Archive for the 'Pensions' Category

How much can you put into a pension?

There is a huge difference between how much you can put into a pension depending on whether you are paying into a personal pension/ PRSA or a company paid plan. I will go through the maximum amounts you can make and claim tax relief on the contributions. You can, of course, contribute more and not […]

Read More

When can you mature your pension?

I previously wrote on how pensions work. In that article, I focused on the common traits of all the different pension plans that are available. One difference with the various pension plans is when you can mature your pension. Different rules apply to different pensions, so it is important that you are aware of these differences. […]

Read More

Total Expense Ratio

I wrote an article back in April 2014 on pension charges, explaining the relation between allocation rates and the management charge on your contract. That wasn’t the whole of it, there are also trading costs that usually aren’t disclosed that have to be added on. That is why I am going to explain the Total […]

Read More

When it comes to pensions, we need to look at ourselves first

I was reading Stephen Kinsella’s article last week about the Irish government’s long term planning failure to address pensions. While successive governments are certainly guilty of kicking the can down the road when it comes to pensions, I think the same can be said of ourselves. We all know the government have avoided addressing the pension […]

Read More

Are you a speculator or an investor?

There was an article in the Sunday Independent last week asking Where’s the best place to invest a spare €100k. I was surprised the some of the advisors interviewed said to invest in Irish property. Is it really that long ago since we saw property values plummet -60%? Or was this some great advice for long term […]

Read More

Questions about the universal pension

The Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton, indicated that, now they economy is recovering, she is looking at implementing a universal pension scheme. Only half the population have private pension schemes and approximately 17,000 additional people receive the old age pension each year. Ahead of starting a universal pension scheme, there are a few questions […]

Read More

Reduce your tax bill through pensions

The tax return deadline is just around the corner. The deadline for those submitting their return on paper is 31 October and 13 November for those submitting it online through the Revenue’s ROS system. A common way to reduce your tax bill is through pension contributions. So, how does this work? Example of how reduce […]

Read More

What happened at Custom House Capital? Part 2

This is part two of out blog on what happened at Custom House Capital. Part 1 can be found here. Ponzi Scheme Mister Justice Gerard Hogan described Custom House Capital as “a sort of irish ponzi scheme”. Money was taken from clients accounts to pay fees, commissions, buy shares in Custom House Capital, pay French, […]

Read More

What happened at Custom House Capital? Part 1

I was hoping to fit this blog on Custom House Capital into just one blog post but even with leaving out large chunks, there is just too much to fit in one post, so I will be publishing this over two weeks. It was reported in the news last week, that Bank of Ireland are pursuing […]

Read More

The power of compounding

The Power of Compounding

I was giving a presentation at the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Chamber of Commerce B2B meeting last week on pensions. Beforehand, I was talking to David Crawford who as me ‘would it be better to start with a cent and have it double every day for a month or have €1m right now?’ I knew it […]

Read More