A very strange thing happened to me a little while ago, before I was forced to change my credit card provider, which you may recall was not a happy experience for me – Lloyds TSB really pissed me off, not once but twice….

Anyway, I got a credit card statement and to my immense surprise, I discovered I was £16,000 in credit on my card. It was like one of those fabulous dreams where you are richer than you could ever imagine…then you wake up!

I was determined not to suddenly find myself needing to pay back £16k that I’d spent so I decided to ‘own up’, tell my credit card company that somehow this money had found its way into my account accidentally and that it wasn’t mine. It was a reluctant decision but I felt it was my best option, feeling sure that it would all end in tears (mine) if I’d not done that.

They took the money away. Then a couple of weeks later they took it again, leaving me £16k in the red and stopping my card because I was over my limit. Sorting it out was painful. It took several months and lots of angry phone calls. Eventually it was sorted then the flaming company went and withdrew their cards from the market leaving me with Lloyds TSB to deal with.

I behaved completely honourably over it but it caused me lots of aggravation!

Well now another deeply painful financial episode has happened to me this year and this time it’s all my own stupid fault.

I had to pay someone a deposit for some work being done on the house, had mislaid my cheque book so I said I’d transfer the money electronically to him. I did this and thought no more about it. A month later he phoned and said he’d not received the money and I’d not get my work done until he had! I was tearing off to London so I just went into my bank account and paid him the money thinking that if I’d paid him twice, the second sum would come off the final bill and all would be well.

Imagine my displeasure to find when the final bill came, neither sum was taken off the bill and the chap claimed not to have received the money, a not insubstantial sum by now. I checked and I had, indeed paid him, not only that but I’d paid him twice. Further investigation showed that I had in fact paid the money into another account – a real account and that person had benefited from my money. In other words – I’d suffered from the opposite of my £16k bonus!

My bank then broke the news that there is no redress for this through the banking system. They can ask politely for the money back from the recipient but there is no legal way of getting the money back. Imagine my horror. I’m not rich, we’re spending money like water trying to shore up this ramshackle house and frankly I can’t afford to just dish out a large sum of money to a total stranger. I have been distraught about it for weeks now.

The whole thing was odd – the bank said that they couldn’t reveal the identity of the recipient because the Data Protection Act wouldn’t allow it but that the account was in our local town. I realised this was too big a coincidence to ignore so set about working out whether it could be the account of someone I know. I eventually uncovered that it was.

Someone else who’d done work for me and I’d paid using the same method.

So, all I had to do was phone him and grovel for my money back. It has been just about the most intimidating thing I’ve done in ages. I’ve put it off and put it off, eventually plucking up the courage today to do that. Guess what – he was lovely. Really sweet, immediately when he knew who was on the phone, he said he’d already set the wheels in motion to send the money back to me.

Now all I have to do is wait but in the meantime, my faith in human kindness has been restored and I am made up!

Last year, my parents and I took a long journey to Kent to visit my Nan in hospital.