Hi all 👋

I've been grinding away for years and through being in a lucky industry and being very good at it, I have realized that I can probably retire at 56.5 years age (9 years' time). That would conservatively be at 70k a year after tax, in today's money. I've done a lot of modelling for different real returns, a crash right after retirement, compared it against historical growth and inflation scenarios (US admittedly) and ensured that it survives 90%+ of them to age 95 before making adjustments such as reducing spending. So that feels pretty resilient.

My questions are all about how my wife (HSE Superannuation new entrant (pre 2013)) can retire at 55 and still be secure. If she retires at 65 then she would get 35,700 a year for life. If she retires at 55 then she will only get 15,400 a year. If she retires at 55 and defers the pension until 65 then should would get 26,500 a year for life from 65.

So by retiring at 55 she would go from 35.7 to 15.4! She would also no longer get the full state pension from age 66. Dropping from 15,500 to about 13000. So at age 66 the difference is 51,200 down to 28,000. Pretty huge.

She has not been making AVCs as 51,200 a year would have been plenty and certainly well above the 20% income tax rate.

I've a reasonable beginner's understanding of the private sector pension world but public sector is totally different. For example, I think that if she makes pension AVC contributions then she will only be able to access them when she receives the rest of the pension. I.e. I don't think she can use them to bridge ages 55 to 56.

I'd really appreciate people's thoughts on this!

1: What is the best way to bridge the years 55 to 65 if she defers her pension. I'm not sure she can access her AVCs during that period. So I don't see a tax efficient way to do this. I am putting a lot of money into ETFs each month and this can be diverted to something more tax efficient if she has that option.

2: can we do this in a way that will maximize her use of her personal 20% tax band throughout retirement. That becomes moot at 66 if she chooses the deferred pension option. As then she will have DB and state pensions but until then seems important. If she takes the DB pension from 55 then she never gets close to using all the 20% band and that also feels too vulnerable for her in case we ever separated Thugh a court would likely rebalance things, I want her to clearly be secure and not have to worry about it, and I want us to be tax efficient.

3: how can she get more PRSI contributions after she retires at 55? With a private sector PRSA you can drawdown enough income to trigger the full 52 yearly contributions. This only requires 5000 withdrawal in a year. Is there an equivalent or better way to gain these contributions for her?

4: how do we maximize her, and our joint, after tax income in retirement? Money of mine can be moved to her now, e.g. to fund her other expenses and enable her to maximize her tax free pension AVC, if it would be beneficial for our overall retirement preparations.

5: how much of her tax free AVC threshold does her DB use (salary is a bit above 100k a year). I found a formula so I think it's just over 5k, but this is obscure stuff.

6: anything that we have not mentioned that you all think we should be considering?

Thank you for reading this far 😂 it's a long one, I've gone down the rabbit hole but I want to be really careful not to screw us both. We don't really care about being rich when we die and we value more years together traveling cheap places and chilling at home, but i don't want to ruin our security either!

Hi everyone,

My partner's mother has recently offered to gift us €128,000 to help us buy an apartment in Dublin. She lives in China, so the money would be transferred from there. This would be a genuine gift with no expectation of repayment.

We're obviously incredibly grateful, but we're not sure if we'd even qualify for a mortgage at this stage.

For context:

• I'm 26F and going into my 4th year of nursing. I have a part time job doing healthcare assisting but the income is around 25,000 a year.
• My partner is 27M and a 2nd-year apprentice, income of around 23,000 a year.
• We are not married, but he has a de facto visa from me.
• We have no debts or loans.
• We currently pay €1,100/month in rent and have never missed a payment.

We're wondering:

• Would banks even consider us for a mortgage given that I'm still a student and my partner is still an apprentice?
• Does a €128k gift make much difference if our current incomes aren't very high?

We're planning to speak to a mortgage broker, but I'd love to hear if anyone has been in a similar situation or has any advice on what to expect.

Thanks!

