Uncategorised

I shared an article from the ESRI last week that was in the Irish Independent and it covered what to do and more specifically what not to do in terms of financial planning.

Because as we get into the workforce and start to take out a financial commitment such as car loans and mortgages and perhaps have a family, these are very long-term commitments financially yet most of us haven’t been taught or really been given any information in terms of how to manage our money over the course of our lifetime and be able to pay for all this.

So between the ESRI findings and my own learnings. I’ll share some habits you should consider when financial planning.

The first thing is very simple, don’t spend everything that you earn, it saves the difference and that disposable income that you save will be used for your financial planning.

Create a habit of saving on a regular basis and any saving that you want to do over the long term, over 5 years I would look to invest it and see if you can get it at a higher return.

If you are looking to invest money I would talk to an adviser just to get a good idea of the risk that you’re potentially taking on.

Be as tax efficient as possible so if you’re looking at very long-term savings could you be getting a tax break on a pension or could you be paying for your life or your illness cover on a policy that has a tax break on the premium.

The last is just to map out the next 20, 30, 40 years and that’s going to cover everything over the time frame so that’ll be short, medium and long term and it’ll identify everything that needs to be paid for and then you can start to allocate resources according to that and that’ll be your financial roadmap.

Today I’d like to write about Cash Flow Forecasting – Cash Flow Forecasting allows you to project your current assets and income together with your current and future expenditures and liabilities and can be a useful tool to help you understand if you are on track or not to achieve your lifetime goals.

So you take your pay, your income, your expenses, your debts and your assets and you map having to afford all of the life events you can expect which could be maybe education costs, inheritance, retirement and also the events that you want which could be maybe related to a hobby or a landmark holiday.

You map it all forward and you look to see how in terms of surplus income or savings and how you’re working towards each of those events or goals.

You may need to make an adjustment so that might be now, that might be in a few year’s time because it is a very long-term plan to help you to work towards those goals and objectives.

It’s particularly popular around retirement because individuals need to see when their pay stops and they need to draw on pensions and savings and investments to see can they maintain their lifestyle.

If you’re wondering what your current assets and income can do for you, consider Cash Flow Modelling – If you need help understanding this tool or other options feel free to get in touch and simply start a conversation!

From experience of setting up monthly investment plans, most people set them up to be used as money for either children or nieces or nephews.

The likelihood is that most people will need to avail of money for education or for housing and also the other side of that I’ve seen that put a strain on people’s finances trying to find the money for mainly on education from what I’ve seen.

So most people will take a long-term view, 10 to 20 years, and invest on a monthly basis between €140 and €250 a month.

€140 is a basic level of child benefit and €250 a month, which is three grand a year, will avail fully of the small gift allowance which should allow for a tax free inheritance.

When you’re looking at a time frame of 10 to 20 years you’ve got the greatest chance of positive investment returns as well.

If you found this article helpful and would like to learn more about your financial planning options for your children, please comment below, share with your network or tag a friend who might benefit from this information!

Feel free to connect and start a conversation or contact me directly at +353 (87) 778 5325☎️

For anybody who’s planning for retirement may not be at retirement age but planning for retirement, the big question is, how much income will I need in retirement?

There are rough rules of thumb such as 50% of your income or 66% of your income but for me, it’s on a case-by-case basis.

The state pension, if you’re entitled to it will cover a lot of the basic household bills but for things, and this is where it comes down to an individual basis such as the lifestyle that you want, your hobbies, holidays, and potential healthcare expenses.

A lot of that will be funded through private pensions and private savings.

Now cash flow modeling is a very good tool that gives you a position whereby you project forward your potential expenses and what you have ring fenced for retirement in terms of private pensions and savings and it gives you the current position and you can then make a decision on whether you need to make any changes to your pension provisions.

If you found this article helpful and would like to learn more about your financial planning options for retirement, please comment below, share with your network or tag a friend who might benefit from this information!

Feel free to connect and start a conversation or contact me directly at +353 (87) 778 5325☎️

This morning I’d like to talk about those who have money on deposit and are looking at investing a part of it.

The first question is how much you can invest. So anything that you want to put the money towards over the next five years should remain on deposit in case of investment market volatility.

You need to keep an emergency fund in place and then if there’s some debt it’s worth considering paying some of that down too.

So you’ve finally arrived at the figure. It’s then about what we use the money for, whether it’s towards retirement or education costs, or long-term savings generally.

That will then tell you the term in terms of how long you want to invest.

Generally speaking with investing the longer the term, the better because you get a greater chance of positive returns. For deposit money, a good place to start can be a capital-secure bond, so a bond that’s 100% capital guaranteed if you invest for the entire term.

And then the last consideration then would be if you want access to the money.

Ideally, we’ve gone through the number crunching to see how much you need to leave aside for various requirements but just for conversation over the years lots of people just want to know, just in case, can they get at it.

Now if you’ve gone for a capital secure bond you may not be able to get access to that so you might not be able to get the two of those together but just some practical considerations if considering making an investment.

If you found this article helpful and would like to learn more about your investments, feel free to connect and start a conversation or contact me directly at +353 (87) 778 5325☎️

𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐎𝐮𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐓𝐮𝐛𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥 HERE

Across Ireland, the EU, and the US we’re seeing a slowdown in economic growth due to an increase in interest rates and while we’re not in a recession yet we may go into one.

I’ll talk today about what happens to stock markets and the investment of pension funds if we do go into a recession.

In a recession, you’ve got two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.

