Irish Financial Independence & Personal Finance Podcast

Monday 5th October 2026

From Growing Wealth to Living off it

For many years, we were building wealth. We were buying assets for growth. This included our index funds in a pension rather than owning them personally (to enable tax free growth) and buying property with leverage.

As I start to work towards retiring from my full time software development contract in March, I have started to think about how we can structure our portfolio to best handle withdrawals.

We expect to create a lot of liquidity by selling our first investment property, but we need to manage this money carefully. Ideally it needs to last around 12 years, until I am 55, and can start to withdraw from my pension.

However, it is unlikely it will last this long. It is more likely we will need to start to sell down other investment properties strategically, as tenants move out voluntarily, we will need to selectively start to sell properties every five years or so.

We have one property that is currently rented out on a lease arrangement to a property manager. We let them know in September that we will look to take back this property from the lease arrangement in early 2028. This will help with our cashflow situation. It is likely that I will look to put a more conventional property management structure in place (a percentage arrangement rather than a fixed price), but I will make this call closer to the time. This property has a much stronger cash flow than our other properties (it is a six bedroom property rented on a per room basis), so will likely do a huge amount of heavy lifting for us when it comes to generating our rental income.

I even considered a few other possibilities, including refinancing again and buying another property, but the numbers basically showed that, unless the property offered an exceptionally strong yield (12%+), it probably doesn't make sense.

The reason is fairly simple. Buying more of our typical three-bedroom semi-D properties would likely increase our net worth over time, but it wouldn't materially improve our cash flow. We've reached the point where our priority is no longer building wealth, but generating income from the wealth we've already accumulated.

So there is going to be a mix of living off rental cashflow, selling property strategically to create liquidity, bridging until we can access our pension, and having some flexibility.

I don’t have this all worked out! And honestly, and don’t know if anyone ever would. The sequence of returns risk is scary - and it doesn’t matter if you retire at age 42 or 72, it's a real threat.

A couple of good years with property prices and stocks, we will look back on this update and laugh that this was ever a fear.

A major housing correction, rental market correction or stock correction, and my whole plan changes pretty quickly.

It isn’t to say I would need to return to full time work, that I am confident I won’t need to do again - but how much flexibility we need, between reducing our expenses and earning the odd bit of “accidental income” and ad-hoc work I might need to do, is going to depend on how the portfolio performs in the short term.

It could be easy to read this and think that perhaps we are retiring prematurely. I have said it before, the risk of working beyond a certain point outweighs this fear. I am ready to leave full time work - and I am already planning for so many great new adventures leaving the job behind. However, this comes with a little bit of fear and acknowledgement that I need things out of my control to continue going in the right direction.

This isn’t to say a correction would be a bad thing. Quite the opposite, especially as I am planning to sit on quite a bit of cash once we sell the first investment property. More just, that I need to be flexible in retirement when it comes to how I withdraw from the portfolio, and much of those decision points are going to depend on how the market is performing at any one time.

It was a lot easier when the core mission was just to grow the portfolio!

Other September News

I officially signed my final contract extension at work. Normally, the contract would be an annual contract, but this time it was only a 5 month extension - my last day of work will be the 12th March 2027.

I got up super early one Wednesday morning and was on the Clare Byrne show on Newstalk. The host, Ciara, did not believe me when I shared my story! You can listen to the interview here.

September 2026 Portfolio Update

There was a lot going on in September. I managed to get our first investment property ready to sell. The place looks amazing, and looks like a different house than a month ago when we got the keys back from the tenant. It can be amazing just how much work can be done to a property in four weeks. There is always a bit of pressure to get the property on the market, and it's hard when a mortgage is coming out with no rent coming in - but I knew this would pay off by getting the property in the right condition to sell.

The property is now in turn key condition, which I knew given the number of first-time buyers in the market, was going to be a big factor in their decision to want to purchase the property or not. I look forward to providing updates on how the selling process goes and am excited to share updates on this. For all the houses we have purchased over the years, this is the first time we are selling a property!