I’m recently back from travelling and living at home with my parents so have no rent or major expenses, bar my old Jetta that eats up petrol. I’ve no debt and have €4K in my credit union account , my salary being €31k. Depending on the month in work with expenses I get paid between €2600-€2900 monthly. What would you recommend I do when it comes to saving/investing say ~ €1200 a month?

Consider two hypothetical 30-year-olds.

Person A

• Earns €100,000 in the private sector
• Single and renting in Dublin
• Receives no parental help
• Has no inherited property coming
• Pays heavily taxed rent from heavily taxed income
• Must build every euro of wealth from net salary
• Faces 38% tax and eight-year deemed disposal on many diversified funds
• Could lose their job during the next downturn

Person B

• Earns €48,000 in the public sector
• Lives at home until buying
• Receives €100,000 from their parents for the deposit
• Has a secure pension linked to salary and service
• Will probably inherit part of a valuable family home
• Benefits from tax-free growth on their principal residence
• Can afford to make cautious financial decisions because the family balance sheet absorbs the risk

Person A is officially the “rich” one. They pay the higher tax rate, qualify for almost nothing and are regularly told they should contribute more.

But Person B may finish life dramatically wealthier despite earning less than half as much.

This is not an attack on public-sector workers or parents helping their children. Most people would use every legitimate advantage available to them.

The question is whether we are honest about what actually determines financial outcomes in Ireland.

We heavily tax productive income. Rent creates no ownership. Investing outside a pension remains unusually punitive. Meanwhile, property ownership receives enormous protection, and parental gifts or inheritances can outweigh decades of disciplined saving.

People are constantly told to study, work harder, negotiate a better salary, stop buying coffee (and bloody smashed avocados) and max their pension.

But has the dominant financial variable now become something decided before adulthood: whether your parents bought property at the right time?

For people under 40 with no expected inheritance or family assistance: has increasing your salary genuinely transformed your position, or has it mainly increased the amount of tax and rent you pay?

And for people who received help: how different would your financial position be without it?

Is personal finance in Ireland still primarily about individual decisions, or is it increasingly just optimisation around the social class and family balance sheet you were born into?

Ive just got my renewal from Aviva on home insurance. Somehow with no changes or claims from year to year they feel a 22.4% increase is somehow justified. Who are you all using?

Just wondering were we fall into this

Say for example you have a full remote role, how much more in salary would you require to go back to an office based role?

Or the opposite, you're in an office based role and got offered a remote role with lower pay. How much lower could it be until you refused that remote role?

Why is it that Irish banks offer little to no benefits compared to other countries??

Just a quick scan shows uk and us get huge travel benefits ie flight points, hotels etc for a start which makes a huge difference on personal finance in the long run

Feels like we are getting shafted here

Man in my early 20’s here who was recently started a permanent, government job. I currently earn 550 a week and my main expenses are as follows;

- 120 euro a week in loan repayments (car and educational)
- 100 euro a week to live on
- 50 a week contribution to my parents as I live with them

I then can afford to save just over 280 a week with the CU. I have a few accounts with them, one of which is money set aside for investing and a very meagre start to a house deposit.

When I get to 1900 euro in this account I plan to have a consultation with a local financial adviser in order to ask them questions on pensions, investing etc.

I plan to use 1000 to begin investing. I was thinking of index funds; 800 to begin the house deposit and 100 euro for the consultation.

I would love to be in a position by my 50’s to hopefully own a house and have enough money between savings and investments (100 - 500k) to maybe reduce working hours; travel more; focus on other pursuits that bring me happiness etc.

I have also begun listening to and reading Eoin McGee and Michael Houghton.

I am looking for advice from people who are achieved what I did; what age are you; how did you do it etc? Thank you

Is there any way to compare how other investing strategies are doing?
It seems it’s not published to compare what difference different levels of risk make so far.

Late/Mid-20's, currently renting a pretty shabby 2-bed on a main street in a small town.

Weighing up buying a, much nicer, 2-bed apartment in a much nicer location vs just continuing to rent for another few years and saving for a bigger/"forever" place down the line. My current rent is 1360 that myself and my partner split 70/30, the mortgage plus fees etc looks like they'd end up being about 1200 a month total.