Negative economic growth will mean lower company earnings and a drop off of in the stock markets.

You’ll see investment funds and pension funds can drop down in value.

They’ll stay at a lower level for the short term, the actual duration of it will depend on the duration of the recession and the severity of it as well.

Typically about 5 months, 6 months ahead of an economy coming out of recession the stock markets will recover or start to recover.

And on the basis of investors who believe that the worst is behind us will start to buy back in at better value.

For monthly investors and monthly pension investors, you’re buying in at a lower level that can represent an opportunity of value there.

Lump sum investors and pension investors unfortunately can be just riding out the storm and waiting for long-term returns.

If you found this article helpful and would like to learn more about your investments, feel free to connect and start a conversation or contact me directly at +353 (87) 778 5325☎️

𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐎𝐮𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐓𝐮𝐛𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥 

With a 12-month deposit account yielding 1%, depending on the bank, and inflation running at 7.7% as of March this year that’s a negative return or depreciation in depositors money of 6.7% using those figures.

There are hundreds of billions on deposit in Ireland with the Irish banks.

Therefore it’s a cheap source of funding for the banks and they don’t have a need to increase their rates in line with the European Central Bank rates because deposit money isn’t moving elsewhere.

It is clear that capital security is important to Irish savers and investors but also it’s important to have your money grow in real terms and preserve the long-term value of it.

So the solution is to look at a capital-secure bond to invest part of your money into.

You need to keep some of it aside for liquidity and some of it to access when required.

If you found this article helpful and would like to learn more about deposit returns, feel free to connect and start a conversation or contact me directly at +353 (87) 778 5325☎️

I’ve had a number of conversations with a client recently about amalgamating pensions into one pot or keeping them separate.

Now the client that I was talking to is approaching retirement so needs to make decisions pretty soon on whether they consolidate their pensions.

But there are lots of people with pensions around the place and I think it’s always worth looking at consolidating pensions if nothing but locating where they are because you can easily lose sight of where they are and as the years go on they’re harder to locate.

So in terms of amalgamating pensions into one pot, if you have company pensions and they’ve defined contributions you should be able to amalgamate them into the one pot.

And the advantage of doing that is that you keep everything under one roof, you have sight of everything, it’s easier to manage and you see the retirement income from the pension.

From a bereavement point of view it’s easier to manage in terms of estate management you just have to locate one pension.

In terms of keeping them separate, if you are 50 or over and you have a pension from a previous employment you can access that and a tax-free lump sum so that can become a contingency fund.

You can potentially have access to a wider range of funds across the market if you have different pensions in different places.

And it gives you greater flexibility in terms of if you want to continue to work in retirement, maybe part-time, you can access some of the pensions and leave the others as they are until age 75.

So it gives you greater control and flexibility in terms of when you draw the pensions down.

If you found this article helpful and would like to learn more about your pension transfer options, feel free to connect and start a conversation or contact me directly at +353 (87) 778 5325☎️

𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐎𝐮𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐓𝐮𝐛𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥 HERE

The 20th of March was the UN International Day of Happiness and there was a World Happiness Index Report released.

I was quite interested to see what criteria they used to evaluate world happiness and it’s interesting to see what money-related topics were mentioned.

• Real Income Per Capita: This is the real income per person in the country.
• Perception of the Government
• Social supports
• Freedom to pursue or make your own choices

And while I do believe the old adage that money can’t buy happiness, I do believe that money can relieve stress and pressure – Particularly with the high cost of living and a high rate of inflation.

I put some thoughts on to graphic to show what financial wellness or happiness can look like…

It’s having some disposable income and being able to save for a rainy day and retirement.

It’s being able to pursue your goals or your hobbies and having the money to have insurance and financial protection.

For most of us, given the cost of living and the rate of inflation being able to do all of those things means managing your money and sometimes making difficult choices.

Because often the case that financial wellness is financial management, it’s just putting a plan in place and sticking to it and managing your money, and this can create the disposable income that you need to do all those things.

If you found this article helpful and would like to learn more about your financial options, feel free to connect and start a conversation or contact me directly at +353 (87) 778 5325☎️

𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐎𝐮𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐓𝐮𝐛𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥 HERE

Check out the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1npKk3LsOsg

What’s preventing you from achieving financial wellness or financial prosperity or financial independence?

In my experience of working in the industry whether it’s a business or an individual its costs creep up, so spending a little bit too much, high overheads through debt or mortgages or bills and obviously, the cost of living is something that’s making things more difficult as well.

So would a long-term financial plan help in turning things around or helping you achieve your goals?

Like a lot of things in life whether it’s sports, business, or finance, a well-thought-out and adhered to long-term plan tends to help an awful lot.

It is something you could do yourself but I think working with an industry professional is very beneficial.

Studies have shown in Ireland, Canada, and the US that those who work with financial planning professionals have a greater level of savings, higher pension contributions and a greater level of financial protection, and a greater sense of financial wellness.

So while financial planning can be difficult and there are trade-offs to be made, with potentially difficult decisions – Being under financial pressure is quite a bit worse.

If you found this article helpful and would like to learn more about your finance options, feel free to connect and start a conversation or contact me directly at +353 (87) 778 5325☎️

𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐎𝐮𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐓𝐮𝐛𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥 HERE

Published by

If this is something you’d like to learn more about feel free to connect and contact me to start a conversation! ☎️ +353 (87) 778 5325 📧 hlambert@integralfinancialplanning.ie #FinancialAdvice #Retirement #Investment #Pension