Choosing a Financial Advisor in Ireland is not an easy task! There are many different types of advisors, operating in different ways, being remunerated differently, and all delivering different services. 

In this piece, I will share with you;

• How to recognise the different types of financial advisors in Ireland
• Why Financial Advisors are comparable to prostitutes, escorts and spouses!
• How different types of advisors are paid for what they do
• Why all Financial Advisors are not the same

I hope it helps.

In this episode, Paddy has a great chat with Paul Merriman from The Merriman Financial Education Foundation in the USA.

The foundation is dedicated to providing financial education to those of all ages.

Paul shares his wealth of knowledge from decades of experience from starting his own Merriman Wealth Management after retiring to setting up his foundation. 

Key topics covered:

• Investing successfully
• Equity asset classes
• Emotions of Investing
• Hardest thing about investing
• Maths of investing
• Follow the history

I hope you enjoy this insightful interview.

Resources:

Merriman Financial Education Foundation Lifetime Investment Calculator - Paul Merriman

About Paul

Here are some helpful resources from The Merriman Financial Education Foundation:

Selecting of the appropriate amount of fixed income (Fine Tuning Your Asset Allocation)

Choosing the best fixed distribution asset allocation

Choosing the best flexible distribution asset allocation

Quilt charts

Investing for Children

The Merriman Financial Education Foundation

Free E-book from Paul - get it here We’re Talking Millions! 12 Ways to Supercharge Your Retirement or here Free E-book

Paul Merriman Podcast

Your Money and Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich by Jason Zweig - Paul's book recommendation

This week I bring you some facts, no metaphors, no story, just facts about recent and important pension changes in Ireland!

• Important changes to PRSAs
• Upcoming changes to UK State Pension benefits (applicable to all those in Ireland with some time accrued in HMRC UK State Pension)
• Recent changes to Lump Sums from foreign pensions (including Malta etc.)

I estimate that there are approximately 100 people retiring today, and tomorrow etc. etc. Of these c100 people retiring each day of the week, some are really well prepared and will have a smooth journey.

However, others will be less prepared and so face a little more challenge and hurdles. My hope is that this piece will help a few to blow any hurdles out of their way with ease!

2022 was a testing investment year for many. Rather than jump headlong into 2023, let's take a few minutes to reflect and observe what we can learn from 2022! To me, there are 3 main investment lessons to be taken from last year:

1. Inflation continues to be the real risk
2. Diversification matters
3. Embrace uncertainty

Welcome back to the latest Informed Decisions podcast: Transitioning from full time employment. This week we have William Lacey back to talk about his journey toward retirement.

We continue to talk about his progress, his thoughts, and his reflections on what he has learned since he began this journey with us in February 2022.

Zen Habits  – Leo Babauta

Die with Zero - Bill Perkins

Dr. Mark Hyman

Fritz Gilbert - The Bucket Strategy In A Bear Market - The Retirement Manifesto

Investing in Ireland can be like staring into a fog at the best of times, until now of course! You have stumbled upon the oracle which will clear that fog for you! In today's podcast I will talk about:

• The 'best investments' Ireland offers
• How you can get your hands on them!
• Why all of this may be utter nonsense!

I hope it helps

You have decided to make a career change or take a redundancy offer but can’t help but ask, ‘what happens to my pension benefits?'.

When leaving your job, apart from the small matter of securing your financial future, what to do with your pension benefits is one of the most important things you need to consider. This can be especially so if you and your employer have been diligently contributing to your pension scheme for many years!

Key Points:

• Beware 'Advisors' that tell you to move it, without due analysis to ensure it is best for you
• You will have 3 main options for your pension benefits when leaving employment
• You are entitled to an option statement after leaving, it's important to know what it means
• If it is a good idea to combine multiple older pensions into one scheme

One of the biggest questions for people who are transitioning from full-time employment is ‘how does spending change in retirement?’. It is a difficult question to answer, but there is a lot of research out there, which points to some key takeaways.

• Retirees can expect to spend less on food and clothing
• You can expect to spend less on transportation in retirement
• Expect healthcare costs to increase
• Many retirees plan to spend more on gifting
• More favourable tax rules apply to retirees
• Expect your overall spending to remain broadly in line with current spending

I hope it helps.

