We have vanguard 80 where to put £150 pcm

Alphamare

So hubby is putting £250 into vanguard and £150 into Royal London.

My work provides a pension but I don't know who with yet and they will put 15% into it on top of my salary not out of it. I want to put £150 pcm away myself but we don't want to duplicate any of the above investments.

Where would you put it?
Just doing some research and would appreciate your thoughts so I can research them and go from there. As right now I'm not sure what to do.

Thank you

redpete

Alphamare wrote: »

I want to put £150 pcm away myself but we don't want to duplicate any of the above investments.

Why not? Don'the know about Royal London but Vanguard is a nicely diversified fund that doesn't really suffer from 'eggs in one basket'.

Where would you put it?

Vanguard, but it depends what your investment objectives are.

dunstonh

If it is the latest Royal London product, then its likely that Royal London is lower cost than Vanguard and the governance on RL is highly regarded. It depends on objectives but Royal London is good value and a good product (assuming current version).

Alphamare

So should I use Royal London myself?

I don't know if his is current he opened it about 10 years ago. Only put a little in and currently it's worth half of what he paid in.

Isn't vanguard weighted a little heavily to UK?

dunstonh

I don't know if his is current he opened it about 10 years ago. Only put a little in and currently it's worth half of what he paid in.

Their current version was introduced around 2009 but was only a tweak on their 2005 version.

Isn't vanguard weighted a little heavily to UK?

It is an active management decision that they make. Some people disagree with it thinking it is too high. However, that is what happens with active management decisions. There are other active managed funds with passive underlying investments that have a different asset allocation.

Alphamare

Thank you

My work place pension is with legal and general.

It may be ?worth? Salary sacrificing £70 to bring me under the tax threshold instead of contributing £150 to a different fund. Then I would add £100 to a separate plan. Possibly vanguard but maybe the 60. I think there may be a cheaper alternative, it's expensive to drop feed such a small amount in? I could even use Royal London for the money but would need to get an adviser to set it up.

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. This is all a learning curve.

zagfles

Alphamare wrote: »

So should I use Royal London myself?

I don't know if his is current he opened it about 10 years ago. Only put a little in and currently it's worth half of what he paid in.

Are you sure about that? If you are why would you consider doing the same yourself??

El_Torro

If you're paying into your workplace pension through salary sacrifice then it's definitely worth making the most of this, ie any extra money you were planning to put into a pension going into your employer's scheme through salary sacrifice. The reduced NI contributions you'll be making make this a good option.

As the pot grows you can always transfer some of it out into a different scheme if you want to (assuming there are no penalties in doing this).

Alphamare

I'm not yet using the salary sacrifice option but I think this is what I may do. Will paying less NI reduce the amount of state pension I receive?

bowlhead99

Alphamare wrote: »

I'm not yet using the salary sacrifice option but I think this is what I may do. Will paying less NI reduce the amount of state pension I receive?

As long as you're paying the right amount of NI for the (adjusted) salary, and that salary is over £112 a week, you are credited with an NI contribution for that week (whether or not you actually pay one; you don't pay anything if your pay from that employer is under £155 a week).

But whether you choose to have a salary of £10000 a year and pay about £200 national insurance or a salary of £90000 a year and pay about £5000 national insurance, you don't earn a different amount of state pension, under the new Single Tier state pension system. So you get the most state pension per pound of contribution if you minimise your salary, but you'll need to stay above the minimum wage and if you only work a few hours a week you'll need to make sure you do enough to stay over the £112 a week.

zagfles

Alphamare wrote: »

I'm not yet using the salary sacrifice option but I think this is what I may do. Will paying less NI reduce the amount of state pension I receive?

No, as long as you earn above the LEL as above (about £6k a year), though I think there are some NI benefits still linked to salary eg SMP.