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Stories from the Celtic Tiger Years Mod Warning in OP PLEASE READ

chops018

Does anyone have any good (or bad) stories from the Celtic Tiger years?

You always hear phrases about how people partied etc., was there just a constant flow of credit available to people and people actually taking the money e.g. was there actually teachers on circa €30k a year buying a house and car and an apartment somewhere.

I was in school and college during these years, graduated into the recession, so I didn't really see what was fully going on at the time bar the fact everyone was working and had money. My dad was working on the buildings on great money and my mam was working away also, we were never stuck really money-wise, also rent seemed to be a lot cheaper back then and fuel and also my college fees were only around €800 a year along with wages being fairly similar to what they are now (from what I can remember anyway, will stand corrected if I am wrong)

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chrissb8

I used to put wads of cash in my shoes to give me an extra 2 inches in height.

road_high

CrankyHaus wrote: »

Neighbour bought a helicopter and had a pad in his back garden. Annoying and you never knew when it was safe to toss off in your own gaff before you'd be interrupted by the sound of rotors and worry about being seen through the bedroom window.

Helicopters! Jesus I hardly ever see one these days apart from the odd army or state ones.
Have private users really died a death? Lived in a rural area during the tiger era and several would pass each day.

[Deleted User]

Knew a property developer who can barely drive a car but he bought a helicopter and tried to learn to fly it. He lost it along with a lot else when the economy turned.
The competition among some of the builders on this side of the country was pretty stupid and quite funny if you didn't buy into it. We'd have conventions and social events and things like that and the big talk was hilarious.
If one started a project building 120 houses everyone else would want to build 130. Fellas bought new cars and rivals would respond with helicopters. Holidays were an odd one, everyone wanted to go somewhere exotic but you didn't want to give the impression your company could do without you for any length. In the summers a lot of them were going for dinner and pints at a certain exclusive golf club every night but then others started going to London and Berline for weekends and doing cocaine.
Unsurprisingly the more competitive and less intelligent guys did lose their very fleeting wealth. Lot of bad health and very hard lessons learned.
I got out of construction altogether for a spell shortly before the top of the market, best move I made, but for a fella with a bit of experience of earlier booms it was fairly clear it was going to end in tears. The problem was Ireland didn't have the history that the UK would have had. I don't think the country as a whole would be caught as badly again, there is a folk memory of boom/bust now.

enricoh

Went for and got a business loan in 2005, the guy in the bank lost interest when I only wanted 100k, tried to convince me to take 250k and 'do the job right'. (And help his commission!)
Was putting up part of the farm as collateral and would be shot if it went sour so I stuck with the 100k thankfully!

clintondaly

I found out what a Tracker Mortgage was and I still have it

Ubbquittious

I was in college during the boom and all I saw was the sandwiches were gone up another 50 cent every term. A lecturer in 2006 or 7 told the class to drop out of electronic engineering and become plumbers.

Nobody in my family had anything to do with the Irish property market so never got to see any of the real madness apart from Cork City being much busier for nights out. I did go on 2 trips to Korea for the craic in 06 but it wasn't funded by building boom money

The recessionary years were much better for me than the ones before it

Strumms

I lived it up.. I was out 4/5 nights a week consistently, making decent cash through work plus another avenue . Be it pub, cinema, cinema and pints, gig and pints whatever I was having a good time although burning the candle at both ends a bit.. I was driving a nice car, two foreign holidays a year, interspersed with weekends away for football in Manchester, London to see a band, Kilkenny for the Roots festival.

I just enjoyed myself. Nothing really that involved ‘excess’ per say just being able to enjoy life, and I did for sure.

In the intervening years I’ve been curtailed a little by a medical issue but that’s thankfully 90% sorted and rehabilitation successful with 100% the aim...

Hopefully that ‘might’ tie in with covid being and having less of a chokehold on us all and a normal life again.

BrianD3

A relative made several million selling his farmland for housing developments and didn't put the proceeds into bank shares. The houses were built and the development completed and it is fairly nice. But I also know of people who made big money selling land just before the crash, the developments never happened or became half finished ghost estates. The land may have been bought back later for a relative pitttance.

I could have made a few million myself from selling property for development if circumstances had been slightly different.

Leaving aside talk of making millions, I remember radio ads for property in Kusadasi. Then there was a terrorist bombing there in about 2005 which got a lot of publicity The radio ads for the development continued but now it was being described as "the Aegean coast" :rolleyes:

paddydriver

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

There have been some great threads a out Celtic Tiger stories.

Some real classics like a bloke going to cinema on his own buying 3 seats so he'd have free seats beside him.

Or my favourite was a lass who said his uncle gave him €50 to mind her counsins while the uncle went to the toilet.

Some people just don't know what to do with money except spend it right now.

That'll be coming back soon when cinema's reopen..

dirkmeister

There was a certain bank giving out €800 loans to students interest free back in 2005/6.

Crazy stuff, lads used it to get through RAG week.

CrankyHaus

Neighbour bought a helicopter and had a pad in his back garden. Annoying and you never knew when it was safe to toss off in your own gaff before you'd be interrupted by the sound of rotors and worry about being seen through the bedroom window.

road_high

davo2001 wrote: »

First day of college in 2002/2003, rep from AIB walks up to me on campus and says I can get a loan of €10,000 if i want. Said i'd no saving and didn't have a job to pay it back.

"no problem she says"

Thank Christ i didn't take it, although i was very tempted.

Madness altogether!

I graduated end 2006 so tbh i kind of missed out on the whole thing work wise- the economy was on the verge of collapsing then so never saw a big benefit from the Celtic Tiger (the opposite in fact as I lost my PS FT contract in the coming years of reccession).

