“Come over next Tuesday, grab a six pack and bring your bills.”
The Washington Post journalist Chris Colin admitted it sounded like he was throwing the lamest party ever.
But he was noticing that everyone in his circle was drowning in a “quicksand of tiny, dumb administrative tasks”, like wrangling with insurance companies.
So he decided to get everyone together for a social occasion, where they would tackle their financial to-do list in an act of collective productivity.
The idea of an “admin party” has gone viral since the term was coined last year.
It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise given how we are all drowning in our own quicksand of “I must get around to that” jobs.
Whether it’s disputing a charge with your bin company, wading through health insurance or getting your car ready for the NCT, these “small” tasks coalesce to become one big soup of digital paperwork.
When the overwhelm becomes so great, the instinct to withdraw wins out for many of us.
We will simply let the car insurance roll over for another year, or the utility or phone contract. Or the streaming subscription or the health cover … you get the idea.
And procrastination costs. So can an admin party help?
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This episode of Better with Money aims to find out.
We’re joined by journalists Conor Pope, Niamh Browne and Órla Ryan to simulate an admin party in the extremely sober environment of The Irish Times podcast studio.
Niamh brings her own particular baggage to the episode.
An actual plastic bag she has been using to hoard receipts, much to Conor’s horror.
We also solve her 600 per cent gas price hike problem in real time.
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Órla has been meaning to take out full health insurance for years but the overwhelm of terms and conditions, as well as the fear of choosing the wrong policy, has left her in a procrastination doom loop.
Find out why Conor tells her ChatGPT is not the solution to this problem.
Meanwhile, Conor urges us to review our recent income versus outgoings and auditing our subscriptions.
He even admits being caught out himself when a cheap introductory offer for a British newspaper became a €299 auto-renewal.
If these are the kind of conundrums you come up against in your life, don’t miss this episode of Better with Money.
You can listen to it on the player above, or search for it wherever you get your podcasts.
Presented by Aideen Finnegan.