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Pension Planning

What Cisti tracks

The Pensions section is where you record your pension pots, log contributions, and project what the pot will be worth at retirement.

Adding a pension

  1. Open Pensions.
  2. Click Add Pension.
  3. Fill in name, provider, current value, and start date.
  4. Set your expected retirement age and assumed annual growth rate.
  5. Save.

Logging contributions

Whenever you or your employer pays in, record it on the pension's detail page. Cisti keeps contributions separate from growth, so you can see how much of the balance came from money you actually paid in versus the market doing work for you.

Projections

The projected value at retirement is built from:

  • Current fund value
  • Monthly contribution (employee + employer)
  • Assumed annual growth rate
  • Years until your target retirement age

The growth rate you enter is a real (after-inflation) return: the return you expect above inflation, not the raw nominal percentage a fund fact sheet might quote. Every projection and chart is shown in today's money, so €500,000 at retirement means €500,000 of spending power at today's prices, not a bigger number that's actually worth less once inflation has eaten into it.

Because pension growth is entered as a real return, the inflation rate (set on the Retirement tab) doesn't change the pension growth chart. It still affects other parts of the retirement timeline, like debt repayments and any income that isn't linked to inflation.

Projections are projections. Real returns will differ.

Tax relief

Pension contributions get income tax relief at your marginal rate (20% or 40%). There's an age-based percentage cap on how much of your net relevant earnings you can claim relief on. For the current limits, see Revenue.ie.

Tips

Update the fund value once a year, or whenever a statement comes through. Two things to know: small increases in monthly contributions compound into very large differences over a 30-year horizon, and any employer match you're not maxing out is free money you're choosing to leave behind.