Informed Decisions Independent Financial Planning & Money Podcast

Needless to say it is a bit of a coup to have a Fintech Legend that has 9 million monthly listeners to his hit radio show 'Breaking Banks' in New York come on our show! An Australian based in New York, he has taken a circuitous route to being a Global thought-leader in the FinTech World. Paddy invited Brett to share his thoughts on the near future of how we will interact, invest and behave with our money. Ever thought about how our experiences will change when we venture even to our local shop? Thanks for checking out Ireland's only dedicated Financial Planning & Money Podcast. Be delighted if you share and spread the word......be great if we could keep in touch with you directly here. You're a Legend! Paddy Delaney QFA | RPA | Qualified Coach Brett King Website Brett King Radio Show Informed Decisions Website

PCP ('Phencyclidine' - not sure how that is pronounced!) was introduced in the 1950's as an anesthetic but was shelved in the 60's due to it's potentially lethal hallucinogenic effects. It was this hallucinogenic effect that made it so popular with recreational drug users and they have been producing it under the title of 'Angel Dust' since! It's chocka with Ketamine and apparently is the bees-knees if that is your idea of fun! Another PCP, Personal Finance Plans, are on the scene now! This and other forms of consumer borrowing have rocketed in recent years, with experts saying the access to these loans is driving the new-car sales figures hugely, almost to hallucinogenic levels! New Car Sales Figures for 2016: Ireland 150,000 UK 2.7million USA 17.5million We love cars here at Informed Decisions, we don't necessarily spend lots of money on them however! We did a blog and podcast a while back to shed light on the true cost of cars, this proved really popular with many of you. We don't mean to suggest we have anything against cars, nor PCP Finance, but we do believe we should all understand the impact of what we are doing, so lets do the same with PCP Finance. Before all that please do pop over here to find out why we exist, what our purpose is and why we are Ireland's first Financial Planning & Money Podcast. If you are looking for info on how to save or invest, protect your income, replace it when you retire or how you spend it in the meantime then this site is a useful resource here in Ireland! Also, if you have any questions or comments we'd love to hear from you, just drop a message to us here. What is PCP Finance? In Ireland, all we see to care about is mortgages, any time we have mortgages mentioned in our blogs/podcasts they are always the most listened to and most downloaded episodes, we just can't get enough of that wonderful stuff! As always on this site we try to take a different view of things in order to help make it more practical and accessible to all, so we are going to 'mortgagise' PCP finance to try and make sense of it all! To achieve this we will deep-dive PCP Finance, we will replace PCP Finance with 'mortgage' and 'car' with 'house'! See how you like that! How Does PCP Work? Most people have a good sense of it at this stage but let's have a brief over-view before we look at the figures. If you are thinking of buying a new house you can do so via PCP contract in your local dealer (pardon the pun!!). You select your house, pay a deposit in the form of cash or a trade-in house. You agree to a certain monthly payment for a certain period of time, typically between 3 and 5 years. At this stage you also agree the Guaranteed Minimum Future Value (GMFV), which is the final and largest payment you need to make in order to own the car at the end. This figure is based on the mileage, condition and estimate the dealer puts on the future value of the car after the 3-5 years. What Happens At The End of The PCP Contract? If you want to actually own the house at the end of the contract you must pay the GMFV as well as any 'completion' fees that may exist on the contract (you don't own it until you pay this by the way!). Another option at the end is to hand back the house and walk away (where you would be walking to is another issue). Be aware that if the house isn't in agreed condition and wear & tear as set out at beginning of the contact then you may be subject to more fees. The 3rd option is to roll into another PCP contract. The deposit you paid on the first house is not carried into the next contract, that's been and gone! If the actual market value of the house at the end is greater than the GMFV then you may have some equity to put to the new house you are looking at. So that's a 'mortgagised' view of PCP contracts here in Ireland. Fairly straight-forward and sounds pretty simple. And we must try to remember that that is exactly how the dealer wants you to perceive it, the simper the better as more of us are likely to buy the produce! How do the Financials of PCP Finance work in Ireland? If you google 'PCP Quote' the first search is the Competition & Consumer Protection Commission This is a crackingly useful (not sure that's a word!) site with lots of information for us consumers to inform ourselves, worth checking out. The next few are car manufacturers offering you the option to quote yourself for PCP. Having done this it still seems pretty easy and straight-forward, as they want it to be! Let's take an example of a Hyundai i40 Tourer. A decent car by all accounts. There is an 'Executive' version of this 'house' for just over €29k, this is the base model of this house, so why it's called executive is a wonder. Seems a reasonable buy though, decent mileage and service etc. Based on the illustrations on their site (and the rest are similar btw!), if you have cash deposit or a house to the trade-in value of €10k then you could be 'eligible' to 'qualify' for their PCP package! Yeah, congratulations! You could select the 2 to 4 year package, let's say you opt for the 3 year package to try get it paid off sooner rather than later. So you are in the house and all for €10k. Not so bad...... Your payments will be fixed at approximately €300 per month, based on a rate of 5.9%. You decide that this, along with the mortgage and the child-minding and whatever other expenses you have, is just about manageable to you. The GMFV agreed (based on doing no more than 15,000kms per year) is just over €11,000 in 3 years time. That is what the dealer is telling you it will be worth in 3 years time provided the wear & tear is average and that the mileage is as predicted. If this really were a house you are agreeing to pay a deposit of 30%, then agree to pay 6% interest on the repayments, which are over 3 years, and that the value of the house is going to fall from €29,000 to €11,000 in that 3 years, at which point you will then exercise one of the three options outlined above......really!!!?? You can the pay the €11,000 to own the house You can hand back the keys and walk away (provided it is in good nick). Or, you can trade it in against another house and pop some more PCP into you! And therein lies the nugget here. PCP really is a bit like the drug in that once we get on it we may find it hard to get off it! What it does do is help us to really easily hallucinate and forget about the depreciation we are paying over the term. That amounts to €20,000 in this example, over 3 years. If it was a house we just wouldn't buy it, PCP or no PCP! Who buys a large asset which will cost you €20,000 over a 3 years period, in depreciation alone!? It seems that lots of us do, that lots of us see the simplicity, see the easily manageable monthly payments, see the easily achievable max mileage and forget about the largest yet least obvious cost. Stop hallucinating! Is PCP an illegal or unethical product? We don't think so, but we do think you need to know what they hell you are doing! But hey, that is what makes the area of our behaviours, biases and what some would call our predictable irrationality around money so interesting!! You have the information now, what will you do with it? Please share this article and check out the podcast while you're at it! Thanks so much for listening. You're a legend. Paddy Delaney QFA | RPA | APA

