Irish Financial Independence & Personal Finance Podcast

Tuesday 4th August 2026

My Early Retirement Plan

As July came around, we packed up our busy lives in Limerick and moved to West Clare. We went from having loads of shops and supermarkets within 1 kilometer of our house, to being a 50 minute round trip to the nearest Aldi (in Kilrush). We found fun in things like going to the beach, playing soccer in the back garden, lighting our outdoor stove and toasting marshmallows, watching the football world cup on the TV or building a tree house.

The weird thing was, none of these things cost money. We saved so much money in July, by the end of the month we took the surplus and decided to save it for Christmas.

Even our food shopping was interesting. Because it was such a long round trip to the supermarket, we just had to survive on what we had. We found ourselves making dinners out of nothing - and actually eating all the food in the fridge before we went and purchased more!

It was an exceptionally simple life, and boy did it give me time to reflect.

City life is busy, non stop in fact. Step away and live on the coast for a few weeks, you really start to appreciate what life is all about.

And here was the kicker. I didn’t miss work. In fact, I had the opposite reaction. For the last two years or so, I have talked about how much I have found enjoyment in my job. I have written recently about the fear of giving up work, as there is no “Plan B”, with AI basically making software development teams obsolete. However, there is a real sense that now is the time that I start planning for early retirement.

I sat down with my wife, and told her I wanted to do something crazy. We have a tenant moving out of our first investment property in the next week or two, and I told her I want to sell the house.

“To pay off our mortgage right”, was her reaction. “Nope”, I said.

“Not to buy another investment property”, she said next. She knows me too well! “Nope”, I said.

“How about so we can use that money to get through the next 10 years and mean I don’t need to work anymore.”

And she was sold!

You see, we own this investment property in our own name. Because we used to live in the property, we don’t get the full mortgage interest deduction due to the way that we structured the refinance, and so the property as a rental property doesn’t give us any positive cashflow. So even if we were to put in a new tenant, the rental income gets eaten up by tax.

However, by selling it will give us anywhere from €160,000 to €180,000 of after tax money! Cash into our account! We can put some of this into index funds and the other as a cash cushion to bridge the next few years. In the meantime, the income I then draw down from my company becomes extremely tax efficient - I can pull down €40,000 per year, and pay only around 10% personal tax on that.

The practical plan is straightforward. We need approximately €5,000 a month after tax to cover our expenses. I expect to draw around €3,000 a month after tax as wages from our five other rental properties. The remaining €2,000 a month will come from the proceeds of selling our first rental property.

Suddenly, we have a way to produce the income we need to support our family of five, without the tax hit.

The money from our investment property should last us between seven to ten years depending on market returns. I am 42 years old now - it will likely get me to 50. By age 50, my oldest is 23 and my youngest is 17 - we are past our peak spending years. Our other five buy-to-let properties will have lower mortgages, we will likely have capital appreciation, and we can decide to sell another property or two every few years as needed.

We also start to get to the age where I can access my pension.

The hardest part about my plan is from now to around age 50, where our spending is at its peak and we need around €60,000 per year to cover our family’s expenses. But this solution allows me to get there!

Flexibility is everything here as well. I am going to aim to leave my full time job before I turn 43 - likely in March next year - and will still continue to earn a small income from the odd ad hoc freelance software development work, and writing for The Irish Independent. This is small change compared to what I am paid working full time, but will still likely result in an additional €10,000 - €20,000 per year - enough to allow me to feel like we have a buffer if anything goes wrong.

The summer in West Clare reminded me that many of the best things in our life cost almost nothing. What they require is time. After eight years of building towards freedom, I think I am finally ready to use it. No more excuses this time - I am at the peak of the mountain, ready to start my descent.

July 2026 Portfolio Update

There is nothing terribly exciting to report on the portfolio front, which is usually good news.

Stocks were down slightly after reaching a peak last month, while our properties ran smoothly enough. The tenant in our first investment property is due to move out in August, and we will begin getting the house ready for sale.

We also expect to sign contracts on our sixth investment property during August.

Funds are extremely tight as I prepare to close on it. At this stage, it looks as though I may need to take out a small personal loan to complete the renovations and get the property ready to rent.

Obviously, this is not ideal financial practice, and it is not something I would generally recommend. It is another example of me biting off slightly more than I can chew - which, if you have followed these updates for long enough, you will know I have a habit of doing from time to time.

The plan is to close on the property, use a small personal loan to complete the necessary work, put a tenant in place and then repay the loan within approximately nine months - ideally before I leave full-time employment.

It is not a position I particularly enjoy being in, and it is something I have reflected on during the summer.

The irony is not lost on me. In the same update in which I am talking about retirement and simplifying our lives, I am also discussing borrowing money to complete another property purchase.

However, this is probably the clearest example of why my thinking has started to change.

Given our current financial position, continuing to take on this level of risk is no longer necessary. I do not need to keep buying properties indefinitely. At some stage, the focus needs to shift from accumulating more assets to making better use of the ones we already have.

There is still a degree of calculated risk involved. We have sufficient rental cash flow to repay the loan relatively quickly once the property is occupied, so this is primarily a short-term liquidity problem rather than an indication that the investment itself is unprofitable.

Nevertheless, it is tighter than I would like, and I would not recommend that somebody copy this approach without having substantial income and reserves behind them.

Hopefully, this will be my final period of stretching our finances to complete another acquisition. The next stage is not about building a bigger portfolio, but rather living of it.

It is about creating a simpler life from the portfolio we have already built.

Let’s break down the numbers:

Monthly Portfolio Growth Report

Portfolio Breakdown

The table below shows the breakdown of my portfolio into the various asset classes:

2026 Year to Date Returns

Here is a summary of my year to date returns for 2026.

2025 Year to Date Growth Report
Opening Balance	€846,030.49
New Contributions	€640.00
Equities Capital Gains + Dividends	€22,365.56
Real Estate Capital Gains + Rental Income	€54,322.53
Interest on Cash Savings	€34.05
Closing Balance	€923,392.63
Portfolio Return	€76,722.14
% Return	9.06%

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