What are Investment Trusts

Investment trusts are closed-end funds, typically in the UK and Japan. They are publicly listed companies that invest in financial assets or the shares of other companies on behalf of their investors. You can read more about these here.

Diversification

Investment trusts are a great way to get diversification by buying one “stock”.

Looking at some info on F&C Investment Trust as an example: The first-ever investment trust, launched in 1868. A diversified portfolio gives exposure to most of the world markets. Invests in more than 400 companies in 35 countries. Among the largest investment trusts in its sector.

F&C is invested in a mix of stocks and bonds of companies listed publicly on the stock market, a max of 5% in unlisted securities (not traded on an exchange) and a max of 20% in private equity (direct investments into companies rather than via stock holdings).

Derivatives (investment contracts between the Company and counterparties, the values of which are derived from one or more underlying assets) may be used for income enhancement and efficient portfolio management. Borrowings, which may be short or long-term, in sterling or foreign currencies, would normally fall within a range of 0% to 20% of net assets.

Of the publicly listed companies, it’s invested in companies like: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, Paypal, Mastercard, Visa, Alibaba, Netflix and SAP.

This is actively managed fund and results in higher fees. F&C for example charges 1.18%

Performance

The average annual return for the last 5 years of the F&C has been 14.46%. I believe this is before annual management or purchase fees, inflation and taxes.

The FTSE World Index‘s performance for the same period was 12.8%.

If we take 1.18% fees and 1.9% inflation brings it down to 11.38%. This still does not include stamp duty, currency exchange fees and brokerage purchase costs.

The S&P 500s last 5 years average return was 13.88%. No stamp duty applies. Minus 0.07% fees and 1.9% inflation = 11.91%. If you bought this as an accumulating ETF on Degiro the fees would be 2€/transaction plus 0.03% of the total purchase.

Taxation

The main draw to IT’s in Ireland is the taxation. As you are investing in a company, who in turn invests on your behalf, these are treated as individual stocks and NOT as ETFs.

This means you will be charged 33% tax on capital gains and your marginal income tax rate on dividends instead of 41% exit tax on gains and dividends along with the 8 year deemed disposal rule that comes with ETFs outside of a pension.

Investment trusts are also eligible for 1,270€/year in CGT allowance per person. Not the case for ETFs.

You can also carry forward capital losses from current for previous years to be applied against any future capital gains taxes. Also NOT the case for ETFs.

When you die, if your portfolio exceeds £325k (which a retirement pot typically would be) your beneficiaries may be liable double-taxation on inheritance tax.

Comparison

Assumptions:

Accumulating ETF

Performance: 11.91% after fees and inflation.

Dividend yield: 1.6%

Taxes: 41% exit tax on gains and dividends, exit taxes applied to both gains and dividends from year 8 due to deemed disposal rule. Dividends are automatically reinvested in the fund and no exit taxes applied for the first 8 years due to accumulating ETF.

Purchase costs on Degiro: 2€/transaction + 0.03% of purchase

Investment: 3,000€/month, bought monthly for 20 years (2,997.10€/month after fees)

Value after 20 years: 2.242 Million – Assuming all taxes incurred for like for like comparison.

Investment Trust

Performance: 11.38% after fees and inflation.

Dividend yield: 1.6%

Taxes: 33% on gains, 52% on dividends (assuming higher income tax bracket and all tax credits applied to employment income)

Purchase costs on Degiro: 0.5% stamp duty, 4¢/transaction + 0.05% of purchase + 0.1% currency conversion (Degiro’s AutoFX rate) on purchase and the manual rate of 0.02% on sale.

Investment: 3,000/month, bought monthly for 20 years (2,976.50€/month after fees)

Value after 20 years: 2.248 Million (+0.3% more than the ETF portfolio) – Assuming all taxes incurred for like for like comparison.

