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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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pgj2015

I know of a guy who paid 100 euro for a taxi trip that should have cost around 7. The taxi was booked but not after 100 euro being offered.

Fitz*

I was DJ'ing in a rural pub for some party, a 21st or 40th or the like, and at the end of the night the father of the family paid me €50 to play 3 more songs. They lasted about 6 or 7 minutes overall.

[Deleted User]

"There was something wrong with me" for not at least going for 1 year to Australia.
You were a complete and utter philistine if you did'nt own an iPod mini/classic/etc (Right now I own an iPod Touch 7th Generation - the only iPod that's not regarded as End Of Life by Apple)
"OK, you bought Eircom shares. Stop looking sorry for yourself. Take that look off your face"

Sheep Shagger

Sheep_shear wrote: »

I really wish his "What you should do with your SSIA" show on RTE was up on Player. Craic.

https://youtu.be/KHcHCcwr3Dg

Ger Roe

Anybody could be a property developer.... borrow against the house you had, buy another and 'flip it' as soon as you get the keys. It was easy... until it wasn't and the house of cards came tumbling down. I had a colleague who thought I was mad not to jump on the train ... he lost everything when the IMF famously flew in behind Brian Cowan's back, to take over the country.

I also remember a local middle aged couple who bought a holiday home in rural Spain during the rush to invest abroad. All was well, until the crash and there were no cheap direct flights out to the nearest airport anymore... it cost them a fortune to fly to an airport further away that they would then have to make their way from, to get to their 2nd home. They ended up selling it at a loss.

For a while, some Irish people thought we had made it to the top tier of world movers and shakers... in reality we were the subsistence inhabitants of a damp rock on the edge of Europe, who got lucky for a while and thought it was going to last forever.

thecretinhop

facehugger99 wrote: »

No idea what this means

a guy/buffer wanted to know where to get stripper at 1am with 500 in notes

CrankyHaus

Sheep_shear wrote: »

I really wish his "What you should do with your SSIA" show on RTE was up on Player. Craic.

Look up the intro on YouTube - beyond parody rip off of the Transpotting intro, complete with Eddie doing a choose... monologue

Sheep_shear

Sky King wrote: »

Eddie Hobbs explaining what 'gearing' is to dumb dumbs.

You see, what you do is, see, you borrow €900k on top of your own life savings of €100k and buy a swish gaff for a million... the value of the place will grow by 10% in a year, then you sell it for €1.1M and pay back your loan. Hey presto! You have just doubled your hundred grand in a year!

I can see no risk to this strategy whatsoever.

I really wish his "What you should do with your SSIA" show on RTE was up on Player. Craic.

Sky King

Eddie Hobbs explaining what 'gearing' is to dumb dumbs.

You see, what you do is, see, you borrow €900k on top of your own life savings of €100k and buy a swish gaff for a million... the value of the place will grow by 10% in a year, then you sell it for €1.1M and pay back your loan. Hey presto! You have just doubled your hundred grand in a year!

I can see no risk to this strategy whatsoever.

Sheep_shear

double jobbing wrote: »

The few people who did spent half their lives booking Ryanair flights for their friends who didn't have them.

I had a friend who used to do this for me. I remember texting him once to get a flight somewhere, he replied I'd have to wait til the week after cos he'd exceeded his limit for that month as he has used his CC to pay a deposit on a flat in Bulgaria. He had never been there. And it was off the plans. I didn't think that too unusual at the time. Must have been after Summer 2006?

2lazytogetup

inflation was rampant, everytime i went to the shops, the cost of everything was going up.

i think alot of the spending was because everyone else was spending. if the jones were buying a bulgarian property, why werent you. if they were going to new york for a shopping trip, you felt left out if you didnt do the same.

herd mentality. i think there is a deep psychological element to it. i feel jealous when i see them all going to electric picnic every year. and i know if i go, i would hate it.

Hangdogroad

facehugger99 wrote: »

No idea what this means

OP was at a stag party in Galway where the groom to be was presumably in a state of inebriation as his shirt was ripped. Groom announced that (I think) he wanted to engage the services of a prostitute and wondered what he could get get for 500 Euros.

