Families with more than two children will lose some of their child benefit, perhaps some back-to-school payment and those with older, third level goers, will pay another €250 towards their annual fee contribution and 3% of the annual grant. The reductions for single parent families will be particularly difficult.

All homeowners, except those in receipt of mortgage interest supplement or living on ghost estates will have to find €100 for the new household charge (aka property tax) and more carbon tax on home-fuel.

Pensioners did not see a reduction in their old age pension rate, but parts of the household benefits package was already cut back last September and now those who had qualified for the 32 week fuel allowance will see that payment reduced to 26 weeks.

Coming one day after the delivery of the 2012 austerity Budget, it may feel counter-intuitive to load up your wallet and hit the shops, even if it is Christmas.

But those of us lucky enough to still be employed and to have some disposable income are being counted on not to ruin the holiday – let alone the businesses – of our local shopkeepers and merchants.

Making a list, setting a spending limit per gift, not taking anything but cash or a debit card with your to the shops and not both, should help you stick to your own Christmas budget.

My friend is not alone in wanting some kind of closure to the great banking and sovereign debt crisis. I feel the same way. However the decisive action that everyone wants from the politicians or central bankers still hasn’t happened as I write. I think this is because they know there is no easy solution or ‘happy’ ending.

Instead, the austerity programmes are being pursued as I write, with a debt write-off for Greece, but only if they agree to the austerity measures, which is still not certain.

Many financial commentators and advisors are recommending that investors stay away from the markets until there is more clarity regarding interest rates, and especially the cost of government bail outs of indebted countries, let alone their banks. And that makes sense.

Mostly, they recommend their clients hold a certain amount of cash and other defensive options, ranging from precious metals, inflation-linked bonds and well-priced absolute return funds.

Currencies are daily falling and rising widely against each other. Governments are desperately trying to shore up the cost of their own borrowing and the bond market.

Many commentators worry that the US bond market in particular could blow up if interest rates are ever forced higher by reluctant lenders, who are not indifferent to the fact that rates are being endlessly manipulated by central banks.

The ordinary person’s reaction to all this uncertainty – and the losses they’ve taken on stocks and shares in their pensions or other investment funds, not to mention on the value of their homes – has meant they have become even more risk averse.

It will be little consolation to the beleaguered Priory Hall residents that the way mortgages will be sold in the future will be improved – this time, with due regard to suitability and affordability.

But it might help prevent someone else from paying far more than they can afford for an overpriced, shabbily built apartment or house.

I say ‘might’ because no amount of stricter regulations or codes will prevent outright fraud if an individual builder or lender/broker is determined to rip you off.

While the Keane Report throws out some lifelines to the nearly 100,000 people who already cannot pay their full mortgages, it is not a solution for the delivery from debt that many might have hoped it would be.

The authors clearly state that anyone who is making their repayments, no matter how difficult or how large their negative equity, is just going to have to keep doing so. The idea that somehow the government would come up with a clever scheme to allow people to pay a mortgage commensurate with today’s market price of their home, or even 110% of the market price, was never a runner. The Irish banks may be just about properly capitalised now, but there is still billions in interest repayments alone for the cost of the €60 billion plus bailout. This means that there isn’t really any spare money to give anyone debt forgiveness if they still have the capacity to make their monthly payments.

‘World dominator’ is a just another way to describe some of the best, highest quality public companies in the world.

They may be more familiar with the expression, ‘blue chip’ shares, which refers to the highest value blue chips used by poker players.

All investing involves risk, but buying global dominator shares for the right reason isn’t a poker game.

These are companies that are considered to be the strongest in their sector or industry, dominated all the others because they tick all the right boxes in terms of:

Last summer, when the markets fell sharply, she quite sensibly consulted an investment advisor – not her broker – who looked over the portfolio and gave his opinion about her holdings.

Up to last March, the overall portfolio, mainly invested in a mixture of bluechip Irish and European shares, had made a modest (c) 2.5 per cent gross return. This was roughly the rate she would have earned had the money been in a good bank deposit.

By late August the share values were down at least 10 per cent she said, though the dividends (about €5,000 a year’s worth) were still being paid.

She was now wondering if she should have taken the advisor’s advice when he gave it: “Is it too late to act now?” she wrote.

Such a young workforce will he heavily weighed down with mortgages, credit cards, personal and credit union loans, hire purchase loans – the list goes on.

They are, of course, far from alone. Unemployment continues to rise with 14.4 per cent of the population out of work as of the end of August, or just under 450,000 people when seasonally adjusted.