![\"Comedian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/JOANNE.jpg\")
<\/p>\nBarbara Scully is a writer, broadcaster and comedy storyteller. She published a book, Wise Up: Power, Wisdom and the Older Woman, in 2022 and is currently touring her first one-woman show, called Older, Bolder, Wiser.<\/p>\n
Next year, Scully will take her new show, Because I\u2019m Worth It, on the road. She lives in Cabinteely, Dublin, with her photographer husband Paul Sherwood. For tour dates and tickets to Scully\u2019s shows, visit barbarascully.com.<\/p>\n
How did your upbringing influence your relationship with money?<\/p>\n
My father thought that the best way to ensure financial security was to join the civil service. He joined what was then called Customs & Excise as a messenger and worked his way to the top. When he retired, he had a good pension, which my mother continued to get half of after he died. So he was right. None of us listened to him, of course.<\/p>\n
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Comedian Joanne McNally’s live shows have been hugely popular<\/p>\n
My mother was a trailblazer, although she didn\u2019t know it. She went back to work in the mid-1970s, when a woman going out to work was seen as something of an insult to her husband.<\/p>\n
In 1986, when she was 50, she set up her own business as a word-processing trainer. She showed me it\u2019s never too late to reinvent yourself.<\/p>\n
The only direct financial advice I got was from the nuns in school. They taught us that as soon as we started working, we should divide our wages in three: a third to give up at home, a third for savings, and a third to spend. I never took any notice of this, either.<\/p>\n
Have you ever felt broke?<\/p>\n
Regularly. I\u2019ve always prioritised job enjoyment over earnings, so I\u2019ve worked in jobs that I loved but didn\u2019t pay particularly well. Instead of joining the civil service when I left school, I went into the travel business (much to my dad\u2019s disappointment). It was a job I loved but the pay was shite. My wages (and I did pay up at home) would last three weeks and on week four, I\u2019d cash cheques made out to \u2018cash\u2019 in the pub to keep afloat.<\/p>\n
We had some money once and spent over \u20ac5,000 on a corner sofa<\/p>\n
We were also seriously broke when the Celtic Tiger upped and died. We were living solely on my husband\u2019s income as a freelance photographer, and jobs just dried up. The pandemic nearly did us in financially as well \u2013 it cost us all the bit of savings we had just to keep our mortgage paid.<\/p>\n
What was your biggest ever extravagance?<\/p>\n
Outside of buying our house? We had some money once and spent over \u20ac5,000 on a corner sofa. We bought it in about 2016 and it\u2019s the best thing we ever bought. One of my daughters recently asked if I\u2019d add a note to our will to say she should get the sofa.<\/p>\n
Are you a spender or a saver?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t often have more than I need, but when I do, I chuck some into a savings account \u2018til I need it. Which is usually to go to Australia to visit the kids and grandkids.<\/p>\n
Do you have a pension? <\/p>\n
Not a private one, no. I\u2019m hoping to write a multi-million-euro bestseller in the coming years. Or do a Joanne McNally and take my one-woman shows to the 3Arena.<\/p>\n
What three things would you not be able to do without if you had to tighten your belt?<\/p>\n
Gin (although, I have enough to keep me going for a while \u2013 I\u2019m not a total eejit). My animals \u2013 four cats, a big dog, the family of foxes that I feed in the garden. And trips to Australia to see my girls and grandkids. Obviously these are in reverse order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barbara Scully is a writer, broadcaster and comedy storyteller. She published a book, Wise Up: Power, Wisdom and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,81067,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":{"0":"post-161366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-gabrielle-monaghan","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-personal-finance","15":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}