Thanks

In this week’s episode, I chat with Dan Cooper, CEO of ROC Investments, about investing in the character of CEOs of large cap companies.

• What return on character as an ETF means
• How this ETF came about and how it is implemented
• How ROC Investments are trying to deliver returns in excess of the benchmark for investors in their ETF
• How they are trying to drive positive change within corporations
• The long-term goals of this EFT

I hope you find the conversation interesting and helpful.

Thanks

ROC Investments

Book Recommendations:

Shantaram

Return on Character

'Safe' Investment funds in Ireland are drowning in the past year, much to the surprise of many investors. In this short piece, you will learn:

• How 'Safe' and Conservative Investment Funds are performing
• Why 'Safe' Funds are suffering badly
• What you can do to improve things for yourself

Thanks

In this week’s podcast, Paddy talks to Jordan Grumet, a.k.a. Doc G. Jordan is a Hospice doctor who found a passion for personal finance, public speaking, and finding purpose in life.

Jordan's experience working with patients in end of life care brings a really unique, insightful and interesting perspective to living a life with no regrets.

Key topics we cover:

- What is important to you

- What he has learned from hospice patients about life regrets

- Financial independence

- Finding what's important to you

- Discovering what your identity really is

I hope it helps

Thanks

Jordan's podcast - Earn & Invest

Jordan Grumet.com

Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor's Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life

The White Coat Investor: A Doctor's Guide to Personal Finance and Investing by James M. Dahle MD

The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life by JL Collins

This week's podcast tackles 8 of the most common financial mistakes retirees make.

• Be prepared for retirement lifestyle changes
• Have a plan in place for elder care
• Understand how Income Tax works in retirement
• Don’t forget about inflation (kinda hard not at the moment!)
• Stay active and socialise
• Don’t delay retirement planning
• Test your retirement lifestyle before retiring
• Make a plan for any debt, or gifting

I hope it helps.

If you are a soon-to-be-retiree, or an already-retiree, you may well be grasped with fear in times like these.

In three short parts, I will outline where we are in the greater scheme of things.

• Where exactly are we now?
• What we know
• When will markets recover?

I hope it helps

Paddy

This week, I’m bringing you an interview with Santi Burridge, who is the CEO of what’s going to be a very impactful company, I believe in the world of financial planning and financial advice. I met and interviewed Santi at the Future Proof Festival two weeks ago in Los Angeles.

Santi is a great guest, full of energy and who is driving forward. He is here to share what they're doing with Lumiant by bringing value based financial advice to the world and ultimately helping people to live their best life. 

He also talks about what has happened to financial advice in general in Australia, which has followed a similar track to the UK and America. And probably a tract that Ireland is heading down in the future. 

We also speak about the non-financial spouse. Those people who quite often get left behind by financial advisors and why they are people that we need to engage.

I hope you enjoy the conversation. 

Lumiant

The Knowledge Project: #142 Marshall Goldsmith: The Essentials Of Leadership

Are we seeing the death of ESG Investments in Ireland, before they even got off the ground? 

In this piece, I'm going to share a little bit about what's happening in other parts of the world with regard to ESG investing and explore what options we do have here in Ireland. 

It's an interesting topic and it's one I'm not fully decided on yet; as will become clear.

What is most important when deciding to retire?

The road to retirement and the decision to exit full-time employment is an undulating road. It is one that brings up many questions, concerns, and indeed many doubts for lots of people.

This is particularly so when you are fortunate to have a choice on when you actually retire. In that situation, the internal debate could actually give you a throbbing headache!

While only you can make the decision to take an early leap from the purpose and steady income of work, there are some factors that will help you clarify your questions. I hope this helps you, either now or in the future.

Hello! I hope life is good. This week I’m going to be talking about retirement lump sums and what to do with them. This equally does apply to most lump sum investment decisions that we do or will have to make in the future. 

I will talk about the top 3 considerations you should think about when making the decision to invest a retirement lump sum.

Taking or investing a retirement lump sum isn’t a one-off decision. There are many aspects that one should consider both at the point of investing but also on an ongoing basis when taking or investing a retirement lump sum. 

