A letter from Services Australia

Finally, finally, finally, Jim has had a letter from Services Australia telling him that his financial contribution for his aged care facility has been re-assessed.  How much you pay is means tested. Everyone pays a set daily fee, which is 80% of the basic aged pension, then how much extra you pay depends on how much you and your partner (if you have one) earn and own.

They can't use our house as part of the assessment because I live in it and they can't intentionally render me homeless. But they can take both of our incomes into account, including overseas income. You may remember the bill they sent me for over AUD 27000, because, they said, I hadn't filled in the financial assessment form (I had) so they were going to charge us the full monthly fee, backdated to July. Since then I have had ongoing telephone conversations with them, filled in innumerable forms, had multiple conversations with the finance people at the care home and generally had very stressful time trying to sort it all out without rendering us bankrupt (the full monthly fee is considerably more than Jim and I jointly earn in a month).

Anyway. Yesterday he got a letter saying that the re-assessment means that he only needs to pay the set daily fee and no further contribution. This is a considerable relief! I am, possibly optimistically, hopeful that there will be no more demands with menaces for enormous amounts of money.

I have been "renovating" the kitchen. I can't afford to put in a whole new kitchen, and probably couldn't justify it anyway. The kitchen is not well planned, but it is functional, more or less. But the cupboards are irritating, and the kitchen bench was designed such that the bit that overlapped into the dining room was largely wasted space. I have never used it as a breakfast bar, and only used it as a serving space when we had lunch or dinner guests. Otherwise it was dead space that I couldn't properly reach when I was in the kitchen.

So I have put shelving there:

Next, I will organise the cupboards so they are a bit less irritating. Eventually. When I get a round tuit.