Financial planning for every stage of life, from protection and pensions to retirement,
investment and estate planning, walked in the order experience teaches it must be walked.
A financial plan is not a collection of products. It is a sequence of decisions, made in the correct order.
Across decades of advising Irish families, we have observed that the most consequential financial errors are almost never errors of analysis. They are errors of sequence. A pension built before adequate income protection. An investment portfolio constructed before debt is brought under discipline. A legacy plan drafted before retirement income has been resolved.
We frame the right order as a hierarchy: seven tiers, each resting upon the one below, each earning the right to the one above. Three stacks group them — a foundation that secures the base, a growth stack that builds and then draws upon wealth over time, and a final tier concerned with passing on what has been built.
The hierarchy is not what we recommend to our clients. It is the framework within which every recommendation is made.
A plan is sound to the extent that the tiers beneath any given recommendation have been addressed before it is made.
Three parts of our service do not belong to any single tier, because they run through all of them.
Few households arrive at a financial review with all seven tiers in proportionate order. Most arrive with the upper tiers more developed than the lower: investment portfolios held alongside thin protection cover, pension contributions made alongside consumer debt, legacy intentions held privately alongside an undocumented will.
Our work, in every initial engagement, is not to recommend new products. It is to bring the tiers into the order experience has taught us they belong in.
Begin the conversation The first conversation costs nothing. The absence of one can cost a great deal. We would welcome the opportunity to understand where you sit within the hierarchy today — and, where we can add genuine value, to show you how to bring it into the order it deserves.
Foundation stack
— The ground beneath the plan.
Before any policy is purchased, any pension established, or any investment selected, a household must understand the geometry of its own income and expenditure. Liquidity is not a product. It is the cash architecture — mapped through honest budgeting and cashflow planning — that determines whether every other tier above it can function as intended.
A practical working reserve, held in instant-access deposit, is the precondition of every higher tier. Its purpose is not investment return. Its purpose is that the plan above it does not have to be dismantled when the unexpected arrives.
We understand that this conversation is often regarded as the least sophisticated stage of a financial review. It is, in our experience, the one on which the most disciplined wealth is built.
— Paddy Keenan MSc QFA, Principal & Senior Financial Consultant
Could your household meet six months of fixed expenditure without disturbing any long-term plan?
If your primary income were interrupted tomorrow, what would change first?
Where is your working reserve held, and when was it last reviewed?
Tier 1 of 7
Foundation Stack
— The promise the plan will survive the unexpected.
Above the reserve sits the second tier. The events that derail a household’s financial trajectory — illness, injury, premature death — are not investment events. They are the events for which investment is no defence.
Protection is the structural acknowledgement that the income on which a household depends, the home in which it lives, and the people who rely on its continuity must each be insured against disruption.
Every engagement at this tier begins with an assessment of income, dependants, existing entitlements, debt obligations and long-term objectives — before any recommendation is made. We then search the provider panel to construct a framework calibrated to your life as it is, and resilient enough to serve your family as it evolves.
— Barry Oliver LIB QFA EFA, Principal & Founder
When was your mortgage protection sum assured last set, and against what version of your life?
If you were unable to work for twelve months, how long would your savings sustain the household?
Does your specified illness cover reflect the financial reality of a serious diagnosis today, not the one assumed at policy inception?
Tier 2 of 7
Foundation Stack
— Clearing the path before the journey begins.
Debt is not, in itself, a financial failing. Sustained discipline around it, however, is a precondition of every tier above it. A household carrying high-cost credit while contributing to an investment plan has, in arithmetic terms, accepted a guaranteed cost in pursuit of an uncertain return. The order is wrong.
We distinguish carefully between structurally productive debt — a mortgage at a competitive rate against an appreciating residence — and consumption debt at rates that consistently outpace any reasonable post-tax investment return. The first is managed through periodic review. The second is prioritised, cleared, and kept clear.
For households in mortgage difficulty, the framework is more structured. The Mortgage Arrears Resolution Process (MARP), governed by the Consumer Protection Code, is one in which a qualified adviser plays a central role. In our experience, that is a conversation always better had earlier than later.
If you do not keep up your repayments you may lose your home.
You should consider the total cost of the mortgage and any applicable incentive included in a mortgage offer.
Your interest rate may increase and the amount of your mortgage repayments may increase as a result.
— Paddy Keenan MSc QFA, Principal & Senior Financial Consultant
Is any debt in your household priced higher than the long-term return you expect from your investments?
When was the last full review of your mortgage rate against the current market?
If you have moved provider on energy or insurance in the past three years, have you done the same on the larger of the recurring household costs?
Tier 3 of 7
Growth Stack
— Capital assembled for the goals you can see.
