Meant to post this last night. The above programme is going out at 7pm on Tuesdays. It is following three families as they try to economise and cut their cost of living. For example one Longford family of 6 spends €1600 a month on food, the mother mostly shops in M&S and buys pre-prepared meals. She was given the challenge to reduce the household food bill to under €600 a month using Aldi/Lidl as much as possible and cooking meals. Another of the families are a couple in Stepaside who want to move to Stillorgan where the female comes from. They bought their house for €395k circa 6 years ago, they turned down an offer of €485k 3 years ago. The programme brought in an agent to advise them and he reckoned that in the present market they may be able to get €300-350k. Again this is an indicator of just how far the market has fallen to 2002 levels or less.
My reaction when the agent said they could realistically expect to get 350k for their terraced gaff in Stepaside was to guffaw. No chance.
Its not clear when this was shot. Could have been 6 months ago easily.
They must be kicking themselves for turning down the 480k offer, ouch!
Only made it 01:46 minutes in and the retching is killing me!
The hypocrisy!
It’s in the “Lifestyle” genre of the programme listings:
rte.ie/tv/programmes/lifestyle.html
Which includes:
House Hunters in the Sun
I Want A Garden
I’m An Adult, Get Me Out Of Here
Voiceover on the intro - “The three families you’re about to meet and each living way beyond their means…”
Well, who sold them that “lifestyle”?
2006
2009
Fuck off condescending TV assholes!
When they showed the family in Longford preparing the garden to grow vegtables, I’m sure I saw frost on the grass. So I’d guess at least some of it was shot back in the springtime.
I’m not overly familiar with the place, but the house in Stepaside looked to be in Belarmine and there is still a lot of denial out there!
A house near me has been for sale for 2 years now. Started at 650K and they got an immediate offer of 550K which was turned down. The asking has now dropped to 450K. And the house is owned by an investor so he is not looking to buy another one and therefore immune to the price fall.
IMO, there are a number of things which struck me as bizarre about that Longford family.
- The eldest daughter commutes from Longford to UCD daily!
- The two middle daughters are in boarding school in Dublin
- The mother spends 1600 on groceries alone??!
The above is financed by the father who works in the dept of Ag in Monaghan.
I’m bemused. I worked for a public organisation in another country for a while. I wasn’t allowed talk to the media about ANYTHING without it being mandated by higher up. Is it really okay for civil servants to take part in reality tv shows like this?
Only if their union says its ok. 
This kinda crap definitely lags behind public opinion (‘recession chic’ been in the Sindo for ages now). RTE are far from trail-blazers.
Fair point, but you’d give her one though.
Absolutely. Indignation only goes so far!
In de what now?
An electrician and a part time teacher’s income goes from €5000 per month to €1200 per month when he hasn’t worked a full week in 6 months.
Wife: “I actually went to the bank last year, we could have bought a second house” …" but Dave stopped me". LOL! Typical. No Stilawrgan for the moment. These people have been in fantasy land. In 2008, after the crash was being written about eveywhere, and they still thought they were on the “property ladder”.
That presenter Ella McSweeney was quite good, especially with the gardening advice. Not good for those watching this from a €500k two bed flat in the Spirt of Gracious Ecstasy.
‘Filmed’ in March/April judging by the daffodils.
Just watched it myself.
Made my skin crawl to be honest. Nuke the country now someone, the world won’t miss us.
Actually how much did Mr O’Connor earn? He has some sort of bullshit admin job at some department or other and yet appears to have the disposable income of a medium sized country.
I don’t buy the general ‘We’re so rich that we need to be taught prudence’ charade either.
It’s obvious that all of them are relatively unfamiliar with wealth.
Spent all their money buying shite and want to know how to keep buying shite whilst spending less.
There’s more fiscal sophistication in a granny sitting at a one armed bandit.
Just finished watching it…Your first statement there, I have to agree with. They were an incredibly unattractive bunch of people (not physically), particularly the women, and particularly the childish attitude “I’ve been a good girl so I’ll treat myself”. The banker taking the time off 3 years ago is fine if he was an IB and made some serious cash, but clearly not as it was stated they have a huge mortgage in the house in Howth. The males in the show seemed to be quite passive with regard to the family finances and attitude; I hope it is not saying something indirectly that the passive-male stereotype of old Ireland still exists, because it explains a lot.
How hard was she really trying though…
In Tesco in one of the clips -
Bottles of the *** Mountain water - 3.79 for 6 - for christ sake get the 30c brand!
Other brand goods (Brennans)
Coco Pops
Easy Cook something…
Branded wholemeal bread
And tell your daughter no more chocolate bars at lunch - ‘I hope she likes them’ - or what?
Pizza (Dr Otker lol).
Frozen vegetables.
Roma Tomatoes (again one of the dearest brands) - for something you usually cook with this is dumb.
A magazine (burning money)
Now let me get back to my 
Do you think these 3 groups of people are representative of your average middle aged couple?
…I really hope not…I really hope RTE just picked the most extreme examples they could find…that’s the only hope that i’m clinging on to as I’m watching this.