{"id":372573,"date":"2026-03-30T07:08:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T07:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/372573\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T07:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T07:08:11","slug":"michael-houghton-our-combined-income-is-almost-double-what-it-was-in-2022-yet-strangely-we-dont-feel-like-we-have-twice-as-much-to-play-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/372573\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Houghton: \u2018Our combined income is almost double what it was in 2022, yet strangely we don\u2019t feel like we have twice as much to play with\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">High tax rates at relatively modest income levels create a strange reality in Ireland: very few people are truly poor, but very few people feel truly rich either\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ireland has a progressive tax system in which the rate of tax rises with an increase in income. Photo: Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/d4c8d2f1-7f4a-4990-9011-80ac20dd81ab.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Ireland has a progressive tax system in which the rate of tax rises with an increase in income. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Sitting in a restaurant in Carrigaholt, Co Clare recently, my older son looked through the menu and said, \u201cIs it OK if I have the surf and turf?\u201d Having a quick browse of the menu, I noticed the cost of the meal was \u20ac37. \u201cUmmm, could you have a burger?\u201d was my initial reaction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">This was one of those money crossroads: do I push back here and make money an issue, or do we enjoy the experience, knowing it is a rare night out as a family?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"High tax rates at relatively modest income levels create a strange reality in Ireland: very few people are&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60,898,128197,132310],"class_list":["post-372573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news-ticker","tag-shp","tag-signature-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}