Bad advice - investments / pension

Marcon

steampowered said:

Do you have a feeling of how much 4 years of contributions into the council pension at ages 18 - 22 would have been worth?

Compared against the 4 years of contributions you made into a personal pension instead?

I am no expert on this and could be completely wrong, but we might not be talking about very much money here.

Actually you are talking about a LOT of money, because it would be four extra years of council pension based on your current (or final leaving) salary.

green_man

Did you take official advice from them?  I.e. did they do a financial health check/factfind questionnaire (or whatever it was in those days) etc, or was it just unofficial advice because they were there dealing with your parents?

Unless you went through the full process it would be difficult proving whether any advice was given and/or whether it was reasonable at the time.

AnotherJoe

Adrwilliams said:

Thanks for your comments. 
This is not about 'having my cake and eat it' it's about whether the advice to leave my pension was correct, which clearly, it could not have been. My job, at that time, was seen, pretty much, as a 'job for life' and that was my expectation.
Whether the 'alternative investments' made money or not, is irrelevant. The impact on my pension, surely, is a separate issue. 

Of course its relevant. To exaggerate an example with silly numbers  suppose had you been in the council pension for those four years, and suppose that would  be worth in todays money an extra thousand pounds a year in a "pension", whereas the investments you made in those 4 years instead (note, instead, so one replaces the other) are worth a million pounds "in an ISA".

Would you really argue that the fact a thousand pounds is in a pension makes it more valuable than a million not in a pension? Or that you are quite happy to keep the million but want compo for the "missing" thousand?

Because if you arent, then the first question (if we ignore the fact your time to dispute this probably passed 20 years ago) is what are the respective amounts? How much did you miss on council pension, how much have you got in your investments?  Whether one is in a pension or not is far less important (and money in a pension will be taxed unlike an ISA so thats another point against your fixation on it being in a pension)

 

Joey_Soap

The OP's too late, the burden of proof anyway would be impossible now. The system did work back then though. Mrs Soap was advised to transfer a blue chip deferred DB pension by an advisor to transfer the deferred DB pension to a Clerical Medical unitised with profits scheme. It was a disaster and after about five years I calculated that even then the shortfall of benefits was likely to exceed £250,000. I wrote a letter to the advisors who without question persuaded the DB pension trustees to accept Mrs Soap back into the scheme. I don't know how much it cost the firm of advisors. A lot, I guess. So the system did work but that was over 20 years ago.

(The advice back then was basically based on "everyone's doing it, why don't you?" Backed up by projections far into the future that I discovered the Clerical Medical with profits funds had never, ever got close to returning. Thank goodness that the internet came along for me in 1996 and made it easy for me to research this stuff).

Adrwilliams

Thank you, everyone, for the advice and opinions. Much appreciated.