reading

Contents

Cover

Title Page

How to Use this Book

1 Mortgage Protection

2 Rent a Room

3 Make Extra Money

4 Mobile Phone Contracts

5 Health Insurance

6 Tax Refunds

7 Quit Smoking

8 Composting

9 Buy in Bulk

10 Energy

11 Beat the Bank

12 Generic Drugs

13 Use Cold Water

14 Scrap Expensive TV

15 Save by Going Online

16 Motor Insurance

17 Home insurance

18 Ditch the Coffee and the Takeaways

19 Overpay your Mortgage

20 Save for a Deposit

21 Get Mortgage-ready

22 Car Finance

23 Christmas Spending

24 Start a Pension

25 Credit Cards

26 Help-to-Buy Scheme

27 Medical Treatment Abroad

28 Public Transport Costs

29 Broadband

30 Dental Expenses

31 Car Care and Fuel

32 House-swap Holidays

33 Hand-me-down Clothes

34 Recycling

35 Lose Weight

36 Change the Lights

37 Make your Lunch

38 Convert your Car

39 Eat Less Meat

40 Inheritance Tax

41 Buy a Water Filter

42 Sell and Declutter

43 Save with Bananas

44 Learn to Haggle

45 Avoid VAT

46 Get out of Debt

47 Welfare for Families

48 Travel Insurance

49 Avoid Holidays from Hell

50 The Whole Picture

Afterword

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

About Gill

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Saying this book is worth €25,000 may seem like a big claim. But as you will see, if you were to get the maximum savings and income from each chapter, then the book is actually worth far more – in excess of €50,000. However, we think that a fairly average person should be able to be better off by about €25,000 in total.

These gains come from a combination of one-off savings, additional income and ongoing investments. Some will be recurring, others won’t be, but for the sake of giving a total sum, we are happy to say that this book is worth €25,000.

We have to stress that not every choice, option or suggestion will be available or suitable for every reader, so while we are confident that €25,000 is a fair figure, your personal figures might be far higher or lower.

For that reason we are confident that the name reflects the value of this book. Of course, you’ll pay only a fraction of that sum in order to learn the tips and tricks that we have garnered over many years, in Charlie’s case as a journalist covering personal finance and in Karl’s case as a financial adviser.

When we were coming up with a name for a book that would both save and make you money, there were many different ideas thrown around – but the simple fact is that money talks.

So much of what we hear about personal finance is confusing, time-consuming, or sounds like a lot of hassle. What we aim to do with this book is to make it easy for you to be better off financially with just a small commitment of time on a regular basis.

If you were told to give away €20 to a random stranger every day of the year you might get upset, yet many of us do exactly that by paying over the odds, getting ripped off and doing nothing about it, and by not maximising the money we keep.

If you save €5,000 by making better choices it’s like getting a raise of at least €5,000 at whatever job you do, and we have never found a person who said they wouldn’t take a raise of that amount for no extra work. That’s the beauty of this book; you don’t really have to change much of anything you do – it’s more about how you do it.

The structure is simple. Each chapter covers a single topic. We start by giving you the topic, then the expected savings you can hope for over the course of a year, and the time it will take to follow the tip. Finally, the difficulty or ‘hassle factor’ is given a star rating of one to five, one star being the easiest and fastest, five stars requiring the most commitment. As with many tips of the trade, there are pitfalls and things that can catch you out. Therefore, we also list some of the things you need to watch out for, the aim being to save you from having to learn the hard way (which Karl says is how he learned almost everything he knows).

If you have just ten minutes to spare, find something that has a ten-minute time frame and you can just do that in the time you have. Alternatively, if you have a little more time and would rather save €1,000, flick through the chapters, find something that can save you that amount and do that instead.

The whole point of this is to make personal finance something that works in your favour, but rather than telling you all about it in boring detail (and frankly few people care about every aspect of the subject), we just explain what you need to do in order to get the benefit of the digging about and understanding we have gained through our respective careers. Listed below are just a few of the topics discussed in this book.

ENERGY. From taking advantage of ‘new customer’ discounts to simply switching to a cheaper supplier, there are savings to be made if you know where to look.

MOTOR INSURANCE. There are a dozen motor insurers active in the market, with credit unions involved in reselling motor cover at good rates for members. Shopping around for car cover will save you lots of money. We outline other ways to save money, such as taking advantage of telematics, taking out two-year cover, and the advantage of men getting insured with an insurer that focuses on women drivers.

