Age:
55
Spouse’s / Partner's age:
50
Annual gross income from employment or profession:
€110,000 + ~€15k bonus. (Most of bonus, €12.7k, goes to employer approved profit share scheme so comes out tax free after 3 years)
Annual gross income spouse:
€42,000 + ~€4k bonus. (Bonus goes to employer approved profit share scheme so comes out tax free after 3 years)
Monthly take home pay:
Me €3,950
Spouse €1,850
Both after max DC pension contributions
Type of employment:
Both full time - private sector – same employer
In general are you:
Saving passively. We’re both very easy going and not big spenders day to day.
Rough estimate of value of home
€600k
Mortgage on home
€35k – 12 yrs remaining (ECB + 0.8%). €260/mth
Mortgage provider:
PTSB
Type of mortgage: Tracker, interest only, fixed rate?
Tracker
Interest rate
ECB + 0.8%
Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc
Nil
Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month?
Yes
Savings and investments:
€250k cash
€200k prize bonds
€500k shares in employers company (tech multinational). Cost to me was approx. €100k therefore some CGT liability here if sold
Do you have a pension scheme? Yes, both
Me:
DB scheme from previous employment - €27k pa payable from age 65
DC scheme 1 - €70k (previous employment)
DC scheme 2 - €100k (previous employment)
Have recently started new employment contributing 35%. Employer contributing 8%
Spouse:
DB scheme from previous employment - €6k pa payable from age 65
DC scheme 1 - €70k (previous employment)
DC scheme 2 - €25k. (previous employment)
Has recently started new employment contributing 30%. Employer contributing 8%
Do you own any investment or other property?
No.
Ages of children:
19 – working full time. No plans to go to college.
16 – at school. Plans on going to college in local Dublin area, so probably no additional accommodation costs.
Life insurance:
Have double life cover taken out at time of mortgage 18 years ago. Pays out €150k for each of us. Costs approx. €80/mth.
Both have life cover through employer which pays out 3 x salary.
What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?
- I thought about paying off the mortgage a few years ago (costs ~ €280/yr interest) but at the time was thinking of borrowing to invest in residential property so thought I’d hold onto the low tracker rate loan! I guess I should pay it off now?
- Am I wasting money on Life Ins cover taken out with mortgage? Probably don’t need it really but just kept it up without question over the years. If I dropped the Mortgage & Life Ins we’d reduce expenditure of approx. €4k/yr.
- My plan was to continue paying max into DC scheme for another couple of years and spouse to continue paying max until retirement to achieve total pensions inc. state pensions of €73.6k (today’s rates) so that’ll we’ll only pay tax at lower rate after gaining the higher rate tax exemption on paying in. Should I just keep making the max contributions myself even though I’ll jump into the higher tax bracket on retirement (at current rates)?
- I know it’s been said on Askaboutmoney several times about not holding significant value of shares in your employers company but I’m guilty here purely through inertia and hoping that one day the market will turn around and I’ll be rich! In reality I accept this is probably nonsense but I wouldn’t know where to put the money if I sold up. Assuming I sold up and paid the CGT due, where should I invest the share proceeds, say €380k total? I’d also wish to sell the PBs and invest the proceeds along with some cash, say additional €400k?
- Lately we’ve been taking stock of what’s important and how we want to spend the rest of our days. We’d like to stop the normal full time work routine in, say, 5 years and spend more time on ourselves. Any inputs about when we could reasonably stop working full time and coast along maybe doing some volunteer work etc with no reliance on an employment income before drawing our pensions?
