The wait is over! 🎉 The 2025 annual survey is now live, featuring several highly requested additions from last year including partner/household information, childcare costs, and more!

Everyone is encouraged to participate - higher response numbers lead to stronger insights.

If you notice any issues in the survey, please let me know as soon as possible so they can be corrected early.

If you’re interested in creating visualisations or helping analyse the results, leave a comment! 📈📊

We plan to leave this open throughout the month of December to get a critical mass of respondents, with results out in the New Year!

Finally, thanks to all those who helped QA the survey this year - too many to mention but you know who you are! 🙏

LINK TO SURVEY

  • parent

  • Thanks for running this again. Will be great to see the updated insights

    parent

    Cheers man, and thanks for your feedback on this!

    parent root

  • Some interesting and fun questions there. Anyone who answers 'yacht' should be banned from the forum!

    parent

  • Fantastic, I have been looking forward to this one coming back!

    parent

  • You data validation on:

    • How much are your annual management/maintenance/estate fees, if any, in €? * Round your answer to the nearest '00.
    • How much did you spend this year on home renovations, upgrades, maintenance, and dĂ©cor? * Round your answer to the nearest '00.

    Doesn't seem to be working correctly. It seems to be rounding to the nearest thousand rather than hundred.

    parent

  • This’ll be interesting! I’d be interested in doing some of the processing/analysis/visualisation too.

    parent

    Great! I'll reach out to you!

    parent root

  • Maith thĂș mo chara!

    parent

    Cheers for your help and all your suggestions! 🙏

    parent root

    Thank you so much. It is great to see how people are doing, and whether I am putting aside enough for the future.

    I feel both lucky and guilty I have a home and how hard people are finding it at the moment.

    parent root

    MĂ­le buĂ­ochas mo chara!

    parent root

  • Oh Jesus you just made me add up how much I spent on holidays this year
 granted I was away 7 times but Christ it’s a good chunk

    parent

    Hell I was barely away and it's still a crazy amount! Revolut have a holiday spend section somewhere and I was sick when I saw the total figure! đŸ€ą

    parent root

    Ah I created Travel/ Travel Food/drinks / Travel Experience categories for my budgeting so added them up for the figure. I just checked that figure against the Trips section of the app and that’s missing €3000 of spending 😂 I assume it’s the hotels/flights which would have been booked here as opposed to in the countries.

    parent root

  • Thanks for this, will have a look

    parent

  • Great work putting this together!

    parent

  • All done, great job as always

    parent

  • That time of year already! Flipped through without answering yet (I need to value my yacht...) but some feedback:

    The question: If you have little to no investment in stocks/crypto excluding pension, why not?

    Might do with an answer that is something like "I'm maximising investment in my pension rather than investments outside of it."

    What are you saving for?

    Could do with an answer relating to kids.

    parent

    Added these options! :)

    parent root

  • Great work. Thanks for doing again

    parent

  • Thanks for this!

    parent

  • Happy to help with results analysis if you need (am a data analyst)

    parent

    Sound, I'll reach out!

    parent root

  • Just addressing some early feedback from respondents from the last question:

    • For pension amount I don't know the total value so I put in 0 but it's much higher I just have no idea as I don't check - Please don't do this! It's OK if you don't know the exact value to a question, just give your best guess! You should be able to go back and edit your response.
    • Add retirement to 'What are you saving for at the moment?' - Done!
    • There are few few outliers where a preceding questions does not give all options. e.g. I do not send my children into creche/childcare - but I have an Au Pair where I spend 9600 a year. - That should go under the childcare cost question. I've added Au Pair to the description.
    parent

  • Thanks for organising again!

    parent

  • Nice one!

    parent

  • Thanks will fill it out now

    parent

  • Done. Some of the figures I was surprised when I filled in but I remembered I got married this year.

    parent

    Yeah I found when filling it in myself that it sort of helped me do a "financial sync" if that makes sense?

    parent root

  • It wouldn’t let me enter my net worth as negative - if I take all my assets and subtract my debts (mortgage), I end up negative.

