Paul May

Recently I’ve moved to a lovely new house in Booterstown. The house is great great great, I love it. I especially love being able to cycle to work, and I especially love not having to trudge home all the way through town every evening. It’s great - I highly recommend never commuting to where you work if at all possible.

On the downside though; I now live pretty far away from swimming, so I’ve been to training exactly once in two months. My excuse is that getting up at 5.45 am to get a 6.06am train to go swimming would probably not be something I could keep up twice a week indefinitely, so I’ll have to figure something else out. I don’t drive a car, and buying one so I can go swimming might be a bit drastic.

My main piece of news is that I’m now practically debt free. Take that student loan! Seriously, getting into debt while in college is the easiest thing in the world; the friendly people are only too happy to let you take the small loan you took out to travel, or to fund a project, or do whatever and increase it a couple of times - because they’re just so nice. My time in the Students’ Union was a real learning experience (personally and professionally), but it also didn’t pay a lot and I found myself drawing on the loan to pay for things that I really shouldn’t have. Anyway, to cut a long story short I’ve spent that last 14 months putting some money aside each month into a company shares scheme. I sold my shares last week and had enough to pay off my student loan with about 100 quid left over to go crazy with. It’s a huge weight off my shoulders. Beware student banks bearing gifts.