Web developer Michael Houghton, who hosts The Irish Fire Podcast, with wife, Rachel and children, Jake (11), Daniel (eight) and Isaac (five). Photo by Don Moloney
In 2018, Michael Houghton, a Limerick-based web developer and investor, set out to build an investment portfolio that could enable him to escape the rat race at 43. But it’s performed so well that the 40-year-old father-of-three expects to be free to retire at the age of 41.
Houghton is a follower of the Financial Independence, Retire Early (Fire) method, which involves cutting expenses to the bone, avoiding debt, saving between 50pc and 75pc of your annual income and sinking the proceeds into an investment portfolio.
Houghton, who hosts the Irish Fire Podcast, started investing through his pension. However, “I had no idea about financial products and you get signed up to default portfolios balanced between stocks, bonds and cash, even though if someone is under 50, they should be 100pc in equities”.
“There’s all this talk about taking 100 minus your age and that being how much you should be in bonds. That would mean at 40, I should have 60pc of my money in bonds but you won’t get enough returns.”
Because Houghton wants to retire early, he stopped making pension contributions and now holds 75pc of his assets in property, having bought two rental properties in 2022 to generate passive income.
“If I had €800,000 in a pension, I wouldn’t be able to access that till 50 so I needed to balance that out,” he says.
“Being a landlord is a wealth-building thing but would I want to be 60 and retire into it? No. I don’t want to be dealing with blocked toilets at that age.”
