Should You Reduce Investment Risk Before Retirement?
Informed Decisions Independent Financial Planning & Money Podcast
Release Date: 06/22/2026
Strategic Giving - Philanthropy in Ireland: A Conversation With Community Foundation CEO, Denise Charlton
Informed Decisions Independent Financial Planning & Money 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 Independent Financial Planning & Money 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...
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Sequence of Returns Risk: Same ARF. Same Return. Totally Different Outcome
Informed Decisions Independent Financial Planning & Money Podcast
Two people can retire with the same ARF, the same average return, and the same withdrawal rate and still end up in completely different places. One leaves over €1m to his family. The other runs out of money before he turns 88. The only difference is the order in which the returns arrived. In this episode, Paddy breaks down sequence of returns risk in Ireland. The risk that gets far less attention than fund performance or pot size, but can matter more than either. What you'll learn: • Why sequence of returns doesn't matter at all while you're still accumulating • Why the first ten years...
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Enduring Power of Attorney in Ireland With Áine Flynn: Who Can Act If You Can’t?
Informed Decisions Independent Financial Planning & Money Podcast
An Enduring Power of Attorney (EPA) is the planning step most Irish adults never get to. Only around 8% have one, against roughly a third who’ve made a will. Yet if you lost capacity tomorrow, it’s the document that decides whether the people you trust can actually act for you, or whether your family ends up in front of the Circuit Court. Paddy Delaney is joined by Áine Flynn, Director of Ireland’s Decision Support Service, for a clear, practical conversation about planning ahead. If you’re approaching retirement with assets to protect, this one matters. For more information about...
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Should You Reduce Investment Risk Before Retirement?
Informed Decisions Independent Financial Planning & Money Podcast
As 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:...
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Pension Drawdown Above €2M: The €243,000 Timing Decision (SFT Ireland)
Informed Decisions Independent Financial Planning & Money Podcast
If your pension is approaching or has passed €2 million, the question is no longer just how to grow it, it's how to generate income without handing a significant portion to Revenue unnecessarily. The Standard Fund Threshold in Ireland rose to €2.2 million in January 2026, and the decisions you make in the next few years will determine how much of that headroom you actually use. In this episode, Paddy covers the income strategies that matter most at the SFT level. If your pension is approaching €1.5 million or more, this episode is for you. • Why timing your Benefit Crystallisation...
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Bonds Aren’t Broken. What the 1970s Tell Irish Retirees About Bonds Today
Informed Decisions Independent Financial Planning & Money Podcast
A lot of investors have written off bonds after 2022. In this episode, Paddy Delaney explains why that conclusion is based on a misreading of how bonds work — and what the historical data actually shows. The 10-year US Treasury yield went from under 6% to over 11% during the 1970s. Bonds still returned 5.4% per year. The worst single year was a loss of less than 1%. If bonds survived that rate environment, what does it mean for the environment we are in today? In this episode: - How bond returns are calculated (starting yield and duration) - Why rising interest rates improve your future bond...
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Pension When You Change Jobs in Ireland: The 4 Most Important Decisions for Professionals
Informed Decisions Independent Financial Planning & Money Podcast
“There's a pension somewhere in your name that you haven't looked at in five years.” That's a sentence Paddy finds himself saying in client meetings more often than you'd expect. Across a 25-year career, the typical Irish professional works for three or four different employers — and the result, by the time someone reaches their mid-fifties, is often €100,000 to €500,000 spread across multiple dormant pensions that haven't been reviewed in years. In this episode, Paddy walks through what he calls the forgotten pension problem: the structural feature of Irish pension administration...
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PRSA vs Company Pension in Ireland: Which Is Right for You?
Informed Decisions Independent Financial Planning & Money Podcast
After the 22 April IORP II deadline, thousands of Irish directors are now in a pension structure they didn't deliberately choose. Most transitioned from an executive pension to a Master Trust or a PRSA under time pressure. Few sat down to ask whether the resulting structure is actually the one that serves them best. In this episode, Paddy walks through the PRSA versus Executive Pension / Master Trust decision in detail: Funding mechanics, lump sum comparison, death benefit treatment, and the second decision most people never review: the investment mandate inside the structure. The episode is...
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Risk and Reward in Retirement: What Ben Carlson’s Research Means for Irish Investors - Interview
Informed Decisions Independent Financial Planning & Money Podcast
Most people approaching retirement believe their job is to reduce risk. Get out of equities. Move into something safe. Ben Carlson disagrees — and he has the research to back it up. Ben is Director at Ritholtz Wealth Management in the US, author of Risk and Reward (Harriman House, May 2026), and one of the most widely read financial writers working today. He's spent his career studying every major market crash in modern history: the Great Depression, Japan's lost decades, the dot-com bust, 2008 and what they actually mean for long-term investors. In this episode, Paddy and Ben talk about...
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.