Personal details
Your age: 29
Your spouse's age: single
Number and age of children: none
Income and expenditure
Annual gross income from employment or profession: €67,500
Annual gross income of spouse/partner: 0
Variable amount of extra money from previous sole trader job: €300-400 per half day depending on the work but not doing many of those lately. Really just a handful a year to keep my foot in and support things I've set up which others won't touch since they didn't set it up.
Monthly take-home pay: €3,415.89 (5% pension, 8% company match, 10% AVC to bring me to 15%)
Type of employment - e.g. Employee or self-employed. PAYE Employee, was Self employed up until March 2023.
Employer type: e.g. public servant, private company: semi-state now
In general are you:
(a) spending more than you earn, or
(b) saving?
Saving somewhere around €2,000 per month
Summary of Assets and Liabilities
Family home value:0
Mortgage on family home:0
Net equity:0
Cash: €390,000
Defined Contribution pension fund: €21,500 (started last year)
Company shares : 0
Buy to Let Property value:0
Buy to let Mortgage:0
Total net assets: just cash and pension. Need to spend about €10k on car soon.
Family home mortgage information
Lender
Interest rate
Type of interest rate: tracker, variable, fixed.
If fixed, what is the term remaining of the fixed rate?
If tracker, what is the margin e.g. ECB + 1%
Remaining term: (Original term is not relevant)
Monthly repayment:
Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc
Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month? Yes (don't have a CC)
If not, what is the balance on your credit card? 0
Pension information
Value of pension fund: €21,500
100% in Irish Life Moderate Growth
Buy to let properties
Value:0
Rental income per year:0
Rough annual expenses other than mortgage interest : 0
Lender
Interest rate 0
If fixed, what is the term remaining of the fixed rate? 0
Other savings and investments:
Other information which might be relevant
Life insurance: 3x salary paid out in the event of my death by pension fund I believe...
Currently sharing a big A-rated house 2km from work with one person for €600 per month under rent a room. Great setup for while I need it.
Have an accountant to look after my self employed income, only costing a few hundred a year.
Received windfall mid 2023 of about €120,000 + about 100k to cover loss of earnings while I was injured. The rest of the money I've just accumulated through saving and I was previously on more money than now. I was self employed. Industry too small to give any detail for what it was but nothing too crazy I just saved a lot for years.
I moved to this role because I wasn't able to really do my previous job after an accident, and I wanted to be able to get a mortgage.
I'm now in a permanent IT job with a guaranteed small increment and I'm going to be very likely to get a few jumps in salary as people start to retire. Ultimately I think the cap in this company for me is about €120k + decent pension / perks and I think I will be happy with that amount of money because I believe I'll be able to hopefully reduce how much time it's really taking up by working smart rather than hard... I am currently not very happy in my role but I think it's down to money and work/life balance at the moment.
What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?
I have this €400,000+-10k at 29 and I don't know what to do to set myself up.
I don't know whether to spend all the money on a roughly 400k house mortgage free, or to get a 90% mortgage (AIP for a 270k loan at the moment) and use the rest of the money for other investments, or to spend 400k+270k and get somewhere nicer in a good location. I'm open to doing rent a room and some of the more expensive houses would be more pleasant to do this in whereas I feel some of the cheaper end of houses would be a bit painful to share and I'm not sure I could deal with coming home from a stressful day of work to a crap house I'm sharing with someone. Vs buying a much nicer house in a nicer area, probably getting more rent for it. I know I could have good and bad rental experiences in both.
Or some mix of a few of them such as leaving enough money to renovate a house etc.
I don't know what to do. I have been close to buying a few houses over the last year but each time I pull back because I don't want to over bid yet here I am without a house and with this lump of money which is worth less now than it was. Two in particular I really missed out on which are fuelling the panic to buy asap now but value is feeling worse than ever and I'm feeling rushed to make offers before I've properly evaluated a property and next step they're sale agreed.
I have been afraid to put my money into instant access accounts because I felt like a house purchase was imminent enough that it wasn't worth the hassle of having the money all over the place while trying to show banks for AIP. I've obviously lost out and I'm continuing to lose out every day on the interest while not doing so.
