30 Great Personal Finance and Investing Resources in 2020
Where can you get the cheapest mortgage, find out the trades of the best investors, save on tax and even get a discount on..Mulberry? I've listed details of personal finance savings to be made 1-10 and from 11-30 onward investing resources and tips for putting these savings to good work.
Online investing brokers: save a fortune using online brokers instead of the traditional Irish brokers.
Cheapest Mortgages: Avant has entered the Irish market with headline grabbing mortgage rates. You need an LTV of 60% to qualify for their sub 2% rate. With a 250k property that has 150k of a mortgage left, if you were to switch from a 2.95% rate on a 20 year term to Avant's 1.95% you could save €17,489 over the course of your mortgage.
Mortgage calculator: as banks are frequently competing and changing their rates it's best to keep tabs on these changes to get the best offer. The CCPC have an excellent calculator to allow you to compare all the options for the best rates for you.
Personal loans: similarly they have a calculator to enable you to discover the best value personal loans for based on your time frame and needs.
Budget Planner: use this CCPC resource to work out a plan that suits you (or your household) and helps you keep control of your spending effectively. They also have a spending calculator to figure out what you are spending every month, or every year, on items that you might not really think about or budget for.
Shareholder Freebies: Would you like a discount on Mulberry, members passes to the races or a discount on the ferry when you take the horse to France?! While I wouldn't recommend buying a company based on their perks, you might as well avail of them where applicable and here's a handy list of shareholder perks available.
Bonkers.ie: It pays to review your supplier, we found savings of up to €300 between some suppliers on bonkers.ie for electricity. There can also be savings of €200 between different broadband suppliers and more again when shopping around between dual bundle suppliers.
Stay and Spend Tax Credit: if you spend over €25 up to a maximum of €625 on a holiday in Ireland between October 1st and April 1st you can claim back up to €125 as a tax credit against your income tax/USC liability. You can find out more information on the scheme here.
Tax relief: As a PAYE taxpayer, you can claim for medical expenses if you have not already claimed these back through your health insurer. There is an income tax credit at 20% of the cost of qualifying medical treatment. For a full list of what you can claim back the revenue website details this here and Catherine McGovern of PKF's summary here of taxation on investment income also covers this and lot's more tax reliefs.
SEAI Grants: Invest in the efficiency of your home , cut down your monthly bills and leave some extra money to invest. Through their wide range of grants SEAI helps you ‘upgrade your home, making it warmer and more energy efficient’ while you benefit from long term lower energy bills. The grants range from Solar electricity grants to insulation grants and you can apply at SEAI.ie.
Where to Invest 10k right now? Bloomberg update this piece quarterly with advice from a group of experts as to where they recommend investing 10k. Their advice ranges from buying European bank shares, Emerging markets focusing on Taiwan, railway/chemicals, semi-conductors and Chinese bonds.
Irish focused Investing Blog: I love Mrs. Money Hacker’s blog and during the year asked if she would put together some of her best tips around investing and savings in Ireland. She talks here in investing tips about what you might not think you could negotiate on but actually can, risk tolerance and 'experts' to how she calculates the real return on her pension.
Property and Your Pension: How to buy property through your pension here as explained by Paddy Delaney, founder of Informed Decisions, an excellent podcast, blog and financial advisory company.
Undervalued Growth Stocks Screener: if you'd like a screener* for Undervalued Growth Stocks, Yahoo Finance has a useful one here. This screens for stocks with earnings growth rates better than 25% and relatively low PE and PEG ratios.
Investing networks: I run the Investing Ireland Facebook group which has a broad church of opinions and knowledge in terms of investing. People will often ask the question that everyone's wondering but might be embarrassed to ask so it can be an excellent resource. You'll ask find some people who look at opportunities from a completely different perspective and thus offer unique insights.
The Sage of Omaha: Interested in what the world's most famous investor thinks? You can read Warren Buffetts shareholder letters to tap into his no nonsense insights.
Contrarian Thinking: Codie Sanchez discusses a complete mix of ideas and insights from the opportunities that investing in cannabis companies offers to making money from dirt (there's actually a logic and a very profitable one at that!).
The Entrepreneur Experiment: I incidentally heard about her from a good friend of mine Gary Fox who runs the excellent Entrepreneur Experiment podcast and YouTube channel. He breaks down business ideas from selling unique trainers to flights to nowhere. I find his pod excellent for helping me come up with new ideas and business concepts. Who knows you might get a new business idea after listening and come up with your own venture.
Market insights: David Flynn the chief investment strategist at Baggot Investment Partners posts quarterly market updates. View Q3 here where he talks about 'pick and shovel play” and the markets where he sees value and where he sees challenges.
Charts: This interactive stocks charting tool allows you to compare for example Apple versus the S+P etc.
Broker Reports: RTE have a very useful section with a daily round-up of links to Irish brokers reports here. There are links to today's reports produced by Davy, Goodbody, Goldcore etc all within this section. These contain quick, digestible notes on everything from currency moves to key investing events.
Education: learn investing principles, the 2021 outlook, tax efficiencies, how to identify undervalued shares and lot's more on our Investing Fundamentals course. This is taught by former Barclays chief dealer Peter Brown with guest lectures by tax expert Catherine McGovern and former hedge fund partner Steve Clapham.
Interested in retiring early? There are some good Irish specific blogs to check out on how others are working towards achieving F.I.R.E including Frugal Personal Finance, and IgniteMyFire while further afield there's 'MrMoneyMustache'.
Investing Tax Free in Ireland: it certainly helps to grow your returns when there is less charges and tax eroding your returns allowing them to compound. Here is a short summary from Paul Overy's previous talk on how to effectively invest tax free in Ireland.
Superstar investor: Cathie Wood's (pictured below) ARK Innovation ETF is up 149% year on year. You can subscribe here to get notifications on shares she's buying for the fund. Check out their big ideas presentation here.
Whale Wisdom: you can check out how to replicate any fund and their composition here .
Reddit: has an a useful investing thread here.
Wealth creation: I have a quick summary here of Paul Overy's previous talk on wealth creation and financial freedom here. Paul discussed how to get to your financial freedom number and tools of wealth.
Property Versus Shares: Eoin Wilson created this article on the Smart Money Site previously discussing the pros and cons of each asset class. He looks at liquidity, capital growth and ownership.
Funds return calculator: should you invest in Zurich, Davy, New Ireland or any of the other options for your pension? Rubicon investment consulting have an excellent calculator here to breakdown the returns offered by each provider.
As always please do your own independent research before making an investment and the above should not be constituted as advice.
* There are other stipulations and undoubtedly some paperwork but if you meet the criteria it's definitely worth applying for or at least using for leverage to negotiate with your existing mortgage provider.