Sipp newbie, can you pay in v small amounts

Brighty

Hi all

Looking for advice on Sipps (i think) and don't know much about them.

Wife currently receives carers allowance for looking after our son. She wants to start doing some part time work while he's at school, not sure exactly what yet, possibly bank hours in her old care job, or work as a personal assistant for a/some disabled people locally. Hours will probably be variable.

She can earn up to £116 a week and still receive the carers allowance, a penny over £116 and she loses it all (crazy system, why not taper it?). A way round that for any weeks she goes slightly over, is that she can deduct half of any pension payments from her earnings. So if one week she earns £120, she could pay £8 into a pension and still receive the carers allowance.

Is that possible with a Sipp, to open one with minimal initial payment, then pay in small weekly amounts as and when required, making no payment some weeks? What is the best Sipp provider for this sort of thing, low fees etc?

Thanks

Brighty

bigadaj

For very small amounts then you are looking at a stakeholder, minimum £20 start and you can then pay ad hoc from there.

Aviva and standard life are the two that pop up on a quick search.

Asghar

bigadaj wrote: »

For very small amounts then you are looking at a stakeholder, minimum £20 start and you can then pay ad hoc from there.

Aviva and standard life are the two that pop up on a quick search.

You cannot invest direct with Aviva or Standard Life, have to go through an advisor to invest with them.
Virgin Money and Legal & General allow you to start a Stakeholder Pension online direct but they are not good value for what you get.

You are better off looking at Hargreaves Lansdown.
http://www.hl.co.uk

They are the only SIPP provider that I know off that allow you to invest a minimum of £20 per month via Direct Debit. Have a browse on this forum for a suitable low cost fund (low management fees) to invest in.
They charge a platform fee of 0.45% but if you are only investing £20 per month then it should be less than a pound for the first year.

Asghar

Brighty wrote: »

Is that possible with a Sipp, to open one with minimal initial payment, then pay in small weekly amounts as and when required, making no payment some weeks? What is the best Sipp provider for this sort of thing, low fees etc?

Forgot you mentioned the above.
If you want to just start with a small amount then either Virgin Money or Legal & General are your only options.

With Legal & General you can start a Stakeholder Pension with just £16. You are not tied to regular payments and you can then add a minimum of £16 by cheque, as and when you want.

With Virgin Money you can start a Stakeholder Pension online with just £1 via Debit Card, again you are not tied to regular payments and you can then add a minimum of £1 whenever you want online.

tacpot12

I'm paying £15/month into an AJ Bell Youinvest SIPP.

alewin

Make sure that you know exactly what you are doing and maybe get some extra advice.
I always though that payments into a pension were counted on a yearly basis, not weekly.

cloud_dog

Just one point... You need to be clear on the difference between 'paying in' and a 'minimum investment'.

Going direct to stakeholder pension providers, for example L&G, you are likely to need to make the minimum payment / investment amount, i.e. £20.

SIPP platforms will allow you to pay in any amount you wish to; they may have minimum balance requirement so you need to consider this. For example I think HL you must have at least £1000 in the account.

Wookey

Other things you need to look at with a sipp is charges for dealing in shares (if thats your thing) or investing in funds a lot of which have minimums to open and to make regular payments into for example http://www.hl.co.uk/funds/fund-discounts,-prices--and--factsheets/search-results/r/royal-london-short-duration-global-index-linked-bo-income (picked at random) £100 to open and a minimum of £25 regular saving into it. Keeping it in cash would attract some interest but it would be very low. If she has a pension from previous employment could contributions still be made into it?

AnotherJoe

alewin wrote: »

Make sure that you know exactly what you are doing and maybe get some extra advice.
I always though that payments into a pension were counted on a yearly basis, not weekly.

Payments for tax reasons are.

But that isn't the concern. For OP's wife, obviously the amount put in per week is key since benefits are judged per week.

cloud_dog wrote: »

SIPP platforms will allow you to pay in any amount you wish to; they may have minimum balance requirement so you need to consider this. For example I think HL you must have at least £1000 in the account.

That statement is incorrect, for example HL have a minimum ad-hoc payment you can make of £80 so they are counted out for the OP.

p00hsticks

Asghar wrote: »

You cannot invest direct with Aviva or Standard Life, have to go through an advisor to invest with them.

I can't comment on Standard LIfe, but it's certainly possible for an individual to set up and invest monthly into a SIPP directly with AVIVA - I do.

cloud_dog

AnotherJoe wrote: »

That statement is incorrect, for example HL have a minimum ad-hoc payment you can make of £80 so they are counted out for the OP.

Hi... I was only using HL to illustrate that there may be other considerations when running a SIPP in addition to a minimum payment amount.

Liberty for example (who are administrators for X-O) do not have a minimum contribution amount.

EDIT: I'm sure there are lots of pension providers that do have minimum contribution limits but I'm not checking every one