A Different View
Can we all get a hundred and fifty grand off our mortgage?
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
I have to come clean and admit that I have made a series of critical financial errors right from the moment we decided to buy our family home.
First off, we paid way too much for it – five years in therapy have allowed me to wipe the actual amount from my memory but I do know that the house across the road is now on the market for not much more than one-third of the price the owner rejected around the time that we bought ours.
But my biggest mistake was that I took out an enormous mortgage and I’ve kept paying it religiously ever since.
Stupidly I kept doing it when we could have gone on long holidays instead; I still paid up when we could have changed the car or bought a little hideaway in France or Turkey.
I should have stopped paying and squirreled away just enough to fly to a bolthole in the UK or the US from where I could declare myself well and truly bankrupt.
I’d then have had to hunker down in my condominium with the beach views until such time as my period in financial limbo was at an end – and then I could have come home to start all over again.
But I was stupid – like tens of thousands others out there who have prioritised the repayment of their mortgage over all other debts and who have actually accomplished nothing more than making the hole even deeper than it was at the start.
And somehow, we’re the lucky ones.
We’re not allowed to voice our frustrations at a system, where we pay all of the tax on our income because we don’t have a team of accountants to reveal those little-known tax havens.
Our earnings are there for any taxman worth his salt to see; we have no other sources of income unless twenty quid on a 4/1 winner at Cheltenham qualifies.
Every utility provider has us by the proverbials, because we’re signed up on a direct debit that ensures they get their dosh before my wages have even settled in to their new surroundings.
So we have no hiding places, no secret accounts, no three-month credit window on our bills – we work, we get paid, we pay out and the cycle starts all over again.
And yes, we’re lucky that we have jobs and an income because there are many who don’t – but does that preclude us from anger or frustration because we barely have the wherewithal to keep our heads over water?
I do not, for one minute, begrudge the Dublin couple who had one-third of their mortgage debt written off by AIB last week. I just wish that I could have €150,000 taken off mine.
That wouldn’t even halve my mortgage, but it would give me the security that I crave – the money for college, for pensions, for the rainy day. As it is, every day is a rainy day and with a massive mortgage it will continue so for years to come.
Our Dublin friends owed €400,000 after borrowing to buy their home during the boom, and they are struggling with loans, credit card debt and other borrowings.
They are caught in a trap from which there is no escape – and this represented the only pragmatic solution, as well as being the morally correct route to take as well.
The Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation are a fantastic group of people who provide the only shelter in the midst of a financial storm for couples who find themselves at their wit’s end.
As the banks close in on repossession and everything you’ve worked for heads down the pan, these angels of mercy come to pull as much as they can from the wreckage to allow you to cling in to your life.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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