Advice please

Pobby

Thanks for getting back top me.What details do you feel I need to post please?

Pal

It is clear that the original poster did not mean to cause anyone offence with the wording of their post. Personally I am happy to state that I am also "not altogether trusting" of IFAs or advisers of any kind, estate agents, GPs, dentists and so on. As EdInvestor has said, it is entirely appropriate to want to find out more so that an adviser can be questioned in detail and the right questions asked on the advice they have provided.

Part of my job is to encourage my Trustee clients to go on training courses so that they can question the advice I give them. (It also makes my job easier if I don't have to keep explaining the basics over and over again. )

ReportInvestor wrote:

The pension board moderator has also been an IFA, so watch your language .

They do get everywhere, even MSE, but not all IFAs are bad people.

If you were referring to me, I have never been an IFA. I have no idea whether any of the other BoardGuides or offical Moderators have ever been IFAs in the past.

EdInvestor

Pal

Are you having a larf?

Boardguide for the Pensions, Annuities and Retirement Planning board.
Member of the £2 club. Savings so far = £1.37.

:rotfl:

:beer:

ReportInvestor

Pal wrote:

If you were referring to me, I have never been an IFA.

I was making that mistake. And yet you seemed to have many of the qualities that ilk.

Pal

EdInvestor wrote:

Pal

Are you having a larf?

:rotfl:

:beer:

When my savings reach my £2 target, I am going to spend it on sweets.

margaretclare

Pobby wrote:

Firstly my I apologise for any offence I may have caused.I am sure there are good IFA`s out there and my bad experiences are not the norm.Being pretty naive on the investment front it is easy to be trusting,in particular when advice is being offered from ones own bank.

Pobby, don't ever go to your own bank (or any bank) for investment advice. They will only sell you their products - in fact it's all they are allowed to sell you!

An IFA can look at the whole picture and the whole marketplace. This obviously takes time and depends also on the information that you give the IFA.

Having said that, I am a great believer in reading around and finding out as much as possible yourself.

I'm interested in Mrs Pobby's pensions situation - you see, I feel passionately that women should take responsibility for their own pensions provision, quite opposite to the culture of the times in which I grew up!! You say she has an 'old pension plan'. It would be worth dragging this out and giving it a good look, dusting it off so to speak. Maybe it has grown wherever it is, possibly it might do better if it was transferred somewhere else.

Don't ever invest in endowments - they were the 'flavour of the month' some years ago, but not now.

Of course, depending on how much you need to live on when you both reach those magic 'retirement ages', you may be able to leave some of your investments to grow for longer. After all, you are looking at another 30 - 40 years of life, and in those years none of us knows what we may need, what changes may come along in taxation, living costs etc, or people's expectations. Too many people (especially women) are retiring now and will have the same income to live on for the rest of their lives. Even with annual government increases these won't keep pace with ordinary living costs. A good example is what's happening now. State pensions are rising in line with inflation, but council tax, heating costs and water bills are all separately increasing at a rate above inflation. Even with only my GCSE maths I can see that people are going to be worse off.

Margaret Clare

whiteflag_3

ReportInvestor wrote:

I was making that mistake. And yet you seemed to have many of the qualities that ilk.

You mean you were making lots of assumptions again :rolleyes:

What are the qualities of the IFAs who post on this site?

Heres a few to help get you started-

Charitable
Balanced
Honest
Careful- not to give advice without knowing the full facts
Helpful-Always wanting to make sure posters dont loose money by following advice from "amateurs"



Oops forgot sense of humour

Edna_Bucket_2

whiteflag wrote:

You mean you were making lots of assumptions again :rolleyes:

What are the qualities of the IFAs who post on this site?

Did you leave out "making sweeping generalisations" from those qualities whiteflag?

Only kidding. I can't comment on all the IFAs lurking here, as some clearly don't let slip their actual profession (I wonder why?)

But if you are talking about the "profession" as a whole in the UK, I guess it's like most other professions - full of the good, bad, indifferent in varying measures.

Sure, there are some good helpful IFAs on here - though sometimes they tend to get a bit "sniffy" from what I've seen even if amateurs give accurate advice.

At the other extreme in the outside world there are some IFAs who would most thoroughly deserve the attentions of a TV secret agent going over like the estate agents recently had, and which has been discussed here at MSE - at the very least those people would deserve to have the word "Independent" stripped from their title. Mind you, if that happened, they'd just be "FA" of course...:D:D

whiteflag_3

Edna_Bucket wrote:

Did you leave out "making sweeping generalisations" from those qualities whiteflag?

Only kidding. I can't comment on all the IFAs lurking here, as some clearly don't let slip their actual profession (I wonder why?)

But if you are talking about the "profession" as a whole in the UK, I guess it's like most other professions - full of the good, bad, indifferent in varying measures.

Sure, there are some good helpful IFAs on here - though sometimes they tend to get a bit "sniffy" from what I've seen even if amateurs give accurate advice.

At the other extreme in the outside world there are some IFAs who would most thoroughly deserve the attentions of a TV secret agent going over like the estate agents recently had, and which has been discussed here at MSE - at the very least those people would deserve to have the word "Independent" stripped from their title. Mind you, if that happened, they'd just be "FA" of course...:D:D

Yes you are right, i would add however you are unlikely to get rogue Ifas on this site on the basis that they wouldnt do anything unless they were going to make money out of it!

Thats why i cant understand why the investor twins keep knocking the IFAs who generously give their professional views for free.

EdInvestor

Pal wrote:

Part of my job is to encourage my Trustee clients to go on training courses so that they can question the advice I give them. (It also makes my job easier if I don't have to keep explaining the basics over and over again. )

Looks like Pal is a "benefit consultant" aka actuary.