FAMILY INCOME SUPPLEMENT. Family Income Supplement (FIS) is a weekly tax-free payment available to married or unmarried employees with children. We show you how to check if you are eligible.

HOME INSURANCE. Seeking out better value home cover will save the average household €156 a year, according to the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. We give you some steps you can take to reduce the cost of cover.

CURRENT ACCOUNTS. Day-to-day banking has become expensive. Some people are now paying their bank €120 a year for a current account. There are ways of avoiding this expense.

HEALTH INSURANCE. Premium rates are rising all time, but the good news is that with hundreds of different plans in the market there are ways to save a packet on private medical cover.

MOBILE PHONES. There are over 500 plan options available for Irish consumers – a bewildering number. But the potential for savings is now greater than ever, and reductions in monthly bills of €25 per month are common. This means savings of €300 a year.

MORTGAGE SWITCHING. A householder with equity in their home can save €140,000 over the term of their loan by opting for a mortgage provider with a low rate. We tell you the steps you need to take.

HOW TO GET A TAX REFUND. Tax refunds average €900 for those who have never made a claim to Revenue. We show you how this could be the easiest cash you will ever make.

CAR FINANCE. If you are in the market for a new car, you have a few choices in terms of how to pay for it, but it pays to be aware of just what type of finance you are signing up to.

BROADBAND. How to get the best deal while ensuring your internet is up to speed.

TV DEALS. Customers who want TV, a landline and broadband in their home will find the best value by bundling these services and getting them all from the one provider.

CREDIT CARDS. Credit cards are weapons of money destruction. We show you ways to control their use and avoid running up big debts.

OPTIMISE YOUR SAVINGS. High taxes and low interest rates mean it is hard to make money from deposits, but there are ways to make some money from your savings.

PUMP UP YOUR PENSION. Saving for retirement is the best tax break you can get, bar none. We show you how to maximise your after-work fund.

LIFE ASSURANCE.There is massive competition in the life assurance market. If you have never checked out whether you can get a better deal on life cover, or mortgage protection, the likelihood is you are losing out.

BIN CHARGES. It’s almost impossible to avoid paying them, but for many of us, finding the most competitive deal is possible.

WAYS OF TACKLING DEBT. Borrowing is a way of modern life, but you do not need to become a slave to your debts. We show you ways to unshackle yourself from debt serfdom.

An important caveat to this book is that we assume you have chosen the worst of everything. Of course, that is highly unlikely. Nobody could manage to make a bad decision on every aspect of their personal finance; even by chance you’d end up making a few good ones.

That isn’t the point, though. We assume that you have made a few crap choices and for that reason not every saving will apply to you in full, but some probably will. These will, we hope, be a big eye-opener for you, which will mean that you will put other ideas in other chapters into force and get your personal finances nice and lean.

Karl says that making a savings is the same as getting a ‘raise’. That point is fair and true, so just imagine that by getting a simple book you could start to save when before you couldn’t. Or that it could make a difference big enough for you to afford a holiday or to replace a car or some other big expenditure that you currently can’t manage?

That’s how powerful spending a little time on your personal finances can be, and because it tends to be a somewhat personal and private matter people don’t go through their finances methodically on a regular basis, and that results in less than ideal outcomes.

We really hope that with this book you can get better deals, better value for money and better returns on your hard-earned money. We also believe that short and to the point is what people want, so in keeping with that belief we’ll wrap up this introduction and you can get started.

MORTGAGE PROTECTION

TOPIC	Property
EXPECTED SAVINGS OR EARNINGS	€200
TIME REQUIRED	2 hours
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY

Some households never buy a home. Others do and pay for it in cash. Most use a mortgage to buy a home and in the process they are usually required to take out a type of life assurance called ‘mortgage protection’.

What this policy does is clear the balance of the mortgage on the death of any of the policy holders. It’s normally done on a ‘joint life first event’ basis, which means that if two people take out the policy and die simultaneously, it only pays out once and the sum is usually engineered to cover only the balance of the loan.

It does this because it’s created as a ‘decreasing-term’ policy, which means that the amount it pays out decreases over time – just like your mortgage – and it has a set term, the same as a mortgage does. So if you take out a mortgage for €250,000 over 25 years, this policy should track it fairly closely so that if the policy holder (or holders) dies, the mortgage is cleared.

