Self-employed Pensions

Amethyst1960

I'm 50 and have been self employed for the past 5 years.
I don't earn much so I haven't paid any pension in that time.
Can you suggest any private pensions with a good return?

Thanks,

Janet

Batchy

yes every private pension has had a great return over the last 12 months...
if your asking whats going to be a good return in the future... then your asking how long a peice of string is... good luck!

Alisonb1975

I am also self employed and opened a regular saver account instead with a decent rate. I will increase my regular amount every year. Obviously I wont benefit from the tax savings I would get by opening an actual pension, but for me I didnt want to take the risk. I may change my mind in the future but for now it suits me.

dunstonh

Can you suggest any private pensions with a good return?

As batchy says, it doesnt work that way. When you invest, you invest on the basis of future potential. As you dont have a crystal ball you dont know what is going to be best. This is why you should aim to spread it and there are investment funds that do spread the investment and automatically rebalance for you.

am also self employed and opened a regular saver account instead with a decent rate. I will increase my regular amount every year. Obviously I wont benefit from the tax savings I would get by opening an actual pension, but for me I didnt want to take the risk. I may change my mind in the future but for now it suits me.

As you are self employed you are no doubt aware that you dont qualify for the full state pensions. Just the basic. So, retirement planning is even more important for a self employed individual than an employed one.

You have chosen to use a savings account which is not tax free, doesnt get tax relief and whilst it doenst have investment risk, you have taken on shortfall risk and inflation risk instead. Whereas investments will zig zag in value and you dont know what the returns will be, in your case you know the returns will be insufficient to give you real capital growth and that you need to be paying in 2 to 3 times more than someone using a pension to make up for that. i.e. If you take a £160pm net pension contribution, you would need to be paying in around £500-600pm into savings