This was the year when the boom began to sound like the punchline of a bad joke - but denial is not just a river in Egypt, writes Róisín Ingle
This was the year when thrifty became trendy, when dining out three times a week became once a fortnight with tap water flowing instead of the sparkling kind. But it was also the year when we stuck our heads and our mounting credit card bills in the sand and it became obvious that denial was not just a river in Egypt.
Even as the boom began to sound like the punchline of a bad joke, some of us refused to accept reality. You saw them in Brown Thomas dressed head-to-toe in designer gear. Even the toddler in the Burberry pram was sporting an outfit in that middle-aged yet somehow exclusive checked pattern. In pudgy hands, junior clutched a Burberry Barbie while mummy and daddy shelled out around €150 on a trinket called a biosphere.
It looks like a snowstorm paperweight but actually contains tiny Hawaiian shrimp. These creatures don't need to be fed or even watered. They spend their days swimming around in a watery bubble, unaffected by outside influences such as inflation or spiralling prices or stock market crashes. Just like Burberry couple. And this year, they have been convincing themselves the bubble is not going to burst.
Others remained untouchable, sipping champagne in ivory towers constructed out of new money and brass neck. Meanwhile, the rest of us tightened our belts. Some squeezed the belt so tight that dining out meant eating home-made sambos in the park. Others made a habit of suddenly disappearing from the pub to make a phone call just when it was their round. Some of us came of financial age during the boom. We didn't make a fortune in software or start a recruitment company, but we were still pocketing more than our parents, more than we needed, and we spent, spent, spent. We bought an apartment and watched it appreciate with the glee of a small child in a free sweetshop. We borrowed on the profits of the bricks and mortar, spending the borrowings like there was no tomorrow.
But this year, we found ourselves staring tomorrow in its unforgiving face. Financial advisers such as John Lowe, of Providence Financial Services, saw us coming. "There is an increase in people coming to me who have seen their property appreciate during the boom, and have been spending the profit, racking up debts, knowing they would have to pay the piper some day," he says.
These are the same people who put the groceries on the Visa bill but only pay the minimum payment when the bill comes through the door. "I help them reduce their debt, but it has meant a whole new way of life for a lot of people. They have to start budgeting carefully, something these young couples have not been used to doing," Lowe adds.
But we are getting used to it now, discovering cut-price supermarkets such as Aldi and bargain clothes stores such as TK Maxx. Apparently, the aisles of cut-price Aldi were flooded this year with shoppers usually more at home in the ready-prepared splendour of Marks and Spencer. It is no longer a rare sight to witness somebody swinging a Brown Thomas bag in one hand and an Aldi shopper in the other.
Whereas in the past people boasted about how much they had forked out for their designer trousers, now they are crowing about how much they saved. "We get the children's clothes in Tesco/Dunnes/Penneys, so much better value," they say, with none of the shame that a few years ago would surely have consumed them. But then again, they also worry about school fees in a way they never have before.
Douglas McLuckie, of TK Maxx, where labels such as DKNY or Armani sell for a fraction of the normal price, has noticed the shift. "Our level of business has been increasing at a phenomenal rate," he says. "You see a lot more people coming in already carrying bags of more upmarket stores. A couple of years ago they might not have felt comfortable shopping here," he says.
A sign of bargain-hunting chic is the store's reusable bags, at 99 cent each, are selling in their hundreds. While more upmarket retailers quietly grumble about a slump in sales, TK Maxx has recorded an increase of around 25 per cent on last year, according to McLuckie.
Other changes were more subtle. Exotic holidays to the Caribbean were put on hold as friends got together and shared a villa in the south of France instead. It became an unspoken assumption that acquaintances were budgeting. It just wasn't polite to talk about it. It was easier to make assumptions about some than others. This was the year being "let go" became par for the course. Sitting in the pub, you looked around and realised most people at the table were facing some kind of downsizing due to financial upheaval at work. Even you.
This year, a billboard advertisement for a homeless charity in Belfast hit the nail on the head. "Most of us are only two pay-cheques away from being homeless," it read. Two pay-cheques away. It was the year some of us realised this statement contained more truth than we could have imagined at the height of the boom.