Nope, CSDAB
There was murders when one of my ministers tried to get an AP for the role. Fights at management board, and with unions
That explains a lot.
Buy Gamestop lads. I read a good bit about this earlier today, a load of lads on the internet buying the shit out of a dying company to squeeze hedge funds with short positions.
I decided to buy one share on Revolut for the craic at around 6pm. It’s doubled in value in about 4 hours 
The allowance is not tax free …the job varies …some private secs have become forms of advisors to ministers , others offer nothing more than office manager role …they have a team of which one will be diary secretary …ministers can take private secs with them from department to department of they wish …unions will naturally fight when what is traditionally a HEO or lower role is marked up to AP as obviously it is a form of grade drift and also weakens their membership …
The Internet is SERIOUS BUSINESS
JP blessed there was no reddit in his day
JP lives tax free inside the heads of the Galway lads.
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Interest rates attached to State savings products cut in blow to savers (irishtimes.com)
not one for high rollers here but the good on the way out of the old prize bonds too
Can anyone give me an high level overview of an index fund? Is it pretty much the same as how a pension fund works only it isn’t linked to your retirement?
Yes. Without all the tax advantages
A pension fund can take many types. An Index fund in shares or bonds is considered a low fee passive investment in a weighted average of the most popular securities in the market. I’m not sure of the tax implications which will be relevant.
Say S&P 500. Has 500 of the largest companies in the world your money is invested in all of them in the proportion they are weighted in the index. So for example you’d have a lot more google than a smaller company. The fund just tracks the index minus the management fee which these days is fuck all.
It’s passive. That is no one is making any decision on where to invest it. If a company becomes more valuable the fund will invest more in it, if it falls you’ll have less of it. The bigger the index the more diversified you are.
There are specific ones also. Say a technology index and this will just track tech companies.
It’s what every investor who doesn’t have a whole pile of knowledge should be invested in, and it’s probably what every investor who has a whole pile of knowledge should be invested in also.
If the market you are tracking rises you make money, if it falls you lose money.
Equities generally return 6-8% long term but obviously they can fall in specific periods as we have seen in the not so distant past. They’ve been running at way higher than that lately but trying to time the market is a mugs game.
The tricky part is where to buy them and hold them. You’ll need some sort of brokerage account. The online ones are generally a lot cheaper. Some of the traditional stockbrokers will charge you a large annual fee for the privilege which will eat into your returns.
There’s also tax implications for holding a fund that I’m not arsed explaining.
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Would it be worth putting money into for 20 or 25 years for a child? Or is there better ways to invest a monthly sum in the long term?
It’s as good a way as any
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Every personal finance question in an Irish context can be summed up as “if it’s not property you are rode by the taxman”.
Yes it probably would be. I put the children’s allowance into something simikar but it’s a managed fund rather than just tracking the index
You end up paying tax on gains every 8 years or something so that’s a downside but fuck all else options unless you just threw 200 quid a month into a different shares every month and took a chance yourself… Its the best of a bad list of options to save imo
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Your rode by the taxman if its property as well now in fairness… Equal opportunity riding
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Would I be correct in assuming that the main benefit of shares over index is that you would get dividends? But it would be far more time and effort