IT’S that time of year again. New beginnings. Outstretched vistas of possibility. The promise of a better you, a better life, a better job, maybe even a better nose.
Or at least this is what the Instagram gurus and the copious round-table radio panellists would have you believe. It’s a time of year fraught with nonsense and unrelenting danger and I am here to tell you all it’ll be grand and to ignore the lot of them.
Instead, I come with some real practical advice to bring you through the long nights of January. You see, the only advice people need is how to survive until payday at the end of January.
With most of our wealth now tied up in paying back debt on toys and organic turkey, the trick is to get to the end of the month without formally entering bankruptcy.
Here are my top ten tips.
*Disclaimer: This column should not be confused with professional advice. The value of your investments may fall as well as rise. You should never take personal financial advice from someone whose expertise in the field ended at the Leaving Cert accountancy exam.
1. The first thing you must do is get the family onside. Call a meeting and explain that sacrifices will have to be made. Belts will need to be tightened. Invoke Charlie Haughey. It will help to do the speech in Irish and hold a flashlight under your jaw.
2. Call your local takeaway and formally break up with them. Tell them that it isn’t them, it’s you. Tell them you are sorry, but that the relationship has stagnated. That it’s all one-way traffic with the money going to them and the calories going to you and that you can’t stand being gaslit anymore. Hang up and don’t be afraid to let yourself have a little cry.
3. Lentils. Sorry, I’ll be more specific. I once got through a full semester of college on a bag of green lentils and some rice. If you look on YouTube there is an amazing array of things you can do with the simple lentil. Soup, curries, more soup, lentil bakes, even more soup, lentil porridge, mental lentil lasagna (that’s one of my own). I’m sure if you look on Amazon, someone’s got a book on 1,000 Things You Can Do With Lentils. Buy the book, photocopy it and return it immediately. Keep your eyes on the prize, folks. Frugal Fiachra here has got your back.
4. Ironically, January has become established as the month that people try to kick the booze. Strangely, January was actually the reason that God invented alcohol for humans in the first place. The thing is to reduce your intake and become more humble in your tastes. Ditch the €4-per-can ales handcrafted by Donegal mountain men, or the Tuscan Prosecco that is setting you back €20 a pop. Search the aisles of your local discount supermarket and there are serious paint-stripper style products that can be deployed under the guise of a ‘cocktail’ if you fire in a few cherries or an ‘aul twist of orange.
5. Exercise is free. There is an entire industry that tells you that you need to pay €1,000 a year to go into a room with bad music to lift heavy things and feel inadequate. But there are free ways to get your heart pumping and become completely exhausted. You could walk up a mountain. You could go into a random field and annoy a bull. You could log on to X (formerly Twitter) and read what people are saying. You could think for five minutes about what’s going to happen when Trump gets elected later this year.
6. Do you really need all those subscriptions? Netflix, Disney +, Amazon Prime, Apple TV? The only thing I’ve watched on Netflix in the last few months was The Crown and I’ve been wading through it like a royal reluctantly going about their duties since it dropped. It’s absolutely useless. TG4 have a player too and it’s free and it’s brilliant! Wild documentaries, quirky movies, brilliant music, rugby… If they charged for it we’d probably be paying.
7. Cold showers and freezing water immersion were all the rage there for a while. I think it died away a bit after people actually started to try it. Basically, it involves dunking yourself in an ice bath or taking a cold shower and some claim this results in remarkable health benefits. This is all too intense for me. I’m more of a tortoise than a hare, so I say you could take an ‘extended cold plunge’ in January by turning down the hot water slightly and the thermostat by a degree or two. When counted across the whole month this will equate to one ice bath challenge and you’ll save a few quid on your bills in the process.
8. If things are getting very tight near the end of the month, then I would suggest the fantastic music of Donegal teenager Muireann Bradley who stole the show on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny on BBC on New Year’s Eve. Muireann is a gifted interpreter of Dust Bowl folk classics by the likes of Blind Willie McTell and Mississippi John Hurt, and this is exactly the kind of music that will get you through those last hours of January when you enter your own private version of The Great Depression and the lentils finally run out.
9. Treat yourself. All humans need hope for brighter days to come. Around halfway through the month, ring your takeaway again and begin the process of detente. Order a small starter, like a portion of chicken wings as a reward for all your hard work. Hint that you might be falling in the door on the first of February with a bag of coins.
10. And finally, when all else fails, remember that there are brighter days ahead. You might remind yourself of this by indulging in a bit of nostalgia. For this, I would recommend the Cork v Kerry Munster Final from 1988.