NIMAN

Sky King wrote: »

IM GOING TO BUY A HOUSE AND RENT IT OUT AND USE THE RENT TO BUY ANOTHER HOUSE AND RENT THAT OUT AND USE THAT RENT TO BUY ANOTHER HOUSE AND RENT IT OUT

Are you a taxi driver?

Think I heard a taxi driver on liveline many moons back who was a million in debt cos he did something like that before the crash.

Also remember a prime time or similar show on rte during the financial crisis when a single woman in the audience said she bought a property on her own and got a mortgage 13x her salary.

davo2001

First day of college in 2002/2003, rep from AIB walks up to me on campus and says I can get a loan of €10,000 if i want. Said i'd no saving and didn't have a job to pay it back.

"no problem she says"

Thank Christ i didn't take it, although i was very tempted.

Madness altogether!

[Deleted User]

I used to pay for chicken fillet rolls with fresh 50s and throw the change in the bin on the way out the door.

road_high

I think there was a lot of "there must be something wrong with you" if you're not taking home 2 grand a week...
For the majority of us not in construction or conspicious type spending that's how it was/is.
If you're lucky enough to earn a decent salary now you're rode senseless with taxes anyway

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

Did the LC in 2003, did a couple of years in college, then worked in Centra for 2006 and so was on just over minimum wage for a year when most of my friends were coining it on building sites. Like a few previous posters, for those lads it was all weekends away, nice cars, out for pints and falling out of nightclubs 4 nights a week. I got a job in the Civil Service at the start of '07 and while it was a bit of a pay rise which I was delighted with (we're talking maybe 40 euro a week here), most of them would have laughed at what I was earning. It was literally a fraction.

2 or 3 years later and they're all saying what a lucky so and so I am in my big, permanent job.

Trigger Happy

I had a decent job with a decent salary during those years. Sold and apartment before the crash too which set me up for buying a house post boom.
But dont remember going particularly mad apart from a first class trip to Fiji via london, Los Angeles and Auckland.

antimatterx

Sky King wrote: »

IM GOING TO BUY A HOUSE AND RENT IT OUT AND USE THE RENT TO BUY ANOTHER HOUSE AND RENT THAT OUT AND USE THAT RENT TO BUY ANOTHER HOUSE AND RENT IT OUT

That worked for my dad, although it ****ed my uncle.

Capt. Autumn

The years from 2003-2007 were surreal.
There seemed to be so much money sloshing about , huge money being made and not just by white collar workers.

This was reflected in many of the uber-swish establishments that were opening all over town. HQ on Abbey Street was table service only when it opened, seemed to make sense at the time. It was soon more of a sawdust on the floor type of venue until post the bust, it was no more.

It seemed all the ballsy guys were buying and flipping property, further inflating the bubble, but nobody cared once they had their snouts in the trough and were making easy money. Suddenly buying property off the plan in places like Poland and Bulgaria was all the go. Nobody, it seemed, stopped to ask themselves what the average wage was in these places, rather using our own vastly inflated house prices as a yardstick as to what was good value.

The day the penny really dropped for me was when my wife took a call from her bank manager when we were doing our weekly supermarket shop. 'What was it she wanted?' the moneyman intoned, 'A new car, house extension or a holiday...' He had reviewed her bank accounts and arrived at the conclusion that she was under-borrowed. I wasn't aware that such a term existed. Things were obviously barmy.

You know the last thing an engine does before it explodes? It overheats.

Sky King

IM GOING TO BUY A HOUSE AND RENT IT OUT AND USE THE RENT TO BUY ANOTHER HOUSE AND RENT THAT OUT AND USE THAT RENT TO BUY ANOTHER HOUSE AND RENT IT OUT

El_Duderino 09

There have been some great threads a out Celtic Tiger stories.

Some real classics like a bloke going to cinema on his own buying 3 seats so he'd have free seats beside him.

Or my favourite was a lass who said his uncle gave him €50 to mind her counsins while the uncle went to the toilet.

Some people just don't know what to do with money except spend it right now.

NIMAN

The boom meant little to me, I had a property in Donegal and had considered upgrading, kinda glad I didn't.

Didn't make or lose anything.

Anyway, one thing I do remember from the time was being in Balbriggan around 06 or so in a Supervalu I think, and seeing a bottled water with a crystal or something round the neck of it for €50.

L1011

double jobbing wrote: »

Old cars disappeared off the streets almost overnight when the scrappage bonus came around 2000. Up to 2009 you essentially never saw a car older than 2000 yet today half the cars on the road seem to be 15 years plus old.

Cars are so incredibly better built since the early 00s which is the main factor there.

In 2000, a 1985 car would be rusting to bits and failing constantly and also have basically no features at all. Plenty of 2005 cars are still going strong now and still have a decent bit of modern comforts (aircon, power steering etc).

double jobbing

Montage of Feck wrote: »

We've drank the "easy" credit Kool-Aid and there no going back now! We are just as worse now.

Credit is doled out just as easily now for everything bar houses. I used the AIB app a while back just to see how much repayments would be if I were to add another grand to my loan, a day later they call me up saying they noticed I was looking for a loan top up on the app and were wondering if I was still interested in following through :rolleyes:

whisky_galore

Ghost estate stories?

antimatterx

Better Than Christ wrote: »

When we ran out of logs, we'd burn bundles of fifty euro notes instead. Seems wasteful now, but they were different times.

Can that still be used as legal tender?

:pac:

branie2

Rodney Bathgate wrote: »

Does it have a pool?

Sorry, it doesn't

Better Than Christ

When we ran out of logs, we'd burn bundles of fifty euro notes instead. Seems wasteful now, but they were different times.

Rodney Bathgate

branie2 wrote: »

We built our house extension during the period, in 1996

Does it have a pool?