Names on bank accounts don't matter. ASK ME HOW I KNOW.

I have a story to tell you. It's been twelve months in the making because it's taken me this long to get over the trauma.

A combination of time and my go to coping mechanism of humour means I can now make bad jokes about it, but I can tell you at the time I was rocking in the corner.

Lemme take you back to December 2017...

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They say buying a house is one of the most stressful life events and I can 100% confirm this.

We had been looking at houses on and off in our preferred high school catchment. Our record was 13 houses in one day, expertly scheduled by MapGuy. We were having a weekend off looking while we did some Christmassy things and checked out Santa's Enchanted Wardrobe. Spoiler: it was Narnia and it was awesome. While we waited for the kids to finish the last of their play, MapGuy was checking his phone and saw a house in the suburb we were eyeing off was having its first home open... if we left now, with a 25 minute drive, we could get there five minutes before it closed.

Lock and load, baby, let's do it.

We got there and raced in. We liked what we saw. It ticked a lot of boxes. Great, quiet street. Close to public transport. A bit of yard. Four bedrooms. Modern (after renovating we didn't want to do it again!). It was 1.5km from the primary school and 1km from the high school we wanted the kids to go to. It was small and didn't have a pool - tick, tick and tick. We don't like giant houses where you might not see each other for days, and we didn't want a pool because of the hassle and expense, but, you know, feel free to invite me to yours.

A few days later after double checking finance we put an offer in and the agent was pretty dismissive of it, thinking it too low (well duh, it's her job to get them the highest price) but rang back that night to say it had been accepted. That was twelve months ago this week.

It was time to get the finance locked down. This is where shit gets cray. Try to keep up.

My parents had sold us our previous house (they had built it in the 1970s and I grew up in it - you should click this for super cute pictures of Bubba Glow) and our loan was through them. We had about $100k left owing to them. They had just sold their investment property and their home was on the market getting ready for their new house that they'd move to in the new year. So they had a chunk of cash sitting in the bank and my Dad offered to loan us $50k to put a deposit on the house, go toward all the fees, and to get us over the line with the bank loan that wouldn't quite cover the cost of this house we wanted. He'd be repaid the full original loan plus the new loan on the sale of our house, which was expected to be (and was) in early Feb.

With me?

So I told my Dad our bank details and he set about transferring a head spinning FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS to us for this super short term loan.

The transfer should have been pretty quick, but the money wasn't showing up no matter how many times I refreshed.

So we double checked the account number.

You guessed it.

I told him the wrong number.

I was out by one digit.

I can honestly say I have never felt such terror.

My mind started to spin, the room grew dark and I fought off fainting. I could feel my body flush with adrenaline. I retched over and over, standing in my kitchen with my Dad as he too was processing that he'd possibly just transferred a shit tonne of money to a stranger.

I fell to the floor and struggled for air. It was all very dramatic and if I'd started beating my chest no one would have been surprised.

Tricky and Bobbin, had come running on hearing the commotion, and asked what was wrong.

I tried so hard to hold it together.

"I've just lost some of Pop's money so I'm a bit upset."

Bobbin ran off somewhere and Tricky rubbed my back reassuringly and said as many comforting things as he could think of as I sat on the ground with a few tears down my running down my cheeks.

Bobbin came back and handed me the 20c she had gotten earlier in the week.

"Here, Mum, you can have this."

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Yep. All the ugly crying you can imagine. I cried so loud I scared them.

My Dad was holding it together, saying it would be OK, but I could see from the tension in his jaw that he was pissed. And rightly so.

It was past 5pm so I couldn't contact the bank. Even the emergency numbers couldn't help me at all. I texted my bestie and let her know what happened, needing to share the burden with someone. She rang me back immediately (possibly our second ever phone conversation since we are text peeps) and all I could do was sob in to her ear. She spoke quickly but calmly, saying that she was going to put her husband on as he's an accountant.

He reassured me the likelihood of the number being an actual account was super low. He told me all the times that people write down the wrong number on a form, or key it in wrong, and it bounces back after a day or two. Even with garbled replies between sobs, he kept repeating how it was so extremely unlikely that it would go through. And it is unlikely. I'm told the way accounts are set up they generally don't have consecutive numbers, so getting the final digit wrong by one like I did, should be cool in most cases.

