To give a short background to the financial side of a night out on the town for a 20-something in my home town in Ireland - if you leave the house with €120 in your pocket and the next morning you find €5 you are doing very well !! haha
Our social life tends to revolve around drink. However, the major damage is done by a seemingly harmless system of replenishment called the Round i.e. you buy a drink for everyone and everyone buys a drink for you - you take turns. To not fulfill your duties and buy your round is probably the very very worst thing an Irish man could do - seriously :-)
To cut a long story short, I'm extracted myself from the round system and will only buy drinks for very close friends and relatives... who I can bet my life on are as eager to buy for me as I am for them. In a weird way, I think people respect you more when you bestow your good will upon a selected few rather than all and Sundry.
Anyway had a great week this week € speaking. A colleague left my place of work last Friday so we had going away nites Thurday AND Friday :-) see how bad us Irish are. Thursday nite bought a beer for the person leaving and only had one coke myself - damage €6.50. Friday nite - out for about 4 hours and spent €17.20. I am so proud of myself for cutting my spending so drastically.
This hasn't been a sudden change - have been working on it for a couple of years now
AND
I LOVE HAVING HANGOVERS THAT ARE LESS SEVERE AND FEW AND FAR BETWEEN... :-)
But the crucial thing that has made it work has been the seismic change in my attitude to buying drink for the ladies... in fact this is deserving of a post of its own :-)
give me a min
Drastically reduced Social Spending
April 13th, 2008 at 01:57 pm
April 14th, 2008 at 01:09 pm
April 14th, 2008 at 06:53 pm
Yes... it is an expensive custom... part and parcel of social life in Ireland - and I imagine Britain too. I lived in Edinburgh for 7 months - it is customary there for people in your company to offer to buy you a drink when they go to the bar... but they are no way as insistent as the Irish....
The trick is to develop excuses for not getting involved in the Round which won't involve offending those offering to buy the round - it is critical to avoid getting involved in the round from the very start... once you're in it, you're in it for the night..... also after say midnight.. pints start being accompanied by hangover-inducing, wallet-deflating shorts of various sorts.
Be playful when you make the excuses and you will be fine..... e.g. Ye guys know I can't drink as much as you....are ye trying to take advantage of me or what !! :-)
Thanks for the welcome :-)