Typically, it’s the cheapest type of life assurance because the risk of death increases over time, but the amount paid out decreases. As well as this, only one life is really being covered, even though many couples have this type of insurance.

WHERE THE PROBLEM LIES

Often when a person takes out a mortgage they buy their insurance from the bank. In our view this is almost always an error, for two reasons. First, the bank can only sell one policy from whomever they are getting their insurance from because banks are usually tied agents (they don’t research the whole market; they have only one offering).

This lack of full market research means you might not be getting the best value. A good example of this is that AIB currently sells Irish Life policies; we’ll see shortly that this can mean that you pay more than you might if you didn’t buy the policy from the bank.

The second issue with buying your insurance from the bank is that sometimes the payment is mixed in with your mortgage payment and this means that if you miss mortgage payments your insurance can lapse too. This means that if a person went into arrears and then died, their loan might also not be paid off.

This is a mistake because job loss and other factors could mean that you can’t meet a mortgage payment, but many people could still afford a policy that might be costing €30 a month. Both going sour at the same time is a risk you don’t want to take.

HOW TO FIX IT

The fix here is to look for better value for money on this insurance. Mortgage protection isn’t the most complicated product because the simple test is ‘Are you alive or dead?’ If you are alive, you don’t have a claim; if you aren’t, you do. Apart from regular terms and conditions there aren’t any of the special requirements that you get with some other health-related insurances such as serious or specified illness cover.

Think about it like this. Imagine that two airlines go to the same airport you want to travel to, they offer the same in-flight services and are virtually identical except for their names. On that basis, would you willingly pay €100 more for the flight with one versus the other? If your answer is ‘no’, look to do the same on your mortgage protection.

THE SAVINGS EXPLAINED

A quote for a non-smoking couple, both aged 35, who are taking out a loan for €250,000 over 25 years depends on who you take out the cover with. At the time of writing, the highest price was €30.45, which was offered by Irish Life. Remember what we just mentioned about AIB?

The cheapest was €26.61, offered by New Ireland. But how do you get an even lower price? The simple answer is to use a broker who checks the whole market, because they can get you the cheapest price. Savings of €1,152 over the life of the policy aren’t something you should be happy to walk away from; that’s why getting a full market view is a good idea.

It doesn’t stop at shopping around; brokers also control the commission within the policy and many brokers can manipulate this to get you an ‘under-the-counter’ offer.

One way that this can be done is by dealing with a firm that brokers for Royal London, which not only allows a price-match (this is where they sell their products at somebody else’s price), but also has add-on discounts, and on top of that the broker can further discount the policy.

Using this method you could get a price of more like €22, which would represent savings of just over €100 a year or €2,500 over the term of the policy.

We have put in a higher amount of €200 savings at the top of this chapter because the explanation so far is for people who are looking at taking out a brand new policy. Many people have older policies where the prices were higher because life assurance prices have been coming down over time (recently other insurances, like car insurance, have been getting more pricey).

There is a point, depending on your age, where that trend won’t benefit you, where if you tried to switch you would actually pay more (typically if you are over age 50 and have a long term left on the policy, the reason is that you are getting closer to the time where a claim might typically happen), but outside that it isn’t uncommon to see people save €200 a year by moving to the lowest cost provider.

TIME You’ll need to contact a broker, get quotes, see what the best price is, determine if you are happy with the price offered and then fill out the forms and return them. When you get the cover you’ll also need to send it off to the bank. In total this will take about two hours, including your calls to the broker and the bank.

DIFFICULTY This isn’t completely hassle-free. It involves answering health questions, making sure you have the right amount and term, and then getting the policy issued and sent to the lender. That said, remember that in effect you could be earning the equivalent of about €100 an hour for your time!

SOME THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR Before you do this you may need to make a call to your bank to see what process is required for you to ‘assign the policy’, because when you take out a loan the insurance is taken out by you but owned by the bank. Most of the banks have a form that you have to fill out to assign the new policy, so get one sent out to you. There is also the issue of some banks grouping the insurance with the mortgage. These can be tricky to change, so ask what you need to do to cancel the policy you were sold and replace it with a better one.

USEFUL WEBSITES Insurance brokers are listed by their association, the Professional Insurance Brokers Association, https://piba.ie.