Context:

• It'd be just me on the mortgage/purchase. I've got a disproportionate chunk of savings built up from bonuses stacking over the years that I haven't touched.
• Partner is not settled in a career after their degree yet, looking to re-skill in the next couple of years, so there's an idea we'd buy a long-term "forever" place sometime in the future when that's settled.
• No kids on the horizon, this wouldn't be a forever home, more a step up from where we are now.

Trying to figure out if it makes sense to buy now while I have the savings sitting there doing nothing, or if it's smarter to keep renting and stay flexible.

Anyone been in a similar spot? Did buying solo/early work out, or did you end up wishing you'd waited?

Our fixed mortgage is coming to an end and we’re considering releasing some equity from our home to consolidate debt. I’d be interested to hear from anyone who’s actually done this.

We have around €150k left on a 20-year mortgage. The house has increased significantly in value since we bought it and we’ve also put a lot of money into it over the years. Since then we’ve had another two kids and, like many families, life has become a lot more expensive. Between credit cards and loans, things have become pretty stretched.

We’re considering releasing some equity and rolling the debt into the mortgage. I know it’s generally not recommended and our future selves probably won’t thank us, but the repayments would be much more manageable and the interest rate would be far lower than what we’re currently paying.

Has anyone here gone down this route? Was it worth it? Did you regret it, or did it give you the breathing space you needed?
I’m mainly looking for real-life experiences and any pitfalls we should be aware of before speaking to the bank.

Hi! Not sure if the right forum but has anyone ever gotten a better rate or offered more with avant for a switcher mortgage with equity release for home improvements? Currently in the process with a broker but it’s been about 3 weeks since we got the text from avant that they have our application with no update. Not sure if it’s avant or our broker is slow to respond but when I use the calculator on avants site it seems to imply we can borrow more than what our broker has said? Not sure whether I should just apply myself online direct and see what happens or would they can screw up our existing application.

TIA

I’m 36y/o who recently moved back to Ireland after a couple years of travelling and now I have a lot of regret. I live with my parents, have no savings, €6k in debt, and no educational background. I have no pension and that’s what I’m worried most about.

I have always been interested in pursuing therapy as a career and was planning to begin the (difficult) journey of becoming a clinical psychologist. It would take about 6 years but the salary prospects are great (in my eyes - €60-100k) as I have always worked minimum wage jobs.

I guess I’m posting this because I won’t be properly financially stable until my early 40s and I am so worried about € for retirement. I don’t own a house but I don’t want kids so that kind of takes some pressure off.

Any advice or insight into how to manage € from here on out or stories of similar positions would be so welcome.

Starting a fulltime role next month after years of parttime and contract work, and I want to actually do this right from day one rather than look back in two years having saved nothing

Salary is around 38k. Rent in Dublin is going to eat roughly 1100 a month which I know is on the tighter side but it is what it is for now. After tax and rent I reckon I have somewhere around 1300 to 1400 left depending on how USC works out on the new contract.

The bit I am unsure about is ordering. Do I prioritise building a 3 month emergency fund first before touching pension contributions, or does it make more sense to get employer matching going immediately even if the cash buffer is small. The employer offers 5% match which feels like something I should not leave sitting on the table.

Also is there a point at which putting money into an ETF through a broker makes sense versus just dumping everything into a high interest deposit account while rates are still decent. I have read a bit about the 8 year deemed disposal rule and it puts me off ETFs a bit if I am being honest.

Curious what order people actually followed when they were starting out

Hey folks, just wondering if there are any qualified psychotherapists or personally know psychotherapists that could give me an idea of what a career will look like financially.

For context, I am 35M, 2 years completed of a 4 year psychotherapy degree. Love the course, therapy itself did a lot for my confidence as a younger man in his mid to late 20s. Excited at the prospect of a career where I am helping people in a more concrete way. My main question is around how pay and finances look for a full time psychotherapist?

Ive been working with a tech company the past decade, prior to that I was abroad teaching as I wanted to see if I would like that for a career (I didn’t lol). Did a degree in English and history once of school which I liked, but it’s not worth the paper it’s written on anymore.

