Bloody hell - it's MELTDOWN on the FTSE

chucky

markelock wrote: »

I know where you're coming from, but for the last few years, the performances are so poor, that any contributions and tax relief are offset by the bad investments.

I think it's also a little bit of a lack of control that I don't like!
people spending my money for me! then driving home in ferraris!

Markelock - the control that you do have is to contribute lump sums instead of monthly contributions. Monthly contributions buy units on a monthly basis.

The Lump sum will allow you to purchase units when you decide to - hopefully when it is a good time to invest and the stocks are at a low price.

This is just my opinion and seems to work for me (for now)...

markelock

kennyboy66 wrote: »

If you are retiring in the near future & have a mainstream private pension, then most of your money will be invested in bonds / cash / gilts. If you have a SIPP & close to retirement and all your money is in shares then more fool you.

The bigger problem will be that if interest rates continue to fall then annuity rate will fall as well.

I think its a fantastic time to start drip feeding money into the stockmarket.

Sadly too many private investors panic and sell at times like this.

the problem is short term against long term, and knowing approx where in the roller coaster graph the market is. I quite fancy buying a few shares in banks, a few more pence off RBS, and I might buy the whole bank, but I looked at Barclays a few months back, and they've continued to fall, at least another 100p.

the only big winners will be the ones questioning the confidence, then buying up shares on the losses they create.

not sure why I'm so bitter...

Dithering_Dad

markelock wrote: »

I know where you're coming from, but for the last few years, the performances are so poor, that any contributions and tax relief are offset by the bad investments.

I think it's also a little bit of a lack of control that I don't like!
people spending my money for me! then driving home in ferraris!

If you invest in an index tracker, you wil be able to get very low fund charges and as they're not actively managed you won't be at the mercy of a 19 year old 'barrow boy'. The down side is that by their nature they will only provide average returns.

The motely fool site is a great proponent of index trackers (www.fool.co.uk) and has some very low cost ones. You can invest in exactly the same funds in S&S ISAs as you can in a pension so you just need to look at the pros and cons of these two investment vehicles. There is an excellent thread in the pensions board that discusses this (pension v ISAs, I think it's called).

There are no right or wrong ways to save towards your retirement, because it's always better to do something than nothing. However there are better and worse returns to be made on your hard-earned cash so it's well worth the effort in doing some research and deciding which is better for you.

One thing is certain, if you do nothing then you are going to rely on the state pension only, which is just enough to exist but not to 'live.

Pobby

It`s difficult to know what to do right now with only a few years from retirement. We have a mix of old company pensions and private pensions that were due to pay out £10k a year between 2 of us. The non pension investments I have split between 70% cash isas, high ( that`s a laugh ) interest savings, government and corporate bonds and 30% in equities which was set up to pay an annuity of around £12k a year. Not really happy about the equity bit but hey ho.

With us both getting a full state pension plus some serps we had hoped for a pretty comfortable retirement in particular being mortgage and debt free. I have to say, being a bit prone to panic, that the last few days has really spooked me.

WTF?_2

:rotfl:

Topov wrote: »

lol, and again! two for two, there DD!

Come on 'Topov', you must have more to say for yourself than that

Or are you having problems as shown below:



Multiple user accounts seem like a good idea until you try to use them all in an argument at the same time, yeah?

Dithering_Dad

borntobefree wrote: »

DD I can't provide the evidence because:-

1) I don't have the time to trawl through your stupid rantings/ posts
2) We all know you delete all your posts anyway and will have done this by now.

You DID tell posters not to put their pension money into cash early in the year.

As for the insults - water of a duck's back.:cool:

I will respond to this bit of trolling because it is related to the pension discussion we're now having in this thread.

I would not delete a post where I recommended using an S&S ISA, rather than a Cash ISA for retirement savings, simply because this is really good advice!

Retirement saving is typically over a long period of time and it has been proven that putting your money into cash over a long period simply results in the erosion of the value of that cash by inflation. Instead, people should use a traditional pension or S&S ISAs (Stocks and Shares) invested in the stock market.

I'm convinced this is correct advce and I'm sure that even !!!!!! would agree with it. However, to make sure I have created this thread over on the Pensions board: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1209067

I will happily apologise for giving incorrect advice if they confirm that Cash ISAs is a better retirement vehicle than using S&S ISAs (or pension plans).

I wonder if B2bf will reciprocate if my S&S ISA advice is vindicated? I doubt it.

neverdespairgirl

markelock wrote: »

I think it's also a little bit of a lack of control that I don't like!
people spending my money for me! then driving home in ferraris!

Pensions don't have to involve any lack of control. I control my own.

Dithering_Dad

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Pensions don't have to involve any lack of control. I control my own.

That's one of the many obsolete statements made about pensions, people still view pensions as they were 20 years ago. They're a very different beast these days.

You don't even have to buy an annuity when you retire and can instead leave the fund invested and use income drawdown to fund your retirement. The current rules are that you have to buy an annuity when you turn 70, but I suspect even this rule will be gone by the time most of us retire.

When you use income drawdown instead of an annuity, your pension pot is not lost when you die after retirement. Instead the pension pot is passed onto your wife or children. I think it is also free of inheritance tax.

neverdespairgirl

FTSE down again today - 1.2%-ish

borntobefree

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

I will respond to this bit of trolling because it is related to the pension discussion we're now having in this thread.

I would not delete a post where I recommended using an S&S ISA, rather than a Cash ISA for retirement savings, simply because this is really good advice!

Retirement saving is typically over a long period of time and it has been proven that putting your money into cash over a long period simply results in the erosion of the value of that cash by inflation. Instead, people should use a traditional pension or S&S ISAs (Stocks and Shares) invested in the stock market.

I'm convinced this is correct advce and I'm sure that even !!!!!! would agree with it. However, to make sure I have created this thread over on the Pensions board: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1209067

I will happily apologise for giving incorrect advice if they confirm that Cash ISAs is a better retirement vehicle than using S&S ISAs (or pension plans).

I wonder if B2bf will reciprocate if my S&S ISA advice is vindicated? I doubt it.

When I first joined MSE I clearly remember you giving posters the advice not to move to cash & gilts from equities, within their pension wrapper. The reason I remember this so clearly is that I couldn't believe that someone with a background in IT was so confident in their knowledge to provide such advice. This was in the second quarter of this year. Your reasoning was that the returns weren't good enough from cash & gilts and you would only do this near to retirement, which might have been good advice if we weren't in the middle of a credit crisis. Frankly I was astonished, particularly as you were so dismissive and mocked posters who suggested otherwise.


So I did find it shocking that you'd moved your pension money to cash & gilts, albeit belatedly, after advising posters to do otherwise.

I can only hope that posters ignored your advice.





Edited to add
Extract from your post on the pension board
"Incidently, by doing this I have prevented a fall of £7600 in my pension pot and I'm poised to move the money back into equities once I feel some stability in the market. I intend moving the cash to equities in chunks, rather than as a whole, because it's so difficult to call the 'bottom'.

Shame you gave advice to the contrary to other posters.

Extract from post #55

"Direct advice is frowned upon on MSE, instead she should have provided information and allowed the OP to make their own decisions"

Shame you don't listen to your own advice