2lazytogetup

my mate fitted kitchens during celtic tiger years. said he was up to his neck in work. some woman he knew was pressuring him to put in a new kitchen. He didnt want to be rude and say no. so he quoted her 3 times what it should be to get rid of her. her response "how soon can you start".

i paid 200euro each for rolling stones in slane tickets. I dont even like them that much but everyone was going. Funnily enough that was when the boom ended as the concert was half empty and people were trying to sell on their tickets just before the gig.

Mr.Fantastic

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

When normal people with normal jobs find themselves with extra money due to a boom, the right thing to do is to continue to live normally and bank the extra cash for a rainy day or early retirement. That's what the Dutch do. But you'll hear no end of stories about how stingy the Dutch are. I've no personal experience of stingy Dutch people do I don't know either way.

I think we might all be wise to this stuff after the fact, but we're way too inclined to call frugality stibgyness when we actually see it in action.

Yeah this is totally it tbh, My parents at the time were careful enough so we didn't get stung too badly.

But yeah it will be interesting to see the state of affairs post Covid the second half of this year.

facehugger99

thecretinhop wrote: »

(5) stag nite in galway lad with his shirt ripped with a lot of 50s saying i cant get married without getting me hole i have 500 lads any joy?

No idea what this means

Your Face

I went into the bank to update my debit card and they offered me a mortgage.
When I politely declined she asked me if I'd like any other type of loan.

El_Duderino 09

Mr.Fantastic wrote: »

I was only a child/teenager during the celtic tiger and just finished ty when the recession hit, my brother who has since passed was in College studying computer science(which I went on to do after in a h.dip)

He was telling me at the time that the course cordinator was telling the lads in the course to go out to the sites aswell, a few of his coursemates also went with their fathers who were in construction and dropped out.

The only mad story I have was a friend of my mums with her bi-monthly shopping trips to NY for gifts and her 750k house with bespoke wooden stairs and the like. Never begrudge anyone but they were a normal enough family with normal enough jobs didn't add up at the time.

When normal people with normal jobs find themselves with extra money due to a boom, the right thing to do is to continue to live normally and bank the extra cash for a rainy day or early retirement. That's what the Dutch do. But you'll hear no end of stories about how stingy the Dutch are. I've no personal experience of stingy Dutch people do I don't know either way.

I think we might all be wise to this stuff after the fact, but we're way too inclined to call frugality stibgyness when we actually see it in action.

bluemachaveli

It was madness, I finished school around 2002. Went straight to working full time in a shop earning not much more than minimum wage and ended up with 2 credit cards (~€6k limit between them), 2 bank loans and a credit union loan. Rotated through cars (boy racer era :rolleyes: ), trips to America (went to NY twice in a year for some reason) and out on the drink 4/5 nights a week.

To top it all off we bought a house in May 2008, literally days before everything started to sink. Luckily it was a reasonable size and not @100%

Paying those loans back was the biggest lesson of my life. It took years of juggling payments etc. When I finally cleared them, I swore I'd never borrow again. Thankfully these days the only loan I have is my mortgage, everything after that is my own

Mr.Fantastic

I was only a child/teenager during the celtic tiger and just finished ty when the recession hit, my brother who has since passed was in College studying computer science(which I went on to do after in a h.dip)

He was telling me at the time that the course cordinator was telling the lads in the course to go out to the sites aswell, a few of his coursemates also went with their fathers who were in construction and dropped out.

The only mad story I have was a friend of my mums with her bi-monthly shopping trips to NY for gifts and her 750k house with bespoke wooden stairs and the like. Never begrudge anyone but they were a normal enough family with normal enough jobs didn't add up at the time.

