Too much information - or how often do you check your pension pot?

cfw1994

Like a few here (I suspect ), I check things far too often.

As I am in a vague countdown to a maybe escape from work in the next 6-18 months, I’m taking too much interest in possibilities and probabilities and fiscal performance

I *document* the pension funds performance quarterly, & have for years.....

msallen

I'm another who checks monthly to update a spreadsheet.

... However, whilst I'm not tempted to check more often that that for various old DC pots as that would require logging into various websites, a model of my SIPP is just another tab on my general finance spreadsheet, which is pretty much permanently open on my desktop PC in order to keep bank accounts and credit cards up to date. Hence its far to easy to have a sly look at that tab whenever I'm doing something else, so I have to admit that I probably take a quick look at my SIPP every few days.

lisyloo

We check ours most days (Novia have an online interface for SIPPs), but we are in our 50s and retirement is our financial priority.
Probably only checked it yearly when we were younger and had other priorities.

Daily is too much if you aren’t self-managing, but I guess it’s a bit like social medial, it’s there and it’s easy.
It is nice when you get a day when it’s gone up a few grand (and of course the opposite). It’s nice to look at your pot when your having a bad day or not enjoying your job.

[Deleted User]

bigadaj wrote: »

Any particular reason why you are in vls as opposed to an all world tracker?

There's a heavy uk bias to vls that some would argue constrains performance.

Over the last decade anyone who wasn’t 100% in S&P 500 “constrained performance”. Ten years prior to that it was the exact opposite. In reality, expected performance of various developed countries stock markets is the same snd the only impact is on diversification and volatility.

Home bias has theoretical justification as long as it’s not over the top. https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/icrrhb.pdf

michaels

Those who say they check more often because they are close to retirement, is that because you intend to buy annuities or otherwise derisk on retirement? When I run the cfiresim simulations I but in an anticipated retirement timeframe of 40 or 45 years and expect to keep the same risk profile as I have during accumulation. Thus no point worrying about short term fluctuations as I am not going to act on them.

(My plan if I have one is to retire in 2.5 years but I can see things might change in the next 6 months in which case I would need to think very hard about how I went forward)

lisyloo

michaels wrote: »

Those who say they check more often because they are close to retirement, is that because you intend to buy annuities or otherwise derisk on retirement? When I run the cfiresim simulations I but in an anticipated retirement timeframe of 40 or 45 years and expect to keep the same risk profile as I have during accumulation. Thus no point worrying about short term fluctuations as I am not going to act on them.

(My plan if I have one is to retire in 2.5 years but I can see things might change in the next 6 months in which case I would need to think very hard about how I went forward)

No.
Two reasons really.
We are early 50s so in the process of working out when we can retire. We have a face to face meeting with our advisor next year to do this properly. I suspect events (probably career opportunities) will dictate or at least point us in a certain direction, but we like to have a handle on it ourselves.
I expect DH will go early if he doesn’t fancy the opportunities on offer, but I could be surprised.
I would agree that daily is unnecessary but it’s like Facebook and probably a bad habit, reach for the iPad when nothing to do.

The other reason is keeping an eye on investment performance as that has a big impact on sizeable pots.
Again daily is totally unnecessary.

Will take proper advice but not expecting to de risk significantly with drawdown. After all most of it will stay invested for the long term if you expect 35 year retirement. Will ask IFA how he suggests this works but don’t see the need to de-risk most of it. I am expecting the strategy to be de-risking the expected short term funds.

To be honest I think for DH is partly desperation to retire as he doesn’t enjoy his work at the moment (It hasn’t been a great time for contractors to look for new work with the IR35 uncertainty we still have).

Thrugelmir

ggmf wrote: »

There are 11 funds in my SIPP (not including cash), only 1 of which is acc. The value of the SIPP has increased this year (not last year), my post was only indicating the cash generated by the funds, but shows the impact of the management and platform charges.

Paying a dividend doesn't make the fund income focused. Majority of global markets are low yielding. That's the nature of the underlying companies.

AnotherJoe

Deleted_User wrote: »

Over the last decade anyone who wasn’t 100% in S&P 500 “constrained performance”. Ten years prior to that it was the exact opposite. In reality, expected performance of various developed countries stock markets is the same snd the only impact is on diversification and volatility.

Home bias has theoretical justification as long as it’s not over the top. https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/icrrhb.pdf

except its not really home bias, its bias towards two handfuls of global companies in one handful of industries.

[Deleted User]

AnotherJoe wrote: »

except its not really home bias, its bias towards two handfuls of global companies in one handful of industries.

It is home bias and UK is specifically considered as one of the examples in the White Paper. And yes, home bias always means being a little overweight in certain companies and industries

Triumph13

Before retiring I religiously checked balances every week for over 4 years and plotted them on a graph. It worked for me as it got me used to volatility and made me a lot more laid back about everything.
Since retirement I check much less often.