Life's swerve ball ..how to correct it?

Rodders2409

Thanks Albermarle,

When you say ' two or three different funds'...I'm aware that the Aegon system allows me to move stuff around within the pension scheme, so I'm guessing that this is what you mean?

jamesd

Rodders2409 said:

there will probably be no further contributions, or at least I'm not planning on that. 

Does this really mean that you're not making the £3600 a year of contributions for both of you? If no income  tax personal allowance is left when withdrawing it makes a £180 tax gain, if all within the allowance £720. Assuming that only basic rate tax is relevant.

[Deleted User]

Rodders2409 said:

Thanks Albermarle and Mordko,
To be honest, given the scale of global impact around Covid I was kind of surprised that the funds were back to roughly wgere they were 7 months ago, as I thought it'd take much longer. I've had other things on my plate and didn't really look at these things very closely!
So, I should probably look at reducing UK equities to below 50% then, any suggestions of where might be best to place the investments?

I don’t like the guessing game. Anyone who tells you that he knows which country will outperform over the next 5 years is full of ...  And of you don’t know which country will outperform then you should simply buy the world - according yo market cap. 

Having said this, some home bias makes sense.  As I recall, UK makes 5% of the world cap, so you would be overweight by going 10 to 30%. Agree with Albermate that 50% is too high; you are too concentrated in a relatively small number of companies which are highly correlated.  

Now... Everything I said applies to equities. Bonds are different; they play a different role. Many (but not all) go 100% domestic bonds to remove currency risk. 

Albermarle

Rodders2409 said:

Thanks Albermarle,

When you say ' two or three different funds'...I'm aware that the Aegon system allows me to move stuff around within the pension scheme, so I'm guessing that this is what you mean?

Yes that is what I meant .
More experienced investors often transfer out of their old workplace pensions with the likes of Aviva, Standard Life , Aegon etc to a SIPP , where there is much more choice of investments .
However you have enough on your plate I think, so just maybe moving part of your current fund within Aegon to one( or two )  with lower % equity and/or less bias to UK could be a good step.