are pensions complicated or what

snaffler

they are a nightmare and no one gives you a straight answer all I want to know is if I put in X each month and my employers puts in Y each month when I retire how much will you give me a month back.

No one seems to answer this so I do not trust it.

For this reason I have chosen to save my own money in various accounts and funds.

If I ever find a clear guide to pensions I will be happy I have yet to fine one.

cheerfulcat

snaffler, with the best will in the world, no-one can tell you what any investment will be worth at a given point in the future. The best anyone can do is say, if you put in x and your employer adds y, and the fund grows at such and such a rate for so many years, it could be worth so much. There are a few pension calculators on the net - here's the FSA one.

Ed, are you sure about the annual charge? I have my notes in front of me where I compared HL and SD, and I have written £120-160 for SD's annual charges. No big deal, though; as you say, there's not much difference between them.

dunstonh

So HL will come in a bit cheaper for someone who will invest in funds only,

So, in that case, it is fair to say that people in that area should be looking at the hybird SIPP instead.

EdInvestor

cheerfulcat wrote:

Ed, are you sure about the annual charge? I have my notes in front of me where I compared HL and SD, and I have written £120-160 for SD's annual charges.

This might refer to Sippdealextra, the service where you can use the Sippdeal admin service but your own outside broker, eg Squaregain.This service has an annual charge.

But for someone who was trading shares fairly regularly and using a fairly cheap outside broker, it could still be cheaper than than the Sippdeal plain vanilla service, which has no annual fee, but a higher dealing charge with the inhouse broker. If you raraely trade the latter service is cheaper.

So it is fair to say that people in that area should be looking at the hybird SIPP instead

Don't know. Do the hybrid Sipps do drawdown?

Any idea of their charges, if so?

dunstonh

Don't know. Do the hybrid Sipps do drawdown?

Don't know. I doubt it. However, if you are not utilising drawdown, it doesnt matter.

Any idea of their charges, if so?

No charges on the wrapper. Just unit trust charges as per normal on fund supermarket

margaretclare

snaffler wrote:

They are a nightmare and no one gives you a straight answer all I want to know is if I put in X each month and my employers puts in Y each month when I retire how much will you give me a month back.

No one seems to answer this so I do not trust it.

For this reason I have chosen to save my own money in various accounts and funds.

If I ever find a clear guide to pensions I will be happy I have yet to find one.

Hi Snaffler

Wouldn't it be lovely to have a clear crystal ball to look that far into the future? No one has one, and no one can answer a question like that.

One thing is obvious - if you put in X per month and your employer puts in Y, both X and Y will be invested and will have the opportunity to grow. If you turn down the chance of the employer's Y (i.e. by refusing to join the employer's pension scheme) you are chucking away free money - like refusing a pay-rise!

Margaret Clare

margaretclare

Hi all

Have just received set-up details of my new equity ISA from HL.

'The devil is in the detail' and many of the small-print details in the Budget show that the Chancellor intends to clobber us every which way.

I had thought of not taking drawdown from the transferred stakeholder, of allowing it to build up a bit more. I don't think I'll bother. Even if I don't need this extra income I can always put it into an ISA. If it stays in pension funds the Chancellor doesn't want it to be inherited by anyone except a very limited number of people, and if my DH goes and dies before me it will all be wasted.

Margaret Clare

EdInvestor

Hi Margaret

I had thought of not taking drawdown from the transferred stakeholder, of allowing it to build up a bit more. I don't think I'll bother. Even if I don't need this extra income I can always put it into an ISA. If it stays in pension funds the Chancellor doesn't want it to be inherited by anyone except a very limited number of people, and if my DH goes and dies before me it will all be wasted.

I quite agree. I take the maximum income out of my drawdown every year for the same reason and reinvest in the ISA what I don't need. Even so, my drawdown keeps on building up anyway

margaretclare

EdInvestor wrote:

Set up drawdown benefits

SD 75
HL 75

So HL will come in a bit cheaper for someone who will invest in funds only, while Sippdeal will come in a bit cheaper for someone who has shares.This gap is pretty small, and would certainly be overcome by service issues for me if there was a difference there, so suggest you try and suss that a bit, Margaret. Worth asking also on the SIPP board on the Fool.

Try the "dealing demos" on both sites to see which you prefer.

Hi

Thanks for this info.

I only intend to do funds, not shares.

HL are favourite because, on this Monday morning, they have been quicker off the mark, and their letters etc have been very clear and understandable. They've already set up my equity ISA to start from 7th April and I have another letter from them this morning about the transfer to SIPP. So they 'get my vote', as the saying is!

Margaret Clare

margaretclare

EdInvestor wrote:

But even if you fancy trying to grow it, funds (or shares) that pay a good dividend income yield should make up a decent chunk of the portfolio, so you don't have to incur extra costs selling bits of your investment to pay your income .

Perhaps 4k could be in income funds and 1k in growth, with 1k in the cash account where interest would accumulate along with dividends from the investments to pay out your income.

If we look at the list of ethical funds here there is quite a decent selection, covering corporate bond income funds (Nos 1,18 have the highest income) equity income funds ( No 10 looks to be the best performer) and growth/tracker funds (No 26 seems to be doing well and there are also some trackers).

Thank you for this, Ed. I'm now breathing a huge sigh of relief. When my FP fund transfer actually went through a few days ago, I found that I had 2 investments already lined-up in the new H-L SIPP. Only I couldn't remember where I'd got them!!! I'd never heard of Aegon or Morley before, and there they are, nos. 1 and 18 on the Trustnet site you gave me!! Morley is actually listed as Norwich, and it's backed by Norwich Union, only apparently they want to get away from the 'insurance company' image.

Phew!!!! There was I imagining Alzheimer's , and feeling such a darned fool because I just COULD NOT remember where I'd got the names of those 2 funds from!! It's 2 months ago, a lot has been happening since then, but it's an incredible relief to know that I hadn't just imagined them out of thin air or something!

Best wishes

Margaret