Can I manage my own pension?

tyllwyd

Thanks to everyone who has responded - I know I'm pretty naïve when it comes to investments, but at least your reactions have reassured me that I'm not being unreasonable in questioning his decisions.

lvader

tyllwyd wrote: »

Yes, that's a whole other can of worms. But my OH has a decent company pension so as a family we've concentrated on his pension rather than mine.

That isn't really what you want because you could end up with one paying high rate tax and the other not even using their available personal allowance. If you leave it too late the only way to rebalance is to divorse!

atush

I agree,

First you should get both of you recieving enough to cover your personal allowance (with your SP) once you are both above this or near it, then you should concentrate on the one with the Best pension re:employers contribs.

Then, if the pension is so large that after SP age and income from other sources, they might approach HR tax, more should be put in the other person's pension )or at least all non tax free income transferred the BR tax payers name).

jamesd

When it comes to commercial property, do be sure you're not put off it by the drop back around 2008. The reason I mention this is that bonds are at quite high prices and commercial property still isn't. That makes commercial property likely to be a better place than bonds, particularly better than gilts with long expiration dates. The reason for that is that the high bond prices are likely to drop and not recover, because the high prices are driven by bank rates and fiscal easing that is set at levels not seen for hundreds of years. Commercial property has ups and downs but not on that sort of timeline. And it's likely to improve during recovery, just when bonds are likely to be doing the opposite.

In general it's nicer to be underweight in property going into a recession and oveweight coming out. You ended up pretty much the opposite.

If I wanted something fairly simple I might think of a global equity tracker fund (a FTSE World or MSCI World index tracker), a UK equity income fund (Invesco Perpetual's offerings are fine) and global and domestic commercial property funds, plus a strategic bond fund with a cautious outlook. More to it than that to it but this is one way of hitting the risk target without unduly high bond use.

I'm not at all happy with the high bond component in your current mixture. It's a bad time to be very overweight in bonds on the risk front even though they are low volatility.

tyllwyd

Hmm - so as far as I can see we've established that my IFA has made bad choices (or at least failed to make good choices) and put everything into bonds then forgotten all about me and left them there. It's so frustrating because the main reason for going to an IFA was to get the benefit of his experience and advice.

I can't help thinking that if I try to find another IFA, I'm going to have similar issues because my pension fund is too small, so they don't have the incentive to review it.

I can't decide whether to go back to him and to tell him to sort it out, or to do something myself through the Skandia platform, or whether to give up with him and transfer the whole thing out and at least stand or fall by my own decisions.

dunstonh

I can't help thinking that if I try to find another IFA, I'm going to have similar issues because my pension fund is too small, so they don't have the incentive to review it.

I disagree. Chasing returns is something most IFAs would not attempt to do. Most know that is futile. Yes, you can tweak and adjust via economic circumstances and rebalance to retain risk profile etc but going off on random punts based on past performance is just silly.

I do agree that most IFAs are likely to tell you that it is not cost effective to run your pension with active servicing. Investments suitable for the size of the pot should be used. Its not about incentive to review. Its about the cost of a review post RDR. The cost in relation to the size of the pot would be too great.

I can't decide whether to go back to him and to tell him to sort it out, or to do something myself through the Skandia platform, or whether to give up with him and transfer the whole thing out and at least stand or fall by my own decisions.

I think your relationship with this adviser is soured. He doesnt appear to be good at what he is doing and is falling foul of basic newbie errors. I do think a new IFA is viable option but not with active servicing and would expect suitable investments to match the size of portfolio and no active reviews. Equally, DIY is a viable option but you need to be careful that you would not make the same mistakes. Either you put it into suitable investments that dont need active rebalancing or you take on that role yourself and do your own research, due diligence and rebalancing.

jamesd

I'm not greatly impressed by the current IFA. Part of the issue might be the time interval of reviews, which need to be more driven by markets than the calendar if there is to be an attempt to adjust weights to market conditions. Annual reviews just don't cut it when trying to do that. Part of it is that I'm not greatly impressed by the investment choices, which seem to fit more into the random punts based on past performance category rather than adjusting based on economic cycle and potential.

Given the total value of your investments I think that DIY and some learning might be a good idea. If you want to spend some money you might try a subscription to the Financial Times on Saturdays for a while of use. With real reading of all of the main section and the Money section. You can skip the rest but those two provide education that should help.

If you don't want to learn, try the Jupiter Merlin fund range. They really do do active management and adjusting of weightings based on the market prospects.

tyllwyd

Thank you to everyone for feedback!

I've made the decision to leave my current IFA and do it myself instead. It would be great to find an IFA who could keep an eye on things for me, but I can't face the process of shopping around looking for the right person. I'm dreading having to tell the current guy that I'm off though, we've always got on well so I feel I'm being mean!

I've been looking at the providers mentioned in Martin's pensions article, and so far the one I like best is Fidelity, because the website is very clear and easy to use, and includes some advice and a list of selected funds. Would that be a terrible one to chose? (I'm not looking for rockbottom fees if that means a website that is confusing and throws lots of numbers at me, I want one that holds my hand through the process a little bit!)

dunstonh

I've been looking at the providers mentioned in Martin's pensions article, and so far the one I like best is Fidelity, because the website is very clear and easy to use, and includes some advice and a list of selected funds.

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I would never have picked that as an option. I also think it would be more expensive than Skandia. Fidelity includes no advice. Do not mix up marketing with advice.

atush

Have youlooked at Cavendish online? Have you considered doing some reading on investing?