Understanding Money with Eoin McGee
Jul 14, 2026 · 42 min · 8 segments
One of the reasons Irish people don’t invest is simple: a lot of us don’t know how it works. In episode two, Eoin breaks investing down in plain English, from shares and bonds to risk…
Eoin McGeeHostFeliciaGuestDanGuest
But before we do that, what I want to talk about is what's investing? What does it look like? Let me talk to you about bonds first of all.
When I build a portfolio for a client and I invest in bonds, what I'm doing is I'm taking my client and I'm putting them together, typically with hundreds of thousands of other people.
And I'm not talking about me rocking up to the office in Prosperous on a Monday morning and saying, I must allocate my clients to the bond market.
I'm talking about you give your money to the Irish Lifes or the Zurichs or the New Orleans or the Standard Lifes or the Davies or the Conexams.
But you give them to one of these big household names and they take the money and they invest the money on your behalf into the bond market either themselves or by using another fund manager.
I want you to imagine that the Irish government wants to build a children's hospital.
And the Irish government can't rock up to a bank and say, give us a loan of money, we want to build a children's hospital.
And you, as an investor in the bond market, have become the bond market collectively with hundreds of thousands of other people.
And they go out to the bond market And they say to the bond market, we need to borrow a billion euro.
And what we're going to do is we'll either pay it back to you in five years or 10 years or whatever the term of the thing is.
In five years' time, we're going to pay one bullet payment back in five years' time.
In the meantime, if you're a bondholder, we're going to pay you what's called a coupon or a yield.
But before we do that, what I want to talk about is what's investing? What does it look like? Let me talk to you about bonds first of all.
When I build a portfolio for a client and I invest in bonds, what I'm doing is I'm taking my client and I'm putting them together, typically with hundreds of thousands of other people.
And I'm not talking about me rocking up to the office in Prosperous on a Monday morning and saying, I must allocate my clients to the bond market.
I'm talking about you give your money to the Irish Lifes or the Zurichs or the New Orleans or the Standard Lifes or the Davies or the Conexams.
But you give them to one of these big household names and they take the money and they invest the money on your behalf into the bond market either themselves or by using another fund manager.
I want you to imagine that the Irish government wants to build a children's hospital.
And the Irish government can't rock up to a bank and say, give us a loan of money, we want to build a children's hospital.
And you, as an investor in the bond market, have become the bond market collectively with hundreds of thousands of other people.
And they go out to the bond market And they say to the bond market, we need to borrow a billion euro.
And what we're going to do is we'll either pay it back to you in five years or 10 years or whatever the term of the thing is.
In five years' time, we're going to pay one bullet payment back in five years' time.
In the meantime, if you're a bondholder, we're going to pay you what's called a coupon or a yield.
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