Moneymakeover Aged 61, voluntary redundancy, how to sort finances, make the most of savings

You're crippled by indecision and mistrust. You're very conservative in your risk appetite and maybe some if that is to do with the money being ours as opposed to yours.

Over the next while you'll have more time on your hands to research the various options. Take your time.

You have a very basic understanding of unit-linked funds via your pensions. Maybe do some more research there first before you might graduate to ETFs or direct shares. The funds might suit your profile, even if you have to pay more.

You need to look at the breakdown of what you're invested in with the pension (again conservative) and think that you should let those funds run for as long as possible. I wouldn't be life-styling them in your healthy financial position.

Having a closer look at the other two pensions and the funds they're in will also be worthwhile.

I'd definitely regularise the €6,000pa gift.

My read of what you've posted is that you'd be happy to stay ahead of inflation. There are products/funds at the end of most of the decisions you have to make. You're going to have to either trust someone to choose those for you or trust yourself to do so.
 
On transferring the house, as well as the Dwelling House exemption listed above, look into a lifetime interest and potentially a family partnership, as a way to 'lock in' the current value of the house for tax purposes. I wouldn't be as quick as Brendan to write off a Section 72/73 policy either. I really think in your case you could get a lot of benefit from spending 2-3k of your money on a detailed conversation with a financial planner, and then after that another conversation with your solicitor to get up to speed on your options.
 
I appreciate all your advice here, thank you. I am going to take some time to explore some of these suggestions.
I'll look into how to choose or buy strong dividend stocks, or a basket of about 10 directly owned shares (I don't know how to do this), and I will also explore what diversified conglomerates are or where to find them.
Lots of homework, including on AAM forums!
I will also consider moving away from the default lifestyling of pension fund, as I'm likely to leave pension invested till at least 65 (unless world volatility impacts my confidence in pension fund growth or safety).
And I'll look into lifetime interest, and what family partnership is for house ownership. Thank you for your great observations and advice.
 
I would take a slightly different approach to most posters…

If I’m reading the figures correctly, you have €740k in your pension funds and will shortly have €470k in after-tax savings.

In your shoes, I would move 100% of your pension funds to a global equity index fund and I would leave your after-tax savings on deposit/in State savings products.

You could then live off your after-tax savings (and the State pension in due course) until you need to access your pensions.

You don’t give us any information on your expenditure pattern but I suspect you could live comfortably off your after-tax savings, plus the State pension, for ~10 years or so before you need to access your pensions funds.

My main point is that it is important to look at your various accounts holistically and not to focus on any individual account in isolation.

It is entirely reasonable to have €470k in cash that is going to be spent within a ~10-year horizon, if you have €740k invested in global equities through your pension funds.
 
Sarenco said:
It is entirely reasonable to have €470k in cash that is going to be spent within a ~10-year horizon, if you have €740k invested in global equities through your pension funds.
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I’m not sure having ~35% of your portfolio in cash is particularly reasonable, but we’ve differed on that point before.
 
For money that will be spent over ~10 years?

I think it’s entirely reasonable given the minimum time horizon, IMO, for investing in equities is 10 years+.
 
Sarenco said:
I think it’s entirely reasonable given the minimum time horizon, IMO, for investing in equities is 10 years+.
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While there is certainly risk in investing in equities, especially at the elevated prices of US stocks today, I think someone putting 10 years of outgoings in to cash is hugely exposed to an inflation shock, i.e. they could run out of money in 7-9 years. If it were me, I’d probably keep 3-5 years worth in equities as a hedge against inflation given the max 10 year timeframe.
 
Well, if we see an inflation shock, interest rates will inevitably rise - I’m not suggesting that the cash is stuffed in a mattress.

In any event, an inflation shock is not good for equities either. Look what happened in 2022 - cash handily outperformed global equities.
 
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