Dear Reader

Welcome to the October edition of the Money Mentor monthly newsletter, brought to you by Vantage Financial Planning, your trusted guide through the evolving world of personal finance, investing and business leadership.

📊 Market & Economic Overview

🌬️ Tailwinds

The US Q3 earnings season has been a bright spot so far, with company profits climbing around 8–9% year-on-year, the ninth straight quarter of growth. Inflation remains moderate at 2.9%, and a cooling jobs market has given the Federal Reserve confidence to start trimming interest rates. Lower borrowing costs, steady earnings, and a soft landing narrative are keeping sentiment upbeat.

Global politics has entered calmer waters, with trade tensions softening and supply chains finding their rhythm again. While it’s still early days, the AI revolution continues to power investment and optimism from data centres to chipmakers, promising long-term productivity gains that could reshape entire industries.

🌪️ Headwinds

But not everything’s smooth sailing. AI stocks are now priced for perfection, and market gains remain heavily concentrated in just a handful of mega-cap names. That makes markets more vulnerable if sentiment turns or growth slows.

Meanwhile, the US government shutdown has created a “data drought,” making it harder for policymakers and investors to read the economic tea leaves. Thousands of recent layoffs at UPS, Amazon, Nestle, Accenture, Novo Nordisk, Paramount, Target & Applied Materials are a reminder that AI’s disruption cuts both ways, boosting efficiency while leaving many workers displaced. Ongoing wars and the threat of future conflicts continue to cast a shadow over global stability.

Markets are walking a fine line between optimism and overreach. With rate cuts, steady growth, and innovation on one side, and valuation risk, investment concentration, layoffs, and geopolitical uncertainty on the other.

For now, the glass looks more half full than half empty but it’s worth remembering that tides can turn quickly. Staying diversified, patient, and focused on long-term goals remains the surest way to keep your footing when the currents shift.

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⚖️ Power & Money

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” — Lord Acton

Across Ireland, Britain, France and the United States, five very different public figures have recently reminded us how thin the line is between influence and implosion.

Jim Gavin, once the steady hand of Dublin GAA and a frontrunner in Ireland’s 2025 presidential race, withdrew amid a dispute with a former tenant over €3,300 in overpaid rent. A modest sum but a large lesson in perception, judgment and timing.

Angela Rayner, the UK’s former Deputy Prime Minister, stepped down after an inquiry found she had underpaid stamp duty on a property, a mistake she made not through deceit, but through misplaced trust in flawed advice.

Nicolas Sarkozy, convicted pending appeal in three separate corruption cases for bribing a judge to obtain confidential information, for illegally overspending on his 2012 presidential campaign, and for accepting millions in undeclared cash from Libya’s Gaddafi regime to fund his 2007 election remains a stark reminder that political legacy can’t outrun financial impropriety.

Marine Le Pen, sentenced earlier this year for embezzling EU funds is a case study in what happens when ambition outpaces accountability.

Donald Trump’s fortune has reportedly more than doubled since returning to office, the first leader in history to monetise the presidency more successfully than his businesses.

Different nations, same thread: greed, poor judgment, bad counsel, and the quiet arrogance of believing the rules are for someone else. “Of the people, by the people, for the people” often dissolves once power meets self-interest.

Corruption is ancient; what’s modern is how quickly sunlight finds it. When in doubt, always, always follow the money. The political stage only magnifies what happens in private life.

🤔 When Advice Fails (or Isn’t Taken)

Sometimes it isn’t power that corrupts, it’s pride or ego.

The unadvised do it themselves, confident they “know enough.” The ill-advised take comfort in friendly opinion dressed up as expertise. The under-advised stop one question short of clarity. All three paths lead to the same outcome: self-inflicted damage.

Ego resists guidance, self-esteem hides uncertainty, and mistrust of professionals masquerades as independence. The result? Future personal, professional and financial regret. The cost of good counsel is less than the price of regret.

Advice isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a safeguard. It protects us from markets, from mistakes, and more often than not, from ourselves.

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🗓️ Pay & File Deadline

For most people, October means the clocks go back. For Ireland’s self-assessed taxpayers, it means the Revenue clock starts ticking louder as we move towards the Pay & File deadline:

• 31 October 2025 – paper filing
• 19 November 2025 – online via ROS

Who’s in the frame:

Self-employed & freelancers: Consultants, tradespeople, creatives, professionals, farmers, anyone earning outside PAYE.

