Pension Diversification

Lungboy

If you're a hardcore remainer you might care that Mr Hargreaves donated millions to the vote leave campaign.

atush

Stupid politcal comment.

Lungboy

atush wrote: »

Stupid politcal comment.

To you, yes, but some people care about such things and would include information like that in their decision on where to invest their money.

Crystal_Pixie

Linton wrote: »

Various factors arising from your employers pension may be important:

1) Can you use your AVC pot to pay the Tax Free Lump Sum from the DB pension? If so putting sufficient money in the AVC to pay out the full TFLS could be very worthwhile.
2) Does you employer offer Salary Sacrifice? Again this could be a good reason for using the AVC.
3) May you want to retire earlier than the DB scheme retirement age? If so putting the money into a SIPP could be more sensible as you could access it earlier with no reduction in benefits.

I dont see how merging pots in HL saved fees. HL is one of the more expensive platforms. Most platforms charge on a % basis so generally it would not matter whether you split the pots or not.

so I have found out that I can take my AVCs as a tax free sum at 55.

Thanks all for the advice based on this it seems that contributing to AVCs would be a good idea.

Lungboy

Crystal_Pixie wrote: »

so I have found out that I can take my AVCs as a tax free sum at 55.

You might have to take your DB pension at the same time to do this, which will massively reduce it.

Crystal_Pixie

Lungboy wrote: »

You might have to take your DB pension at the same time to do this, which will massively reduce it.

Thanks for the observation but I don't think so. AVCs are managed by Aviva while my pension is part of the Rolls-Royce trust.

From what I can see (I have asked though) they are entirely separate.

My idea now is to try and pay as little 40% tax as possible.