Irish life expectancy is among the highest in Europe. The figure that should actually drive your retirement date is a different one, and it is considerably smaller. An Irish man who reaches 65 can expect around twenty more years of life. An Irish woman, around twenty-two. Those are among the best figures anywhere in Europe, and they are still improving. There is a second figure sitting behind them, and almost nobody plans around it. Alongside life expectancy, Eurostat publish

Five years out you hold the largest pension balance you will ever have and the least time you will ever have to recover from a mistake. Irish rules add a constraint that most retirement advice ignores entirely. You are 60. You have €850,000 in a defined contribution pension after thirty-five years of contributions. You intend to retire at 65. Then global equity markets fall 50% over eighteen months, as they did between 2007 and 2009. A 60/40 portfolio drops roughly a third. Y