Company directors: If you own or control shares and aren’t fully taxed under PAYE, you fall under the self-assessment system.

PAYE employees with extra income: If you earn more than €5,000 (or €3,174 if you prefer to file separately) from rent, investments, or share options, you must file a Form 11.

Retirees: Foreign pensions, rental income, dividends, or untaxed savings interest can all trigger a filing requirement.

If your only income is PAYE and everything’s deducted at source, relax. You’re already square with Revenue.

Rule of thumb:

If tax is fully deducted where you earn it → no return.
If any income has escaped the net → file and pay by the deadline.

🧠 The Smart Filers’ Playbook

By deadline day, you’ll need to:

• File your Form 11 for 2024
• Pay any balance of tax for 2024
• Pay your preliminary tax for 2025

And before you hit “submit,” consider these year-end moves that separate the organised from the over-taxed.

💼💡 Maximising Business Expenses

If you’re self-employed or running your own limited company, legitimate business expenses are the most under-used, over-looked tax relief available. Every euro of verified cost you claim is a euro that avoids being taxed at up to 52% personally.

Think of it less as “reducing tax” and more as recording reality properly. Revenue expects you to claim what’s genuinely incurred in earning income.

Core running costs​
Office rent, phones, internet, insurance, professional subscriptions, accounting fees, and advertising, the bread and butter of business life are all deductible.

Motor & travel​
You can claim mileage or actual running costs for business journeys (just exclude personal use). Keep a mileage log; Revenue loves detail.

Equipment & machinery​
Capital allowances apply, typically 12.5% per year over eight years, for everything from laptops to plant and machinery.

Working from home​
If your home doubles as HQ, you can claim a fair portion of heating, electricity, broadband, and even rent based on floor space and time used for work.

Not all expenses are created equal, some have a timing advantage:

• Pre-year-end purchases (equipment, software, professional insurance) bring forward deductions into this tax year can be prepaid if genuinely due.

Add those together and you’re reducing tax today while investing in your people and systems for tomorrow. Treat every cost like a coin on the table: if it’s genuine, claim it; if it’s questionable, clarify it. Over time, that diligence compounds as quietly and as powerfully as any investment return.

⏳ Backdate Pension Contribution

A lump-sum payment into a PRSA, Personal Pension or AVC can still be backdated to 2024, unlocking relief at up to 40% on your marginal rate of income tax. This window closes with the ROS deadline, so October–November is your last chance to turn cash into compounding.

🏢 For Business Owners & Directors

Employer pension contributions remain the most powerful extraction tool. Payments made before your accounting year-end are generally deductible, reducing corporation tax at 12.5%.

And don’t forget the Small Benefit Exemption from 1 January 2025, up to five non-cash benefits per employee per year are allowed, capped at €1,500 total. No income tax, no USC, no PRSI just goodwill, morale, and a deductible expense.

🧾✅ The Annual Tax Checklist — Reliefs & Credits Worth Reviewing

Before you file your return, take one final lap around the reliefs and credits that can quietly trim your tax bill. Many can be back-claimed for the past four years (2021–2024) and together, they can make a real difference.

💊 Health & Medical Reliefs

• Medical expenses: 20% relief on GP, consultant, and prescription costs not covered by insurance.
• Nursing-home fees: Relief at your higher rate of tax.
• Dental & optical treatments: Non-routine procedures (crowns, root canal, etc.).
• Medical insurance relief on health insurance policy premium paid by your employer
• Dependants’ costs: Claim for eligible medical expenses paid for children, parents, or dependants.

🎓👨‍👩‍👧 Education & Family Credits

• Tuition fees: 20% relief on qualifying third-level fees (after excluding the first €3,000 for full-time students).
• Rent Tax Credit: Up to €1,000 per person / €2,000 per couple if you rent your main home or pay rent for a child in college.
• Home Carer’s Credit: Up to €1,800 where one spouse or partner cares for a dependent at home.
• Single Person Child Carer Credit: €1,750 for the main carer of a dependent child.
• Dependent Relative Credit: €245 if you support an elderly or incapacitated relative.
• Incapacitated Child Credit: €3,300 for each child who is permanently incapacitated.