There was much crying and wailing over how stupid I was, but this is already going to be a huge story so I'll fast forward to the next morning.

At 5am I rang my east coast Bank #1 to find out what I could do from this end. I needed to know if it was a real account or if the money would ping back like it does 99% of the time. For privacy reasons they couldn't tell me anything and much to their credit they listened to me cry about it. On hearing how much money it involved the person on the phone asked me to tell her the number that had been entered accidentally. She typed it in and I'll never forget what she said:

"Privacy laws prevent me from telling you if this is an account... but I'd get Bank #2 to stop payment IMMEDIATELY if I were you."

Cue breakdown in 3, 2, 1...

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I rang Bank #2 (my Dad had been doing the same thing over at his place) to be informed that that I couldn't speak to anyone in the Accidental Idiotic Internet Transfers Department because they had closed for the Christmas break, but would I like them to call me back on the 6th of January?

The most awful noise I've ever heard escaped my lips and I started to violently shake again. The person on the phone tried to reassure me that it was illegal to spend money accidentally put in an account to which I strangled out between sobs "that.... never.... stopped..... anyone..... beforreeeeeeeeee" at which point I successfully became his weirdest phone client ever.

All I could think was that someone would get a nice $50k bonus in their bank account, withdraw it all, spend up big and we'd spend years trying to get it back and end up with a random $2 a week pay back scheme set up by the court.

Every person I spoke to was genuinely trying to help, but no one could. One even called me back later just to check on me. Which OF COURSE meant I cried some more.

At the same time that this was happening, our loan had not yet been approved because most of the staff at Bank #3 (there are four banks in this story) had gone on leave already and it hadn't even been marked as received yet. The days were ticking away and the day to have finance sorted by was zooming toward us. We had an emergency meeting with our broker who advised us to put in a brand new application with Bank #4 because it was obvious that Bank #3 just didn't give a shit at this time of year.

Thank fuck for that because Bank #4 got on it right away and we had pre-approval in hours and full approval in a day... but without that $50k, we wouldn't be able to do anything.

Insanely, my Dad had another $50k in the bank (if you remember from up the top he'd just sold his house and wasn't buying the new one until Feb, so he had a super healthy bank account for a while there) and said he'd transfer it over.

At this point Bank #2 called me and said "the money has gone in!!". Is that not the best customer service? He'd been monitoring the account, probably out of morbid curiosity. At which point I had to explain it was a different $50k and he no doubt went away mumbling about rich people problems.

Because who has $100,000 that they can just transfer around willy nilly? Usually we don't, it was just this random set of circumstances that meant we did.

I spent my birthday in a pit of despair. I was helping ticket sales for a school function and even pay pass transactions made me nervous. If there was a way for it to go wrong, I'd find it! I would over charge people. Or refund people that weren't meant to be. You name it, if it was bad, I was thinking it.

I was responsible for losing more money than I had ever contemplated. And it wasn't even my money to lose. I'd lost my Dad's money. I forced myself to put on a brave face for the most part, and threw myself in to advent activities for the kids.

The next week I had to transfer money to a friend and I had a genuine trauma reaction when putting the numbers in. Nauseated and trembling I quadruple checked, then quadruple checked again, sweating bullets as I hit transfer on a piddly $20. Thankfully this reaction hasn't continued.

Christmas day came and went, and whilst I do think I faked it well, it was always the first thought I had every morning; the last thought every night; and at least half my waking thoughts each day. It consumed me.

Finally, in the second week of January, when were packing up the old house getting ready to move in a few weeks time, I got the call I'd been waiting for. My Dad informed me the money was back in his account.

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If you take anything away from this, I want it to be that you should not try to buy a house at Christmas time; always check the account number at least fourteen times before you give it to someone or hit transfer; and to never, ever, under any circumstances, lend me money.

The end of an era

Photo by Jamie Templeton on Unsplash

I keep randomly bursting in to tears.

"So what's new?" I hear you ask.

