Real Health Podcast: Money, mortgages and financial fitness with Eoin McGee

On the Real Health podcast this week, I speak to Eoin McGee, financial planner and presenter of the tv show, “the complaints bureau,” which premieres on RTÉ One this Thursday.

Friend of the podcast Eoin McGee returns to the Real Health podcast to help us with our money woes. I started by asking him about what lifestyle creep is and how do we avoid it and start saving.

“It's called lifestyle creep; your lifestyle expands to the income you have. If you've just identified savings of three hundred euro because you've changed your gas or electricity bill, that's twenty-five quid a month savings. Now you can either allow your lifestyle to expand and in 12 months' time or you can say, that 25 quid is to be subtracted off debt. Or maybe to get myself a takeaway once a month. Or whatever. But be very definitive about what you do with those savings,” the money expert explained.

I was very interested to hear about Eoin’s idea of creating a financial buffer, so you don’t have to use credit cards. The tv presenter told me, “A normal buffer is three to six months take home pay. So, if your take-home pay is 2, 000 euros a month, you should have somewhere between six and 12, 000 euros. Then people could be saying, oh my god, I need three months take home pay. That’s huge. If you just get yourself to the goal of a thousand euros that’s a good start. So, what you do is use the buffer when you would usually reach for the credit card.”

Finally, we came to the subject of pensions and how to start and save for them. Eoin explained that small sums add up but that you must start as soon as possible.

“If you're 25 years of age, and you want to have a pension pot of a million euro at 65, you need to put 500 a month in now,” the financial planner explained.

You can listen to the full episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.