Other Considerations

General risk

Personally, I don’t fully understand the risks with investment trusts, in that I don’t understand who actually owns the underlying assets. My understanding is that you are buying a stock in a company and that company is investing on your behalf. So if that investment company goes under, your “stock” in that company at risk.

Based on the KID document for the F&C Investment Trust – this seems to be the case:

“The Company’s shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange. Should the Company be liquidated, the amount you receive for your holding will be based on the value of assets available for distribution after all other liabilities, but before shareholders, have been paid. Shareholders in this company do not have the right to make a claim to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme in the event that the Company is unable to pay out.”

If this is the case, a good investment rule of thumb is to only have 5% of your portfolio in any one company’s stock. As I plan to build a sizeable portfolio which will passively cover my living costs, I do not think that a portfolio made entirely of investment trusts is sustainable if even spread across multiple ITs.

Complexity

If you read through the various fact sheets for ITs, you will see mention of discount rates and NAV (Net Asset Value) performance. From what I can make out, you can buy ITs at a discount to the NAV on some days or more than the NAV on other days. The same applies to when you sell.

So if you buy at more than the NAV and sell at less than the NAV, you will realise less value than if you bought at a discount and sold at a higher value.

I’m not going to pretend I know any more about it than that. I haven’t factored any of this into my analysis as I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Suffice to say, this adds complexity to both accumulation and withdrawal strategies. Something you may know I like to avoid.

Currency exchange risk

Investment trusts are traded in GBX (British pence) which means you are subjecting yourself to currency exchange risk. But what does this actually mean?

If you look at the historical currency exchange between EUR and GBP here are the highs and low:

• In the last 12 months: 0.94 and 0.83 = 11% fluctuation
• In the last 5 years: 0.92 and 0.72 = 16% fluctuation
• Between 1999 and today: 0.96 and 0.59 = 37% fluctuation

So if the bulk of my portfolio is in GBP which I plan to live off of in retirement (converted to EUR) in say 15 years time, I could have marginally more in growth compared to an ETF portfolio but anywhere from 11%-37% less in value at ay given time due to the difference in currency value.

Even within a given year, if I wanted to withdraw my full years expenses at the beginning of the year to reduce risk, I could lose 11% off the bat to currency difference.

As far as I know, currency exchange “losses” cannot be carried forward as capital gains losses can.

Tax changes

While the tax on investment trusts is currently more favourable to ETF exit tax and deemed disposals every 8 years, as far as I know, Revenue haven’t actually confirmed the taxation of investment trusts and therefore is more likely to change.

If you had built your portfolio around taxation benefits, any changes in this area could drastically devalue your portfolio overnight.

Also exit taxes were once 23% and fund managers are lobbying to have this reduced in line with at least DIRT and CGT. If this should change, ETFs would quickly become an even stronger winner (though I’m not holding my breath).

Final thoughts

As with all of my analysis to date, I keep coming back to the keep it simple approach.

ETFs still tick a lot of boxes for me:

• easy diversification (hundreds or even thousands of company’s stocks in one ETF)
• less maintenance (no studying individual company reports, valuations etc)
• less effort to rebalance (compared to a larger pool of individual stocks/ITs)
• less currency exchange risk and fees (though still some as underlying assets are in other currencies)
• low fees to purchase, hold and sell
• liquid (I can sell off at any time and access at any age, unlike a pension)

I may sound crazy but my goal for financial independence is the freedom of time and peace of mind. If my the cash flow from my passive assets cover my expenses and I have financial security and peace of mind, I don’t really care if my portfolio is worth 1 million or 10 million. Enough is enough for me.

This is why I keep coming back to the simplicity of ETFs.

Detailed calculations

And for those who want to dig into the numbers:

ETF growth

(*) assumes all remaining exit taxes for the 20 years is applied in the final year for like for like after tax comparison

Investment Trust Growth

(*) assumes all capital gains taxes for the 20 years is applied in the final year for like for like after tax comparison

On a high level, even though you pay more tax with an ETF, your real rate of return isn’t much lower than stocks as stocks have higher purchase costs. This results in a somewhat comparable portfolio even though you will have paid more in taxes.

