Garda wife: 'There are weeks I can't put food on the table'

Of course there are details they have omitted.
If he can't survive on that money he is lying his rear off on some details of
his circumstances.
Pity the media latch onto people in good jobs that could never manage their finances.
What about the masses who DO live on a lot less?

You can bet if you really look very closely at his case, there is plenty he could do to make things better.
 
Let's not go off on any tangents. This family should have enough to get by, plenty of families are making do with far less. That is the concern here. Whatever way the figures are being represented and tortured it is masking the truth.
 
bugler said:
Let's not go off on any tangents. This family should have enough to get by, plenty of families are making do with far less. That is the concern here. Whatever way the figures are being represented and tortured it is masking the truth.
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Spot on bugler. There is a real story here and that is the lost art of household budgeting - I have no doubt that many families on reasonable incomes do find themselves in unpleasant situations from time to time because of their inability to manage the purse strings.

It's disappointing that neither MABS nor the Irish Times seem to have any grasp on what needs to be done.

€1400pm is not an outrageous mortgage by the way (must be a tracker), it probably wouldn't be hard to find a family in similar circumstances paying a much higher mortgage or one paying the same mortgage on a lower income with no possibility of managing. Why do the media always seem to pick questionable cases???
 
I'm also asking myself if MABS don't point out to people that they really need to live within their means, including giving tips on how to do that? This woman seems to also have the justification behind her that MABS agreed with her figures, which is sort of bothering me, too.
 
I find this story laughable. Their income is more than sufficient to sustain a comfortable life. We are not being given the full story.

I have no kids. My wife and I have had greatly reduced income for over 2 years now due to illness. Our annual net income is 28.5k. We have the same bills as everyone else and the same bills as when we had income of 65k+. I am being totally honest when I say we are financially ok. Out of our income, we pay mortgage of 14k, health insurance 2.5k, car costs 2k, mgmt fee 1.6k etc. Excluding food and clothing, about 23k is spent. We are not in arrears to anyone and have no loans. We don't smoke and drink little. We eat like any normal people. We are able to dine out the odd time and take the occasional hotel break. We have enough savings to pay our mortgage for 6 years.

I just refuse to believe that it is a struggle for a garda sargeant and family to survive on their income. They can't afford to eat some days?? Its not credible at all.
 
Janet said:
I'm also asking myself if MABS don't point out to people that they really need to live within their means, including giving tips on how to do that? This woman seems to also have the justification behind her that MABS agreed with her figures, which is sort of bothering me, too.
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MABS don't usually comment on individual cases. I would strongly suspect that the woman is telling the journalist her version of what MABS told her. It may not reflect the actual advice given.
 
Conor_28 said:
Two things here:1) If they bought seven years ago, chances are they're in serious negative equity so can't sell. 2) They have four kids, you would be doing very well to get a house in Dublin for two adults and four kids for €1000 a month.

There does seem to be a gap in the figures somewhere but let's be realistic.
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I presume they owned a house before they moved here, so chances are they aren't in negative equity. It doesn't say either way in the article.
 
Clearly, this Garda Sergeant "case" has been given media time to demonstrate how hard up a "typica" Garda Sergeant is and how they couldnt possibly afford to lose any allowances at budget time.
The cynical side of me is wondering who is behind this media outbreak
and whose vested interests are being promoted here.

In reality this is nonsense. Any family of six can live well on 75000 euro per year. As others have pointed out , a 1400 euro mortgage payment is well within the means of any individual on this type of salary. It is also well within the means of a family earning 20,000 less.

If this was a teacher on 35000 a year, with five dependants, who had purchased a family home at the height of the boom, then they would have my attention and my sympathy. This is not the case here.

Clearly the Garda has a spending problem rather than an income problem
 
Yes, Mugga, you are right that middle Ireland is feeling much pain and frustration.

But what a rotten example to pick - a guy in a secure well-paid job with monthly mortgage that is roughly equal to the average rent for a 4 bed in Dublin.

And how angry must members of middle Ireland be reading this article when they have lost their jobs or earn half what this guy is or who are paying far more every month.
 
i
terrysgirl33 said:
I presume they owned a house before they moved here, so chances are they aren't in negative equity. It doesn't say either way in the article.
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My wild guess is they never sold the original house and are topping up a BTL.

Also all this talk about him getting another job, if they are so hard up, and why doesn't the wife re/enter the workforce?

It's bull!
 
It is either vested interests making their pre budget submission or chronically bad money managers and there will always be those. Take your pick.
 
