Personal details
Age: 50
Spouse’s/Partner's age: 47
Number and age of children: 1 teen
Income and expenditure
Annual gross income from employment or profession: €65k (50k tax exempt)
Annual gross income of spouse: €65k (50k tax exempt)
Monthly take-home pay: Varies due to erratic nature of our income.
Type of employment: Both self-employed artists/company directors.
In general are you:
(a) spending more than you earn, or
(b) saving?
Saving
Summary of Assets and Liabilities
Family home €1.4m with €400k mortgage
€200k personal savings
€100k company cash
PRSA pension: €100k x 2 (just started)
Shares : 25k approx in individual tech shares via Revolut
20k physical gold (inherited)
Site with planning permission €130k approx
Family home mortgage information
Lender BOI
Interest rate Fixed 3.4%
If fixed, what is the term remaining of the fixed rate? 4 years
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?
Do you have a pension scheme? PRSA 100k each.
Do you own any investment or other property? No.
Other information which might be relevant
Life insurance: Mortgage protection insurance 400k & life assurance 350k
What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?
Hello. We've only recently purchased our dream home after many years of saving and building up more straightforward income/credit history via our limited company for mortgage purposes on the advice of our accountant.
Even though we are both fairly well-established in our profession, due to the erratic nature of it it's extremely difficult to get a mortgage, which is why we borrowed the max amount possible in order to buy a large house in a great location and which suits our needs going forward since we both work from home and will likely have our son living with us into adulthood as seems to be the way these days. We hope to never have to move again!
Our accountant set up our salaries up to best maximise both our artists's exemption and individual PAYE allowances, keeping us in the lower tax bracket. This also meant that we pretty much neglected pensions while focusing on the mortgage/house purchase but recently set up PRSAs as above, and began monthly contritubions to them with the intention of adding additional lump sums going forward when cashflow allows.
We're aware that the balance of borrowings and cash looks askew at first glance, but we're grand with that since it's so hard to get borrowings in our field and at our age, and also because of the up and down nature of earnings we always prefer to have a cushion.
But now that our house situation is finally settled and we're made some well overdue inroad into pensions, we need to to find a way to make the remaining cash work for us. Feel it's important to try and diversify and was considering something like a set-and-forget ETF or some kind of fund without time limit restrictions that we could tap into if times got lean or one of us couldn't work, but the deemed disposal element puts me off.
I know the obvious thing would be to add even more to the pensions etc but I feel that we're being almost *too* tax-efficient as is and maybe not seeing the wood for the trees!
Anything else we're missing besides building up pension/paying off mortgage which seems counterintuitive seeing as it was a nightmare to get in the first place. Thank you.
Age: 50
Spouse’s/Partner's age: 47
Number and age of children: 1 teen
Income and expenditure
Annual gross income from employment or profession: €65k (50k tax exempt)
Annual gross income of spouse: €65k (50k tax exempt)
Monthly take-home pay: Varies due to erratic nature of our income.
Type of employment: Both self-employed artists/company directors.
In general are you:
(a) spending more than you earn, or
(b) saving?
Saving
Summary of Assets and Liabilities
Family home €1.4m with €400k mortgage
€200k personal savings
€100k company cash
PRSA pension: €100k x 2 (just started)
Shares : 25k approx in individual tech shares via Revolut
20k physical gold (inherited)
Site with planning permission €130k approx
Family home mortgage information
Lender BOI
Interest rate Fixed 3.4%
If fixed, what is the term remaining of the fixed rate? 4 years
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?
Do you have a pension scheme? PRSA 100k each.
Do you own any investment or other property? No.
Other information which might be relevant
Life insurance: Mortgage protection insurance 400k & life assurance 350k
What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?
Hello. We've only recently purchased our dream home after many years of saving and building up more straightforward income/credit history via our limited company for mortgage purposes on the advice of our accountant.
Even though we are both fairly well-established in our profession, due to the erratic nature of it it's extremely difficult to get a mortgage, which is why we borrowed the max amount possible in order to buy a large house in a great location and which suits our needs going forward since we both work from home and will likely have our son living with us into adulthood as seems to be the way these days. We hope to never have to move again!
Our accountant set up our salaries up to best maximise both our artists's exemption and individual PAYE allowances, keeping us in the lower tax bracket. This also meant that we pretty much neglected pensions while focusing on the mortgage/house purchase but recently set up PRSAs as above, and began monthly contritubions to them with the intention of adding additional lump sums going forward when cashflow allows.
We're aware that the balance of borrowings and cash looks askew at first glance, but we're grand with that since it's so hard to get borrowings in our field and at our age, and also because of the up and down nature of earnings we always prefer to have a cushion.
But now that our house situation is finally settled and we're made some well overdue inroad into pensions, we need to to find a way to make the remaining cash work for us. Feel it's important to try and diversify and was considering something like a set-and-forget ETF or some kind of fund without time limit restrictions that we could tap into if times got lean or one of us couldn't work, but the deemed disposal element puts me off.
I know the obvious thing would be to add even more to the pensions etc but I feel that we're being almost *too* tax-efficient as is and maybe not seeing the wood for the trees!
Anything else we're missing besides building up pension/paying off mortgage which seems counterintuitive seeing as it was a nightmare to get in the first place. Thank you.