Can I manage my own pension?

tyllwyd

OK, starting again ...

(yes, I am intending to read up on investing, I've been guilty of relying too much on my IFA, but since I want to get my pension moved sooner rather than later I have to just do the best I can for the moment!)

I looked at Cavendish online, and going to a Scottish Life personal pension through them seemed to offer the option of going for a governed range for now and the possibility of getting more actively involved if I feel more confident in the future.

Does that sound sensible?

zagfles

Hargreaves Lansdown are quite good if you're going DIY - their platform is easy to use and if you have any problems you can phone them and they are very helpful.

They give lots of investment hints and tips in their magazine which they send (some would say bombard you with), articles where people give their opinions etc, some say these are biased towards the funds they want to sell but I find them quite helpful.

For a smallish pot their charges are very reasonable, for the vast majority of funds there is no direct charge up till retirement, they just take the renewal commission which comes out of the fund charges (they usually give you a small rebate on these charges too).

dunstonh

Why not stay at Skandia? It can be cheaper than HL and they have online servicing.

tyllwyd

dunstonh wrote: »

Why not stay at Skandia? It can be cheaper than HL and they have online servicing.

Yes, I have online access at Skandia so I'm OK with that. If I went for that option, would I need to go to Cavendish then apply for a new Skandia personal pension via them, or would I be able to take over managing my existing pension plan by phoning Skandia?

EdGasket

Slightly O/T - Index-Linked Gilts
I fully understand and agree that Bonds and Gilts are highly priced right now and that they will fall in value when interest rates rise. Would this also apply to IL Gilts though ? I would imagine that higher interest rates will only come to pass to control higher inflation on which IL gilt returns are based. So would IL gilts fall with bonds or rise with inflation? I tried to look at this historically but IL gilts only seem to have been around in a period of continually falling inflation/interest rates so nothing to go on. In general I see IL Gilts as a better home for 'cash' than fixed-rate Gilts/Bonds right now.

zagfles

dunstonh wrote: »

Why not stay at Skandia? It can be cheaper than HL and they have online servicing.

Don't Skandia want an IFA?

dunstonh

zagfles wrote: »

Don't Skandia want an IFA?

To set it up, yes. However, once set up, you can ask the IFA to stop servicing and use the online service.

tyllwyd

dunstonh wrote: »

To set it up, yes. However, once set up, you can ask the IFA to stop servicing and use the online service.

Oh, OK, that makes sense, thank you - it saves the hassle of transferring and I think all the paperwork gets copied to me by Skandia anyway so I've got a fair idea of what they send out.

zagfles

dunstonh wrote: »

To set it up, yes. However, once set up, you can ask the IFA to stop servicing and use the online service.

So would the OP then have access to "clean" units without paying any advice charges? Sounds like a good deal if so!

dunstonh

zagfles wrote: »

So would the OP then have access to "clean" units without paying any advice charges? Sounds like a good deal if so!

The OP is probably on charging method 1. Clean funds are only on charging method 3. However, with trail commission rebated in full, that would largely negate the differences.