FJ Hanly & Associates

24/06/2026

Your pension statement shows you one big number. What it almost never tells you is the thing that actually matters: how much will it pay you each month when you stop working?

A new 2026 study found this is now the single biggest barrier to a confident retirement in Ireland. People are saving diligently, yet 79% feel financially unprepared for retirement and 52% worry their money won't last. The issue isn't willingness, it's clarity.

The good news? Turning a pension pot into a clear monthly income figure is an entirely solvable problem. Between your State Pension, an annuity, and an Approved Retirement Fund (ARF), there's a route that fits your life. You just need to know how the pieces work together.

We break it all down, including the 2026 figures, in our latest article.
Read more 👉 https://www.fjhanly.com/what-will-your-pension-actually-pay-you-turning-a-statement-into-a-monthly-income/

17/06/2026

Most people put more thought into planning a two week holiday than into planning a retirement that could last 25 years or more.

That is the idea behind this piece by Jonathan Guthrie, and it is hard to argue with.

Retirement planning has never been more difficult. The certainties our parents had, defined benefit pensions and guaranteed annuity income, have largely gone. The investment risk now sits with the individual, and the unknowns are significant.

Two of his points cross the Irish Sea cleanly:

1)People consistently underestimate how long they will live, and how much they will need to fund it.

2)Treating the minimum contribution as "enough" is one of the most expensive assumptions a saver can make.

The UK has run auto-enrolment for over a decade, and its clearest lesson is that the default minimum was never designed to deliver a comfortable retirement on its own.

That lesson lands at an important moment here. Ireland's auto-enrolment scheme, My Future Fund, went live on 1 January 2026, and an estimated 750,000 workers have had nothing beyond the State Pension to rely on.

Auto-enrolment is a strong start. It is rarely the finish line.

If you want to know whether your own plan is on track for the retirement you actually want, that is the conversation we have with clients every week.

Read the FT article here:

Pension planning is less straightforward than it used to be — data can help when uncertainties abound

03/06/2026

Your credit union savings feel safe. And for short-term, emergency cash, they are. But for long-term savings, that comfort is quietly costing you.

Irish credit union dividend rates typically sit between 0.3% and 0.75%. Apply DIRT at 33% and set that against Irish inflation running at 2.2% in 2025 and 3.6% by March 2026, and the real return on your savings is not just low. It is negative. Your money is buying less every single year.

A €30,000 balance earning a 0.5% dividend generates roughly €100 after DIRT. Against even modest inflation of 2.5%, that same balance needs to grow by €750 just to hold its value. The real shortfall is around €650 per year, silently, with no letter from Revenue and no line on your statement to show it. Over ten years, the cumulative real loss on that balance can exceed €5,000.

This is not a niche problem. Irish households are holding roughly €140 billion in overnight deposit accounts at near-zero rates. The CCPC has flagged it repeatedly. The pattern is clear: Ireland is a country of cash savers, and that preference is costing households real money every year.

The question worth asking is not whether the credit union is good or bad. It is whether the money sitting there is in the right pot for the job it is actually being asked to do.
Read the full post here: https://www.fjhanly.com/the-quiet-cost-of-cash-why-your-irish-credit-union-savings-are-losing-real-value-every-day/

27/05/2026

Most Irish families don't think about Capital Acquisitions Tax until a parent dies. By then, years of entirely free, entirely legal tax planning have already slipped away.

The Small Gift Exemption lets any individual gift up to €3,000 per year to any other individual with no CAT, no Revenue return, and no impact on the recipient's lifetime threshold. It resets every January. It cannot be backdated. Miss a year and that allowance is gone for good.

Two parents gifting to three adult children can move €18,000 per year outside the CAT system completely. Over twenty years, that is €360,000 transferred tax-free. Start ten years late and you have permanently lost €180,000 of transfer capacity.

At the 33% CAT rate, that translates into roughly €59,400 of avoidable tax.

There is no Revenue letter telling you what you missed. The cost only becomes visible at the point of inheritance, when families look back at decades of gifting capacity quietly left on the table.

With Irish estates increasingly breaching the €400,000 Group A threshold, this is a conversation worth having before another calendar year ticks over.