🏡⚡ Home, Energy & Property Reliefs

• Remote-working relief: Claim 30% of home heating, electricity, and broadband costs for days worked from home.
• Home-energy upgrades: Grants via SEAI for insulation, solar, and efficiency works.
• Mortgage Interest Tax Credit: 20% credit (up to €1,250) on the increase in mortgage interest paid during 2023 for eligible loans.
• Local Property Tax: Must be fully up to date, Revenue blocks Form 11 filing if outstanding.

It is estimated €389 million in overpaid taxes went unclaimed in 2024.The self-assessment window isn’t just a compliance exercise, it’s an annual financial audit of your own discipline. File early, fund your future and remember, the most valuable relief of all is peace of mind.

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🏁 Business Succession & The Art of Letting Go

According to the CSO, Ireland is a nation of enterprise. There are 324,211 active micro-businesses (fewer than 10 employees), 21,310 small firms (10–49 employees) and 3,817 medium-sized ones (50–249 employees). Together, small and medium-sized enterprises make up 99.8% of all Irish businesses.

Behind those numbers are people who built something from nothing, driven by independence, opportunity, and purpose:

🔥➡️🏁 From Spark to Succession

Starting a business is rarely rational. It begins with a spark, a collision of courage, curiosity, and caffeine. Early progress is messy and exhausting: tiny wins that feel enormous, mistakes that sting, nights spent swapping certainty for belief.

Then things click. Systems work, phones ring for the right reasons, confidence hardens into competence. You start walking, then running. Growth arrives, exhilarating at first, then demanding. Over time, the business becomes a mirror of who you are: your decisions, your energy, your purpose.

And one day you reach the crossroads: do you keep running, or do you start planning the hand-over?

💭❤️ The Emotional Side of Letting Go

Succession is as emotional as it is strategic. Letting go often feels like losing part of yourself and in many ways, you are. A business isn’t just what you do; it’s who you’ve become. It carries your ambition, your values, your relationships, your rhythm. Which is why selling or passing it on can feel oddly hollow. The structure that once defined your days suddenly disappears, leaving space where purpose used to live.

The most successful transitions happen when owners design their next chapter before they turn the page through mentoring, investing, giving back or simply finding a new mission that matches their momentum. True succession planning fills both gaps: the financial and the emotional.

💶 Turning Professional Success into Personal Wealth

The financial side of succession is about translating years of risk and effort into durable, tax-efficient personal wealth. Here’s how to approach it strategically.

📈 Maximise Pension Opportunities

• Channel company profits into Executive Pensions (catch up facility) or PRSAs while trading.
• Optimise contributions pre-exit for corporation-tax relief.
• Structure business sale proceeds to backfill or top-up pension depending on age and capacity.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Employ Family Members

Employing a spouse or children in legitimate roles spreads income, builds pension benefits, and reduces overall tax exposure while building a shared sense of ownership and continuity.

💍🤝 Transfer Shares Between Spouses

Transfers between spouses are CGT-free, allowing both to claim Entrepreneur Relief or Retirement Relief individually, effectively doubling relief thresholds assuming both qualify. Proper structuring well before a sale can save hundreds of thousands.

🧭📊 Understand and Sequence Key Reliefs

A well-timed exit can unlock substantial value, provided conditions are met:

• Entrepreneur Relief: 10% CGT on the first €1.5 million of lifetime gains (from Jan 2026) on sale or liquidation.
• Retirement Relief: Up to €750k tax-free for qualifying disposals (or €10m if transferring to a child) on sale or liquidation.
• Business Asset Relief: Cuts CAT from 33% to 10% on qualifying business assets.
• Agricultural Relief: Up to 90% reduction in asset value for CAT on farmland gifts or inheritances.

Each applies to a different event or tax type. Plan carefully, and they can work in sequence, not overlap.

Example:​
Sell your trading company → claim Entrepreneur Relief (10% CGT).
Gift a farm to your child → claim Retirement Relief on disposal.
Your child receives the farm → claims Agricultural Relief on inheritance.

Separate transactions, separate reliefs, all legitimate.