The main question is do I need to go spend time with a financial planner (@ €2,000-2,500) to work through this or will they just tell me I need to answer these lifestyle questions myself? If the answer is obvious but I'm missing it then I'd like to keep the €2k. It'll be completely exposing me to swings in the property values if I go all in on a house, but I'll be in a really nice house and be guaranteed to be able to pay the mortgage and have the opportunity to rent a room to basically negate the mortgage. If I stay in this job for 20 years I doubt I'll lose out on having bought a nice house now in a good location?
I could also be looking at the cheapest possible house I'd be willing to do rent a room in? I'd then need to figure out what to do with the rest of the money. Unless the cheapest possible house I'd be willing to do rent a room in is above 600k.. in that case there'd be nothing left and full mortgage.
As you can see I've got a lot to figure out. There are some other more complex things going on, there's a family business which I currently help with and take no salary of any kind and never have. I believe if I got the recipe right I could keep my full time paye job and also maintain a good portion of that business operation without any other staff if I decide to take it over in time. It's B2B with a good markup that can be kept on top of with a couple of hours a day if I improve efficiency. It's a lot more involved now but there are elements of the business I can gut which aren't worth maintaining for the overhead (IMO).
Does it sound like I just need to go to a financial advisor or should I try to nail down what house I want first and then talk to someone before doing it, and then mention the other complexity of the business or wait for when that's actually happening to worry about it? But I should probably be doing something now to document the fact I'm working for free on it so it's not a big deal to inherit that in future?
Also any other help or a steer on what to do in general would be really appreciated. I feel like the only person who's able to turn having €400k cash into stress but I'm genuinely not sleeping right at the thought of what house to buy and what to do so I don't waste this opportunity. I do feel like once I have this solved it'll be a massive weight off my shoulders.
Sorry for writing a novel here. Hope to not get doxxed for the info I've put here. I've read others and understand there's less of a life story and more numbers with them usually so apologies.
Your age: 29
Your spouse's age: single
Number and age of children: none
Income and expenditure
Annual gross income from employment or profession: €67,500
Annual gross income of spouse/partner: 0
Variable amount of extra money from previous sole trader job: €300-400 per half day depending on the work but not doing many of those lately. Really just a handful a year to keep my foot in and support things I've set up which others won't touch since they didn't set it up.
Monthly take-home pay: €3,415.89 (5% pension, 8% company match, 10% AVC to bring me to 15%)
Type of employment - e.g. Employee or self-employed. PAYE Employee, was Self employed up until March 2023.
Employer type: e.g. public servant, private company: semi-state now
In general are you:
(a) spending more than you earn, or
(b) saving?
Saving somewhere around €2,000 per month
Summary of Assets and Liabilities
Family home value:0
Mortgage on family home:0
Net equity:0
Cash: €390,000
Defined Contribution pension fund: €21,500 (started last year)
Company shares : 0
Buy to Let Property value:0
Buy to let Mortgage:0
Total net assets: just cash and pension. Need to spend about €10k on car soon.
Family home mortgage information
Lender
Interest rate
Type of interest rate: tracker, variable, fixed.
If fixed, what is the term remaining of the fixed rate?
If tracker, what is the margin e.g. ECB + 1%
Remaining term: (Original term is not relevant)
Monthly repayment:
Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc
Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month? Yes (don't have a CC)
If not, what is the balance on your credit card? 0
Pension information
Value of pension fund: €21,500
100% in Irish Life Moderate Growth
Buy to let properties
Value:0
Rental income per year:0
Rough annual expenses other than mortgage interest : 0
Lender
Interest rate 0
If fixed, what is the term remaining of the fixed rate? 0
Other savings and investments:
Other information which might be relevant
Life insurance: 3x salary paid out in the event of my death by pension fund I believe...
Currently sharing a big A-rated house 2km from work with one person for €600 per month under rent a room. Great setup for while I need it.
Have an accountant to look after my self employed income, only costing a few hundred a year.
