The Report of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare was published last week. At 547 pages, this is a lengthy document and there is a huge amount of recommendations in it. As there is enough just on pensions, that is what I am going to concentrate on now. I will come back to some of […]
Even before annuity rates dropped to the low rates that they are today, annuities had very much given way to the ARF as the retirement option of choice. Even though they were giving up guarantees and assuming all the investment risk, retirees preferred to have control of their own retirement fund. One of the biggest […]
Ever go to conference? Ever notice that people return to the same seat after breaks. If it is two day conference, everyone will be sitting in the seats they had the day before. We are creatures of habit and we like routine. One certainty we love the most is getting that pay cheque every month. […]
When we think about investment returns, we think of long term averages. It doesn’t work like that though with returns varying from year to year. If you are assuming a 6% annualised return, there will be years of double digit returns but also years of negative returns. This is fine when contributing to your pension. […]
There is a vulnerability to retiring and not earning an income anymore. Instead of money coming in every month and your savings increasing, you are spending that money that you have saved over the decades. And not knowing how long we will live for means we don’t know how long our savings have to last […]
You have spent your working lifetime saving. Putting money away into your pension and an extra few quid when you had the money. By being frugal and living below your means, you have accumulated a substantial amount of money and you have reached the financial planners holy grail…you are financially independent. You are now in […]
As people near retirement, they tend to de-risk their pension investment by moving it into bonds and cash before they mature their pension plan. But will most retirees investing in ARF’s post retirement, should they really be reducing their risk exposure at all? Annuity The idea to de-risk your pension came about originally when the […]
You have spent decades diligently putting away money, always contributing to your work pension scheme, not spending all of your take home pay to keep your cost of living low. At times it was hard when there was a recession but you kept saving. Other times you saw others with a new car that you […]
On June 29, 2011, the Social Welfare and Pensions Act became law in Ireland. In that Act, the State pension age was gradually increased, starting in January 2014 by increasing the State pension age for those born between 1 January 1949 and 31 December 1954 to age 66. For those born between 1 January 1955 […]
When the ARF was first introduced, you were under no obligation to make any withdrawals from it if you didn’t want to. This was was very useful for those with other sources of income, especially if those other sources were taxed as income. You could just let your ARF accumulate in value in a tax […]