    A bleak thought!

    parent

    Ooof sorry!! Will fix!

    parent root

    Can you try again now?

    parent root

  • Great work

    parent

  • Done! Looking forward to hear results :) :)

    parent

  • Annual estate/management fees should allow for less than €100. I’m only paying 30 quid a year.

    Otherwise the survey is grand - just enough questions to not feel like a ton of effort. Good balance.

    parent

    Fair point. I've removed that restriction now if you want to go back and edit your response!

    parent root

  • Thanks for sharing again!

    parent

  • Good one, I'll be interested in generating viz and insights as well. Thanks.

    parent

    Perfect, I'll reach out to you!

    parent root

  • "How much is contributed to your pension each month, in €? (Include personal and employer contributions)"

    People often make additional contributions during the year (eg from bonus). Consider changing it to "on average", or alternatively, "how much is contributed annually..."

    Good work, keep it up!

    parent

    Thanks, I added on "on average" to the question!

    parent root

  • All done thanks for doing this again!

    parent

  • This is probably a stupid question. But you talk about total compensation including bonuses, RSUs, pension contributions etc. Are you talking about employer contributions too. I assume so

    parent

    Yeah for sure, it includes absolutely everything that could be considered “compensation”. Employer contributions are often a big part of TC.

    parent root

  • How come there is no question about the percentage of total compensation comes non base pay like RSU's/bonus?

    parent

    That's derived from monthly take-home pay vs. total compensation. But also, I didn't want to get too into the weeds with this survey or it becomes too much effort to fill in.

    parent root

  • One of the questions was something along the lines of. Why do you not invest ... There wasn't a section for "I overpay my mortgage instead" I do this instead of investing. Might be worth adding

    parent

    Added! I think you can edit your response if you want to update to that!

    parent root

  • my name is jerry. i earn 170k im a software engineer

    parent

    Fair play Jerry!

    parent root

    thanks i’m from brighton

    parent root

  • Great work! Thanks for this!

    parent

  • There lacks a section for pay bonus or additional comp such as shares etc.

    parent

  • For RSU's I put what they were granted at, not what they are currently estimated to be worth since they have not vested, as that's what they were aiming to pay me, seem ok?

    For employer contribution for pension it probably makes sense to take tax into account, 1k from them is like 2080 added to your gross salary on the higher rate of tax.

    parent

    Your employer contributions should be entirely tax free. Can you elaborate on why it’s not?

    parent root

    That's what I was saying, for calculations that since employer contributions are tax free, each 1k from them into your pension is the same as getting 2k gross in your salary.

    parent root

    Errr no, you’re getting confused somewhere.

    If you’re earning 100k base and your employer gives you a 5% (5k) employer pension contribution on top, then the TC is 105k. Why in the world would it be 110k?

    parent root

    I was trying to let people know that employer pension contributions can be worth more than an equivalent amount of taxable salary.

    Say that two people can both have “€110k total compensation,” the composition matters:

    €100k salary + €10k employer pension match. The €10k pension contribution is fully tax-free.

    €110k salary, no employer match. To get €10k into your pension, you contribute it yourself:

    You only get 40% tax relief, €4k back but the other €6k comes out of your take-home pay.

    So even though both have “€110k TC,” the second person is €6,000 worse off in real take-home terms.

    If you wouldn’t contribute to a pension at all or have it maxed, a €10k employer match is worth about €20k in salary, because you’d otherwise lose ~52% to tax.

    Since I already max my pension every 1k I get from my employer is worth 2k salary to me, especially as I'd like even more to go into it.

    Not really a TC question but something for people to note themselves.

    parent root

    Yeah I get you, it’s just not a factor in calculating TC. Obviously total after-tax compensation can vary wildly depending on your forms of compensation e.g. a self-employed person could put a very large percentage of their earnings into pension and have a very high after-tax retention rate.

    parent root

  • Will the results be published separately for a single v with a partner?

    parent

    So household income of those with a partner vs. those without? I think that would be a key insight yeah.