Some broker houses are set up just for discounts like this. Check out www.labrokers.ie or www.hello.ie.

RENT A ROOM

TOPIC	Property
EXPECTED SAVINGS OR EARNINGS	Up to €14,000 a year
TIME REQUIRED	4 hours, and a new person living with you
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY	(because of the new housemate)

One of the most generous tax breaks available in the entire country is the ability to get up to €14,000 a year entirely tax-free by renting out rooms in your home. This is the equivalent of going out and earning (depending on your tax band) between about €17,500 and €23,500.

This is a simple and effective way of really increasing your income and it’s the same as if you saved it. Imagine being able to save a five-figure sum every year.

A word of caution: up to €14,000 is tax-free, but above that limit the entire amount becomes taxable. So if you get €14,500 in a year you pay tax on the whole lot, not just the €500 over the limit.

WHERE THE PROBLEM LIES

A lot of people don’t realise that they could almost have their mortgage or rent paid for them if they rented out rooms in their house. This comes with the obvious issue of more people living with you, and some folks don’t want additional people in their house, or the rooms are used by their own children, but this is an idea with big potential.

A 25-year mortgage of €200,000 with an interest rate of 4% costs just over €1,050 a month. If you were getting the full room rental amount you could be paying that mortgage off and the cost to you would be zero, your mortgage is totally covered and you’d even have money left over.

If you were renting a house for €1,200 and had two others paying €500 each per room, you’d have deeply discounted rent of only €200 a month (again, the annual amount can’t go over €14,000).

In one sense, it would be a bright idea if young renters teamed up, bought together and rented out spare rooms because by doing this they could be accumulating the wealth that repayments of capital create, but we are not suggesting you do this because there can be other issues, so get advice if you are thinking about this.

People may not want to rent out rooms for all kinds of reasons; even older people who have spare rooms sometimes want to keep them free for when grown-up children want to visit.

HOW TO FIX IT

Put an ad online – there are lots of property sites such as Daft.ie or MyHome.ie – or contact a student exchange. If you have kids, having a person from another country live with you might even help to teach them a language. Ads in universities and further education schools also work.

You need to find the right person who you think you can get along with. Then you simply set a rent and have a chat about what is and isn’t acceptable while they live with you. This isn’t a ‘tenancy’ so you don’t have to register with the Private Residential Tenancies Board.

You do have to declare the income, so log on to Revenue.ie. If your income is mainly from being employed, register for PAYE Anytime. This will allow you to file your return once a year – but the good news is that you will have a zero tax bill if you aren’t getting more than €14,000.

If you are self-employed, simply add this income to your Form 11 tax return that you have to do every year anyway.

THE SAVINGS EXPLAINED

The 2015 Finance Act changed the rules on room rental. Before the Act was passed you could get up to €10,000 a year tax-free; this was increased by 20% to €12,000 for 2016 and from 2017 it’s €14,000 a year. If you can rent out a room, which is a great idea if you are an empty-nester or own a home and have a spare room or travel a lot and want somebody there, the income is totally tax-free. No PRSI, no USC, nothing. It does give a slightly unfair advantage to people who own property because mortgage payments have a savings element in them, but we aren’t here to set or change the rules, only to work with the rules that exist so that we can maximise your finances. The advantage to the renter is that by using the scheme they can pay lower rent than they might otherwise pay and have money to save or use elsewhere.

TIME To advertise, talk to people and have a room ready, we figure it should take about four hours of your time. You might already know somebody and it could take far less, but the assumption here is that you will be vetting strangers.

DIFFICULTY Adjusting to having a new person in your home can be hard, but that doesn’t make the actual task itself difficult. In many cases, roommates become lifelong friends so it can be a very positive experience too.

THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR Obviously, people who are incompatible with how you live are the biggest issue. If you like the quiet life and have a party animal move in (or vice versa) it will lead to problems. Something that is in the property owner’s favour is that this is not a ‘tenancy’. For that reason, and often to the detriment of the roommate, they are not protected by tenancy laws and can be asked to move out rapidly.

This should ensure that you have some comfort around who moves in, as if things aren’t working out the law is on your side. While this kind of power has to be dealt with carefully and fairly, it does mean that you won’t become hostage to your decision because if it doesn’t work you can change it.