Shivvers said:
On a serious note, the Irish Times says it has "established the facts to its satisfaction" in relation to this article. That just cannot be possible. No way.
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I seem to recall the yarn a while ago about the civil/public servant bloke (with a Ph.D in mathematics) out west who could not afford food never mind the mortgage and other expenses. If I recall correctly the Irish Times and other media organs gave this story quite a bit of coverage. Only problem was that absolutely nobody was able to vouch for this bloke's existence. Obviously hard cases exist and some people are indeed struggling but I would also be inclined to treat this latest story with similar skepticism. It's a pity that the Irish Times doesn't stick to trying to be a newspaper of record and skip the middle class lobbying/agenda setting (e.g. [broken link removed]). Stories like these give the real hard cases a bad name!

Update: so did anybody ever find MP MacDohmnaill or was this another one where we were supposed to take the IT on trust... Hmmmm.

[broken link removed]
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Ke...tarve-due-to-mortgage-payments-128582613.html
http://www.*****************.com/mp-macdhomnaill-a-tall-story-from-tralee.html
 
mugga said:
the dishwashers broken down
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Minor point in the greater scheme of things and one that has been mentioned by some people who commented on the original IT article but ... if somebody is strapped for €100 to fix the dishwasher then they would surely consider washing the crockery by hand for a while rather than running to Mummy to bail them out...
 
Dermot said:
It is either vested interests making their pre budget submission or chronically bad money managers and there will always be those. Take your pick.
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We can only speculate here but my money is on the former. I agree - there are any amount of bad money managers out there. However, the I.T. must know what it is they are printing - and I suspect they know exactly what it is they are printing in this instance.

I think that this is EXACTLY where any cuts should be made in the upcoming budget!

I live on less than half of what this guy earns - and I can say that I do so quite comfortably. Somebody mentioned that we all have to cut our cloth to suit our measure - and public servants with inflated salaries will have to do the very same!

Again, we are speculating - but someone mentioned that a second BTL property being topped up would be likely in this case - I think that's the most likely scenario here. That's unfortunate - however, I don't think that this scenario (and lets face it, there are 1000's on such salaries with BTL baggage) should be used to justify preventing the Government from the reigning in of public sector salaries (at these higher grades) which are not only out of kilter with what we as a country can afford - they are also off the mark when like for like comparisons are made with our european counterparts.
 
There is much more to this story than has been revealed.

What is stopping the spouse from working to improve the financial situation? I'm not clear on this point.


Marion
 
This is probably why the Government is slow to tackle the high earners in the public sector because they're being told these kinds of stories and then think - ok we can't touch those guys. Most of us on here would agree >€70k is a high earner..
Scratch below the surface and this country is really in a mess.. and we've no one to take charge of the situation and do something about it!
 
I'm clutching at straws here-because the story doesn't add up .
So I reckon it's reverse psychology .in that if the idea was for us to feel sorry for this family .when it's had the completely opposite effect , them it's worked!
I vote to give the frontline public servants an increment on top of the other increment, so they don't have garda sargents kids been fed cornflakes!
Release the hounds.
If we are to be fed story's like this one, then at least give us all the figures!
As another poster mentioned there are many middle income families who are struggling .This did nothing for their case
In my opinion the article is
kis like something from a transition year magazine, but less informative.
 
Charlie Weston wrote a very good opinion piece in the Irish Independent

A Garda earning €75,000 and living on cornflakes? I doesn't add up

Well done to all you finance experts!
Finance experts calculated yesterday that earnings as high as that should leave a lot more to live on than €100 a week.
....The monthly mortgage payments are indeed high but even after that is paid there should still be €2,200 left over which would allow a family to live comfortably, according to figures put together by accountants on the www.askaboutmoney.com website.
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Would anyone like to do a comprehensive piece debunking the story? You should take into account Kathy Sheridan's update on the figures.
 
I found the MABS budget troubling.

€336 pcm "Other Expenditure".
€240 pcm on "clothing/footwear".
€172 pcm "Telephone/Other utilities".

It doesn't do much to dissaude me that even though the incomings seem to be much less than €75k (this was a figure quoted for the previous year, not for this one) there is a huge budgeting problem here.

And worse, MABS did not seem interested or capable of addressing it.
 
Somebody pointed out above that MABS don't comment on individual cases and that it is most likely that it is this woman's interpratation of what she was told that is being used.

I do think that a large part of many people's issues with money is the mis-match between the reality of their income and their expectations of the kind of life that is "normal".
 
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