Breaking free from debt: ‘I used to see my credit card limit as a target'
During the recession following the 2008 financial crash, Ann-Marie Gaynor was going through a marital breakdown; suddenly finding herself single parenting three children under the age of seven, jobless and €17,000 in debt.
A self-described Celtic Tiger baby, Ann-Marie says she never saw the top limit on her credit card as anything other than a target.
When one was maxed out she would successfully apply for another one.
'It was debt that would have been paid off quite easily if I was still in a marriage, but I wasn't... The first time I became an adult on my own was at the age of 30.'
READ MORE
Ann-Marie is also known as
Irish Budgeting Mammy
on
Instagram
where she shares what she's learned from turning her finances around.
The key steps included engaging with the
Money Advice and Budgeting Service
(MABS) and going back to college as a mature student.
The Longford woman is now a clinical nurse manager.
Gaynor also joined the #DebtFree community; a movement originating in the US where people engage in hardcore economising to clear debt and save money.
In this episode of Better With Money, she outlines what she's learned along the way and encourages others to regain control of their finances.
Presented by Aideen Finnegan. Produced by Declan Conlon and Aideen Finnegan.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Money Advice and Budgeting Service
Other links you may find helpful:
The Insolvency Service of Ireland's
Back On Track
web site
Competition and Consumer Protection Commission
If debt is causing serious mental distress, reach out and speak to an organisation like
Samaritans
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
9 hours ago
- Irish Times
The Irish economy grew by 22% over the past year. Yes, you read that right
Ireland's economic data was always going to be a bit special at the start of this year. But Thursday's figures were mind-bending. It is impossible to overstate the extent to which we now stand out in international comparisons. And this is not just a curiosity – it matters. The economy, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) , was 22 per cent larger in the first quarter of 2025 than one year earlier, according to the latest estimates from the Central Statistics Office . Think about it. The figures suggest that for every €1 of activity last year, there was €1.22 in 2025. Even comparing GDP in the first quarter of this year with the last quarter of 2024, there is a rise of close to 10 per cent – this is roughly the extent of growth across the euro zone over the past decade. Of course this bonkers data is not real, in the sense that it does not reflect what is happening in the underlying economy in which we all live. How could it? As has been long discussed the headline economic data is entirely distorted by the activities and tax planning of a small number of very big US tech and pharma companies. From time to time, this has created huge distortions in the figures. A decade ago, top US economist Paul Krugman famously described a 26 per cent GDP growth rate reported for the Irish economy (later revised up to over 30 per cent) as 'leprechaun' economics . At the time the figures were distorted by massive tax-driven investments by the companies concerned, including Apple, essentially a manoeuvre by the companies involved to try to keep their tax bills down as international rules changed. READ MORE Now, as one observer put it, we are seeing another 'Krugman' moment. This time the reasons are different. Big pharma companies have been rushing product over to the US to try to get drugs and key ingredients into the market before Donald Trump announces tariffs on the sector. This has led to a surge in exports, feeding into the GDP data. Many of these are manufactured here – and some are made elsewhere but organised by Irish subsidiaries and so also show up in our figures. And so we see a massive surge in Irish GDP in the first quarter of this year. A big – temporary – decline in pharma exports in GDP will follow at some stage, as the firms involved must now have massive stocks jammed into every free warehouse in the US. Much will depend on how the tariffs story plays out. [ Welcome (back) to the era of Leprechaun economics Opens in new window ] Whether Krugman renews his leprechaun offensive or not, let's not pretend this won't be noticed. Ireland's GDP data is not some irrelevance in a quirky economic corner. The amounts of money being moved through Ireland are now enormous. Daniel Kral, chief economist at Oxford Economics , calculates that Ireland – which accounts for 4 per cent of the euro zone economy – accounted for half its total growth over the past year. Analysts have taken to looking at the figures 'excluding Ireland'. How do we pull back from all of this to judge the underlying health of the economy? Total demand in the domestic economy – adjusted by the CSO to remove the multinational factors - rose just 1 per cent over the year. But we need to look under the surface here, too. Consumer spending, a good measure of how we feel, was up by a decent 2.5 per cent. But the overall figure was dragged down by a fall in business investment, presumably reflecting the international uncertainty. So households continued to spend in the first part of the year, but businesses are taking a wait-and-see approach to big capital spending. This is likely to be reflected in the jobs market as the year goes on – and here AI is also changing the game in many sectors. Consumers may get more cautious too. Uncertainty is starting to slow the economy and this is a trend we need to watch as the year goes on. The piece of data that seemed a bit out of line this week was a 30 per cent fall in corporation tax in May compared with the same month last year. This was affected by the comparison with a strong May last year – which the Department of Finance suggests was boosted by once-off factors. Two of our biggest taxpayers, Pfizer and Microsoft – pay significant amounts of tax that month. But the key early indicator for most of the big companies is June – and what happens here will give a good pointer for the year as a whole. The figures do underline one point. It is our huge reliance on the opaque affairs of four or five massive companies – and our exposure to the sectors they operate in, their own performance and complex decisions on how their tax structures are set up. Our latest bout of data exceptionalism again puts Ireland in the spotlight, when it would have been better to keep the head down. It underlines the outsize take Ireland is getting from pharma and tech activity in the EU – both contentious points in the White House. Notably, the US added Ireland to an economic watch list this week, based on the size of our trade surplus. We are very much on the radar in Washington. Our corporate tax take and manufacturing base are looked on enviously not only from the US , but from elsewhere in Europe. [ 'No long-term commitments to anything' – Ireland's economy is experiencing a silent slowdown Opens in new window ] The advance shipping of products again focuses attention on the scale of activity and tax planning in Ireland by big pharma companies. And this causes a rollercoaster of cyclical activity. But what really counts is longer-term, structural issues. Will these pharma giants decide over time – and it would take years – to relocate some of their production to the US? Will their profits and thus tax payments here be hit by Trump's policies? Or will they – or some of the tech giants – alter their corporate structures so that they pay significantly less tax here? It comes down to whether Trump's policies change the way the economic and corporate world operates fundamentally, a fair bit or not much at all. As Ireland benefits from the current system so much, the more it changes, the more risks there are for us. The coming months will tell a lot.