This post has been edited as when I first did the analysis, I forgot to drag the formula down to include the stock dividends. This resulted in ETFs winning in the comparison. That’s what you get for doing analysis at 10PM!

An added benefit of this blog is that my analysis and assumptions can be peer reviewed, usually within a day or so of posting. It’s so great to be part of an active community that’s as interested as me in finance.

Read on for the details.

ETF Pros:

• ETF’s are index funds which are made up of hundreds if not thousands of different stocks/companies. This gives huge diversification with little effort.
• They can be a set and forget and lazy investment option meaning you don’t need to read up on company performance reports and continually watch individual stocks.
• They have low fund management fees.
• They are cheap to buy in terms of commissions. Brokers often have some ETF’s which you can buy commission free.

ETF Cons:

• High taxes
  • 41% on gains
  • 41% on dividends
• Subject to 8 year deemed disposal rule
  • Reduces compounding effect
  • Increases tax filing burden
• They do not allow you to carry forward any losses to be used against future gains

ETFs are often down played or even avoided due to their high taxation in Ireland as well as their being subject to the deemed disposal rule.

A few years ago we used to have access to US ETFs which had a better tax treatment similar to stocks.

When I first started reading about investing I was annoyed that we no longer had this option and considered trying to replicate the ETF make-up manually by buying the top 10 stocks in each in order to avail of the better tax treatments.

This post will show why I’m no longer going to worry myself with this annoyance.

Deemed disposal

The concept of deemed disposals was brought in in 2006. The idea is that on the 8th anniversary of you holding an investment you must pretend to have sold it at the market value in that year. You must pay the exit tax on those gains.

This tax acts as a credit which you will use against your actual sale of the ETFs. If the market value is worth more when you sell than it was when you paid your deemed disposal, you will pay the difference. If it is worth less, you will get a refund.

If you hold distributing ETFs which pay out dividends each year, then you will need to pay taxes each year from year 1, regardless of if you reinvest those funds into the same ETFs or if you withdraw the cash for current use.

If you hold accumulating ETFs which automatically reinvest the dividends into the same ETF, you will need to pay the exit tax in the 8th year on both the gains and the dividends.

Worth noting is that exit tax was once as low as 23% from 2001-2008. Fund managers are lobbying to the government to bring the current rates of 41% back down at least in line with CGT and DIRT at 33%.

If this were to happen, ETF’s would fare better than stocks.

Stock Pros:

• Lower taxes:
  • 33% on gains
  • Marginal tax rate+USC+PRSI on dividends
    • You would need to be earning 120,000€ per person in order to have a net tax rate of 41% or higher so anything below this will mean you pay less on stock dividends than ETFs
• You can carry forward losses to offset taxes on future gains
• You get a tax exemption of 1,290€ on gains per year any year you sell stocks

Stock Cons:

• Expensive to purchase
  • 1% stamp duty on Irish shares, 0.5% stamp duty on UK shares. Some shares are exempt from stamp duty, such as Irish shares listed on the Enterprise Securities Market (an offshoot of the Irish Stock Exchange).
  • 2.40€ charge to buy 1,000€ worth of shares
• Lack of diversification
• Active reviews, research and monitoring required

This article shows how the assumptions I am using are the lowest possible in terms of fees for buying stocks. If you are using expensive brokers with annual account fees and high purchase charges this example would be even further exacerbated.

