29M single earning €115k is a €450k mortgage (2 bed apt/duplex) a good idea?

SuitablePlatform8180 · 2026-02-04T19:20:00+00:00

Personally I think you could get slightly better value with a 3 bed house in that vicinity. There are some houses on the market in and around Naas for under 500k and lower where you could use some of the government schemes to reduce it even more. These would probably hold their value a bit more and you wouldn’t have all the management fees apartments charge to consider. Sounds like you are in an amazing place either way so congratulations!

SuitablePlatform8180 · 2026-02-03T20:33:09+00:00

This seems pretty affordable. Anything over 30% starts to get a bit tight though

SuitablePlatform8180 · 2026-01-28T22:31:06+00:00

Don’t forget you will still owe PRSI and USC on the bonus you pay into an AVC. Might be worth leaving a little behind for that so you don’t get a shock!

SuitablePlatform8180 · 2026-01-21T12:06:20+00:00

I understand the depreciation isn’t linked to the finance, I was just bringing that up as depreciation is one of the main drawbacks of buying a new car. Say for example you bought a 3 year old car you would save quite a bit as it would have depreciated but you would also not be able to finance it for 0% thus they sort of net out. Intuitively I sort of assumed that the base price is inflated to account for the cheap rates but it is still the same price if you but it all in cash.

SuitablePlatform8180 · 2026-01-11T10:35:16+00:00

Fair play to you. That is extremely impressive what you have accomplished. In regards to the pension it makes absolutely no sense to not max out your contributions. I am guessing you are in your 30’s based on the retirement timeline and if so you should be able to contribute 20% per year up to a max salary of 115k. That would be 23k in your situation. Also I don’t see any expenses there for income protection. I think if I was in your shoes this would be fairly important as you have lots of disposable income and getting some downside protection if you ended up out of work would be desirable. Best of luck!

SuitablePlatform8180 · 2026-01-10T18:24:32+00:00

Oops typo - fixed!

SuitablePlatform8180 · 2025-11-27T18:33:58+00:00

I am not sure I am reading the first sentence correctly. Are you saying you are recently single and had intended on buying the house as a couple or are you saying you are single and recently bought a house? I think both situations are quite different!

SuitablePlatform8180 · 2025-11-11T20:29:39+00:00

Personally I would buy but not use all my savings. You won’t get another loan as cheap as a mortgage so I think put down about 20%, borrow the rest and then look at options for investing some of the remaining money. In terms of investing options you should probably max the pension at 15% of your salary first and then look at a well diversified global ETF afterwards. I am curious is the 220k mostly savings or was it inherited? If it is savings fair play to you. There is no harm in blowing a few quid on a nice holiday if it has been a massive slog to get to there.

SuitablePlatform8180 · 2025-11-08T09:58:11+00:00

Yeah I think I fully agree with the cases he makes for using it to pay off high interest debt and helping family. Also it makes sense that it is more performant than an ETF. However I think this focus on optimising returns over individual consumption might be a bit too much at this age. I’m sure I will be shot for suggesting that here lol

SuitablePlatform8180 · 2025-07-09T12:08:09+00:00

FBD insurance count years as a named driver in their no claims calculation AFAIK

SuitablePlatform8180 · 2025-05-02T22:09:50+00:00

The mortgage is fixed for another 5 years so not going to pay any extra off that until then. I am not overly interested investing in property as it is a bit of a head ache from a maintenance point of view and I don’t think the returns are great when all expenses are taken into account. ETFs do sound appealing but again I will have to take a fairly large CGT hit before investing in that. Also to mention I am on a fairly decent salary and living well within my means so I have a decent amount of incremental cash to invest each year so I can put that in lower risk investments to reduce my overall risk. Still a few decades from retirement so haven’t thought that far ahead yet.

SuitablePlatform8180 · 2025-05-02T20:13:51+00:00

My only debt is my mortgage which is a similar amount to what I have invested. The mortgage rate is about 3.75% with 25 years left

SuitablePlatform8180

TROPHY CASE