Informed Decisions Independent Financial Planning & Money 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 differently here than in the US or UK research you'll have read. If you're approaching, or already in, retirement with €1m+ in an ARF, and you're not sure whether you have a withdrawal plan or just a fund value, this one is for you.
What you'll learn:
• How the bucket strategy and the total return (guardrails) strategy actually work inside an ARF
• Why Revenue's imputed distribution welds a hard 4% floor under your withdrawals from age 61 (ARF under €2m)
• What a 20% down year does to a €1.2m ARF under each approach and why a hybrid often captures the best of both
• The three most common drawdown mistakes and how to avoid them
If you're approaching retirement with a significant pension pot and want genuine clarity on turning it into a sustainable, tax-aware income, this episode is for you.
🎙️ Full podcast episode and 📖 Blog: https://www.informeddecisions.ie/post/retirement-withdrawal-strategies-drawdown-risk 
Check out our new category on YouTube: Paddy's Pension Pieces. Smaller, condensed content of our topics, where Paddy condenses longer topics into shorter clips, covers topics that are hot off the press or shares timeless classics that are always relevant to pension planning.
📊 Want to check where you are? Try our free 5-minute Retirement Readiness Scorecard: https://www.informeddecisions.ie/pension-calculator 
📅 Find out how we work: https://www.informeddecisions.ie 
DISCLAIMER This content is for general educational purposes only and does not constitute personalised financial advice. Everyone's situation is different — always speak to a qualified, independent advisor before making pension or investment decisions. Tax rules and pension regulations change; figures quoted are accurate at time of recording.

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 charitable giving in Ireland
How families bring the next generation into a giving conversation, and how endowments work in perpetuity
If you've built significant wealth and you're starting to ask what it's actually for, this conversation is worth your time.
About the Guest
Denise Charlton is Chief Executive of Community Foundation Ireland, the country's leading philanthropic foundation. Her career spans senior leadership at the Immigrant Council of Ireland and Women's Aid; she was a founder of Marriage Equality, and she currently sits on the board of Cuan, the State's statutory agency for sexual and gender-based violence. You can find Community Foundation Ireland at communityfoundation.ie.
🎙️ Full podcast episode and 📖 Blog:  www.informeddecisions.ie/post/strategic-philanthropy-ireland
📊 Want to check where you are? Try our free 5-minute Retirement Readiness Scorecard: https://www.informeddecisions.ie/pension-calculator 
📅 Find out how we work: https://www.informeddecisions.ie 
DISCLAIMER This content is for general educational purposes only and does not constitute personalised financial advice. Everyone's situation is different — always speak to a qualified, independent advisor before making pension or investment decisions. Tax rules and pension regulations change; figures quoted are accurate at time of recording.

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 they need to be
● The real-world cost of sophisticated, structured investment products that underperform
● What a simple, transparent pension and investment structure actually looks like in practice
● The questions worth asking any advisor before trusting them with your retirement assets
If you've ever had a feeling that your own pension or investment structure is more complicated than it needs to be, this episode is for you.
🎙️ Full podcast episode and 📖 Blog: www.informeddecisions.ie/post/simplicity-over-sophistication-pension-planning
And a quick word on something new: alongside the podcast, I've started putting together shorter pieces for YouTube: Paddy's Pension Pieces. Each one built around a single question from a fuller episode or a specific topic I'd like to discuss in shorter time . The first is up now, on what a €1 million pension pot in Ireland actually leaves you with after tax: check out our YT Channel to discover :) More to follow.
📊 Want to check where you are? Try our free 5-minute Retirement Readiness Scorecard: https://www.informeddecisions.ie/pension-calculator
📅 Find out how we work: https://www.informeddecisions.ie
DISCLAIMER This content is for general educational purposes only and does not constitute personalised financial advice. Everyone's situation is different — always speak to a qualified, independent advisor before making pension or investment decisions. Tax rules and pension regulations change; figures quoted are accurate at time of recording.

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 of drawdown can account for roughly 77% of your final outcome
• How Revenue's 4%/5%/6% imputed distribution rules interact with this risk in an Irish ARF
• Four practical ways to protect your ARF: cash buffers, dynamic withdrawal, portfolio
  construction, and timing flexibility

If you're within a decade of retirement, or already drawing an income from your ARF, this
is worth half an hour of your time. Enjoy!

🎙️ Find all the full podcast episode and 📖 Blog here: www.informeddecisions.ie/post/sequence-of-returns-risk-ireland 
📊 Want to check where you are? Try our free 5-minute Retirement Readiness Scorecard: www.informeddecisions.ie/pension-calculator 
📅 Find out how we work: www.informeddecisions.ie 

DISCLAIMER This content is for general educational purposes only and does not constitute
personalised financial advice. Everyone's situation is different. Always speak to a
qualified, independent advisor before making pension or investment decisions. Tax rules and
pension regulations change; figures quoted are accurate at time of recording.

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 Áine Flynn and the work of Ireland's Decision Support Service: https://www.decisionsupportservice.ie
In this episode:
Why your next of kin can't automatically step in. And what an EPA changes
The joint-account trap most couples assume protects them
What it costs (€30 to register, €90 to activate) and how the DSS process works
The "holy trinity": Will, EPA and Advance Healthcare Directive, and what each one covers
If you want genuine clarity on protecting yourself and the people you love, whatever happens, this episode is for you.
🎙️ Full episode (video) and 📖 Blog: www.informeddecisions.ie/post/enduring-power-of-attorney-ireland
📊 Want to check where you are? Try our free 5-minute Retirement Readiness Scorecard: https://www.informeddecisions.ie/pension-calculator
📅 Find out how we work: https://www.informeddecisions.ie
DISCLAIMER This content is for general educational purposes only and does not constitute personalised financial or legal advice. Everyone's situation is different — always speak to a qualified, independent advisor (and a solicitor for legal documents) before making pension, investment or estate-planning decisions. Rules and figures change; figures quoted are accurate at time of recording.