Comparison

Assumptions

• Investing 12,000€/year (1,000€/month) in ETFs
• Investing 11,851.20€/year (987.60€/month) in stocks due to there being 1% stamp duty and a 2.40€ commission for purchasing 1,000€ of shares on Degiro. This is MUCH higher on some other brokers as this article points out
• ETF performance 100% equities at 10% minus 0.19% management fees minus 1.9% inflation = 7.91% real rate of return
• Stock performance at 10% minus 1.9% inflation = 8.1% real rate of return
• Dividends for both 2% paid from year 1 (non-accumulating)
• Marginal net tax rate for stock dividends = 26% (gross income of 50,000€ for single person or 100,000€/couple)
• 20 year investment term
• Selling all assets at the end of the 20th year and paying all taxes due.
  • Although this is highly unlikely it is the only way I could compare the net effect of all taxes simply. This approach doesn’t take into account the stock gain exemption either which would also increase the stock output if selling little amounts each year of retirement.
  • I might look at a more comprehensive analysis including staged withdrawals at some point.

Outcome

So over 20 years, you end up with 70,291€ more in stocks than you would in ETFs with 28,000 less in taxes. This is a difference of 3,500€/year or the stocks earning a real rate of return of 0.31% more than the ETFs.

If you change any of the assumptions this comparison could swing in the other direction.

Even though stocks fare better, for now, I’m laying to rest my annoyance over not being able to get access to better tax rates for ETFs as I feel the pros of diversification and passive investing outweigh the potential additional gains of a stock portfolio.

I’m also hopeful that the hedge funds lobbying to bring the exit tax rates back in line with DIRT and CGT will be successful.

If that were to happen the above scenario would result in the ETF having 550,000€ as the end portfolio, paying 152,000€ in tax. And resulting in only 27,000€ less than the stock portfolio (or 1,350€ less per year).

What do you think? Have I missed something?

Assumptions

I’m basing this study on a couple starting to invest at age 40, earning a combined gross income of 94,000€. This is higher than the average income but was chosen as an average over 20 years for simplicity sake.

They save 1,960€/month (or 23,500€/year) towards option A, a self directed investment and option B, a pension.

While there is no limit to what you can contribute to investments outside a pension, the 1,960€month is the full 25% allowable in a pension from age 40. You can contribute more as you age but I kept the base amount the same over the 20 years, again for simplicity and ease of comparison.

The total they invest in both cases is 470,000€ over 20 years.

They retire at age 60 and live on 40,000€ combined.

This results in a portfolio of just over 1 million in both portfolios.

Investment outside a pension

I’m assuming the self directed investments are in Irish domiciled ETFs. These incur a 41% deemed disposal exit tax every 8 years. This tax amount is taken out of the portfolio growth amount.

I’m assuming a growth of 7.91% in the accumulation phase. This is the historical stock market average of 10% minus 0.19% management fees and Ireland’s 30 year average inflation of 1.9%.

In the withdrawal phase the growth goes up to 9.81% as the inflation of 2% is taken into account in the withdrawal amount. For example: In year 1 the couple withdraws 40,000€ and in year 2 they withdraw 40,800€ (2% more).

Pension

I’m assuming the same growth as outside a pension using ETFs in a self administered fund and pension management fees of 1.25%. This results in growth of 6.85% in the accumulation phase (compared to 7.91% outside a pension) and 8.75% in the withdrawal phase (adding inflation back in as it is taken into account in the withdrawal amount).

The annual withdrawal starts at 40,000€ and increases by inflation of 2% each year. However, at age 60 the withdrawal has to be a minimum of 4%. At age 70 the withdrawal increases to 5%. And once the portfolio exceeds 2 million the withdrawal rate goes up to 6% as per revenue rules.

Income taxes at the marginal rate are taken out of the portfolio growth amount.

Any amounts that exceed the inflation adjusted 40,000€ are reinvested into a self directed ETF portfolio.

Whether you take the money out of the pension or not, you will pay income tax as though you have withdrawn the full 4-6%. You could leave the excess in the pension to continue growing but then your withdrawal percentage and taxes will be higher and higher as the years go on. You may be better off withdrawing the full amount which you are paying taxes on and reinvest it outside of the pension to reduce this impact. This also keeps your pension below the 2 million mark for longer, reducing your mandatory withdrawal (and tax) rate for as long as possible.