Yeah, I admit, I cry over bloody everything (except my kids starting school for some reason). But these last few days I have been in floods of tears as it is the last week I will ever live in this house. We are saying goodbye to Casa de Glow.

While we will still technically own it for a month or so (anyone wanna buy it?), we are bidding a very fond farewell to a home that is full of so many memories.

The memories are not just these past eleven years that we have lived here, they go back much further.

See, the house our children were brought home to, and took their first steps in, is also the house I was brought home to and took my first steps in. I will go so far as to say the house my kids were conceived in is also the same house I was conceived in... and now you have that visual in your head, you're welcome. Ew.

My parents built this house in the 1970s, and when we moved out in the 1980s they kept it as a rental property. Thanks, War Services Home Loans.

When MG and I were looking to purchase our first house, my Dad suggested we buy this place off them. In all its 70s glory; purple tiles, yellow benchtops, and brown wallpaper. So we did. It wasn't the best house, and it wasn't in the best suburb, but it was going to be a foot in the real estate door.

I have memories of birthday parties here; of playing bicycle taxis in the backyard; of Santa coming up the street every year and throwing lollies from the back of a ute; of first day of school photos being taken in the backyard; of sitting on my Nanna's lap at the dining table; being with my other grandparents outside at Christmas. Sure there are some not so fabulous memories, but the passage of time has firmly cemented rose coloured glasses over them.

Over the years we remodelled the whole place. It no longer looks like it does in my memories. Firstly, we ripped out the kitchen and bathroom to put in a more functional (and yes, waaaay more aesthetically pleasing version). We overhauled the bedroom with a fully customised his and hers walk in wardrobe with hidden shoe storage that would make many a clotheshorse foam at the mouth.

Then four years ago, we added a major extension. We got the call telling us of our final council approval as I was labouring in the dining room (though I didn't think I was in labour at the time), and the bobcats rolled in when Bobbin was only four days old.

The little cupboard sized house with cardboard box sized bedrooms was transformed in to an open plan home with generous bedrooms, an extra bathroom (complete with bathtub so big I could almost float in it), toilet, and a walk in linen cupboard that was the envy of everyone who saw it... and a lot of people saw it because I would squeal "YOU HAVE TO SEE MY LINEN CUPBOARD!" whenever we had visitors. You know you're an adult when you place a high value on a fabulous linen cupboard.

We added a massive patio. And I mean massive. Because the house was still technically small (although it now felt huge to us!), the patio became an outdoor room. The kids would be out there no matter what the weather was like because it offered so much protection, and with the big screen MG installed, it was the perfect place for outdoor movies nights with friends and neighbours.

Bit by bit we transformed the back yard with turf, veges, natives and trees that are now established and bearing tonnes of fruit. We poured our hearts, souls, sweat (mostly MG's), tears (mostly mine) and a fuck tonne of money in to this place. And now we're leaving.

My mind swirls so continuously these days I'm reaching for sea sickness tablets. Was it a waste to renovate this place? Are we making a terrible mistake by moving? What privileged worries I have.

But I keep packing. Because, well, it's a bit bloody late to change our minds now with settlement due, oh, TOMORROW!

I am not the only one who is sentimental about crap like this, but I've never done anything quite as momentous selling my childhood home, so other than stopping to have a cry every now and then, I'm not sure what else I can do. Any suggestions, including taking a teaspoon of cement, would be most welcome.

For now, I'll keep packing, and keep my fingers crossed that after complaining right now about how I'm sad to sell it, that it will actually sell fast! So, um, yeah, anyone wanna buy a house?

No more knock, knock, who's there!

This is a S3 post: I received a complimentary Ring doorbell.

#C2 for full details please see my disclosure policy

It's no secret that I live in a bit of a dodgy area. It's more likely to be mentioned in the news for a stabbing than for the accomplishments of its schools. But as high as it is on the crime-o-meter (that's a thing, right?), I still love my lil house and this street. It just means we take a few extra security measures.

The latest we've adopted is the Ring video doorbell which I had been eyeing off in the catalogues for a while. I thought it would be pretty good, which is why I said yes to a review, but it has actually been even better than predicted, and in unexpected ways!

