Frugal Friday

Oooh it’s Frugal Friday!

I am going to tell you about something that saves me an awful lot of money at the moment, that most of you will not be able to use! But I can, so I will tell you about it anyway!

I have a car. I also have sleep apnoea! That means that at the end of last year, the driver licensing organisation revoked my driving license temporarily on medical grounds. So my car now sits in our garage, officially off roaded. My husband runs the engine for 5 minutes or so each week to keep it from seizing up.

But in the meantime how do I get around?

THANKFULLY when you have your driving license revoked for medical reasons (i.e. rather than for criminal ones), your local council has a legal responsibility to provide you with a replacement local bus pass. They don’t tell you about this, no one at the hospital or DVLA tells you, it’s up to you to find this out!

So I filled in my forms and sent them off.
And in return I was given a bus pass that allows me free travel on buses in the WHOLE OF ENGLAND! That is what the local pensioners get, and it would cost the council too much money to organise a separate system for medical revocations, so we get the same as the pensioners.

I can use it between 9:30am and 11pm, and in certain areas outside that. For instance in our location we can use them from 9am.

A trip into the local town centre is £1.10 each way, I do that at least 3 times a week. A trip to the hospital for one of my appointments (3 times in the last 2 weeks) means buying a day rider ticket at £3.50 for the day.
This is money we don’t have! So having this bus pass is making a real difference to our lives!

Last weekend I sent off the forms to reapply for my driving license. BUT my bus pass does not run out until 2012, so I may well continue to use it for short journeys even after I get my license back. Longer journeys just don’t make sense once I am driving again, since by bus I have to leave over an hour before my appointment time, a journey I can do in just 20 minutes in the car!

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