The full 200,000€ tax free lump sum is taken at retirement and reinvested into an ETF portfolio. I use the same assumptions as the non-pension investment.

How do they stack up?

After 20 years, by age 80, the investment portfolio outside of a pension stands at 2.1 million. While the pension including separate investment for lump sum and excess withdrawals stands at almost 2.7 million. A difference of 675,000€.

After 40 years, by age 100, the investment portfolio outside of a pension stands at just over 5 million. While the pension stands at 8.9 million. A difference of 3.8 million.

Management fees and performance

What if your pension management fees are higher? Or what if the performance is lower than what you can get outside of pension? Or some combination of the two ie: your real rate of return?

If your pension management fees are just 0.75% higher (at 2%) or your performance is 0.75% lower than you could get by investing yourself (at 9.25% instead of 10% before fees and inflation) then you will have 23,000€ less in your portfolio than investing yourself after 20 years but 476,000€ more after 40 years.

Do you know how your pension is performing and how much you are paying in fees? These two elements are very important as you can see that even very small differences in percentage will totally wipe out any tax advantages you are getting.

Any more than a 1.9% variance in combined fees and performance and you will be better off investing yourself in a self directed fund and keeping your money accessible at any time.

Average pension fees and growth

For a bit of context, the average charges for pensions in Ireland according to this 2012 report were 2.18%.

The average pension growth in the same report was -4.82% after fees and inflation based on historical average, though the report only has data from 2007 (-7.3%), 2008 (-35.7%), 2015 (4.5%), 2016 (8.1%) and 2017 (6.3%). Even if you take out the crash in ’08 it’s still only 2.9% (or 6.98% if you add back in the 2.18% in fees and 1.9% in inflation instead of 10% in the stock market).

If I apply these rates to my example, your pension would only be worth 643,000€ by age 60 and you would run out of money by age 87.

Lower exit tax

Fund managers are petitioning to bring exit tax back in line with DIRT and while that seems unlikely it’s not impossible. Exit tax and DIRT were aligned from 2001-2016. Going down as far as 23% back in 2008.

If brought back down to 33% then the 2 cases in this post would be more comparable. After 20 years the pension would have 197,000€ more than the ETF portfolio. After 40 years the pension would have 716,000€ more.

Are pensions the best investment in Ireland?

So are pensions the best investment in Ireland?

Like most things, it depends. It depends on:

• Your real rate of return which takes into account your performance, management fees and inflation
• Years to retirement

Real rate of return

In order for a pension to fare better than self directed ETF investments you need to have a real rate of return of 5.95% or higher.

You can calculate your real rate of return by taking your performance – annual management fees – inflation.

So in the first case I looked at it was 10% performance – 1.25% fees – 1.9% inflation = 6.85%

Years to retirement

Different pensions have different retirement ages. Make sure yours aligns with your goals. If not you will need to take that into consideration when planning out your investment goals.

You may need to invest outside of the pension as well as in the pension in order to bridge the gap between the age you can access your pension.

Summary Table

Why am I still avoiding a pension?

So why, if the pension is clearly the most tax efficient option, as long as the real rate of return is 5.95% or higher, am I still holding off?

Personally, I am aiming to be financially independent by age 45 at the latest. This would leave at least 5 years until I could access my pension if I had an executive pension. It would require me to draw down on my self directed investments during that time until I could access the pension.

I currently have investments scattered across Ireland and Canada and already have complicated tax matters and withdrawal strategies to account for.

After all my analysis, I still have questions unanswered and am getting to the point that I’d just like to streamline and simplify my portfolio.

I recently met up with a couple who have already retired early and are offering consultations to others on their path to FIRE. They said that one woman who was highly educated felt like she needed to have an overly complex portfolio as she felt that the more complex would mean the better returns. She felt that since she was so well educated she should be using her intelligence to outsmart the system when in fact it was making matters worse.