Once liquidity is established, protection is in place, and debt is under discipline, the question of what to do with discretionary capital begins to admit useful answers. The first concerns capital intended for goals on a known horizon: a deposit, an education, a wedding, a planned change in circumstance within the next few years.
Capital with a known horizon has a known constraint. The shorter the horizon, the less volatility the capital can absorb. The structural mistake at this tier is not under-investment; it is the deployment of short-horizon capital into vehicles whose natural rhythm of return is longer than the horizon allows.
The value of your investment may go down as well as up.
If you invest in this product, you may lose some, or all, of the money you invest.
— Paddy Keenan MSc QFA, Principal & Senior Financial Consultant
Which specific goals does your savings capital exist to fund, and on what time horizon?
Is short-horizon capital deployed against short-horizon risk, or is it borrowing time it does not have?
Have you considered whether a structured gifting programme could move capital across a generation more efficiently?
Tier 4 of 7
Growth Stack
— The engine of a working life.
At the fifth tier the time horizon lengthens, and the tax architecture becomes definitive. Ireland’s pension regime offers, within age-related limits and statutory funding thresholds, income tax relief at your marginal rate on contributions, tax-free growth within the fund, and a significant tax-free lump sum at retirement. The compound effect of those three reliefs, applied systematically across a working life, is the most powerful wealth-accumulation engine available under Irish law.
Within these structures, capital is invested through unit-linked and managed funds matched to your horizon and risk profile. For some, investment property forms part of the long-horizon picture. Each recommendation rests on a documented suitability assessment — the discipline that keeps the engine aligned with the life it serves.
The State Pension was designed as a foundation, not a destination. The gap between State provision and the retirement expected is a problem that requires a structured solution, begun as early as possible.
The value of your investment may go down as well as up.
If you invest in this product, you may lose some, or all, of the money you invest.
This product may be affected by changes in currency exchange rates.
— Paddy Keenan MSc QFA, Principal & Senior Financial Consultant
If you stopped contributing today, what would your retirement income look like, and is that the future you intend?
How many separate pension entitlements do you hold across previous employments, and when did you last review them?
For your stated retirement age, is your funding within Revenue limits, and are you using all of the headroom available to you?
Tier 5 of 7
Growth Stack
— Drawing down and managing capital.
The fifth tier builds the fund. The sixth decides how it is drawn upon — the point at which a plan built well over decades can be undone by a few decisions taken without sequence. This is the tier at which capital must do two things at once: produce a dependable income, and remain diversified enough to last.
Alongside the pension sit the wider instruments of a diversified estate. In retirement, diversification is not a growth strategy. It is the discipline that lets income survive a market that does not cooperate.
We access the Irish and international markets without bias towards any single provider, and operate no proprietary funds. Every recommendation is traceable to your stated objective, your tax position, and your capacity for the volatility implied.
The value of your investment may go down as well as up.
The income you earn from this investment may go down as well as up.
If you invest in this product, you may lose some, or all, of the money you invest.
If you seek to realise your investment before [specify the particular date], you may lose some, or all, of the money you invest.
If you invest in this product you will not have any access to your money for [insert time required before the product matures.
This product may be affected by changes in currency exchange rates.
— Barry Oliver LIB QFA EFA, Principal & Founder
When you stop earning, which assets will produce your income first, and in what order will the rest be drawn?
If markets fell sharply in your first years of retirement, would your income plan survive without selling at the worst possible moment?
Is the diversification of your retirement assets a deliberate structure, or the residual of accumulated decisions?
Tier 6 of 7
Tax & Legacy
— The final expression of the plan.
At the seventh tier the question shifts from accumulation to transmission. The wealth assembled across a working life does not, in itself, secure its passage to the next generation. Without structured intent, even the most carefully built estate can be materially diminished by Capital Acquisitions Tax (CAT), by family complexity, or by the simple absence of clear direction.
The structures that address it are not difficult to design. They are difficult to design retrospectively.
Generation after generation, the families we have served longest are those for whom this tier has been considered, structured and reviewed in advance — not contemplated for the first time when the event that calls upon it has already arrived.
The value of your investment may go down as well as up.
Two matters belong at this stage of an Irish family’s life and fall outside the regulated remit of a financial adviser.
We raise both in our one-to-one conversations so they are not left to fall between stools, and so the right specialist is brought to the table in good time. The drafting is your solicitor’s work; the coordination with the plan is ours.
— Barry Oliver LIB QFA EFA, Principal & Founder
What is your family’s CAT exposure today, on the assumption that nothing changes?
Is the structure you intend for transmission written, dated and reviewed — or held privately in intention only?
Does the generation that will be served by this plan know of its existence, and the names of the advisers who hold it with you?
Tier 7 of 7
Of the seven tiers, which sits least resolved in your household today?
If you and your partner were asked the same question separately, would the answers agree?
What is the single question, drawn from these pages, you would most like to have answered in the next quarter?
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