I didn't expect to generate so much heat on this story, to clarify, the money was not used on one bet, I just flurished it a bit for emphasis, sorry for that. My husband does the odd horse himself, particularly when we are in Ireland or when they are big racing festivals, St. Stephen's day, Cheltenham, Aintree etc. I used to work many years ago in a pub so would have a fair idea of punters etc and gambling in general. Pre boom people used to do 5 Euro and 10 Euro bets, during the boom this went up to 50 Euro a pop and more, nobody seemed to be doing any less. I know people who would lay more than that, in the thousands. I also know people who take bets in pubs, become the bookie as it were. My first cousins husband who owns a pub for example does this as does a cousin of my husband from time to time. Anyone who's been to Cheltenham or Galway knows how crazy the betting world was, but it went mad altogether during the boom. Still today, just take Galway, the serious gamblers don't just gamble on the horses, there are huge card games going on all night. We are talking serious money.
The person in this story boom or no boom, would despite being on the average industrial wage do 500 Euro bets, this I saw myself, many times. When the money was gone he went home and didn't gamble again until the next pay check or income (which he got from a second job working in pubs). Sorry if the story is far fetched to some of you.
I also know a professional whose sister re mortgaged (took out equity 3 times) to fund lifestyle, cars holidays etc. I know someone who borrowed to build 2 houses, still has the houses, cannot sell them, cannot pay the mortgage, this person would have been on I'd say about 60K, one income. And some of my own family also got the celtic tiger bug, (which I'm not going to go into) but some others did not, one of those (PAYE)is hopping mad at having to pay for everybody else mistakes.
You only have to look at some of the stories on AAM to see how much people managed to borrow to see how crazy it all was. I bought in 2005 at the height of the boom, the bank was in such a hurry to give me the money they decided instead of giving me a normal mortgage that it was easier to dish it out as a commercial loan so as to avoid paperwork. It was so easy for me to borrow money it was unbelievable. No life insurance needed, no long form filling, no grief from head office in Dublin. To this day there is very little paperwork on it and I believe the bank doesn't have proper records as they were so eager to lend and get commissions. Recently they telephoned me about interest rates, for various reasons we had a dispute and somehow the bank discovered I had overpaid (I haven't gotton to the bottom of this yet) and they repaid me a 5 figure sum. Every January I get a bank statement showing account balance in previous January, my monthly repayments, the interest taken and balance owing as of December and despite this I apparently overpaid. To me that's a crazy story but it's true.