I’m actually starting to feel like maybe I’m a bit like that woman. I am over analysing all the variables and just need to take a step back, possibly consolidate and simplify my investments and continue plugging away at our goal.

And this may seem crazy to some but, who cares if after 40 years I have 5 million instead of 8.9 million. As long as my portfolio is sustaining my retirement lifestyle then the rest is just excess.

As for leaving money to my son, yes that would be nice, but I hope that we will be able to teach him to provide and invest for himself so that he won’t need to rely on an inheritance from us.

Some, but not all, of the below tools include affiliate links where I will get a small commission if you sign up. I only include tools I use and love so if you sign up, it will be a great support for me and the content on this blog.

Investing

Degiro – The online trading platform I use for non-pension self-directed investing (ie: my ETF portfolio). As usual do not invest money you can’t live without. Investing involves risk of loss.

Banking

Bonkers.ie – Depending on your banking habits (minimum through-put, minimum balance, number of contactless payments, number of ATM withdrawals etc), different bank accounts may suit you better. This comparison tool is handy to figure out which works out best for you.

Revolut – This is an online bank account. They are great for avoiding non-euro transaction fees (which I use for Amazon and other UK purchases) and other online purchases.

I considered using it as my main account but ruled against it for a few reasons. The biggest consideration is that I don’t think they are regulated in the same way as brick and mortar banks so if the company goes bankrupt, any money you have in the account is not protected. Smaller consideration is that there is no facility to lodge cheques (we still get the odd one, like from older relatives for wedding and baby gifts). I suppose you could use a friends bank to lodge them and have them transfer but the deposit protection thing is still an issue.

Utilities

Electricity/Gas/Broadband/Mobile/Insurance

Bonkers.ie – I use this tool to compare gas and electricity every year. It’s best if you look up your annual usage to put into the tool, an easy way to do this is to look at the “actual” readings on your first bill of the year and then look at the final bill of the year that has “actual” readings (rather than estimates). I have found the online reporting tools by various providers aren’t accurate and then retention teams quote off different figures to try and convince you into staying. I have a spreadsheet which includes standing order charges and VAT rates etc so that I can compare the full picture when being quoted various deals from retention.

This site also includes Insurance comparisons (Life, mortgage protection, serious illness and health), and broadband comparisons.

Switcher.ie – This is similar to bonkers.ie but doesn’t cover insurance or banking comparisons but does cover mobile, broadband (inc TV), and gas/electricity.

Mobile phone

We buy our phones outright and try to make them last as long as possible. This allows us to have SIM only packages. I currently use An Post (they use Vodafone’s network so I have found the coverage quite good) and pay 20€/month for 7GB and 250 minutes and texts. My husband uses Eir as he gets access to the Eir sports package on his phone (since we don’t have cable) and 30GB of data and unlimited calls and texts for 30€. These are 30 day contracts or pay as you go type deals.

There is a new company called GOMO (owned by Eir) who also offer unlimited calls, texts and data for 13€/month. 30 day rolling contract and port your number. Mixed reviews of customer service so holding off on switching to this for a bit.

TV

Netflix

Internet

We’ve been with Vodafone for a good few years as we always seem to get good deals with them. Though you need to call and ask. We upgraded to fibre this year and now pay an average of 37.5€ for 12 months. 30€ for 6 months, then 45€ thereafter.

Library

The library is an amazing resource that so often gets forgotten about. No longer just for books. When our son was born I bought a few board books and just assumed the library wouldn’t have any due to the slobbery nature of little ones but they have a great little selection. They also have printing facilities and events for teens, parents like book readings (all pre-lockdown). I also recently discovered that you can gain FREE access to magazines and publications on your phone using your library card. Download the press reader app, select your local library, enter your library card number and create a password. Access a wide range of popular magazines including Forbes, Men’s Health, Style at home, House beautiful, Highlights for kids and many more. If they don’t have a book you’re looking for, you can put in a request and they will order it in for you. They also have some digital content like DVD’s, music, audiobooks etc.

