Garda Sergeant can't afford food

Personally I have no real issue with how much this, or any other, garda earns - my issue is with people on what are good salaries, in secure employment, crying the poor mouth and resorting to emotive statements about their children eating cornflakes for dinner when there are hundreds of thousands of people struggling to survive day to day on SW and millions trying to survive on salaries that are considerably less then this family have but they still have to pay the mortgage, feed the kids, pay through the nose for our 'free' education, tax and fuel the car, pay for health insurance etc etc etc.

greecy_joe wrote: »

seems perfectly sensible to me

Please explain I'm all ears
This should be good!

greecy_joe wrote: »

no

Right ok

hyperborean wrote: »

Rubbish and down right wrong.

It's impossible to quantify as every business has different pay structures, certainly a middle manager in the banking/financial/insurance sector would expect similar. Given the nature of their respective jobs, would someone in a 9-5 office middle management job deserve similar or more, in your opinion?

The problems in the public sector don't lie with middle management like sergeants, they lie further up the foodchain in all areas of it and throughout the bureaucratic mess that is the HSE.

greecy_joe wrote: »

the couple most likely dont even exist , someone at SIPTU probabley penned it , their attempt to drum up sympathy for those on a medium salary in the public sector has clearly flopped

What does SIPTU have to do with the Gardaí?

greecy_joe wrote: »

even the biggest form of crime in ireland today was picnic basket snatching , we could not afford to pay relativley low ranking guards the kind of money this protagonist is on , its a lack of money issue , not a performance issue

Sadly the biggest form of crime in Ireland has thus far gone unpunished, but the biggest problem with an underpaid policeforce at rank and file levels is it gives opportunity to bribery and corruption. While we seem relatively willing to accept that at government level, I don't think drug dealers and gangsters having free reign to do what they want would appeal to anyone.

Money is short, but we have to look at the right places to find it: the highest earners in general and in the public sector the underperforming and the overpaid levels at the top, not to mention the quangos, committees and "jobs for the boys". The low to middle income in every sector are already paying enough for the greed of others.

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Reading between the lines here, what has happened is that the couple bought the house on two salaries. And then when kids came along, the wife stopped working and became a stay-at-home mom.

You didn't bother reading it did you ?
Either that or you are seeing some very fuzzy lines. :rolleyes:

Ehhh they bought the "latest" house in mid noughties and they have a kid entering college.
Now unless the kid is a child genius, not likely with the way the parents budget and think they deserve sympathy, the kid is late teens.
Thus your assumption that the wife gave up work when the kids came along after they bought this house is specious.

Now this is Ireland and knowing some members of the Gardaí I would bet he had bought a house long before the mid noughties.
We can maybe even assume he bought a house over 20/25 odd years ago when he was late 20s or early 30s.

Thus one can make the assumption that they had some house before they bought the current one.
Now if they had bought at the height of the boom, then one can assume they could have sold at the height of the boom which would mean that they had something to put towards the current big mortgage.
I reckon they bought somewhere like South County Dublin where normal houses were going for over 600k to a 1 million.

Or the other things which I bet is mroe likely is that they still have that original house that they used to have.
The line that they don't have any holiday home might point to this.

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Now I'm guessing, but I wouldnt be surprised if thats what happened.

You aren't very good at guessing are you ?

Tombo2001 wrote: »

And that is an issue that a huge amount of people face.

That they bought the house as a couple 8 years ago, when they could both work and both had lots of disposable income.

One of the biggest luxuries for a young family stays at home with the kids. For the children and for the parent this is IMHO far superior.

You must know my sister in law.

Tombo2001 wrote: »

So to put it this way, I have no doubt that they are struggling and things are tight. But giving up work and staying home with the kids, is a far greater luxury than going to a restaurant once a month, and its something most families cant afford.

Very true.

There are two many missign gaps in the above story and like a fair few other hard luck stories of late involving struggling property owners, we are not seeing the entire truth.

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

While there is some sense in this from the point of view of this particular Sergant, its important to realize in Ireland, given tax credits, the working poor are not as far behind as the headline figures suggest.

All PAYE workers can earn about 16K before a penny of tax is taken, and the marriage allowance brings that to 24K. The you pay 20% until 40K, I think. After than you get 50c on the Euro.

You and your oh are dual income of course - and this guy seems not to be - so taking that into account, you may be as rich a household as he is, if you live together.

I get the impression that people think a single earner on 65K rich, even as a sole earner for a family, and two 30K earners as poor.

My income varies and I am not PAYE so not quite the same. As the State hasn't sorted out the tax aspects of civil partnership yet my OH and myself do not enjoy the same tax benefits as a 'married' couple but that is beside the point. Neither of us borrowed 12 times our annual salary - that is just insane.