    We haven’t started working on the results yet though. Let me know if you’d like to help!

    parent root

    Yes, That and household savings, investments and total asset value - debt

    I know I'll personally be an extreme outlier for one answer especially based on my income.

    parent root

  • Great stuff OP! Well done for running this again

    parent

  • Hey all, just wondering does the data collection run up to the end of the year and results posted in January? Thanks (sorry if I’ve missed this info in the posts)

    parent

    Yeah that’s the plan!

    parent root

    Are results coming any time soon? 🙃

    parent root

  • No accounting for buy to let properties here, other than property value for ney worth?

    Also, I reopened the poll to recheck the questions, but all the answers were blank again. Does it lose original answers if you reopen?

    parent

  • Problem with this is it’s provably biased to people who think or know they have a great salary. Ie very high earners. People like me who know they are being ridden sideways on very low salaries do not fill in surveys like this because it’s too fucking depressing to think about. This is like asking people to fill in a survey about how many thousand bitcoin they have now - only those with them actually bother. Fact it asks about RSUs/bonuses just proves it’s for the high earners. I don’t even know what an RSU is - apart from something very rich tech bros get from their rich American tech jobs.

    parent

    People who spend time on a personal finance forum are more likely to have money. That's true. This isn't supposed to be a view of the whole country, but people are always asking these questions and this give a feel for it.

    Last year people of all incomes filled it out. It was skewed above the average for the country though.

    It's a benefit to everyone to fill it out and get a view on their own finances 

    parent root

    Well TBF the plan is to publish this to other Irish subreddits too - am talking to some mods about that atm.

    But regardless, not everyone answering is in a great financial position and I’d encourage you to fill it out.

    parent root

    I filled it out and at the moment, I'm earning a bit over 40k and have no savings at the end of the month. It's depressing but my financial situation should improve in a few years once my debt is paid off .. provided there are no more disasters.

    parent root

  • No good for public servants, as the first page expects a numerical value for your pension fund, and PS pensions are unfunded.

    parent

    The description specifically mentions how to answer for defined benefit pension.

    parent root

    It asks for a transfer value. PS pensions don't have a transfer value.

    parent root

    I see. Is your pension received in the form of an annual payment + lump sum?

    parent root

    PS pensions in Ireland have a lump-sum of 1.5x salary and a pension of 0.5x salary.

    The 0.5x salary includes the SPC.

    parent root

    Public service pensions do have a valuation as far as the SFT is concerned. It’s just not something most but the most senior think about.

    parent root

    ChatGPT says it can be approximated by calculating (Annual Pension × 20) + Lump Sum.

    Is this correct?

    parent root

    It’s age related and depends on when you entered the public sector - pre crash pensions is 20 but post crash depends on your age at retirement - so eg 30x if you retire at 60.

    parent root

  • "What is your monthly take-home pay, in €? (after taxes). Forget your total compensation figure, pension contributions, etc."

    Found this question a bit confusing, many people make regular pension contributions from their monthly salary, meaning the take-home figure includes both taxes levied and pension contributions, which make them hard to "forget".

    parent

    Hmm I don't think I get you - it's simply what amount actually goes into your bank account each month so taxes levied shouldn't come into it. What would make it less confusing?

    parent root

    You're looking for the net amount received, I'd phrase it like that, "after all deductions, including taxes, pension contributions, salary sacrifice schemes etc"

    Btw because of how all those variables could change the net amount, I'm not sure there's as much value asking that particular question, compared to some of the others.

    parent root

    "after all deductions, including taxes, pension contributions, salary sacrifice schemes etc"

    I'm confused though, I did say that...

    I'm not sure there's as much value asking that particular question, compared to some of the others.

    I'd argue it's the most revealing question as it shows how much "spending money" people actually have and it can vary wildly from TC.

    parent root