Private Pension - which?

krooton · 14 Nov 2017 at 12:36

I've got a SIPP with Hargreaves Lansdown, happy with how it has been performing (not that I have any real point of reference)

booyaka · 14 Nov 2017 at 12:37

LOAM said:
Its a Local Government Pension Scheme

really - no brainer. join now.......end of.

Hagar · 14 Nov 2017 at 12:46

GinG said:
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?

I think that you have to be 50+ (correct if wrong) and if you take it from a pension source, you attract tax at your marginal rate, if a tax payer, 20 or 40%.

booyaka · 14 Nov 2017 at 12:50

nkata said:
I think that you have to be 50+ (correct if wrong) and if you take it from a pension source, you attract tax at your marginal rate, if a tax payer, 20 or 40%.

55 years old - 25% tax free and rest is taxable as income. Nothing you can do with it just now in terms of withdrawing it. You can switch providers but that's it

The_Abyss · 14 Nov 2017 at 17:07

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.

weringo said:
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%).

Other research is probably available, but this disagrees with you: https://www.ftadviser.com/your-industry/2017/07/13/financial-advice-leaves-people-40k-better-off/

I guess it all depends on what you want and expect from an IFA. If you've the means to pay and the wealth to manage, the vast majority are well worth their fee. Are you going to see value from transferring your £10,000 pension and then paying in £100 a month while not engaging the IFA to look at any other areas of your financial affairs? Probably not. Well, definitely not actually, as no IFA would agree to engage with you on those terms, unless they were entirely fixed fee based and even then they wouldn't be able to justify it.