As I said waaay back in this thread - my sister is also in dire financial trouble having been made redundant from a very well paid job. She was only working there for a year (having been headhunted) but got only statutory redundancy as her new boss declared bankruptcy. They have gone from being an over 120k p.a household to a one income (plus her JSB) one - her husband is a sergeant in the army but, although she is in serious arrears with her (now on interest only) mortgage, has been to MABS, she still has the full sky+ HD multiroom package (there are only two of them), still have two cars, still goes on long weekends away, is paying for her 30 year old sons wedding and honeymoon and is insisting he has the best = not the best she can afford.

She is in mortgage trouble because she remortgaged to remodel her house - a walk-in wardrobe for her, a top of the range whirlpool bath, huge multi-spray shower, 8 k on tiles for the bathroom alone etc etc etc.

Yes, she lies awake at night worrying about how to pay bills - her health is suffering and she now has heart problems and has developed diabetes and we are seriously worried about her but suggest that perhaps they don't need sky multiroom and she howls at the prospect that herself and her husband might watch the same TV at the same time. Oh, no - he must watch the soccer and she must watch her soaps/X Factor etc. Or that they get rid of one car and she could drive him to the barracks and collect him and you would think we had suggested she go on the game.
She recently got 5k from an old investment plan - so she went on holiday.

They are clinging to a lifestyle they cannot afford - when they could afford to spend lavishly they borrowed to fund trips to Thailand, change their cars every year etc etc rather than save for these things. Instant gratification enabled by easy access to credit. Those debts were manageable when they had a good income - they no longer are but neither of them want to cut back on what they see as essential to their lifestyle.

I am very worried about my sister's health - but what can one do with a person who cannot conceive of a world where she has to share her 46" flat screen TV with another person and come to some compromise about who watches what and when?

this thread is odd.
Cos Although I agree the garda sargents missus is crazy claiming they can't feed themselves on 65k - there is another cohort in this thread who think that a couple with kids on 65k have no worries either.
Both sides are ****ing idiots but I'm more annoyed at the people here who clearly haven't a rashers about manging a family with no help from the state.
65k means that if the car or washing machine need fixing or replacing that you are dodging other bills that month. So no you're not in good nick.

Bannasidhe wrote: »

My income varies and I am not PAYE so not quite the same. As the State hasn't sorted out the tax aspects of civil partnership yet my OH and myself do not enjoy the same tax benefits as a 'married' couple but that is beside the point. Neither of us borrowed 12 times our annual salary - that is just insane.

As I said waaay back in this thread - my sister is also in dire financial trouble having been made redundant from a very well paid job. She was only working there for a year (having been headhunted) but got only statutory redundancy as her new boss declared bankruptcy. They have gone from being an over 120k p.a household to a one income (plus her JSB) one - her husband is a sergeant in the army but, although she is in serious arrears with her (now on interest only) mortgage, has been to MABS, she still has the full sky+ HD multiroom package (there are only two of them), still have two cars, still goes on long weekends away, is paying for her 30 year old sons wedding and honeymoon and is insisting he has the best = not the best she can afford.

She is in mortgage trouble because she remortgaged to remodel her house - a walk-in wardrobe for her, a top of the range whirlpool bath, huge multi-spray shower, 8 k on tiles for the bathroom alone etc etc etc.

Yes, she lies awake at night worrying about how to pay bills - her health is suffering and she now has heart problems and has developed diabetes and we are seriously worried about her but suggest that perhaps they don't need sky multiroom and she howls at the prospect that herself and her husband might watch the same TV at the same time. Oh, no - he must watch the soccer and she must watch her soaps/X Factor etc. Or that they get rid of one car and she could drive him to the barracks and collect him and you would think we had suggested she go on the game.
She recently got 5k from an old investment plan - so she went on holiday.

They are clinging to a lifestyle they cannot afford - when they could afford to spend lavishly they borrowed to fund trips to Thailand, change their cars every year etc etc rather than save for these things. Instant gratification enabled by easy access to credit. Those debts were manageable when they had a good income - they no longer are but neither of them want to cut back on what they see as essential to their lifestyle.

I am very worried about my sister's health - but what can one do with a person who cannot conceive of a world where she has to share her 46" flat screen TV with another person and come to some compromise about who watches what and when?

you worded that brilliantly, it is my understanding there are loads like her and got so used to this kind of living, they forget what it was like when they had to scrimp way back, and dont want to go back down to needs must,
simple baths, and ordinary tv we all have to have now, all i see in the shops are huge screens, posh bathrooms and kitchens, everyone wanted them, but only some of us passed them up,
i have put children through college, that is what i spent what i earned on, and i always drove a secondhand car, have the same old tv,s with yrs, and just bought the stb for it,
needs must, is the way to survive at this moment.
i feel sorry for those who thought that it was never going to end, it was all false,
some of us knew it was too good to be true, and you know what they say about that.