Read the full post here: https://www.fjhanly.com/the-e3000-youre-throwing-away-every-year-why-delaying-the-small-gift-exemption-is-quietly-costing-irish-families-a-fortune/

25/05/2026

An excellent opportunity for an early-career advisor 😁

🚀 WE’RE HIRING – FINANCIAL ADVISOR (QFA)

We are looking for a motivated, client-focused Financial Advisor (QFA qualified) to join our expanding Limerick-based financial planning team at FJ Hanly & Associates 📊

This is an excellent opportunity for an early-career advisor to develop within a supportive, team-based environment while gaining hands-on experience across full financial planning services 🌱

💼 ROLE OVERVIEW
You will support experienced advisors in delivering high-quality financial planning advice, helping clients achieve their long-term financial goals.

Key areas include:
• Assisting with pensions, investments & protection advice 📈
• Supporting client meetings and financial reviews 🤝
• Preparing documentation and recommendations under guidance
• Ensuring strong compliance and regulatory standards 📑
• Building strong, long-term client relationships

🌟 IDEAL CANDIDATE
• QFA qualified 📜
• Experience in Life & Pensions / Wealth / Financial Services (preferred)
• Strong communication and client-focused mindset
• Highly organised with strong attention to detail
• Eager to build a long-term career in financial planning
• Team player with a proactive attitude

🏢 ABOUT US
At Gallivan Financial, we are committed to delivering trusted financial advice with professionalism, integrity, and real client impact 🌍
We pride ourselves on a culture of mentorship, collaboration, and continuous development — helping our people grow into confident, successful financial advisors 🚀

🎁 WHAT WE OFFER
• Competitive salary package
• Employer pension contributions
• Supportive, team-focused environment
• Mentoring from experienced advisors
• Ongoing professional development & career progression 📚

📩 Interested? Send your CV to [email protected]

🧡

22/04/2026

14% of Irish adults now expect to retire at 70. Among those already in their sixties, the average expected retirement age has climbed to 71.

These are not outliers. For a growing portion of the Irish population, working into your seventies is fast becoming the default, not the exception.

The CCPC Pensions Research 2025 paints a stark picture. A quarter of Irish adults have no retirement plan at all. Three in five people without a private pension are banking on the State Pension to carry them through retirement, a system that already costs over €10 billion annually and faces mounting pressure as Ireland's old-age dependency ratio is set to nearly double over the next 30 years.

The pattern is predictable. People start saving too late, rely too heavily on the State, and find themselves with no real choice but to keep working. The gap between starting a pension at 25 versus 40 can easily be the difference between retiring at 64 and retiring at 70.

The good news is that this does not have to be your story. Those who take action early, build their own pension provision, and get proper advice retain control over when they stop working. Those who don't risk having that decision made for them.

Two thirds of Irish adults have never consulted a financial adviser. Low engagement today is the single biggest factor pushing retirement further into the future.

Read the full post here: https://www.fjhanly.com/rising-retirement-age-are-we-heading-for-a-70-year-work-life

15/04/2026

When markets drop, the urge to move your pension to cash feels logical. It isn't.

Geopolitical crises trigger a predictable pattern: markets fall, investors panic and sell, then markets recover and they buy back in at higher prices.

Selling low and buying high. The exact opposite of what any sound strategy would suggest.

The numbers tell the story. DALBAR's 2025 research found that the average equity investor earned 16.54% in 2024, against 25.02% for the S&P 500. An 8.48 percentage point gap, driven almost entirely by poorly timed decisions. Over the longer term, Morningstar estimates that this behaviour gap costs investors around 1.22 percentage points every single year.

For anyone saving into a PRSA, an occupational pension, or the new My Future Fund auto-enrolment scheme, the investment horizon is measured in decades. There will be more crises. That is the normal rhythm of markets. What matters is that your pension stays invested and compounding through the full cycle.
The greatest risk for most pension investors is not the next geopolitical shock. It is the temptation to react to it.

Read the full post here: https://www.fjhanly.com/why-trying-to-time-the-market-during-geopolitical-crises-usually-backfires-for-pension-investors/