USEFUL WEBSITES If you need more information on what constitutes room rental, go to the Revenue.ie website to find out more. It’s worth noting that at the time of writing, using your home for Airbnb is not considered room rental under this scheme. Therefore all the profits are taxable; there is no tax-free threshold. There are some other caveats – for instance, the room cannot be a granny flat or another home attached to your own house – so read the guide and make sure you are doing it right.

Other websites you’ll want to consider for renting out rooms are www.daft.ie, www.rent.ie and also www.myhome.ie.

MAKE EXTRA MONEY

TOPIC	Lifestyle
EXPECTED SAVINGS OR EARNINGS	€2,500
TIME REQUIRED	100–200 hours?
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY

Would you like to have a little more money? Almost everyone would say ‘Yes’. We know you agree because you bought this book. Most of us would agree that a little extra wouldn’t go astray.

Often books about money only go in one direction: they either tell you to self-inflict massive austerity; or they say ‘go start a business’ or something. The real trick is to get the balance right. This balance means living a life you are happy with, obtaining acceptable results (in this case we mean being adequately paid for your work) in a way that best suits your life while being aware of the options available to you at any given time.

You can’t work all the time – nobody can – but when you do, are you ensuring that you are getting paid for your work and paid fairly?

WHERE THE PROBLEM LIES

There are only two ways to become better off: you either spend less (and we have lots of tips about that) or you earn more. We know there is somebody smart reading this who is thinking ‘What about investing? If I invest my money and it grows isn’t that a way to become better off?’ and the answer is yes, but to get that money to invest you’ll typically have to save it and that ultimately comes from earnings.

Just to be clear about how vital earnings are, imagine Jane or Joe bought a house for €100,000 many years ago and sold it recently for €200,000 and that over the years of ownership it generated €70,000 in rental income. Leaving taxes out of it, the asset for €100,000 made them €170,000, but without earnings they would never have had it.

The reason is that (assuming they didn’t inherit the house) they had to be making money to get the opportunity in the first place. So many people who advise on financial matters or who write about it miss this fundamental point – your most valuable asset in life isn’t your house or your pension. It’s your earning ability (which in a sense is the same as your time) because that is the key factor that goes into making it possible for you to do everything financial such as purchase a home or start saving.

Now, you can increase your earnings in a few different ways. You can go into work tomorrow and ask for a raise, or if you are self-employed you can raise your prices. These are both totally acceptable and realistic possibilities for everybody who is working.

Be prepared for your boss or customers to resist this; if they say ‘no’ it doesn’t mean that you are wrong and not worth it, it just means that right now you don’t have the necessary bargaining power or value to make the proposition too good to resist. The good news is that you can work on that.

Some people work in jobs where unions have negotiated pay scales. One of the big frustrations with that is that a high performer will be paid the same as a middle or low performer simply because they are all on the same scale. In this instance you can look for promotion (or leave that job and get a better one elsewhere), but going to the gaffer and asking for a raise definitely won’t work.

In general, though, we are assuming you are doing your best already, so another way to increase your income is to work more, do a second job or turn a hobby into paid work. There is also a third choice, where you offset cost with work.

This isn’t rocket science; it’s more about doing the things you already do but being fairly rewarded for it.

HOW TO FIX IT

We have yet to meet a person who doesn’t have some kind of skill that they could make money from. Did you ever turn on the radio and hear Charlie talking about one of the national stories that regularly hits the front pages? Well, he doesn’t go on the radio for free. Granted, it isn’t highly paid, but it is something and it helps him to get by. Some other people appear on radio shows and don’t get paid – he just made sure he wasn’t one of them. We’d encourage you to consider doing the same with whatever it is you do.

For instance, Karl plays music as a hobby. It’s something he’s been doing since he was a teenager. He performs a couple of nights every month and he doesn’t show up and play for free or for a few pints; it’s a commercial proposition. Providing entertainment can be done for free but it doesn’t make sense for him to play for nothing, and nowadays it’s part of his income. If you are good at music you could play gigs or teach others.

An obvious issue (in particular with some skills) is that they are undervalued. For instance, stay-at-home parents do a job that is worth tens of thousands of euro but they aren’t usually remunerated for it. And in many bars musicians show up and play a trad session in exchange for a few pints, but that still amounts to a form of payment, albeit a paltry one.

