How the viral 'admin party' saved €1,169
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What is an admin party and why is it gaining popularity?
You're listening to the Irish Times.
You have come to the right place if you're drowning in life admin, particularly the kind that drains your bank balance. By the end of this episode, you'll know you're very much not alone. We'll help you overcome some of the barriers and motivate you to close the loop on all those money-related tasks that are taking up your mental bandwidth. I'm Aiden Finnegan and this is Better With Money from the Irish Times. I'm joined in studio today by an embarrassment of Irish Times journalists. We have our Price Watch editor Connor Pope, we have reporter Orla Ryan, and features writer Neve Brown. Hello to you all. Hello. Hello. And today we are attempting to hop on a new personal finance self-help hybrid trend, the admin party.
It was coined by a Washington Post journalist called Chris Collin, who wrote about how he wanted to turn the bureau democratic grind of life into a party. So he was observing his friends surrender too many evenings to insurance wrangling and other painful life admins. So he made a suggestion to them. Come over next Tuesday, grab a six pack, bring your bills. Now, even if we were allowed to bring drink into the studio, it'd be a bit early anyway. So, lads, I've brought some fancy pastries. So please help yourselves there. How's that? They look very good.
But you have brought your bills, Neave. I know you have your receipts. Oh, I've an all I have a few jobs. The first one
is to claim my expenses. I'm a bit embarrassed about my filing situation. When you have receipts, you just sort of use whatever is closest to hand to file. So I have one set of expenses in a plastic bag, and I did manage to secure an envelope for the second set of expenses. So I need to uh file those and uh claim back money I've already spent. Okay. Anything else you're looking to tackle today? Another one is my energy bill went up almost fivefold uh in January. So for the same period last year. Last year the bill was 115 euro for gas and this year it's 696 euro and I need to ring them and figure out what's going on there. Yeah. I don't know if it's because we're out of contract and they're just charging us an extortionate rate, or is it because
like things have gotten more expensive or maybe we use more units or so I need to bring them to get to the bottom of that. Uh but it was a bit of a shock when that landed, uh at the end of January.
Yeah, I can imagine.
Never a good month.
And Orda, your task that used to do is slightly adjacent to mine. You're looking at health insurance, right?
Yeah, so essentially initially I was gonna say I've been thinking about doing this for months. I've been thinking about doing this for years and I keep putting it off. So every time I look at plans, I get sort of bamboozled by all the information, what it does cover, doesn't cover, the wait period, all of this stuff. So I do have a cash plan with HSF. So I can, you know, apply for money back for GP visits and physio and and certain scans and things like that, but it's not full health insurance. So I have been literally for years keep saying, I really need to change that and I need to get proper health insurance. And every now and then I'll have a spurt where I'll sit down, I'll look up different plans, and I'll be like, Okay, I'll go with plan A and then I'm like, but what about plan B or C or E?
And then I get kind of have this analysis paralysis and don't arrange to take out any health insurance, which is great. Range. Which is great.
That resonates so much with me, or as the TikTok kids say now, I really resonate with that. I I think Connor Pope has written umpteen articles about health insurance, so we'll get around to chatting about that. By any chance, do you have anything you need help with today, Connor? Or just this ever it's
we all we all could do with improving ourselves just a little bit. What I would say to Neve straight off is I'm horrified by the bag of receipts. Because the simplest thing that you could do right away is scan the receipts and then store them digitally. And then when you're filing your expenses, you file them digitally.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is an admin party and why is it gaining popularity?
0:01–4:38
2
How can you organize and tackle a mountain of receipts and expense claims?
4:38–8:26
3
What steps should you take to investigate a sudden gas price surge?
8:26–12:04
4
How can you compare and switch energy suppliers to save money?
12:04–15:57
5
What is ‘body‑doubling’ and how does it help with admin tasks?
15:57–20:55
6
How do you audit and cancel unwanted subscriptions in minutes?
20:55–25:25
7
What quick financial snapshot should you create during an admin party?
25:25–29:09
8
What are the biggest money‑saving wins from today’s admin party?
29:09–32:49
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Better With Money
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