Online Shopping

Honey – A Chrome add-on which automatically searches for discount codes. You save money on purchases you were going to make anyway. You also gain points from certain websites (like booking.com) which you can exchange for vouchers for places like Amazon.

Parcel Motel – A great option for getting products off Amazon that don’t deliver to Ireland. Parcel Motel gives you a UK address and they deliver to a location near you (usually at petrol stations). Just be careful of orders which don’t group items together as you could end up paying for multiple parcel motel stays for 1 Amazon order. I’ve been burned by this before. Even though you select “group items together”, sometimes the items are coming from different warehouses and grouping is not possible. Anyway, parcel motel costs 3.95€/package so a great option if it’s something you really can’t get at home.

Mortgage

CPCC mortgage comparison – A great website for comparing mortgage rates come renewal time. They also have mortgage calculators which I use for a lot of my analysis when considering investment property costs or paying lumps off my mortgage etc.

If you apply the lump sum section it shows you how much your monthly payments will be reduced by, by the lump sum while keeping your mortgage term the same length. If you apply the extra monthly payments it shows you how many years your mortgage will be reduced by and how much less interest you will pay.

Expense Tracking

YNAB – This is the tool I use for expense tracking. It allows you to split expenses so I can easily track expenses between my husband and myself. It also allows multiple budgets for different currencies. The reports are handy too.

I used to use the desktop version which had a once off fee but now they’ve moved to a cloud based paid subscription of 84$/year (~75€). I struggled with this cost but I’ve also struggled to find an alternative that suits my needs. A way to make this easier to swallow is to convert the cost into your hourly wage and see if it will save at least that amount of time per year in maintenance as it has the auto syncing and our historical transactions from the desktop version.

That said, the only Irish bank that supports simpler imports is Ulster Bank. However, their current account fees are exorbitant, so updating does take a bit of file preparation. Apparently, Oath is on the way which is a secure method of auto-syncing with bank accounts so that feature may be coming in the new year.

Some other FIer’s use an app called Pocketsmith which has auto bank sync using the Salt Edge function. However, I haven’t figured out how to track expenses in it where I assign a certain portion to my husband and another portion to myself. You can split expenses but only into different categories and not between people as far as I can see, the reporting visuals were not as intuitive as YNAB so I ruled this one out.

Travel – Accommodation

Air B’n’B – Great site for finding cheaper accommodation. If you don’t already have an account – get 41€ off your first trip!

Booking.com – Another great accommodation site. I usually compare between both Air B’n’B and Booking.com. As mentioned above, if you use the Honey chrome-extension you can earn points which you can convert to Amazon vouchers. So far I’ve earned 40£ just by booking accommodation I would have booked anyway.

Travel – Fights

Google Flights – One of the quickest easiest ways to find flights with easy search filters for max duration, stop overs, price etc. Also really handy to explore destinations by putting in one or two starting airports and seeing where you can get to for little money. Great if you are just getting ideas of where you want to go, or where it’s cheap to get to from your airport. They also have price tracking notifications so you can be notified when prices increase or drop if you have a specific flight/date in mind.

Skyscanner – Similar to Google Flights, easy to search multiple airlines and sometimes has better prices than Google Flights.

Travel – Getting Around

Google Maps – Google Maps is great for showing how to get around a new place. It includes public transport, walking and even Uber prices and times. Street view is also a great way to explore an area before you get there.

Rome2Rio – Sometimes better at the public transport options than Google Maps. It even shows much longer journey price and booking options from country to country.

Ex-pat/Cross-border Tax Advice

ETSI – A great resource for cross border tax advice as well as other personal tax matters.

Income tax calculator

PWC tax calculator – I use this tool ALL the time for my analysis on take home after taxes based on various scenarios. It’s great as it takes into account various credits and pension contributions etc.