 I do hope that it is helpful for one and all that choose to listen to this week’s episode.

Having clarity around the management of your RSUs in Ireland is critical to successfully avoiding major tax and succession issues in the future.

In this short piece, I will share 3 critical aspects to US RSUs, and outline steps you can take to achieve successful outcomes for you and your loved ones.

According to the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland, there are 190,000 people in Ireland, employed by US Companies. Many of these individuals are employees of financially successful companies (think Google, Meta, Paypal, Intel, Oracle etc.) and have benefitted from that success, often in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) from their employer.

Thanks for listening

Paddy

How are you doing, hope life is good. We have a very enthused, knowledgeable, and contagious personality on the podcast this week. Roger Whitney. 

He is The Retirement Answer Man in the US. Podcaster, blogger, financial advisor, community organsier head; he’s a ball of energy. 

And he has some great ideas to share with us in this episode. With Roger, you’re going to hear about all sorts of preparations for retirement. 

You’re going to hear about a thing called that ‘Tart Cake’, which is a new concept we created in our conversation. You're going to hear about his book recommendation. 

His investment philosophy. His approach to leaving both a financial and a non-financial legacy and how to successfully retire.

So we cover quite a bit of ground in this episode, and Roger could talk for days on this one. 

Roger Whitney has been a Certified Financial Planner for more than 25 years. And he really is on a mission to help people live well today without sacrificing tomorrow, as he puts it. 

Roger’s book recommendations:

 Top 5 Regrets of The Dying

Necessary Endings by Dr Henry Cloud 

Roger’s website: The Retirement Answer Man

Escaping Full Time Employment With William Lacey Part 4

Thank you for joining us for what is our fourth conversation with William Lacey who is in the midst of transitioning out of full time employment out to a life of freedom and choice. 

In this particular episode it was really interesting to hear William’s progress, transitions and works on the various aspects both financial and nonfinancial.

We continue to talk about his progress, his thoughts and reflections, on what he has learned since he began this journey with us in February 2022.

And what he’s going to continue working on next to aid his smooth, successful transition to full time employment to the life of freedom and choice we mentioned

"My Bonds & my equities are falling in my pension - I must do something"....said almost everyone who has an invested pension or investment.

It is the natural reaction, and it seems the obvious one, but should you do something, and if so what?

In this weeks' super-short piece I share 3 things you might consider doing about it your Bonds & Equity values falling. I hope it helps.

Lars Kroijer is our guest on today’s podcast. Lars is a former hedge fund manager, author, and entrepreneur from Denmark.

He talks with Paddy about can we beat the market, investment edge, hedge funds, and many interesting related topics.

Can We Beat the Market? If We Can’t What Should We Do?

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode. Really interesting topic if you’re into investments. If you’re into ensuring that you get the optimal long term return for yourself into the future.

This episode has some really interesting insights from our guest today. I hope you enjoy it.

This is from last year, 2021, but the content, the ideas, and the principles that Lars shared with us are still applicable.  Enjoy

Lars Kroijer YouTube Channel

Welcome, dear listeners. This is the second of our from the archives podcast and this is from a Tribe episode that was launched in August 2021.

We got a really interesting question through the Ask Me Anything function which was a part of Tribe, which is no longer. But the question is a great one.

Here we delve into it in quite a bit of detail and got great feedback from the Tribe members. So, hopefully, this episode is of real value to you. Enjoy

Consolidate Old Pensions, Or Not?

This episode was originally recorded and published in September 2021 for the Tribe when things, and by things I mean our pension funds and our investments were saving. 

They were on the upward curve having recovered from a recent downturn. It’s amazing how short our memories are when it comes to these things. 

I’m resharing it now for two reasons:

1. It’s a really timely reminder of when things aren’t going so well in terms of our pension and our investment values
2. Because I’m taking a couple of weeks' break from podcasting and other professional duties until mid-July 

However, the ideas, the insights, the thoughts, the planning, the concepts, and the confirmations and clarifications without overegging it still stand. The world is not coming to an end we have been here before and we will be here again. 

How To Prepare Your Pension For The Next Big Crash. Blog 186

I hope you enjoy!