We also closed on property number eight in September and you will notice the portfolio has reflected this, as cash was moved to our property equity. This was a property we went ‘sale agreed’ on earlier this year, before I had planned to retire. This property doesn’t really change our retirement plans at all, and will help generate a small little bit of extra cashflow once rented. On a plus side, the property is in a fantastic location and iconically is our first investment property located in Limerick itself (all our other properties were in commuter towns outside of Limerick).

The property requires a good bit of work to get ready to rent, and I suspect given the time of the year, we might need to wait until the new year to have a tenant move in, but we will see how we go. I am happy to take my time and get it right, even if it will mean lower returns for the next few months while we miss out on rental income due to the renovation work.

The timing of this purchase however, is terrible. When I went ‘sale agreed’ in March, we were still in a growth mindset. Our first rental property was still rented and I had no idea the tenant was planning on moving out. Fast forward to today, we currently have six investment properties, with only four currently rented. Our first investment property is now sitting empty while we sell it. Our newly purchased investment property requires work (they always do). We need a new kitchen, new flooring, as well as various other repairs, which need to be carried out before we can rent the property.

In hindsight the timing couldn’t have been any worse. Given my plan is to retire, taking on another rental property right now is a bit of a mess - especially as I am effectively fighting a war on two fronts by trying to sell a property at the same time.

This has created a major cashflow issue for us. In the past, this was never really an issue, as I was contributing so heavily to the portfolio that I was effectively able to cover repairs and home upgrades from this cash. But this time, I am sitting on lost rental income while selling a property and getting a new property ready and no new contributions. I also stretched myself when buying this property - I was left short with the refinance, so the purchase effectively has drained our excess cash, and more.

The worst part is, we have now gone into a property that is far from being in ‘turn key’ and likely needs €20,000 worth of money spent on it to get it ready.

To say I have bitten off more than I can chew is likely an understatement. The timing is terrible. Had I sold the first investment property first, and decided to buy another property (assuming it helped me generate cashflow in retirement), I wouldn’t have an issue with this. But selling a property, while trying to renovate a property at the same time, has created a cashflow problem for us.

With rental income down and us not making further contributions to the portfolio, I was left with two options:

1. Work more and add more contributions to the portfolio to cover the short fall.
2. Borrow to fund the short term cash shortage.

Knowing that I have a property being sold, it is most likely that this is just going to be a short term cashflow issue. Once the property is sold, and the new rental property is rented, everything will largely go back to business as usual.

But in the meantime, it has created a short term cashflow challenge. While in theory, I could just leave the new rental property empty for six months while the first investment property sells, I am effectively paying a mortgage with no rental income coming in. The next option then, is to borrow to fund the property upgrades, to get a tenant in faster. With rental income coming in sooner, it will more than cover the interest on the loan.

I am once again using debt as a way to solve an issue. This isn’t great timing again, with interest rates rising recently - the interest rate on our buy to let mortgages recently rising to over 6%.

This has created a bit of a pressure cooker. You will see in the portfolio numbers below, my cash is now sitting in the negatives. I have taken a personal loan to cover the cost of the property repairs, as well as to help cover some of the purchase, there was a small shortfall by the time the dust had all settled.

This negative cashflow will likely get worse over the next couple of months, while we spend money on the property renovations. The issue will be solved once our first investment property is sold as the money I receive will then be used to pay off the personal loan. As always with these things, I share these situations as I want to highlight that even after eight years of investing, mistakes can still be made and I want to highlight this to help you learn from my mistakes. In this case, I simply just took on more than I needed to - knowing that I am looking to retire in March, I already had enough, taking on an additional property has only created additional pressure on me, that frankly, I just don’t need at this stage of my journey!

Stocks were up in September. Ironically, this isn’t really a major consideration, even with retirement only five months away, as all of our stock portfolio is in my pension, and I am still years away from accessing it.

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.

2026 Year to Date Growth Report
Opening Balance	€846,030.49
New Contributions	€640.00
Equities Capital Gains + Dividends	€31,614.81
Real Estate Capital Gains + Rental Income	€60,543.41
Interest on Cash Savings	€142.19
Closing Balance	€938,970.90
Portfolio Return	€92,300.41
% Return	10.9%

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