Should You Reduce Investment Risk Before Retirement?
Informed Decisions: Ireland's Independent Retirement Planning Podcast
Release Date: 06/22/2026
Prize Bonds Ireland: What the New 1.5% Rate Actually Pays You
Informed Decisions: Ireland's Independent Retirement Planning Podcast
The Prize Bond prize fund rate rose from 1.00% to 1.50% this month, the first State Savings increase in about three years. Almost every write-up has described that 1.5% as a return. It is not one. It is the size of the prize pool spread across the whole €4.4 billion in issue, and what an individual holder receives is decided by a draw. In this Episode, Paddy works through the NTMA's own published figures and puts a realistic number on what Prize Bonds are actually worth to a normal holding, then lines them up against what the same State will pay for certainty. What you'll learn: Why the...
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Inheritance Tax in Ireland: Gift Now or Leave It? - with Mairéad Hennessy from Taxkey.ie
Informed Decisions: Ireland's Independent Retirement Planning Podcast
Inheritance tax in Ireland is charged at 33% on anything above €400,000 passing from a parent to a child. The question most families never properly work through is whether to move assets during their lifetime or leave them until the end. And that decision changes the bill, the timing, and who ends up paying it. Paddy is joined by Mairéad Hennessy of Taxkey, a firm of independent tax consultants, for a practical conversation about passing wealth on in Ireland. What you'll learn in this episode: • Why the tax question is the wrong place to start, and what to work out first • How the...
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Should You Retire at a Market All-Time High? Sequence Risk & the Irish ARF
Informed Decisions: Ireland's Independent Retirement Planning Podcast
Should you retire with the market at an all-time high? In Ireland, the record level feels dangerous, but it is not the risk that decides your outcome. In this episode, Paddy asks whether retiring at an all-time high is really the risk Irish savers fear, or whether the thing that decides your outcome is something else entirely. What you'll learn: • Why all-time highs are common, not a warning: global equities sit at or near record highs on roughly a third of trading days • What Japan's lost decades really warn against: concentration in one market, not equities themselves • A...
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Planning to 95: Life Expectancy, the Irish ARF and the Real Retirement Lever
Informed Decisions: Ireland's Independent Retirement Planning Podcast
Your Irish pension plan probably runs to age 95, but you'll likely live to around 83, and the gap changes your pot far less than you'd expect. In this episode, Paddy digs into the retirement life expactancy in Ireland. He checks on the one age assumption buried in almost every Irish retirement plan, where the default of 95 comes from and what the most recent CSO life tables actually say about how long a 65-year-old really lives. It's for you if you're approaching or already in retirement with a meaningful pension or ARF, and you've never been asked (or never questioned) the age your own plan...
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72% - One Country: Is Your Irish Pension Actually Diversified?
Informed Decisions: Ireland's Independent Retirement Planning Podcast
If you hold an Irish pension or an ARF invested in a global equity index fund, you have almost certainly been told you are diversified: Thousands of companies, dozens of countries, one fund, job done. And it is true: your global index fund really does hold well over a thousand companies across more than twenty developed markets. But there is a second truth sitting right beside it. As at the end of June 2026, roughly 72.45% of that same "global" fund is allocated to a single country: The United States. Same fund, same name, same low-cost passive approach and yet quietly a very different animal...
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Should You Take Your Pension Lump Sum at 60? A Worked Irish Case Study
Informed Decisions: Ireland's Independent Retirement Planning Podcast
Turning 60 with a significant pension pot and nothing forcing your hand? This episode is a worked case study on the pension lump sum decision at 60 in Ireland: Take the tax-free lump sum now, or leave the fund invested and revisit it at 65. Paddy goes through a study-case: Larry is 60, a senior private-sector executive, with €1.4 million in a defined contribution scheme. He doesn't exist. The numbers do. What you'll learn in this Episode: How the retirement lump sum is actually taxed in Ireland: the first €200,000 tax-free as a lifetime limit across all schemes, the 20% band to...
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Private Credit in Ireland: Can You Actually Get Your Money Out?
Informed Decisions: Ireland's Independent Retirement Planning Podcast
There is a pitch doing the rounds in Irish advice circles at the moment: private markets have finally been democratised, and private credit and private equity are now open to anyone with a decent pension pot. But is it really like that? In this episode, Paddy looks at what is actually being sold, and at the one feature that matters more than anything else in the brochure, because liquidity here is offered, not guaranteed. Have a listen, if you’d like to get an idea of what these ‘zombie funds’ in the private markets sector are all about, what your ARF has to do with them, and what...