Welcome to Episode #41 of the Informed Decisions Financial Planning Podcast, still the only dedicated resource here in Ireland. In this episode Paddy speaks with Stephen Browne, who is owner and distributor of Voyant here in Ireland. There are several providers of this type of software for Financial Advisors and Planners, such as Truth, however Voyant is a leading player in the Financial Planning/ Financial Forecasting Software industry. Stephen shares insights with listeners on what is it, what it does and importantly how financial panning software might benefit you in the long run. While the software is generally only used by Planners, for their clients, here is a link to Voyant Ireland's website if you want to check it out. Thanks for sharing... Paddy Delaney QFA | RPA | Qualified Coach

Last week we explored what will happen when the next crash comes......and importantly how we will react. It is the volatility of things which causes us to react, not the risk! Volatility is not risk, risk is not volatility. I'm not trying to be profound (it's not one of my strengths!). In today's world the two are thrown together, interchanged in conversations, media and advertising, yet they are 2 completely different things. It's sort of like interchanging chalk and cheese in conversation: Hey, did any of you students take the cheese I was using to write on this black-board? (showing my age there!) Hey, would you like chalk on your ham & turkey sandwich? Makes no sense, just as it doesn't to mix risk and volatility, yet we all do it, and I am as guilty as the next fella/gal! Now this may help some of you, and it may not help, yet it is a critical aspect of retirement planning, pensions, investing and savings of any sort here in Ireland, it is vital to understand the difference between the 2, particularly if you want to make informed money decisions...speaking of which please do pop over here to find out why we exist, what our purpose is and why we are Ireland's first Financial Planning & Money Podcast. Also, if you have any questions or comments we'd love to hear from you, just drop a message to us here.

