Is this the right thing to do ?

madeinireland_2

Hi,

Using this forum I have finally decided to invest in a personal pension. I will be investing in the region of about £50-60k but i may invest a a few chunks rather than all in one go. I am 53 years old and intend to retire, from my current job at least, sometime in the next two years.

I have been looking at my own company scheme - which has not got any matching contributions or anythng like that for me (as i'm already in a different final salary scheme run by the company already) - long story but I can't do any more with that one as I'm maxed out on AVC's without having to buy an annuity which I don;t want to do.

The pension scheme has what I think are reasonble charges and uses Standard Life to provide the list of funds with negotiated rebates that seem good. I would be described as a lazy investor and so I'm thinking of a balanced passive investment - following an interesting read of Tim Hales "Smarter investing". I've also been advided on here that I'm probably better going down this route rather than a SIPP - due to higher charges.

The fund I am thinking of investing it all in is...

SL Blackrock Aquila HP Consensus Pension Fund.

It's fact sheet is attached.

http://www.trustnet.com/Factsheets/Factsheet.aspx?fundCode=K5F07&univ=P

The charges that I would end up paying are around 0.3%

So am I good to go ? or Am I making a big mistake ?

Anyone have good or bad views on this fund ?

Thanks for any assistance.

madeinireland_2

Apologies - I think I've posted this to the wrong section - I have now reposted in the pensions area.

Thanks.

kidmugsy

madeinireland wrote: »

The pension scheme has what I think are reasonble charges and uses Standard Life to provide the list of funds with negotiated rebates that seem good. ….

SL Blackrock Aquila HP Consensus Pension Fund….end up paying are around 0.3%

0.3% is certainly a good rebate on the 1% quoted at your link. Or do you mean that you'll be paying 1% + 0.3%, which would be dire?

It's about 80% equities, which some might think a bit on the "aggressive" side for a chap of your age who may be only a couple of years away from taking at least some of the money out.

Let me guess: if you do retire at 55 you'll probably not want to start your final salary pension early because of the actuarial reduction - so you may depend in part on this pension money. Do you really want to risk a stock market decline of (say) 30% in the next couple of years?