[Deleted User]

Munster final day,being like south armagh at height of troubles,with all the helicoptors about

I remember bank writing out to my folks,(who have v.ordinary jobs) wanting to talk to them about buying apartments in local town

My ould lad,who left school at 13,sunk the plan,with best piece of advice i always remember.....if it was such a good deal,the rich would keep it for emsleves and not advertise to us

Lockheed

I knew a guy on the sites who was on 3k a week at one point. He said he's better off now though because in the day it all went on sniff and drink

Hangdogroad

The Sunday Indo hyping z listers like Gavin Lamb Murphy.
The O2 Girls.
Brendan O Connor and his infamous "all the smart ballsy guys are buying property now" column. Great advice Brendan only this was 2007.

dzsfah2xoynme9

About a week before my 21st I had the bank ring me up asking did I want a loan for my 21st in case I was going away or having a big party. Mad when I think back now..

road_high

helimachoptor wrote: »

Myself and wife were going to a wedding, a couple of weeks before hand we got an updated invite to say it was now black tie only and only admittance would be in black tie. And also they didnt want gifts just cash. I cant remember the exact number but there was 200 or so due to go, about 70-80 turned up and most brought presents.
Bride spent most of the day crying

Don't mean to wish ill on strangers but the stuck up cow deserved it and hopefully some little life lesson was learned that day for the "happy couple".
Nothing worse than up your arse weddings, they'd been making a comeback pre-covid so no harm to see them clipped for a while. Vulgar, narcisstic nonsense

One More Toy

I was in school, the teachers were famous for having new cars every year. My parents bought a second house in the city, still have it and back to the value of the purchase price

I did better post crash, in college 2008, was making a good sum of money in a part time job {nearly full time it took over my studies). For some reason I said to myself I want to invest some money so I did with Zurich into a fund. Made a nice little earner out of it when stock prices were deflated

El_Duderino 09

CrankyHaus wrote: »

There was an Episode of MTV's Super Sweet 16, a celebration of retarded excess like that, set in Ireland during the period.

Most Episodes were in places like Bel-Air or Malibu. This one was in Dundalk :pac:.

I knew a girl who was at it. She said the production company had Myrmidons going around instructing the girls to act like complete airheads on camera, and getting arsey when they said its not the sort of thing they do.

Nightmare. How could having a camera crew at your party be fun?

How much will we learn from it is the next question. Will,our generation blow mo ey if we get it again? Will our generation tell the next generation about it and how to avoid it?

Will our generation be like the old folk with cash under the mattress for fear of losing it?

CrankyHaus

Sunny Disposition wrote: »

That's the way it was with developers! Even at the time I found it funny, the insecurity with a lot of the newly successful ones was so bad that they had to outspend the next guy. There's no way his daughter liked a relatively talentless group like that so much that it was worth bringing them over. They'd surely have had as much craic with a good DJ there, but that's not a story you can use in the bar of the golf club when the bragging starts.

There was an Episode of MTV's Super Sweet 16, a celebration of retarded excess like that, set in Ireland during the period.

Most Episodes were in places like Bel-Air or Malibu. This one was in Dundalk :pac:.

I knew a girl who was at it. She said the production company had Myrmidons going around instructing the girls to act like complete airheads on camera, and getting arsey when they said its not the sort of thing they do.

El_Duderino 09

KoolKluxKlan wrote: »

Who could forget this guy with his 50 notes
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=00umb7Cdgdk

If I didn't see that I might not have believed it. Some people will never have money, looking at that it's clear some people are destined not to have money for long.

[Deleted User]

mariaalice wrote: »

n 2007, a property developer booked Girl Aloud for his daughter's 21st. The group were reportedly flown by private jet to Dublin and performed on stage before mingling with guests. According to event planners, the cost of the band alone could have been anything up to €400,000.

Found this online, be hard to top that but I am sure some did.

That's the way it was with developers! Even at the time I found it funny, the insecurity with a lot of the newly successful ones was so bad that they had to outspend the next guy. There's no way his daughter liked a relatively talentless group like that so much that it was worth bringing them over. They'd surely have had as much craic with a good DJ there, but that's not a story you can use in the bar of the golf club when the bragging starts.

KoolKluxKlan

Who could forget this guy with his 50 notes
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=00umb7Cdgdk