Regular readers & listeners will by now know that Informed Decisions isn't in the space of trying to predict the markets, we leave that to the fortune-tellers of this world! We don't see any benefit in dissecting the daily news-feed and trying to interpret what that means for our investments, pensions, property prices etc. Nobody can do that with any degree of accuracy. Also, what difference does it make if the price of something which you intend holding for 10, 20, 30 or 40 years fluctuates by 0.1 or 1% this week?? And that is what this week's shortish blog is out to address, our human inclination to do something stupid at the absolute wrong time! It will be a real test of our Financial Planning here in Ireland, so listen to this podcast episode to be as well prepared as possible not to do the wrong thing when that time comes!! Thanks for listening and sharing. Paddy Delaney QFA | RPA | APA | Qualified Coach

We were humbled to have been contacted by the Irish Times a few weeks ago and asked for our opinion on life cover for an article by journalist Eithne Dunne, published in the Sunday Times on 21st May. We wholeheartedly gave our 'tuppence-worth' on some of the things we believe are important to consider when selecting Life Cover for yourself. However it also dawned on me how big a problem exists with regards Life Cover, so we are out to quash that problem right here and right now.........in a second! Firstly, if you are a new visitor to Informed Decisions, welcome, and have a quick look over here to find out what we are all about & why we exist! We are on a mission to bring practical financial planning & personal finance to Ireland's millennials. If not, welcome back to Ireland's only dedicated Money & Financial Planning Podcast! What's The Big Problem!? Life Cover, it's a product (of many sorts!) and as someone recently said to me 'everyone and their Granny sells it'. The commissions paid to the intermediaries and agents who sell it can be pretty rewarding for them. So, do intermediaries and agents be they online or face-to-face make money if you buy Life Cover from them? Of course they do! As do people from whom you buy tanning lotion, cars, carpets, jewellery, cat milk, holidays, lawnmowers, home insurance, windows, taxis, shoes and every other consumable item or service on this planet! However it is the fact that people make money from selling it that we believe leads to a wholesale dislike and general apathy to this form of 'insurance'! And this is a problem ( oh by the way I was recently told by a reputable source that it is actually OK to start a sentence with the word 'and'!). Consumers are often therefore also sceptical of the benefits and their potential need for Life Cover, and not knowing who to trust! We may all have heard someone (or ourselves) say 'sure yer man/ yer wan was trying to sell me bloody life cover, sure I don't need that stuff, a racket!'. Maybe you do, maybe you don't but please don't let a sceptical view be a barrier to a potentially life-changing product for your heirs! In this episode we are going to address this problem, we are going to outline how to figure out for yourself if you actually need any Life Cover, presenting purely facts, and you decide for yourself if you need to buy some or not, and also how much Life Cover to buy if you do decide you need some! I remember almost 10 years ago when meeting a client who insisted that he did not need Life Cover (despite having 5 kids and a wife whom were all relying on his salary!), when I probed he advised it was because "he was not going to die, ever", and he wasn't joking. That's a separate issue and not sure it's one I can address in this blog!!!

