I am one of Ulster Bank’s 1.1 million customers. My wife and I have our household account with them, so we have to move our account at some point. I was going to leave it until the last minute but Brendan Burgess of askaboutmoney.com told me that there will be chaos with people trying to […]
After Budget 2022 was announced a few weeks ago, the Finance Bill 2021 was published and it introduces some interesting pension reforms. The end of the AMRF The AMRF will be no more. This is something that we have been supporting for years and it is finally happening. We had been talking to the Revenue […]
I have been working in financial services for 22 years and been advising people on their money for 20 of those years. There have been plenty of changes over that time but the biggest ones weren’t imposed by the Central Bank, they were imposed by the market, what people wanted. I worked for years under […]
I have written a lot about the role of the financial advisor and the lack of trust in the people giving advise in the industry that I have worked in for over 20 years. This came to the fore for me again when a new client came to me when they had doubts over an […]
This is slightly different to what I usually write about but it is hugely important and comes up in conversations all the time. Having just gone through the process myself, I have spoken to loads of parents who were hugely stressed over not being able to get their child into a secondary school. This applies […]
As the last decade ended, we were bombarded with articles and tweets about the best and worst of the last decade. I am going to do my own Blue chip We all believed that Irish banks were “blue chip” investments when they weren’t really. Companies like Coca-Cola, Disney, Microsoft are blue chip companies. Irish banks […]
The Revenue doesn’t like it when people save loads of money and they can’t get their hands on it. We have seen it with deemed disposal on investments and imputed distribution on ARFs. Another one that has been in place for a long time is the closed company surcharge where the Revenue will charge a […]
The Central Bank issued its feedback to a consultation paper on commissions. While we welcome some of the measures, we feel the reforms are clunky and do not address the issue of overcharging and transparency, something that can be solved in a much simpler manner. Can’t be Independent if you receive commission From April 2020, […]
How long can you go without looking at your phone? Answer honestly. If you are doing a big project in work or at home, how many times will you check your phone? It might just be for a second to see if new emails or WhatsApp messages have come in. We all do it and […]
The summer has traditionally been a quiet time for the stock markets. But we certainly are not in ordinary times with Donald Trump in the White House and Boris Johnson at 10 Downing Street. The trade war between the US and China is really beginning to bite. After contiously telling everyone who would listen that […]