💰🎯 Termination Payments

When a business owner or director retires or steps away, the company can make a termination payment sometimes called an ex-gratia payment as a thank-you for years of service. With the right structure, part (or even all) of this can be tax-free, often up to €200,000, depending on your service and average annual salary.

🏢🔁 Holding-Company Option

For larger enterprises where the business sale value exceeds maximising the above options, a holding-company structure can provide:

• Tax-efficient reinvestment of sale proceeds.
• Deferral of personal taxation until funds are drawn.
• A clean framework for multi-generational ownership.
• Risk segregation while keeping capital productive.

Structure before, not after, the sale, detail determines outcome.

Business succession is the final test of entrepreneurship: can you detach from what you’ve built without diminishing it or yourself?

Financially, it’s about preparation, timing, structure, and foresight. Emotionally, it’s about identity and purpose. Do both well, and you turn a lifetime of enterprise into a legacy of independence. Plan proactively, ask the hard questions and coordinate every move with your financial planner, accountant/tax adviser and solicitor.

Because when it comes to succession as with every act of building, the work you do in advance is the wealth you keep afterwards:

Life is dynamic, constantly shifting, unpredictable, and full of motion. Your personal finances are no different. Aligning your money with your life is a bit like trying to parachute onto a moving train, the further into the future you aim, the trickier the landing.

A financial plan sets out your starting point and destination, but its real value lies in what happens in between, keeping you on track through the twists, turns, and unexpected loops of the rollercoaster that is life.

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📊🔬 Evidence Based Investing

At Vantage, our investment philosophy is simple: markets work, data matters, and discipline wins. We believe in broad index investing with a tilt toward evidence-based factors namely, smaller companies and value stocks, where decades of research show the potential for enhanced long-term returns.

Dimensional’s data tells the story clearly. Since 1975, global large-value stocks have delivered more than double the return of the MSCI World Index, while global small-cap stocks have returned nearly four-and-a-half times as much. It’s hard to argue with half a century of evidence, though the future never unfolds exactly like the past:

For investors who want to dive deeper, Dimensional’s Quick Takes provide a pleathora of one-page insights on past market trends, while the Dimensional Matrix Book 2025 remains one of the best long-term data resources available.

The challenge and the opportunity of factor investing lies in behaviour, not theory. To capture those higher expected returns, investors must endure extended periods of underperformance and resist the constant pull of comparison, trends, and fear of missing out:

Few investors can walk that contrarian path alone. That’s where the real value of advice lives in pairing data with discipline, and strategy with self-control. Evidence guides the way, but faith in the future keeps you on course.

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🌍 The Good News Network

The world we see through news and social media can feel like an endless stream of conflict, outrage, and noise, the lowest common denominator rising to the top of every feed. But that’s not the full picture. Beyond the headlines, millions of people are quietly improving the world every single day: building, healing, teaching, and innovating.

One story that captures this spirit comes from neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine, whose groundbreaking work is helping paralysed patients walk again. Together with neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch, he’s advancing digital bridge technology to restore movement, a quiet reminder that innovation and compassion still move the world forward, one step at a time:

​

It’s the power of the human spirit, our instinct to adapt, to create, to reach further than reason says we can, that propels us forward. When that spirit meets science, technology, and the quiet courage to dream beyond limits, extraordinary things happen. Together, they turn imagination into movement and hope into progress, reminding us that the future is always built by those who dare to believe it can be better.

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📚 Recommended resources 💡

JP Morgan Guide To The Markets (EMEA Monthly):

​​JP Morgan Guide to the Markets EMEA 30th September 2025.pdf​​​​

Book recommendations:

The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Richer Life by Morgan Housel

Amazon

The Courage To Be Disliked: How to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness by Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga

Amazon

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If you are interested in personal finance education, coaching, advice or technology, please reach out to me on my contact details below.

If you found this month's newsletter useful, feel free to share it with family, friends and colleagues. Constructive feedback is always welcome! If there's any personal finance topic you'd like covered please let me know.

Until next month.

Kind regards,

Ken Mason CFP®

Certified Financial Planner™

Tel: (01) 539 2670

Mobile: 083 803 2008

Email: ken.mason@vantagefp.iewww.linkedin.com

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