Pension advice required...

chocolate_loves_me

Hello,
I am currently a full time mum, with 3 pensions that I am not contributing into. They have values of £17,120.43, £5778.40 and £1456.00.
I have no financial knowledge so am not sure whether transferring these into one of the pensions would be more beneficial to me and what questions to ask if I do.
Ideally I would like to take the funds out now and have seen a thread somewhere that states you can do this by starting up a sipp and non sipp and by trading between them you can release the funds...however I have no knowledge of this whatsoever...
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thank you.

atush

For a start, have a look at your last statements for each pension. Find out how each one did and if one has a clearly betterperformance. Then check the annual charges. If anything isn't clear, call them and ask.

If one is doing a lot better than the other 2, consider transferring but check the costs of doing so- there will be charges and there could be an Market Value Reduction if one is a with profits pension.

Last, will you go back to work? When? You might have another pension then. And you and your partner could continue to pay into a pension in your name even if you are at home.

dunstonh

Ideally I would like to take the funds out now and have seen a thread somewhere that states you can do this by starting up a sipp and non sipp and by trading between them you can release the funds...however I have no knowledge of this whatsoever...

SIPPs are generally for larger investors who know what they are doing. You state you have no investment knowledge so using a SIPP would be pointless.

You either need to put the effort into learning about pensions and investments (about 100 hours for the basics) or you get an IFA to look into them for you and see if they are still suitable or can be improved upon.

Loughton_Monkey

Sipp or no Sipp, there is no way of 'releasing' the funds as you suggest.

Each of your 3 funds will grow on their own (given time) depending upon (a) the funds into which you have chosen to invest, and (b) the charging rates.

If you discover what these are, then by all means transfer the other two to the one with the lowest charges, and use funds with which you are most comfortable.

Without earned income, you are still able to contribute £2,880 (net) to a pension, and receive £720 from HMRC. It might well be worth thinking of how you can maximise your pension for when you retire, rather than how you can access the money earlier. Money you draw from savings, or don't put away, only goes on increased spending. All very nice while that lasts, but sets up a much steaper 'drop' in lifestyle to take when you retire.

chocolate_loves_me

Thank you for your responses I will look into transferring to the best deal.