Lots of pensions

Pobby

My wife and I have 7 different pensions between us.2 are old company pensions,3 frozen pensions and 2 active pensions.Some have a few thousand in them some have 10s of thousands invested.With 7 years to go before we use them I wondered what would be the best way forward.Thanks in advance.

brasso

For administrative convenience you may want to put them all together in a SIPP if you can (not all company pension funds are easily transferable or advisable to be transferred e.g. final salary schemes). You could then move them into whatever you wanted, including traditionally safer investments like bonds, though you should probably take professional advice on that.

If you prefer to keep them separate and in their existing form, you should probably make enquiries about where they are invested, and whether you have a choice of changing the investments e.g. from an equities fund to bonds, if that's what you wanted to do.

As always, it depends on your attitude to risk. The conventional pattern is that pension pots are moved into lower-risk investments the closer you get to retirement, to ensure that no last minute stock market crash decimates the value of your pensions.

EdInvestor

Pobby wrote:

My wife and I have 7 different pensions between us.2 are old company pensions,3 frozen pensions and 2 active pensions.Some have a few thousand in them some have 10s of thousands invested.With 7 years to go before we use them I wondered what would be the best way forward.Thanks in advance.

There's nothing necessarily bad about having pensions in various different places - it can reduce risk, as the people who transferred pensions into Equitable from other companies can confirm

But it's a good idea to do a detailed survey of your likely pension entitlement so that you can see if it needs rejigging and 7 years before retirment is a good time to do it.:)

Start with getting both your state pension forecasts update by applying here:

https://www.thepensionservice.gov.uk

This is guaranteed index linked income which should be the foundation for your retirement.

Then go on to check the old final salary company pensions.Write to the companies and ask for an update on what they will pay at your retirement date (these pensions should have been updated for inflation since you left) and what other benefits they have (eg index linking, spouse's pension, tax free cash).It is likely these pensions should be left where they are, but there are some circumstances where a move could be desirable.

Then check the frozen pensions.Write to the insurance companies (or employers) and ask for a transfer value, a current value, plus details of what charges you are paying, and what fund choice is available to you.If the nmoney is in With profits funds, check if the pension has any guaranteed annuity rates attached.

Collect the same information for the active pensions.

Then come back here and report, and we can offer some views.

wotsthat

What matters is whether you are on track to meet your retirement plans - this should be your first priority.

You could amalgamate all the pensions for convinience but this this needs some careful thought. There's no point having a single handy pension pot if it's going to deliver less in retirement.