How has this happened? Surely we can’t already be facing into a new decade! Many of us remember fondly the big party we were at on New Year’s Eve as we entered the new century – and all the worries about the Y2K bug that was going to bring the end to many IT systems across the globe. We’re coming up to the 20^th anniversary of that now…

Time just relentlessly marches on. It never changes pace and before we know it, another year or another decade has slipped by. As we entered the current decade, the world was struggling to emerge from the deepest economic crash in a generation. Many people in Ireland had lost their jobs, had lost a lot of money in investments – particularly in property ventures and bank shares and were really struggling under enormous piles of debt. Many were simply hanging on at that stage.

The last decade has been a period of re-birth for many, but certainly not all people in Ireland. Personal debt issues have reduced, but this...

We came across a quote recently that has really got us thinking, as it hit home on one of the most important aspects of financial planning. The quote is, “Money always moves when life is in transition”.

The reason the quote had such an impact is because it makes financial planning real. When some people think about financial planning, they think only of life assurance, income protection, pensions and investments. This is a mistake, as these are simply products that are sometimes used to enable a financial plan to be implemented. Financial planning itself is about helping you to identify what you want to do with your life, and then devising a plan to help you financially achieve that life. Yes, we might suggest that some products as mentioned above are used – but these are simply vehicles to help you achieve your goals.

And when we talk about your financial goals, we’re not talking about some random figures such as, “My goal is to have €800,000 in...

Paying tax bills can be a challenging time for both business owners and sole traders alike. Of course if your business is very successful, tax is simply an expense that needs to be met when your tax payment deadline rolls around. However, there are also many small enterprises that don’t enjoy the comfort of high levels of excess cashflow. For these businesses, the tax payment deadline can be a stressful time, gathering all expenses together and working with your accountant to identify ways in which you can legitimately reduce your tax liability.

Pension contributions are rightly viewed as one of the most effective ways of reducing your tax liability. The challenge is often having the spare cashflow to make that pension contribution while also being able to meet your tax payment! And as a result, the pension contribution often gets reduced or indeed removed in order to meet the tax liability. The unintended consequence of this is that your retirement plans and future lifestyle...

Traditionally the role of a financial adviser has been to help you grow your financial resources. This has evolved significantly in more recent times into a much broader role, as financial planners have developed the skills and the tools to provide a lot more value than this. Sitting at the heart of what we do now is helping you to identify the life that you want to live, and then through careful financial planning, guiding you on your financial journey to ensure you achieve your goals and dreams.

We believe that as part of helping you to identify the life you want to lead, it makes sense to think far beyond the traditional boundaries that might have existed. Yes your financial plan should include goals such as when you want to retire, where you want to live and how you will transfer money effectively to your loved ones. Each of these takes careful planning and sound investment of your resources. But we believe wise investment goes far beyond investing in funds, shares and other...

In this first edition of our newsletter, we thought we would kick off by examining the different financial challenges faced by people at different stages in their lives. While it's never too early to start financial planning, once you hit your 40's it really has to be taken seriously to ensure you can live the life that you want to lead.

So here goes with our Top 10 Tips for managing your money in your 40’s.

1. 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...

Well there is no exhaustive list for this one – there really are so many potential factors that can influence your investment returns. When you ask a professional investor, they will often jump to factors such as the economy, sentiment and interest rates. All very relevant factors.

Some factors of course have bigger impacts than others. So, we’re going to set out below the factors that we see as potentially having the biggest impacts, focusing on the factors that you have some control over – either yourself or more likely with some assistance from us.

This is not an exhaustive list and these factors are not necessarily in order, however we’ll start with the factor that (maybe surprisingly to you) tends to have the biggest impact on investor returns.

Investor Behaviour

Are you surprised by this one? This factor definitely has the single biggest impact on investment performance. How many investors around the world panicked at the end of last year after...

We’d like to share a story with you that originated back in 1963 when published by the German writer, Heinrich Böll. It’s a very short story, but perfectly captures one of the key messages that we stress with our clients.

The message is that while the amount of money you have or build up for the future is important, it is far more important to know the life that you want to lead and to have enough money to live that life. Otherwise, what’s the “right” amount of money to have, how much is “enough” for you? Is it €500,000, €5 million or €50 million? These are simply numbers.

Instead, it is far better to identify the life that you want lead – where you want to live, how long you want to work for, what you want to be able to do and buy in the future and how much money you want to be able to give / leave to loved ones. Once you are clear on these important life choices, we can then help you put a price on this life that...

We are in the business of helping you to achieve the life that you want to lead, through wise management of your money and by helping you to establish sound financial behaviours. We know from experience that developing a financial plan for you is the first step to enabling you to achieve your desired lifestyle, followed by years and years of relentless and rigorous focus on this plan. It will never be achieved by short term tactical genius and taking bets.

In relation to your financial behaviours, our role is akin to being your (financial) guardian angel! The biggest factor in wealth destruction is very often the investor’s own misguided behaviours and actions. As a result the most important role that we can play is to stop you making mistakes that will impact your wealth. This is sometimes the unseen work that we do, so we thought it would be useful to give you a sense of a few ways in which we add value, without you probably even realising it!

1. Keeping a long-term...

As part of our financial planning conversations with you, we always bring the attention around to subjects that are not easy to think about – a serious illness or death visiting a family member or indeed yourself. We all naturally don’t want to spend too long thinking about this, but unfortunately for us to do our job properly it’s a subject that we simply must contemplate.

The reason for this is because we’ve seen the cost of not thinking about it. We can all picture the devastation, grief and loss that accompanies a death or serious illness. However we’ve also seen at first hand the catastrophic financial consequences that can follow. We’ve seen families losing their total income and the enormous financial impacts of a serious illness where home adaptations and specialist care services are needed. We’ve seen family members becoming carers because there are no alternatives.

So we spend time considering the best financial products to protect...

Income Protection is sometimes described as the glue in a financial portfolio. The most devastating impact on your financial situation is likely to be caused by a loss of your income, and the inability to replace it.

Unfortunately, people lose their jobs from time to time. However inevitably what tends to happen is that these people pick up new roles elsewhere or take a new path in their careers. As a result, their income may drop for a period of time, but will usually pick up again before too long. These people are in the fortunate position of being able to work.

Being unable to work because of illness or injury is a whole other matter. Little or no costs are moved from your life, in fact new costs may emerge such as medical expenses, care fees etc. On the income side, there are social protection benefits available, but in reality these deliver no more than basic subsistence payments. So there is often a lot less money coming in, with sometimes more going out…

Income...