The Irish Homecoming - Proud of New Yorkers for stepping up and tough out Sandy devastation

April Drew proud to see American friends stepping up to the plate in face of Sandy

There isn’t an Irish person or organization that has sat idly by with their arms folded in this horrific time.  There was even an Irish guy vacationing in New York last week that took a day out of his sightseeing to lend a hand.  Now that’s what I call team spirit.  

All these good deeds got me thinking about a conversation I had during the week about the looming recession in Ireland.  The discussion started with how people became dependent on material happiness and forgot about the day to day simple things that used to make us happy.

A guy I know from Limerick was very candid in a recent chat we had.

“I’m not going to lie, I got caught up with all that rubbish too,” he said referring to his five-bedroom house that is now worth $120,000 less than what he purchased it for in 2008.

“I only have one kid and that’s probably it, so what was I thinking buying a five-bedroom house?”

He is lucky to still have a stable job with a decent income, but he admitted during the height of the Celtic Tiger he was spending more than he was earning.

“There wasn’t a month that went by that I wasn’t overdrawn by ****1,000 euro. I was living a lifestyle that wasn’t for me, and if I’m being honest the more I spent the more I was miserable.”

This guy’s story is one that resonates with a lot of people.

Irene Power, a Sligo woman I know living in Dublin, bought her husband a brand new car for their 10-year wedding anniversary. That was five years ago and she still has another year left in repayments.

“I remember his face when I gave him the keys in a fancy box the morning of our anniversary. It wasn’t the reaction I expected,” shared Power.

Her husband asked how much she paid for it and how she was going to afford the repayments. Although he agreed to keep it after she put up a bit of a fight, he wanted to know how much they would be down every month as a family.  

The answer was ****575. This is a big chunk of change.

During the boom this was half of Power’s weekly wage; she worked at a prestigious accountancy firm. Power kept her job but her husband, who worked in an IT company, was made redundant two years ago and has yet to find a suitable replacement job.  They now live on her income solely, and it’s all they fight about.

“Every time we have an argument he throws the car in my face. I know I was stupid buying him a car but I thought at the time we could afford it and he was big into cars,” she said.

“In hindsight if I had known the financial strain and the upset it has caused in our relationship I would have bought him an electric razor.”

There was a wonderful article in the Sunday Independent a few weeks back. It was all about the ingredients to happiness. A survey revealed that money and material things were bottom of the list. Some of the typical answers were as follows:

“I’m at my happiest when I’m playing with my children.”

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Nster.com