Private Pension - which?

  • Thread starter Thread starter smr
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Lol at paying IFAs a few percent a year. Over say 30 years and compounded that would be a small fortune. Pick a equities passive fund and I bet nothing properly diversified will beat it over 30 years. I think I pay 0.25% a year or something negligible.

Funds denominated in sterling have generally done very well since 2009.

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0.205% and 0.25% on 2 different ones.

Looking at their performance they track the benchmark very closely. 108% return in the last 5 years to September 17 alone.
 
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Just stop paying the FA fees if you don't think they are adding value. It should definitely not be "a few percent" anyway. That's a ripoff.
 
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Don't let an IFA manage your pension unless you have £1m in it. Waste of money. Fair better using a SIPP or the likes and putting it in a tracker fund/Vanguard LifeStrategy. Save your 2% to 3% for ongoing annual returns. They won't be able to beat those really.
 
Arazi said:
Can you expand, do you mean throw some money at it with the intention to not touch it for a long time, say 10 years plus?

How much money, £1000s?
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It is kind of irrelevant for the purpose of this thread anyway as you can't invest in bitcoin through a pension anyway (at least not directly).
 
dowie said:
It is kind of irrelevant for the purpose of this thread anyway as you can't invest in bitcoin through a pension anyway (at least not directly).
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I'm talking about just buying bitcoin on an exchange and then dont touch it for ten years, i was wondering if that is what @FishFluff meant.
 
Arazi said:
I'm talking about just buying bitcoin on an exchange and then dont touch it for ten years, i was wondering if that is what @FishFluff meant.
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it probably is what he meant, but the thread is about private pensions not investments in general and pensions are still useful things to have irrespective of any other investments you may hold
 
dowie said:
it probably is what he meant, but the thread is about private pensions not investments in general and pensions are still useful things to have irrespective of any other investments you may hold
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Yeah just to clarify, I was joking. Please do not put all your money in Bitcoin.
 
If anyone is paying an IFA 2% for the ongoing advice fee then you are overpaying. Typically they would charge from 0.5% to 1% depending on the size of funds under management.
 
yogibear88 said:
If anyone is paying an IFA 2% for the ongoing advice fee then you are overpaying. Typically they would charge from 0.5% to 1% depending on the size of funds under management.
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this......

Every pension thread/investment thread turns into an IFA bashing thread......

NO ONE is paying an IFA 2 or 3% a year......Stop with the nonsense.

Also the £1million plus comment is a load of nonsense. Most people use an IFA as they don't want/can't be bothered/don't have the time with managing their own funds. Use one of you want - don't if you don't - it's pretty simple.

If they aren't value for money - find another one, or do it yourself.
 
well to be honest 1% isn't likely to be good value either - going to them for some paid advice/consultation is one thing as they'll be up to date with various regulations etc.. and can probably suggest some useful things, wanting them to be investment managers on your behalf is rather dubious in general

I think it is very dubious that some are apparently asking for a % of your pension pot up front and some % (even 0.5-1%) annually on an ongoing basis for what is essentially going to very little ongoing work on their part and of dubious value anyway.
 
IFAs are a waste of time unless you are totally incompetent or lazy, all they do is set you up with a balanced portfolio and then cream 1% a year from your capital which over time could amount to 25% of your total growth (based on equities returning 4% on average over a long period). Anyone can do this themselves - if you're young you should have your money invested 100% in equities (and maybe a bit of property), just select a range of funds in different markets which charge you the lowest fees (usually trackers which can charge as low as 0.1%).
 
I've spent the last day doing some admin on my Pension as I am about to start a new job in the new year which offers a "final salary" type and was unsure to opt out and funnel the money into my private pension. Its quite difficult thing to decide really as the outcome is fixed at 1/49 of your salary paid per annum as pension for every year you pay in, eg.

Person with a salary of 49k would pay £350 pcm (8.5% contribution) and earn a pension that paid £1000.00 per annum (1/49 salary) for every year paid in, pay in for 20 years you have get a 20K PA pension for life.

I think in principle its good as paying the £350 into a private at 10% growth over the same 20 year period compounds up to £256K or there about and I doubt you could extract 20k a year from that for much more than 15 years.

Obviously though the private fund is an accessible pot which is an asset even in death, the other one is slightly different as some of it would die with me in the event of my death.
 
@LOAM

Is it a final salary or not? I.e Is it a Defined Benefits or Defined contribution??

If it's a DB - join in, don't bother with a personal pension. 99% of the time your better joining your company scheme (whether DB or DC) as the total level of contributions is always likely to exceed what you would pay yourself to a personal pension.
 
booyaka said:
Also the £1million plus comment is a load of nonsense. Most people use an IFA as they don't want/can't be bothered/don't have the time with managing their own funds. Use one of you want - don't if you don't - it's pretty simple.

If they aren't value for money - find another one, or do it yourself.
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No it's not? Anyone who prefers not to just throw money away are better self managing if they don't have access to some kind of company sponsored pension scheme. Unless there are significant funds which would support the use of an IFA to appropriately diversify and manage any ongoing risks, the IFA will never achieve better results net of their fee for a small fund than you would get from something like a Vanguard LifeStrategy fund. It's not about taking time. You just setup the direct debit and auto invest in whichever funds each month.

LOAM said:
I've spent the last day doing some admin on my Pension as I am about to start a new job in the new year which offers a "final salary" type and was unsure to opt out and funnel the money into my private pension. Its quite difficult thing to decide really as the outcome is fixed at 1/49 of your salary paid per annum as pension for every year you pay in
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Bite their hand off. You will find they need to contribute around 25% of your salary to give you that pension. Way better than most defined contribution schemes.
 
booyaka said:
@LOAM

Is it a final salary or not? I.e Is it a Defined Benefits or Defined contribution??

If it's a DB - join in, don't bother with a personal pension. 99% of the time your better joining your company scheme (whether DB or DC) as the total level of contributions is always likely to exceed what you would pay yourself to a personal pension.
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Its a Local Government Pension Scheme
 
Kemik said:
No it's not? Anyone who prefers not to just throw money away are better self managing if they don't have access to some kind of company sponsored pension scheme. Unless there are significant funds which would support the use of an IFA to appropriately diversify and manage any ongoing risks, the IFA will never achieve better results net of their fee for a small fund than you would get from something like a Vanguard LifeStrategy fund. It's not about taking time. You just setup the direct debit and auto invest in whichever funds each month.



Bite their hand off. You will find they need to contribute around 25% of your salary to give you that pension. Way better than most defined contribution schemes.
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I think I have decided to actually do both (bare with me). The new job actually pays at a level that allows us to kill the mortgage off in the next 5 years (ill be 49 by then). My current private pension pot if left dormant for that 5 year period will, providing it achieves the same level of growth it has for the previous 5 year will compound up to around 150K.

At that 5 year point the thought is to pay what we were paying Nationwide, into my private pension fund. If it maintained growth on that it would hit the magic £1m mark in the next 15 years, allowing me to quit at a sensible age and not worry about the state pension at all.

With investment and drawdown schemes now you can probably pull £2500 a month from that million pot and not even dent it, then I have the LGPS as well, and the missus's NHS one as well.
 
Sorry to jump on the OP's post...I currently have a small pension pot I opened with an old employer...think it has around £5k in and is with Scottish Widows.

Is there anything stopping me taking this money out and investing in something like Bitcoin or something else or do I need to move my money around other companies?
 
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