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Bucket vs. Total Return - Retirement Withdrawal Strategies for Investors in Ireland
Informed Decisions: Ireland's Independent Retirement Planning Podcast
If you’ve built a pension pot of €1m or more, you’ve almost certainly thought about how you’ll invest it in retirement. What a bunch of people haven’t thought through properly is how they’ll actually take the money out: that decision, not the fund selection, is often what determines whether your ARF supports you comfortably for thirty years, or gives you a fright in year eight. After his well deserved holiday, in this episode Paddy talks about retirement withdrawal strategies for an Irish ARF: the bucket strategy versus the total return strategy, and why the choice works...
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Strategic Giving - Philanthropy in Ireland: A Conversation With Community Foundation CEO, Denise Charlton
Informed Decisions: Ireland's Independent Retirement Planning Podcast
Most people spend decades building wealth and never quite get to the second question: not how do I protect this, but what do I actually want it to do? On this episode, Paddy Delaney talks to Denise Charlton, CEO of Community Foundation Ireland, about strategic philanthropy in Ireland. How it actually works, and where to start. What you'll learn: How a Donor Advised Fund works in Ireland, and why the entry point is lower than most assume (€25,000–€50,000) The difference between ad-hoc giving and strategic philanthropy How tax relief and Capital Acquisitions Tax exemptions apply to...
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Simplicity Is The Ultimate Sophistication (Replay)
Informed Decisions: Ireland's Independent Retirement Planning Podcast
This one was recorded a while back (in 2024), but the argument hasn't dated a day, if anything, it holds up better now than when we first put it out. A of complexity in Irish pension and investment advice isn't there to help you. It's there to help the person selling it. In this episode, Paddy explains why simplicity almost always beats sophistication when it comes to your pension and investment planning, and what a genuinely simple structure actually looks like. What you'll learn: ● Why financial firms are often incentivised to make your pension and investments more complicated than...
info_outlineAs you get closer to retirement, move your money to safer investments. It sounds reasonable. But what if that one piece of conventional wisdom could cost you €80,000 or more?
In this episode, Paddy unpacks one of the most consequential (and most overlooked) investment decisions you’ll make: whether to reduce investment risk before you retire. For a lot of Irish pension holders, this decision has already been made for them automatically, through something called lifestyling often without their knowledge or consent.
Paddy works through the two opposing risks at the heart of the decision: de-risking too early and leaving significant growth on the table in your final accumulation years and sequence-of-returns risk, the single most underappreciated danger in early retirement. Using two scenarios he shows how a default setting can quietly create an €85,000–€100,000 gap, and why the order in which your returns arrive matters more than the average.
You’ll come away with a simple three-question framework to bring deliberate, personalised thinking to your own pension, instead of leaving it to a system designed for an average that doesn’t exist.
What this Episode covers:
• The two real risks and why most people only know one
• Lifestyling: what your provider may be doing without telling you
• The €85k–€100k cost of de-risking too early
• Sequence-of-returns risk and the retirement ‘red zone’
• The bucket strategy as a simple income buffer
• A three-question framework for the ten years before retirement
And if you like to read this episode again, read the full blog post here: www.informeddecisions.ie/post/reduce-investment-risk-before-retirement-ireland
Chapters:
00:00 - The €80,000 question
01:30 - The two real risks
04:00 - Lifestyling explained
07:00 - The real numbers
12:00 - Sequence-of-returns risk
17:00 - The decision framework
21:00 - Mistakes to avoid + ARF considerations
24:30 - Summary & key takeaways
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ABOUT THE SHOW
The Informed Decisions podcast is hosted by Paddy Delaney, QFA RPA APA, independent, fee-only retirement planner in Ireland. The podcast and the blog at informeddecisions.ie are educational resources for Irish professionals, business owners, and high-net-worth individuals navigating retirement, tax efficiency, and investment strategy.
DISCLAIMER
This podcast is for general educational purposes only. It does not constitute personalised financial advice. Figures and rules referenced reflect the position as at May 2026 and are subject to change. Always speak to a qualified, independent financial advisor about your specific situation.