Managing a budget is a skill that’s badly needed

We, as a nation, are in serious hock to all and sundry. We recently learned that the State, Central Bank, banks, businesses and households, aka you and me, owe a combined €1.64 trillion.

That is €1,640 with another 15 noughts after it. Mind you all of those entities mentioned above all have assets and when those are taken into account our net worth is minus €77bn. It’s still an awful lot. We cannot even comprehend such an amount of money. Yet we apparently owe it.

You’d think that we would be watching every penny we spent like most households have to. By the by, I’m using the royal ‘we’. I do, of course, mean the Government allegedly acting on our behalf. So are ‘we’ being careful? Not on your nellie. Where governments are concerned it’s certainly a case of “do as I say” rather than “do as I do”.