pension plan - can anyone help?

aliyah

we need advice about pensions please.

my husband is 38 and works full time. there is no company pension and he has not started a personal plan either. In his last employment he paid into a company pension for about 4 years. This is now just sitting in a fund doing, I presume, nothing!

We have 5 children aged 9 - 17 and a £70K mortgage. I am 34 and do not work at present as I am a full time carer to one of our children.

we are anxious to start some sort of plan, although cannot afford huge payments at present.

can anybody kindly recommend the type of scheme we should consider?

many thanks for reading this

aliyah

dunstonh

We have 5 children aged 9 - 17 and a £70K mortgage. I am 34 and do not work at present as I am a full time carer to one of our children.

we are anxious to start some sort of plan, although cannot afford huge payments at present.

It may be better to look at paying the pension in your name. Ideally, your pension planning should be balanced equally between the two of you. If you do not qualify for a state pension in uour own right, then you can earn £7000 tax free after age 65 (in todays terms). If you have no pension income, then that tax free allowance is totally wasted. If it was all in your husbands name, you would end up paying over £1000 a year extra in tax just because you had the direct debit going into his pension rather than yours.

can anybody kindly recommend the type of scheme we should consider?

Small contributions, possible contribution holidays or variations would indicate ISA or stakeholder pension. Stakeholder contributions could increase your childrens/working tax credit amount but ISA wouldnt. However, lets not go there yet. No need to make it complicated before you even start!

aliyah

thanks dunstonh, very good advice there

i can see your point about using my name

will look into a stakeholder pension then, although i will probably be back to bother you again!!

thanks again

aliyah