Irish Times
10 hours ago
- Irish Times
FD Technologies chairwoman urges investors to back takeover
FD Technologies chair Donna Troy has urged investors to back a £541.6 million (€643.04 million) sale of the Newry-based data and analytics company to US private equity firm TA Associates at a special meeting on June 30th, saying there are risks to it delivering on its full potential as a standalone public company. The company's remaining business, KX, which analyses large data sets in real time to help companies predict and respond to market conditions across the various business areas, may be hampered by 'uncertain public markets' if it needs to accelerate investment to capture opportunities in artificial intelligence (AI). 'Furthermore, FD Technologies is a relatively small player in a large, but fast-moving, fragmented market,' Ms Troy said in a letter to shareholders, contained in documents relating to the planned deal, published on the company's website on Friday. 'Competing with a number of larger, very well capitalised software providers and consequently the FD Technologies, directors are cautiously aware of execution risk to delivering its strategy and the associated value to FD Technologies shareholders.' READ MORE The deal with TA Associates, first announced a month ago, follows a big restructuring at the Dublin-listed company last year. This led to the group selling its former core First Derivatives division to US software group EPAM in a £236.1 million transaction and the spin-off of another business, called MRP , into a merger. It subsequently returned £120 million to shareholders in January through a stock buyback deal. How to manage your pension in these volatile times Listen | 37:00 FD Technologies confirmed that it has secured irrevocable commitments from shareholders behind 56.7 per cent of its stock for the TA Associates deal. It will need approval from holders of 75 per cent of its shares to get the transaction over the line through the mechanism, known as a scheme of arrangement, that TA Associates is using to execute the takeover. Shareholders are being offered the choice of taking cash for their stock or rolling their shares into the bid vehicle. 'The FD Technologies board does not give any recommendation to FD Technologies shareholders as to whether they should elect for the alternative offer [of taking shares in the bid vehicle],' the company said. 'FD Technologies shareholders should determine whether acquiring or holding rollover shares is affected by the laws or regulations of the relevant jurisdiction in which they reside and consider the advantages and disadvantages of electing for the alternative offer, and whether rollover shares are a suitable investment in light of their own personal circumstance.'
Irish Times
10 hours ago
- Irish Times
Analysts ring alarm bells over private credit risks
Ask financial regulators what keeps them up at night, and the growth of private credit would probably be among the top answers. A report published this week by Moody's Analytics underscores just why non-bank lending is such a cause for concern in the current climate of volatility. Notably, the report echoes some concerns raised by the Central Bank of Ireland in a recent study published in May. With traditional lenders having largely retreated from the commercial property stage here since the crash, non-bank lending has become an important source of funding for the sector in the Republic. Typically, these lenders set up here as special-purpose entities, often backed by international players involved in some capacity in private credit markets. Operations of this type now provide most of the new lending to commercial property developers, according to the central bank's Kitty Moloney and Padraic O'Gorman, authors of last month's report. That's a relatively small part of the Irish economy as a whole, but one with historic baggage since the 2008 crisis. READ MORE The trouble, Molony and O'Gorman note, is that by its globalised nature, the private credit sector is more vulnerable to international shocks than traditional banks. It's a sector characterised by a high risk of 'capital flight', meaning these entities are more likely to cut bait in times of crisis, with significant knock-on effects for the Irish property sector. How to manage your pension in these volatile times Listen | 37:00 It's all the more perturbing given Moody's characterisation of global private credit as a potential 'locus of contagion' in any future financial crises. In the report, researchers from the ratings agency found that the opacity of the international private credit sector is one of its more troubling aspects. They warned that gaps in the data and 'limited information on loan covenants, true portfolio valuations, and the overlap of fund investors' constitute a 'serious issue' for regulators. Similarly, the central bank said that 'many analytical gaps remain as the market is still quite opaque'. Consequently, it's difficult to be precise when analysing the private credit sector and its reach. This lack of information, Moody's warned, coupled with the increasing involvement of traditional banks in the private credit market, is a 'common theme' between the current moment and the situation that prevailed in the lead up to the 2008 crisis. Worrying indeed, particularly at a time of high anxiety across markets and the wider global economy.
