Money management is a crucial skill that every child should learn at an early age. Learning how to manage finances is not just about budgeting and saving, but it’s also about building a healthy relationship with money. As parents, it’s our responsibility to teach our children about money and help them make wise financial decisions in the future. We’re going to set out five valuable lessons that you can give to your children about money.
Picture the scene – I hope it applies to you today or in the not-too-distant future… You’ve got to that point in your financial life where life is getting easier. Maybe the mortgage is paid off or almost there, and you are finally seeing your savings grow incrementally each year, even though you are doing most of the things that you want to do. You are finally seeing that after a nice holiday or two, socialising as you like and changing the car every couple of years, there is still some money left over.
The cost-of-living crisis is starting to bite for lots of people. In the UK we’re seeing widespread strikes, and while thankfully this hasn’t been the case in Ireland, the current high inflation rate is starting to hit people hard in their wallets. Almost 80% of the population are worried about their finances due to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, a recent survey commissioned by Aldi has shown. Essentials like food, electricity, gas and oil all saw prices skyrocket in 2022, leaving many Irish families struggling to cope with the hikes.
Apart from the volatility in investment markets and everything else going on in the economy and the world in general, 2022 was also a tumultuous year in the world of pensions for business owners.
In this final instalment of our age-related articles, it is now the turn of the more senior members of our communities – all of you in your 70’s and older. This group have some very specific financial challenges, so here are some thoughts on wisely managing your financial affairs.
As 2023 gets into full swing, we’re all receiving a constant stream of forecasts and predictions for the year ahead. We’re not going to add to them. At the end of the day, we don’t add any value by making bold guesses about the future, because our crystal ball is no clearer than anyone else’s.
A conversation that often arises with clients is around how much is enough. Everyone is different and has unique wants and needs in life, most of which come with a financial price tag. If someone could wave a magic wand and guarantee each of your wants and needs in life, would that be enough for you?
This month it’s time for the latest in our series of age related articles – welcome to the world of the sixty-somethings! As you (potentially) approach the end of your working life, you are at a really important stage in your financial life. We hope to give you some food for thought to ensure you make the wisest financial decisions to see you through the next phase of your life.
Let's face it, Income Protection is somewhat of a grudge purchase. While it still enjoys the benefit of tax relief at your marginal (highest) rate, it’s another household expense that none of us enjoy paying. After all, you’re paying for a benefit that you hope you never collect...
This is the latest in our series of articles that consider the financial challenges for clients at a specific stage in life. This time we’re looking at people who are in their 50’s. This is a really important stage in your financial life as it is often the time in life of maximum income and the greatest opportunity to really build your wealth.
As Benjamin Franklin once said, “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” However the good news is that both of these don’t necessarily have to occur together.
In our last newsletter, we wrote about what's important financially for people in their 30s. We got quite a few comments about this piece and some requests to set out the financial priorities for people in their 40s. So here goes...
Keep control of your lifestyle
For a lot of people as they enter their forties, the financial pressure starts to ease a bit. As a result of career progression and increased earnings, the bills (in particular the mortgage repayments) don’t look quite so daunting any more. And this is when people’s lifestyles can run out of control. Rather than putting their increased wealth to good use, they simply grow their lifestyle until this becomes the new “norm”. And as a result, that hard earned extra income ends up delivering zero impact to your long-term financial health. Put that extra wealth to good use.
Stay vigilant with debt
Debt costs have been very low in recent years, with base interest rates around the 0% mark. However this situation is changing - we saw last week the first rate increase by the ECB in more than a decade. One of the challenges caused by low interest rates is that people can become a little complacent about debt, thinking it will always be cheap. Be very prudent about taking on new debt, and stress-test your finances carefully against the impact of rising interest rates. Do you really need to take on debt for home improvements, or for a fancy new car? Does it make more sense to save first and spend later?
Think carefully about home improvements
We’ve seen a number of examples of people with the back broken on their mortgage, and then deciding that it’s time to almost re-build the house. The rationale is usually around higher income levels making this possible, and also because the kids need more space – don’t they? This may well make sense, just be clear that the it’s hard to recoup money spent on your house as it usually isn’t fully reflected in future valuations. Also think past the next 5-10 years – will you want a bigger house when the kids decide it’s time to move on? Yes, make your house more comfortable and enjoyable to live in, but don't spend money unnecessarily on it. Oh, and best of luck trying to get a builder at the moment!
How's your emergency fund?
Maybe you were very forward-thinking years ago, listened to the advice and built a nice “rainy day” fund. Now’s the time to take a good, hard look at it. A fund built up a few years ago may be quite inadequate today. Do you need to add to this to cover your current level of expenses?
These are the golden years for building a nice lifestyle in retirement
These are often the critical years for retirement savings. You now have the financial firepower to really accelerate your retirement funding, and you also still have the time on your side to benefit from the magic of future compound interest. So make these years the high impact years in your retirement savings. Look to avail as much as possible of the generous tax reliefs on offer for pension contributions.
How are your parents' finances?
