Should I stop paying into my pension?

Onguard

Please can anyone suggest a solution?

I am 57 this year and have been putting £200 per month into a pension fund. When I got my last forecast from the pension people my fund had barely increased from last year. Should I just stop paying into the fund and put the money elsewhere as it seems unlikely the interest rates are going to improve before I am 60.

jem16

Interest rates have nothing to do with pensions.

It's the investments within the pension that matter and you don't mention these at all.

lvader

Most funds have increased massively from last year, I'd review and probably change funds.

dunstonh

Should I just stop paying into the fund and put the money elsewhere

Pensions have the same investment options as ISAs and unwrapped investments. So, if you put the same investment you would hold elsewhere in the pension you would get the same return. So, what do you hope to gain from coming out the tax free pension wrapper?

Often the ones that have not gone up much at all are the ones which have the guarantees on them. The value is in the guarantee, not the rate of return. The other reasons yours may not have gone up much could be because you are not invested much in equities (you could be heavy in cash given you age if you selected 60 as a commencement age and have automatic risk reduction). Or you could just have a bad investment selection. As Jem says, you have mentioned its a pension but you havent mentioned the investments.

Aegis

Onguard wrote: »

Please can anyone suggest a solution?

I am 57 this year and have been putting £200 per month into a pension fund. When I got my last forecast from the pension people my fund had barely increased from last year. Should I just stop paying into the fund and put the money elsewhere as it seems unlikely the interest rates are going to improve before I am 60.

What are you invested in that hasn't increased significantly in value over the last year? The only asset class I can think of which didn't have a good year and might feasibly be present in a pension portfolio is cash.

Batchy

if he has 60 as retirement age, and he is 57 it would take someone very brave to be investing in equities with only 2-3 years to go.

That said if I was 57 and a pension pot I was happy with hadn't gone down, then i'd be happy. For it to have not gone up based on forecasts on continuing my level of contributions, then I would have expected it to, considering the recession we have just been through and considering I wouldn't or hadn't increased the level of my contributions.

If we had just been through a boom, then I might be thinking otherwise.

PS for all the gains we have made on funds in the last 12 months, its only making good the dramatic losses that were made in the previous 12 months.

Whether you stay in equities is based on how much faith you have of the UK or World for that matter in having a double dipped recession. It will be interesting to see who our government is, and then I will personally make my decision on how dramatic the next few years will be for investments.

margaretclare

...but you don 't HAVE to take this retirement pot at age 60, or at 65. You can leave it longer, which will give it more time to grow.

No word from the OP as to just where the funds are invested. If they're under-performing then switch to another one which is doing better! He mentions 'the pension people' - which pension people are they?

Hargreaves Lansdown have a 'Wealth 150' list of the top-performing funds and switching between them is easy.