Heart disease is actually more common than you think. A third of Irish people die each year from heart disease, yet it’s avoidable.

The foundations of the disease are laid down in our early years and studies show that 80 per cent of it is preventable.

“Cardiovascular disease starts years in advance,” says Dr Angie Brown, Consultant Cardiologist and Medical Director of the Irish Heart Foundation.

“And it’s usually not the fancy stuff that makes you live longer,” she adds. “It’s always about the basics: weight, cholesterol, keeping diabetes away and staying off the cigarettes.”

So what can you do to avoid it? 

Get Your Body Moving

You don’t have to run marathons or do triathlons to maintain a general level of fitness. Simply by being active for a sustained period of 30 minutes – five days a week you will lower your chances of getting a heart attack.
So, get that body moving! Join a gym, take part in an outdoor exercise activity or ditch the car and walk to work.

Eat your greens

You probably think that the Indian take-away you’re planning to have tonight will not matter in the future, think again!

The diet that you’re eating now is laying down the foundations for your future health and if you’re overweight you’re putting your heart at risk.

Ireland has one of the worst obesity records in the world. According to a government report published last year, six out of every 10 adults is overweight in Ireland and with children, it’s one in every four.

Our advice? Ditch the fried food, the desserts and the sugar in your coffee. Opt instead for a balanced and nutritious diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables and wholegrain foods. 

Step away from the wine

Do you enjoy a glass of wine or two in the evenings? Like to meet your friends for a few pints at the weekend? Or maybe you use alcohol to relax after a hard day at home with the kids?
It’s easy to get into the habit of drinking too much, but this is another important factor in the fight against heart disease.

Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol raises blood pressure, which is one of the biggest risk factors for a heart attack or stroke.

Women are advised to drink no more than 11 standard drinks per week and for men this number is 17. 

Quit smoking

Smoking is one of the major factors affecting heart disease. It increases blood pressure, decreases exercise tolerance and increases the tendency for blood to clot.

So, if you’re a smoker, quit as soon as possible. This is especially important for women, says Dr Angie Brown. 

“Women metabolise nicotine a lot faster than men, so a cigarette will increase a woman’s risk [of heart attack] a lot more than it will in a man,” she says.

“Eighty per cent of women who have heart attacks under the age of 40 are smokers, and of the women who have heart attacks under 50 years old, 60 per cent are smokers.”

Is heart disease in your family?

Knowledge is power. Know your family medical history and the signs and symptoms of heart attack and stroke. You are more likely to have a heart attack if other family members did.  

For example, you’re considered to have a family history of cardiovascular disease if your father or brother was under the age of 55 when they were diagnosed with cardiovascular disease, or your mother or sister was under the age of 65 when they were diagnosed.

You need to have your blood pressure and your cholesterol levels checked on a regular basis – and especially so if you have a history of heart disease in your family.

Take up meditation

A practice like meditation, which helps you to relax, will have a lasting effect on your health and limit your chances of heart attack in the future.
In fact anything which helps you to relax – yoga, deep breathing, even a leisurely bath – will lower your stress levels and helps to balance your blood pressure.

We were wondering recently about the impact that COVID has had on claims within the life assurance sector, and so we decided to do a bit of investigation by examining Irish Life’s (the leading provider of protection products in Ireland) claims data for 2020. While we have written in previous years about claims data, we were particularly eager to see the data for 2020, in order to see the impact that COVID had on the figures. There were 2 main headlines for us in the numbers,

1. There was a reduction in the numbers of claims notified & paid during 2020 vs 2019.  
2. COVID related death claims accounted for 4% of Irish Life’s death claims paid in 2020.

A reduction in claims overall

This is probably not too surprising, as the day-to-day activity in Ireland was so seriously curtailed in 2020 with two periods of very strict lockdown in the spring and autumn. There were less people out and about, less traffic on the roads and less workplace accidents etc. Claims fell overall by approx. 20%, with the number of death claims down from 2002 in 2019 to 1691 in 2020. Likewise the number of Specified Illness Cover (SIC) claims fell from 919 claims in 2019 to 701 claims in 2020.

This reduction was not as a result of a more aggressive approach taken by Irish Life, who accepted 98.5% of all death claims and 89.8% of all SIC claims. To give you a sense of how these number translate into euros, Irish Life in 2020 paid out €83,422… on average every hour of the year! This adds up to total claims for the year of €166.8 million.

Many people associate the claims from companies such as Irish Life only with life assurance on death. In fact in 2020, 51% of claims were for living benefits, improving hugely the quality of life of people who had got sick and survived.

Other interesting facts are that cancers are still the number one cause of claims, and these are largely as a result of a sudden diagnosis. The average term on policies on which claims occurred was 18 years, with 3 claims on policies taken out in 1967, over 50 years ago!