What you do or how you do it matters. Everybody has different skills; what about a person who can bake, fix cars when they have problems, clean or do gardens? Is that you? Do you have any hobby or skill that is commercially viable outside whatever you already do?

If so, the chances are there are people out there who are willing to pay you to do just that. The obvious downside is that it means working more hours, so the best solution is to do something you love. If your day job happens to be something you love, that’s great; spend a little more time doing it and you’ll find this an easy tip. Charlie likes to write – that’s what he does as a journalist, so it’s natural that he’d use that skill to help write this book.

Figuring out how to do this means taking a look at your own life and seeing if there is something you like that you could do for extra money. If you can’t think of anything, you could take a part-time job; there are always lots of places that need casual workers. Ideally, do something you like, because you’ll be giving up precious free time, but you could also do a job you don’t particularly enjoy if the goal is just to ensure you have a little more money at the end of the month rather than, as the famous country song says, ‘having too much month at the end of the money’. This is trading your time in exchange for your labour; it’s not really ‘chasing the dream’ as such, so use it as a last resort.

Don’t be afraid to be creative. If you know how to do something that other people might want, then you might also know somebody who does something you want and you can trade the two off, which is also a way of saving money. Imagine a painter or decorator needs a door fixed and knows a carpenter who wants a hallway painted. They can trade off and both be better off because of it. Any difference between the value of the jobs can still be settled in money.

There is a strong chance you might already be doing something like this because so many people have large skill sets. For example, people who pursue a hobby often have the chance to get involved with running their sports team or whatever. This is usually done on a voluntary basis but then they often don’t have to pay the fees or subscriptions that are normally due and in this way it offsets costs that might otherwise occur.

If you still can’t think of some way of getting paid for what you know how to do, consider what you spend money on and see if you can offset the costs. You may be pleasantly surprised at some of the ideas or skills you have that you don’t get paid for and what a big difference it makes when you do start to get paid fairly for them.

THE SAVINGS EXPLAINED

Let’s say you decide to do something that can make you €50 a week extra by doing the activity for about four hours or thereabouts. Can’t find the time? Try watching less TV, something that is normally very unproductive.

Just that extra €50 a week will keep a car taxed and insured and pay for most of your annual fuel too, or it might be two mortgage or rent payments. If you can have that kind of extra money it makes a big difference. The main thing stopping people is either that they don’t want to spend their time doing whatever it is, or they haven’t figured out how they can make it work.

Take a person who is very time constrained. A single working parent fits that bill perfectly. A person in that situation could do ‘drop off’ babysitting at their house, or they could coach or volunteer at something their child does that they would otherwise have to pay for. This kills two birds with one stone: they lower their costs; and they do an activity with their kids.

It takes some thinking, it takes some time, but extra income isn’t as elusive as many people think it is. We have no way to know for sure just how big the black economy is, and we certainly are not saying you shouldn’t pay your taxes. In fact, that’s one thing we should stress; this extra money is taxable and you’ll need to declare it and do tax returns based on it, but it’s also well worth it.

TIME As mentioned, if you want to increase your income by €50 a week, then it will take time and the amount of time is dependent on what you are doing. If you have a skill you can sell at €50 per hour, then it will take one hour a week; if your hourly price is €10 then it will take five hours a week. Also, don’t forget expenses – often you have to bear a cost to obtain income and that has to be factored in. For that reason you are looking at somewhere between 50 and 250 hours depending on what you do.

DIFFICULTY The whole idea of increasing your income is to use something you have an ability with already. What we aren’t saying is that you should spend money to go train for something which you will then do as a nixer.

SOME THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR If you are making extra income, you will be liable to pay income tax on it. For this reason you should be aware of what expenses you can and cannot offset. Depending on what you do there may also be things like ‘flat-rate expenses’ you can claim. Also remember that if you do some jobs then you may also require insurance or licences and that a disgruntled client can turn into a legal nightmare if you cut corners when it comes to the law and regulation. A lot of jobs don’t come with this caveat, so just use your common sense.

USEFUL WEBSITES Try www.jobs.ie, www.gumtree.ie or local noticeboards. In order to stay tax compliant, register online for your tax returns at www.revenue.ie and ensure you are claiming your allowable expenses! Download the IT1 leaflet – income tax leaflet 1 – which tells you all the rates and allowable expenses.