Retirement savings account help

AuntyCat

Hi all


Since paying off our mortgage last year OH and I have been putting our savings into a regular account / premium bonds.


We now want to get organised and deposit our "spare" money into a retirement plan to take advantage of the tax benefits.
I've been looking around and there are so many - most seem to want you to go through a financial advisor, which I'm not sure is necessary at this stage.


I just want an easy to operate account that we can make lump sums into as & when w have it - low risk, that we can then access after 55 when we feel we have enough to last until we can access our workplace pensions at 60 (we are both 50 now).


Any ideas anyone please?

kidmugsy

You have to decide whether you're interested in investing - by which people usually mean buying "risky" assets, often referred to simply as "equities". That is, you expect the investment to grow in value in the long term but to have ups-and-downs in the short term. Usually people buy a "collective" investment i.e. some device that spreads the money across the shares of different companies. If that's your interest people here can suggest good ways to do it, where "good" usually means (i) avoid taxes, (ii) avoid high charges, and (iii) use diversification i.e. ensure that your money is spread widely.

Since you are interested principally in only a five-to-ten-year time span the conventional advice would be not to have a high percentage of your capital in equities because shares might not have enough time to recover value after a crash. Maybe 20% would be enough, maybe too much; opinions will differ.

If you open a "retirement plan" then you are looking at a personal pension of some sort, for instance a SIPP. There are various providers: examples include Hargreaves Lansdown (the one we use), Best Invest, AJ Bell, and others. Their costs are compared at the Monevator blog. These pensions are often called 'wrappers' because they are tax shelters that wrap up the fish-and-chips that are the actual investments themselves.

Your current use of regular savers and premium bonds seems to me to be pretty good for the "low risk", "cautious" or "conservative" part of your portfolio. It's rather hard to suggest what might best be held as cautious investments inside a SIPP. At the moment I'd be inclined to hold a little gold (in a form known as an ETC or ETF) and perhaps the US equivalent of index-linked gilts, known as TIPS. You can hold cash within a SIPP but it usually gets a lousy interest rate (as most cash does currently).

AuntyCat

Thanks for your reply Kidmugsy. I've looked at Sipps, but they seem to be too complicated for what we want. I don't know enough or have the time to choose my own investments.


You are right in that we have between 5-10 years to save, so can't afford to be risky.


I was just looking at the Scottish widows retirement account - it seems straight forward - that's the sort of thing I was thinking of.

xylophone

https://www.cavendishonline.co.uk/pensions/stakeholder-and-personal-pensions/aviva/

might be worth a look.