Debt free - 33, no home, what now?

[DMTW]

Age: 33
Spouse’s/Partner's age: 36

Annual gross income from employment or profession: n/a

Monthly take-home pay: 3500
Type of employment: employed abroad on rolling contract

In general are you:
(a) spending more than you earn, or
(b) saving?

Saving

Rough estimate of value of home
Amount outstanding on your mortgage:
What interest rate are you paying?no mortgage

Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc: none

Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month? yes
If not, what is the balance on your credit card?

Savings and investments: HAve 10,000 between current and regular savings account which I want to do something with. Also have shares worth about 10000 today.

Do you have a pension scheme? yes

Do you own any investment or other property? no

Ages of children: none

Life insurance: none


What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?

I am a researcher so started work late after finishing PhD. I am 33 now and have just cleared all my debts. I work abroad but pay rent both abroad and in Ireland amounting to 860 per month. Since my employment is both uncertain (currently on a 12 month contract) and likely to move around, investing in property seems to be tricky but I do want to save money to make up for this. I have 10,000 in cash which I want to invest but have access to in case I do decide to invest in property. I also have another about 10,000 in shares some of which are Paddy Power which were bought at 6 euro and I want to 'make hay' from those as I am nervous about losing the gains.

What should I do now? If I were to invest in shares, how do I go about it? My father bought those shares originally and I only have control of them recently and he has passed away.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

if you invest in a portfolio of shares, you can access the cash within a few days if you find yourself in a position to buy a house.

The Paddy Power situation is tricky. How much are they worth? You will pay 33% cgt on any gains over the first €1270. So definitely sell €1270 of them.

If you are investing the rest of the money in shares, it might be ok to hang onto the Paddy Power. If the other shares go down in value, you can use the losses on them to reduce the cgt bill on Paddy Power. On the other hand, if you sell the Paddy Power now, you will pay cgt and will not be able to set future losses against those gains. (By future, I mean losses incurred after 2014 - if you make taxable profits now and then have losses before the end of the year, you can set those off against the profits)

 

[DMTW]

Thanks for your reply. paddy power make up most of the current portfolio. the rest are crh which I am happy to hold on to. I think you are right about minimising the cgt losses so I might just sell that allowable amount this year and diversify a bit. what is the best way to purchase and manage the shares? I am not always in Ireland so online would be ideal.