Question on Pensions

Some of the key questions that you should be asking yourself if you are currently seeking to start a long-term Personal Pension Plan, are: How much money will I need in order to provide myself with a comfortable retirement?

What type of contribution schedule should I follow in order to meet these targets? And, for how long will I need to continue to make contributions?


Deciding on the amount of money that you feel you will need in order to retire comfortably depends upon your own personal preferences. Experts advise people to begin by calculating how much income they would like to receive per year once they have retired.

Once you have a rough estimate of the income you need in order to manage your retirement with financial stability, you then need to establish how much money you are entitled to already.

The first place to start is to estimate the value of your State pension entitlement, for Irish pensions this is €11,976pa, or €230.30 per week. You must ensure that you are actually entitled to a State pension; to qualify for the State pension you must have made the relevant PRSI contributions while you were in paid employment- although it is possible to earn credits towards a State pension when you are in receipt of Social Welfare, or have participated in the Homemaker’s Scheme.

Once you have established the amount of your State pension, you must also estimate the value of any other pension plan that you already pay into or that you may have paid into in the past.

Next, you must work-out the shortfall between the total amount of income you will receive per annum and the amount that you would wish to receive.

With a Personal Pension, there are no guarantees regarding the amount of growth a fund will make for the duration of the policy. In order to establish how much you need to invest, so as to ensure that you cover the shortfall between your actual retirement income and the amount that you wish to have, you may need to consult with potential pension providers in order to estimate, roughly, how much projected growth your pension will make.

Ask pertinent questions such as; What timescale should I be aiming for with my pension? How much can you comfortably afford to contribute during that time (be that by monthly or annual payments)? What type of Pension best suits your needs?

You may like to consult with several different pension providers in order to establish the average potential return on your pension, so as to get the most reliable projected value.