Received windfall mid 2023 of about €120,000 + about 100k to cover loss of earnings while I was injured. The rest of the money I've just accumulated through saving and I was previously on more money than now. I was self employed. Industry too small to give any detail for what it was but nothing too crazy I just saved a lot for years.
I moved to this role because I wasn't able to really do my previous job after an accident, and I wanted to be able to get a mortgage.
I'm now in a permanent IT job with a guaranteed small increment and I'm going to be very likely to get a few jumps in salary as people start to retire. Ultimately I think the cap in this company for me is about €120k + decent pension / perks and I think I will be happy with that amount of money because I believe I'll be able to hopefully reduce how much time it's really taking up by working smart rather than hard... I am currently not very happy in my role but I think it's down to money and work/life balance at the moment.
What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?
I have this €400,000+-10k at 29 and I don't know what to do to set myself up.
I don't know whether to spend all the money on a roughly 400k house mortgage free, or to get a 90% mortgage (AIP for a 270k loan at the moment) and use the rest of the money for other investments, or to spend 400k+270k and get somewhere nicer in a good location. I'm open to doing rent a room and some of the more expensive houses would be more pleasant to do this in whereas I feel some of the cheaper end of houses would be a bit painful to share and I'm not sure I could deal with coming home from a stressful day of work to a crap house I'm sharing with someone. Vs buying a much nicer house in a nicer area, probably getting more rent for it. I know I could have good and bad rental experiences in both.
Or some mix of a few of them such as leaving enough money to renovate a house etc.
I don't know what to do. I have been close to buying a few houses over the last year but each time I pull back because I don't want to over bid yet here I am without a house and with this lump of money which is worth less now than it was. Two in particular I really missed out on which are fuelling the panic to buy asap now but value is feeling worse than ever and I'm feeling rushed to make offers before I've properly evaluated a property and next step they're sale agreed.
I have been afraid to put my money into instant access accounts because I felt like a house purchase was imminent enough that it wasn't worth the hassle of having the money all over the place while trying to show banks for AIP. I've obviously lost out and I'm continuing to lose out every day on the interest while not doing so.
The main question is do I need to go spend time with a financial planner (@ €2,000-2,500) to work through this or will they just tell me I need to answer these lifestyle questions myself? If the answer is obvious but I'm missing it then I'd like to keep the €2k. It'll be completely exposing me to swings in the property values if I go all in on a house, but I'll be in a really nice house and be guaranteed to be able to pay the mortgage and have the opportunity to rent a room to basically negate the mortgage. If I stay in this job for 20 years I doubt I'll lose out on having bought a nice house now in a good location?
I could also be looking at the cheapest possible house I'd be willing to do rent a room in? I'd then need to figure out what to do with the rest of the money. Unless the cheapest possible house I'd be willing to do rent a room in is above 600k.. in that case there'd be nothing left and full mortgage.
As you can see I've got a lot to figure out. There are some other more complex things going on, there's a family business which I currently help with and take no salary of any kind and never have. I believe if I got the recipe right I could keep my full time paye job and also maintain a good portion of that business operation without any other staff if I decide to take it over in time. It's B2B with a good markup that can be kept on top of with a couple of hours a day if I improve efficiency. It's a lot more involved now but there are elements of the business I can gut which aren't worth maintaining for the overhead (IMO).
Does it sound like I just need to go to a financial advisor or should I try to nail down what house I want first and then talk to someone before doing it, and then mention the other complexity of the business or wait for when that's actually happening to worry about it? But I should probably be doing something now to document the fact I'm working for free on it so it's not a big deal to inherit that in future?
Also any other help or a steer on what to do in general would be really appreciated. I feel like the only person who's able to turn having €400k cash into stress but I'm genuinely not sleeping right at the thought of what house to buy and what to do so I don't waste this opportunity. I do feel like once I have this solved it'll be a massive weight off my shoulders.
Sorry for writing a novel here. Hope to not get doxxed for the info I've put here. I've read others and understand there's less of a life story and more numbers with them usually so apologies.