One big challenge facing families today is the multi-generational impact on financial plans, it’s not enough to plan solely for your own future. Quite often, we see parents playing an important role in helping their children with significant deposits to enable them to get on the home ownership ladder or to remain in full-time education for longer than might have been expected. And as we see older people living longer and having more complex and expensive care needs later in life, the burden of financing this support can sometimes fall on the family. Does your financial plan take account of these costs?
It might be time to consider starting to transfer your wealth
Depending on your specific financial situation, now might well be the time to really start looking at the future transfer of your wealth. If you have significant assets to pass on eventually and as we've outlined in our other article this month, these can be seriously eroded by our penal inheritance tax environment. Planning for this a long time in advance will allow us to develop financial strategies that will enable you to significantly reduce this tax burden, ensuring your assets go mainly to your loved ones and not to the taxman.
Your 40s are hopefully great years... Manage them wisely and you can establish a really strong financial foundation for the rest of your life.
This is the first in a series of articles that will be aimed at people at different stages of life. Today we're starting with those in their younger more carefree years, but probably with an eye on financial planning - the 30 somethings! For this group there are lots of competing priorities – a house to be bought, maybe a wedding to be celebrated or a family to be started. And these also don’t take into account the holidays, cars and social life that are there to be enjoyed too... So here are our thoughts on some of the important financial challenges facing this group.
We await with interest each year the claims statistics from the leading protection providers in the Irish market. Irish Life annually issue very insightful and detailed information about their claims (as do other providers), and we’ve taken the opportunity to dig a little into the claims data from their Retail division for 2021.
There’s been a lot of media talk over the last few weeks following the recent release of The Tinder Swindler on Netflix. How did these educated, smart women fall for the charms of Simon Leviev and end up giving him hundreds of thousands of euros? Unfortunately, it happens. Attempted scams are happening in different ways every day of the week now, and the key is to have your radar up and be naturally suspicious of any interaction with your money and a third party.
We wrote in January about “Staying out of your own way”, a piece that resonated with a lot of people in these volatile investment markets. In this article, we spoke about how managing our own behaviours is the single factor that will probably have the greatest impact on our investment success.
We’ve seen quite a lot of volatility in investment markets in recent months and while many analysts are forecasting single digit growth in 2022, there is also a sense that markets will continue to be volatile. Covid is still lingering, the US & China are having their differences over trade and Brexit issues remain unresolved.
Let’s make it a real resolution in 2022 to focus together on the big picture when it comes to your finances. All too often, it can be very easy to be dragged down into weeds – in our world that’s the (very important too) world of products, funds and fund managers. Don’t get us wrong, these really matter and need to be discussed, but never at the expense of discussing the bigger picture.
We spend our days helping clients to plan their financial futures. What we see is that people face similar challenges depending on their stage of life. At the same time of course, each and every one of us has a unique set of circumstances, has our own specific financial objectives and needs bespoke advice to help us reach our goals.
No, no, no – really how’s life? We’re not saying this just as a polite greeting, but instead are asking this as many people have become a bit more reflective after the pandemic, as we’ve all seen how our lives can be totally upended by something completely from left field. Unfortunately, a small number of our clients were (and one or two continue to be) quite sick from covid and we know people who also suffered bereavement because of the wretched virus. These people have unsurprisingly been reflecting on their new circumstances.
Tax is a necessary evil. If we want to live in a country with access to public services, taxation is the system used to pay for these services. We can (and do!) argue and moan about the different levels of tax payable and whether they are levied fairly. But at the end of the day, the money to be used for public services has to be collected somewhere.
Are we finally getting back to normal? It’s great to see people out and about again as the country eases itself out of lockdown. And for all of those retail businesses that were forced to close their doors, the early signs are good with the example of footfall on Grafton Street back to approx. 90% of the pre-pandemic levels.
We’re currently doing a lot of planning work with clients whose financial situations have changed greatly in the last 18 months. As part of this process, we’ve taken a little bit of time to stop and reflect on some of the changes to their lives in general, how these might impact their future and how these changes feed through into their financial plans. We’ve noticed a number of themes emerging.
We decided to write about this topic after listening to a very sad radio interview recently. It was with a father of three children, who had recently been bereaved after the death of his life partner of 20 years, the mother of his children. She passed away as the result of a medical condition, that was further complicated when she contracted Covid-19.
We were wondering recently about the impact that COVID has had on claims within the life assurance sector, and so we decided to do a bit of investigation by examining Irish Life’s (the leading provider of protection products in Ireland) claims data for 2020.
OK we admit – this may not sound like the most exciting topic in the world, but it just might make a significant difference to your financial future…
Evidence Based Investing (EBI) is gathering more and more supporters and advocates around the world, and as a result is starting to appear quite frequently in investment commentary and indeed the mainstream media. It is a term that you may or may not be familiar with, so we’re taking the opportunity to inform you of what you need to know about it.
Where do you start with Warren Buffett? Widely recognised as the world’s shrewdest investor, the “Sage of Omaha” is now 90 years young and still doling out nuggets of advice to investors across the globe. Using his investment expertise, he had amassed a fortune of some $79 billion as of August 2020, making him the 4th wealthiest individual in the world.
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