What does it do?

Well, it's a doorbell that has a camera and microphone inbuilt. When someone presses the button you get the usual ding-dong of a standard bell, but you also get an alert immediately via the app on your Android or Apple phone - open it and voila, you can see and hear who is at your door, and they can hear you, but can't see you (or your pyjamas).

You can also set it up to record whenever it senses movement so it becomes a security camera even when noone presses the bell. Super handy when you're going away and want to keep an eye on your property or, if you do happen to be broken in to, you might actually catch the bugger on video! Alternatively you might just get cool vision of a child patting a dog and go viral. Whatever works for you. It's quite sensitive so I'll reserve the motion sensor function for when we're on holidays.

A great bonus is that you can have it professionally wired to your house, but you don't have to., The internal battery lasts for months and the app actually lets you know how much battery life is left. If you have it turning on all the time with the security sensor, then you might want to think about putting it on the mains, but as a standard video door bell, it hasn't used much of the juice at all. Ours is still running on battery and won't need to be charged for another month or so yet.

So that's all great, and it does what it says it will do, using secure wifi. The kids think it is the bee's knees, I think it's fabulous, and the cop who came to my door the other day because my neighbour had a break in thought it was a great additional step to security, too. But it doesn't stop there...

Unexpected perks

1. Because you can see who it is before you press the answer button, you can choose to not answer. Pretend you're not home if it is someone trying to force their religion down your throat, sell you encyclopedias, or even a family member, up to you. You'll never have to close the door on Aunt Beryl again, because you never have to open it in the first place. Aunt Beryl aside, this is also fabulous for those of us with anxiety who are flooded with a sense of dread whenever the bell rings, not knowing who it is. When you see it's a friend with a box of chocolates, you know to let them in.

2. As the app works wherever you have coverage, I answered the door when I was in Kmart the other day and ACCEPTED A PARCEL! Oh lordy, is there anything worse than finding you've been carded two minutes before you got home? I was able to tell the delivery dude that I couldn't come to the door, but he could leave the parcel. I may have looked like a tool in Kmart, but that's OK, I'm used to that. I could have been on the other side of the door with an infectious illness for all he knew, but no, I was looking at storage solutions.

3, Again, because it is app based and you don't have to be on the other side of the door to use it, I was able to let a friend know I was only a few minutes away when she got to my house before me. I'd popped to the shops for milk thinking I could get back before our visitors arrived, but she was early. Rather than her standing around waiting and repeatedly knocking or having to phone me, straight away she knew I was five minutes away.

Only once did the video get a bit laggy, making the image pixelated (see above) and the audio was crackly, but on further investigation it appeared to be because we were maxing out the wifi with streaming and downloading at the same time. But even with it coming through at a lower quality, I could still see who it was and hear everything that was said.

However, there is one thing I'd like to change if I could. The time it takes for the app to load when the doorbell is pressed. It seems really slooooow. I feel some people might walk away before I've even had the chance to see who it is. The app is 'asleep' to save battery power, and if someone was in a hurry or a courier was ready to card, I reckon you'd end up seeing them getting back in to their van rather than waiting at your door by the time it was up and going.

Overall, I'm quite happy with the Ring. The camera gives a sharp picture, even at night with no external light source (see below), the audio is clear, and the app is very easy to navigate and control. You do have to purchase a subscription to view saved videos (including missed rings), but at $4 per month, that's less than a cup of English Breakfast at the local cafe, so that's OK by me.

The Ring video doorbell is available from stores such as Bunnings, Harvey Norman, and JB Hi-Fi.

Because that's a clever thing to do with a newborn in the house!

From what I learned the last time around and from what the powers that be say, when you have a newborn there are certain things you should probably avoid. Dangerous things like rabid animals, hard drugs, death metal concerts, and being around certain relatives.

Then there are the less dangerous but really annoying things you should avoid doing with a newborn. Like moving house, organizing a wedding, and being around certain relatives.

I'd like to add to that list. Renovate and/or extend your house.

So, hey, guess what we're doing?

Yeah. We're renovating and extending the house! Because that is SO clever. And I'm not stressed AT ALL. Unless of course almost bursting in to tears every time you look at the plans is a sign of stress?