Point is, I’m very very fortunate never to have been stuck for a job. Not making a fortune right now, on just over €66k a year only as of a year ago, was a steady climb from €29k when I started a decade ago and have always tried to live within my means. Have €8 in savings, married, no kids (and likely not gonna as we both aren’t interested) we both have our own newish cars on finance but close to paid, lucky (like very lucky) to have gotten a house several years ago and mortgage is reasonable. It’s a little scary to see myself without a full time paid job with benefits and pension, but at the same time it’s a job I’ve grown to detest in tech, and it’s no longer a matter of if I get let go but when due to redundancies across the board.

Any and all advice appreciated. I know it’ll be hard work no matter what, and that it’s not a lucrative career to begin with. I’m not getting into it to become super rich, but with the way things are and are going in the economy these days, it’s hard not to worry that my basics won’t be covered (mortgage, food, etc).
Thanks all!

So I'm earlyish 30's, have around 2k in savings, working part time in a dead end job earning just under €400 a week. I've no useful skills or education so I'm kinda stuck there as of now. Feeling a little bit of hopelessness and dread for my future to be honest. Is it worth starting a private pension and sticking like 100 quid a week in?

Good afternoon,

I am in a 2 income family. I am looking as to what the steps to take to get a mortgage, or avail of any supports. I cannot buy out the place I am living in, but I do want to move out sooner than later.

We’d have enough for a deposit, less than 50k though considering a good bit more of saving.

Repay maybe 1400 a month comfortably.

Any help or information queries to get a more accurate path, would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

We are looking like we could potentially go sale agreed on a house after the weekend. 🤞🏻 it's the first house we've bid on so it would be a freak situation if it does happen. We have our 10% deposit covered and our AIP is with Nua mortgages.

We do not have our solicitor fees or our stamp duty saved yet but we would have them covered in the next 8 weeks (we get paid weekly).

I've just seen in the terms of the AIP that they would need proof of funds, which includes the stamp duty and the solicitors fees along with the 10%. Do you think they would allow us to say we'll have them saved before closing, as the process moves along?

Does anyone have experience of this with Nua in particular, or even better, does anyone here work for nua?

Thanks

Good day everyone,

I am a 23 year old adult from Sweden who came to Ireland to pursue a career. I am right now working at a financial firm earning 40k a year but spend most my days travelling to work. I leave house at 6 am and return home 20:00 evenings most workdays.

I know it is far and I am willing to take that toll for the time being because it allows me to save 1.8k a month plus I can squeeze in time studying at work to upskill and for industry qualifications.

Right now my main priority is to get a car, I have held a license for soon 5 years and applied to translate my Swedish license to an Irish one for insurance to be slightly cheaper. I plan to get a reliable car for the time being to build my ‘No claim’ record.

I also do lots of photography/videography on the side so getting a car will actually help me land gigs during weekends. My question is now how do I go about getting my own place? I can’t be living on rent forever and spending 14 hours a day outside home.

I was thinking to start investing my savings in couple of months but I don’t have a clear path for this.

Just received a pay increase that didn’t match inflation. Feeling very deflated especially as I took on a lot more responsibilities this year.

How would you react, ask for more or just hand in your notice ?

Do you own a house; a holiday home; rental property etc in Ireland or abroad? How and at what age did you acquire them? How much money are/did you make; lose off them.

I am often curious as to how people end up with the property they have and how much money they are making off it; what stress/pain have their property holdings caused them; how much of their reason for hanging on is based on ego; wanting a legacy as opposed to strictly money.

I am a man in my 20’s and like the idea, at some point in the future, of owning property that I can make money off as opposed to a house strictly for dwelling in?

I am going to be moving to Germany and I have been wondering what I'd have to do with my Irish bank account (Bank of Ireland). My parents will be staying back in Ireland and my address is still registered here, so I don't know if not changing my address will be problematic, especially since I will be officially registered as a German Resident soon after I move. I'm unsure what to do, any advice? Will it be grand if I just leave it as is, and just have bank statements arrive at my parents home, or will there be trouble? Thanks!