What about COVID-19?

COVID wreaked havoc on all of our lives in 2020 (and 2021), and we can see the impacts in the claims data too. There were 68 COVID-19 related death claims (4%) in 2020 with an average claim amount paid of €48,000. The median age was 73 and most had a pre-existing medical condition - typically cancer, heart disease, diabetes, respiratory illnesses, high blood pressure and dementia. 8 claims were paid to lives under age 50. The earliest death from COVID was in late March 2020 and Irish Life also paid a small number of income protection and rider benefit claims due to COVID, including those with ‘Long COVID’ symptoms.

So in summary, COVID-19 obviously figured quite prominently in Irish Life’s claims data in 2020. However the positive finding in the data for 2020 is that the number of claims overall fell quite significantly, even with such a high proportion (98.5% of Death and 89.8% of SIC) claims being paid. 

As with all areas of your personal finances, it is really important to review your protection requirements, particularly if your circumstances change in relation to your family, your career or your financial situation. We will happily help you review your situation and ensure that you have the right level of financial protection in place to safeguard the future of you and your family.

Tax is a necessary evil. If we want to live in a country with access to public services, taxation is the system used to pay for these services. We can (and do!) argue and moan about the different levels of tax payable and whether they are levied fairly. But at the end of the day, the money to be used for public services has to be collected somewhere.

While most people accept that tax must be collected, most people certainly do not want to pay more than their fair share. So as we approach the 31^st October tax payment deadline for individuals (17th November if paid and filed electronically), we’ve set out 5 ways that can help you to reduce your tax burden either now or in the future. All of these are perfectly legitimate and are not considered aggressive tax practices – they are simply good tax housekeeping that is sometimes ignored.

Claim relief for your medical expenses

It still amazes us how many people let this one slip by… You can claim standard rate relief (20%) for all the medical expenses that you pay for – typically your own, your family’s and in some cases where you pay other people’s expenses. Most medical costs qualify and when you add up all those doctor visits, prescriptions, physio sessions, hospital consultations, x-rays etc., they can amount to a tidy sum. On top of this, some dental procedures such as crowns and gum treatments also qualify. Your claim is reduced by amounts claimed back from health insurers.

The process is so simple. You claim as part of your tax return and you can even go back and claim for the last four years. There might be the cost of a holiday coming back to you, to help the recovery from all your ails and to put Covid behind you...

Make a pension / AVC contribution

With this one, you need to make a pension contribution payment in order to gain the benefit, but there is a growing awareness of the need to provide for our own retirement needs. The state pension scheme is creaking at the seams and simply must change if it is to continue to be the foundation stone of retirement planning in Ireland. We all need to save for our futures, and pensions are usually the most effective way to do so.

Pension contributions attract a number of tax benefits,

1. Your contributions qualify for marginal (higher) rate tax relief within certain limits
2. Your pension fund grows free of all taxes
3. You can take a portion of your fund tax-free at retirement, with other tax mitigating strategies being deployed in relation to the balance.

Tax relief on working from home

The upcoming tax bills are in respect of the 2020 tax year, which of course was hugely impacted by the covid pandemic. Some employers paid a working from home allowance for expenses incurred by employees who worked remotely. If not, you can make a claim for tax relief as part of your tax return and you will get money back from the taxes you paid. This refund will be based on a number of factors including,

• How many days you actually worked from home
• The cost of the expenses incurred
• Revenue’s published rate for calculating the cost of running a home office

Annual gift exemption

Another one to save tax in the future. When you die and leave wealth behind you, this often results in tax liabilities for your estate beneficiaries. One of the ways to reduce this tax liability is to gift money to your future beneficiaries while you’re still alive. Any person can gift another person up to €3,000 p.a. without a tax liability. So for example, a couple in their later years could each gift €3,000 to each of their children, sons & daughters-in-law and their grandchildren etc. every year. They don’t even have to be directly related. This could significantly reduce the amount eventually to be inherited and could significantly reduce or remove any tax liability.

Be clever with financial protection

Some people unfortunately still think that all life assurance policies and illness benefits are all the same. They are not. Some can be used for specific purposes while attracting tax benefits – for example Section 72 policies that are used to pay an inheritance tax bill are exempt from inheritance tax themselves. Others such as certain life assurance policies and Permanent Health Insurance policies qualify for income tax relief on the premiums.

This area can be quite complex. Give us a call and we’ll simplify it all for you and find the most tax efficient route for you.

And then there’s the rest…

And still there are many more reliefs and exemptions available, some of which may apply to you. So make yourself aware of all of the reliefs available. Whether you’ve kids in college, are taking a training course or are commuting on public transport or cycling to work, there are potential tax saving opportunities out there for you. A little bit of research or a conversation with us just might help you to reduce that unwelcome tax burden that you are shouldering.