Most people in Ireland have money in five or six places and no picture of the whole. A pension from the current job, maybe one from an old one, a mortgage, a savings account doing very little, a life policy bought when the first child arrived, and a vague sense that retirement will sort itself out. A personal financial plan takes all of it, works out what it will do over the rest of your life, and tells you what to change now.
True Wealth builds that plan for you. We are a Central Bank regulated, whole of market broker based in Portlaoise, advising clients across Ireland. A senior advisor models your money year by year to age 100, shows you where the gaps are, sets up whatever you decide to do about them, and stays with you as your life changes. The form on this page takes two minutes and is the first step.
What is a personal financial plan?
A personal financial plan is a written, numbered picture of your financial life and where it is going. It starts with what you have today: income, spending, pensions, savings, investments, property, debts and the cover you hold. It adds what you want: the age you would like to stop working, the income you want when you do, the house, the children’s education, the help for parents, the trip you keep putting off. Then it forecasts the two together, year by year, to see whether the first gets you the second.
The output is not a report that sits in a drawer. It is a short list of decisions with figures beside them: pay this much more into the pension, move that old plan, close this gap in your cover, put that cash to work, use that tax relief. And it lives in an app on your phone, updated as your life moves on.
What does the plan cover?
| Area | What we look at | What usually changes |
|---|---|---|
| Goals | The age you want to stop working, the income you want, the big spends in between | Targets with dates and amounts instead of hopes |
| Cash flow | Income and spending today, and how both move over the years | A clear number for what you can put aside each month |
| Pensions | Every pension you hold, its charges, its funds, what it will be worth at 66 | Contributions set to the target, old plans moved or combined, relief claimed in full |
| Protection | Life cover, mortgage protection, income protection and serious illness cover against what your family would need | Gaps closed, overlaps cancelled, premiums cut where the market has moved |
| Savings and investments | Cash on deposit, regular savings, lump sums, how they are invested and taxed | Money given a job, matched to the date you need it |
| Mortgage | The rate, the term, what overpaying would do | A decision on overpaying versus investing, with the figures |
| Tax | Reliefs you are entitled to and not using | Pension relief, medical insurance credit, flat-rate expenses, gift exemptions |
| Estate | What happens to it all, and the inheritance tax on it | A will that matches the plan, cover for the tax if needed |
How does cash flow modelling work?
Cash flow modelling is the engine of the plan. We put your income, spending, assets, debts and goals into financial planning software and run them forward year by year to age 100, with inflation, pay growth, investment returns and tax built in. You see the result as a simple chart: the years your money grows, the years it is drawn down, and the year it runs out if nothing changes.
Then we stress test it. The model runs your plan thousands of times with different market returns, up to 10,000 scenarios, and shows you the pessimistic, the average and the optimistic outcome. If the pessimistic case still gets you to 100 with money left, you can relax. If it does not, you see exactly which lever closes the gap: a little more into the pension, a later retirement date, a lower drawdown, a different mix of funds.
Your plan is yours to keep. It sits in an app for desktop, iPhone and Android, and your advisor updates it when your life changes: a new job, a new child, a house move, an inheritance, a windfall, a bad year.
What does a plan usually find?
After thirty thousand clients, the same things come up again and again.
- A pension that will not do what its owner assumes. A fund of €150,000 at 45 feels like a lot. At 66, on the usual assumptions, it buys about €8,000 a year. The plan shows the real number early enough to fix it.
- Tax relief left on the table. A higher-rate taxpayer gets €40 back on every €100 into a pension. Many people stop at what the employer matches, or never claim relief on a personal plan at all.
- Old pensions left behind. Two or three plans from previous jobs, in default funds, on old charges, that nobody has looked at in years.
- The wrong cover. Life cover bought for a mortgage that is half paid off, no income protection at all, or a serious illness policy that duplicates something at work.
- Cash doing nothing. Deposits earning less than inflation while a mortgage costs more, or while a lump sum could be invested for a goal ten years away.
- No plan for the house. Whether to overpay the mortgage or invest the same money is a question with a right answer for each person, and almost nobody has worked it out.
None of these is a disaster on its own. Together they are the difference between retiring when you want to and retiring when you have to.
Who is a personal financial plan for?
Anyone with an income and a future. In practice our plan clients fall into four groups.
One plan for everything you own and owe.
A few short questions are enough to start. A senior advisor builds the forecast, shows you the gaps and sets up the fixes you choose.
What does the plan cost?
The first review and the plan are provided without a fee. There is no obligation to act on the plan and no charge if you do not. Our terms of business, which you receive before anything is signed, set out how True Wealth is remunerated. Where ongoing advice is paid for separately, for example on a managed investment portfolio, the charges are shown in euro before you decide.
How do we build your plan?
- Tell us about yourself. The form on this page: who you are, what you want, roughly what you earn and what you have. No documents at this stage.
- Your advisor gathers the detail. A short online fact find for the figures the forecast needs, with your policies and statements if you have them to hand.
- The forecast. Your money modelled year by year to age 100 and stress tested, with the gaps and the fixes marked.
- Your plan review. A senior advisor walks you through it, answers your questions and agrees the decisions with you.
- Set up. Whatever you decide, we set it up, deal with the providers and handle the paperwork.
- Kept on track. Your plan lives in the app, and your advisor reviews it with you as your life changes.
Worked example: a couple of 42 and 40
Ciara and Tom earn €115,000 between them. He has a work pension worth €90,000 and one from an old job worth €50,000 that he has not looked at since he left. She has a PRSA worth €40,000 that she stopped paying into when their second child arrived. They have a mortgage with 21 years left, a life policy each from the bank, and €38,000 on deposit.
Their plan found a gap. On current contributions their funds would give them about €2,900 a month at 66, against the €4,000 they want. It found Tom’s old pension in a fund that had not been reviewed since 2016, on charges above the market. It found that Ciara’s PRSA relief alone was worth €3,200 a year she was not claiming. It found their life cover was €180,000 short of what the mortgage and the children would need, and that neither of them had income protection.
What they did: Tom’s old pension moved into his current scheme, Ciara restarted her PRSA at €400 a month, costing her €240 after relief, Tom added €250 a month to his, and they used €18,000 of the deposit for a lump sum investment with a ten year horizon. The cover gap was closed for less than the two bank policies had been costing. The forecast now reaches 100 in the pessimistic case with money to spare, and the retirement income target is met at 65, a year earlier than they asked for.
Figures are illustrative. Every plan is built on the client’s own numbers.