Many of us have heard of psychology, many of us have heard of positivity, yet not many of us have heard of Positive Psychology, which is an emerging science in and of itself. That's why we are bringing it to you, and looking at how we can utilise it in managing our finances. In this episode we are delighted to host Dr. Jolanta Burke, a Doctor of Positive Psychology, a visiting Professor in Trinity College's School of Psychology, and a Senior Lecturer in School of Psychology, University of East London. Whether you are considering your budgets, planning for retirement, planning on buying life cover, or indeed nurturing your kids there is something of note in this episode! If you are a new visitor to Informed Decisions, please have a quick look over here to find out what we are all about & why we exist! We are on a mission to help normal Irish people with practical financial planning & personal finance info. If not, welcome back to Ireland's only dedicated Money & Financial Planning Podcast! Thanks for checking it out, if you find it any way useful please share it or review it! Thanks, Paddy Delaney RPA | QFA | APA | Qualified Coach

Apparently 66% of the 70,000 'landlords' in Ireland own 1 investment property. Surely you don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, you want to be one of these? "Sure property prices are climbing, you'd be mad not to own at least one investment property". You buy the place and rent it out so that someone else can pay the mortgage for you, job done! Right?! Seems not long ago when this was the regular 'pub talk', however it is over 10 years ago now, and that talk is coming back (to a degree!). For a long time a bank would ring the Gardai if you went in and asked for a 'buy to let' mortgage (a loan to buy an investment property which you would rent out). They have softened, and are actually advertising these again, just google it! Now before we jump in it's worth noting that there is a large % of our generation who are making ends meet, putting kids into creches, working hard, and paying the bills, maybe stashing a few quid each month for future and for rainy days. For this % of us a buy to let is not on the radar at all. Having said that there are also a fair % of our generation who have quite a bit of disposable (spare) income each month, their income may be comparatively high or their outgoings comparatively low, or indeed a mixture of both (if you are really fortunate!). It is this % that may be sniffing at the idea of buying another property or moving out of their home, renting it out and buying another. Considering a mortgage for an investment property in Ireland? In this episode we will share with you the maths behind mortgaged investment property ownership, so you can make your own mind up on whether it is for you or not! And that is the point isn't it, in owning investment property, it must be in order to try achieve some form of financial gain, otherwise why would you even consider such an investment (unless you fell into it by accident of course!). If you are a new visitor to Informed Decisions, have a quick look over here to find out what we are all about & why we exist! We are on a mission to bring practical financial planning & personal finance to Ireland's millennials. If not, welcome back to Ireland's only dedicated Money & Financial Planning Podcast!

We all know that money is not the be all and end all.....most of us appreciate that there is more to life and more to being a decent human. We might also recognise that living a fulfilled life is not about having full bank accounts, but it sure does help to have sufficient money to make your own decisions and live the life you want! As parents we are naturally wired to try and create positive futures for our children, that probably why we care so much, right!? As part of that for some parents it will come naturally to instill an element of financial awareness and sense into our kids, and to maybe ensure they are a bit better able to manage money than we are! This episode is going to explore just a few ways of doing that, some you may have considered and some not......including a little bit about Andy Dufresne! Thanks for reading, don't forget to drop me a mail at if you fancy a copy of that Excel sheet mentioned in this episode. Thanks for tuning in. Paddy Delaney QFA | RPA | APA | Qualified Coach

Hi All, Why Is My Defined Benefit Scheme Closing? What Should I Do About My Defined Benefit Scheme Closing? What Income Will I Now Have in Retirement? In this episode we empathise whole-heartedly, then delve and explore the options available to the many many thousands of employees who have 'lost' their Defined Benefit Pension Schemes in recent times. We go about answering the above questions. All is not lost! Most 'normal people' out there (with the exception of financial nerds & indeed yours truly until I started working in this area 12 years ago!) have no more interest in Defined Benefit and Defined Contribution schemes than the man on the moon! It's sort of like saying to your mate, 'you know, the price of beef in Kilkenny Mart today jumped from €3.60 per kilo to €4.05 per kilo in the space of an hour!!', not really that interesting or relevant to most of us, unless of course your mate is a beef farmer! If you know of anyone who is losing or has lost their DB scheme please do them a favour and pass this on. Thanks, Paddy Delaney QFA | RPA | Coach