This has been on the cards for a long time. The plans were drawn up months ago, the quotes submitted and the builder chosen. We signed on the dotted line (three hundred times, getting writers cramp) and it is now official.

I'm having trouble picturing the finished product in all it's glory. Instead I can hear jackhammers on the other side of the wall just after getting Bobbin to sleep, see myself cleaning up dust only to turn around and find a fresh new layer and envisioning sand being traipsed around from asshole to breakfast every day of the build.

If Kevin McCloud isn't going to drop around and ask about our budget and council approval timeline then I just don't know if I can do it without a few minor breakdowns and really whiney blog posts.

But then I think of the awesome things and all of a sudden there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Things like decorating Tricky and Bobbin's new bedrooms. Choosing a lounge suite to replace to the two broken ones we are currently using. Finding the perfect dining table that doesn't have wonky legs. Having a house bigger than a shoebox where we don't trip over each other. Planting a kitchen garden to replace the weeds of doom, and even getting chooks. I just have to remember to focus on that... and the outside chance of a visit from Kevin, and I'll get through it.

Failing that I'm packing a bag and moving in with my parents for a while.

Have you renovated? With little kids? Gimme ALL TEH ADVICE!

P.S. Kevin if you're reading this, let's talk.

A house full of memories

Oh hey, guess who is in a magazine this month? Any excuse to get my mug in a national mag, right? Well, not so much this time because it's not an article about blogging. Or motherhood. Or being whingey. The three things most often associated with me. Instead it is an article about property. In a property magazine.

Now I'm no property guru. I live in a 1970s shoe-box sized house on fair whack of land (by suburban Perth standards) in a suburb known for its high proportion of Centrelink recipients. Of which I'm obviously one - ohai soon to be gone Baby Bonus.

But my friend Shannon, who happens to be the Deputy Editor of Australian Property Investor, asked (via Facebook - where all good questions are asked) if anyone knew anyone who had bought a house that had a family connection somewhere in its history for an article he was writing. So I put up my hand. Because it's nice to help a friend and also the whole I'm a MEDIA WHORE thing. Plus I had an idea for some cool photos.

Yours truly is gracing the pages of this month's issue of Australian Property Investor because I bought the house my parents built in the 1970s.

L: Me in the laundry sink 1983    R: Tricky in the new laundry sink 2013.
See the door handle and curtain? Still the same!

Map Guy and I bought the place in 2008 and renovated extensively to de-70-ify it. The archways have all been squared off, the hideous yet groovy in its hey day yellow and brown laundry has been replaced with sleek grey and white, the teeny kitchen has been ripped out and a new sparkly one put in its place and the whole place rendered and painted. Let's not talk about the back yard though.

My little house is full of memories. I remember sitting in the dining room with my grandparents and blowing out birthday candles. I remember my uncle knocking on the front door dressed as Santa... though I was sure it was actually the dude from the North Pole at the time. I remember washing my dolls' clothes and hanging them on a string line under the patio. And whilst almost everything about the house is different I can still see the ghosts of those happy times. I often get extraordinary de ja vu walking around this place.

L: Teeny tiny yellow and brown kitchen (me in my mum's arms) 1982
R: My bigger kitchen with red glass splashback

It is the house I took my first steps in and the house Tricky took his first steps in. I could go further and say we were both conceived in it, but that would just freak me out and give me terrible visuals. And we all know how I feel about that.

It is still a shoe-box but it's a much more modern shoe-box. Right now we're debating whether or not to extend. Every time I think we've made the decision, one of us, who shall remain nameless, spins out over how much money it will cost and how hard it will be being home all day with two children in a building site. Which kinda gives away which nameless person that is. If you can't figure it out, here's a clue:

L: Strike a pose circa 1985    R: Strike a pose 2013
Different front door, carpet and door handle. Same shitty brown tiles though!

What?! I happened to have red shoes and a black silk dressing gown hanging around!!

If you want to read the article to find out why we bought my parents' old house (that we'd moved out of when I was six) then get your hands on the June issue of Australian Property Investor.

Do you have a family connection to the home you live in?