Advice On How To Proceed at 41. Have done zero preparation for retirement

ewaste

@CheekyMunkey Well at least you've done the leg work and now know where you stand. Furthermore as others have tried to reassure you, the fact your on here and actually paying attention already puts you ahead of the game compared to the majority just sleepwalking into retirement. Your also fortunate to be on a good income so much so that you can plough a considerable amount annually into a pension and with the added benefit of higher rate tax relief.

I'd personally avoid additional contributions into NEST beyond whatever gets the maximum contribution from your employer e.g 5% Employee / 3% Employer. My rationale for that is the 1.8% contribution charge.

If your employer is a small startup there might be an opportunity there to see what they can do Pension wise e.g. salary sacrifice if they can see a saving although they are likely just to tell you where to go. If you see the company going places and your career with them also going places then I wouldn't be too hasty to change employer however if your looking for whatever reason you know to look into employer pension provision.

CheekyMunkey

@ewaste. Cheers pal. I guess there seems to be soo many options it's a little daunting on where to start. I can't see there being much chance of my job evolving anytime soon where I am. So I'd be looking for somewhere where I get maybe a better pension package and salary/bonus. Yes, the Nest pension isn't great to be honest. It's the bare minimum but I can claim the higher rate of tax relief I guess. Doubt it will be much though. I probably need to set up a secondary pension of some sort. Just need to work out which one. I actually think my company pensions have seen some pretty rubbish growth over the years. 

Albermarle

Whether Nest , other workplace pension , Sipp etc they all work by the same rules with tax relief.
So they will all have the same tax benefit for you .
The difference between them is charging levels and structure and choice of investments .
Nest is unusual as they have a high initial charge on regular contributions ( 1.8% ) but a low ongoing charge ( 0.3%).
However I do not think they charge this 1.8% on lump sum contributions, but you will need to double check as I am not sure .
For sure they do not charge this 1.8% when you transfer other pensions into them . So your alternatives are  
1) Transfer all old pensions into NEST
2) Pick the 'best' old pension and transfer the other old ones into it . So then you will have this pension and NEST .
3) Open a new pension and transfer all the old pensions into it . So then you will have this pension and NEST.
4) Leave the pensions transfer for now and just get on with adding more to one of them !
Choosing the 'best' old pension is not easy , although one of the later ones is more likely to be up to date with on line access etc.

Notepad_Phil

CheekyMunkey said:

So I've managed to at least track down all of my pensions. So after 20odd years of working with some gaps and some temp jobs I have amassed about 25k in my pension pot. I guess I was expecting at least one of my jobs to have been a lot larger. It wasnt. So I guess that will pay me less than my state pension at this rate.

Currently you might be able to make that provide an income of somewhere south of around £1k a year if you were at retirement age with £25k, so yes quite a lot less. But now you know where you are and you do have 20+ years that you can use to help fix this, both to get the £25k worth more and by putting more in - many others haven't yet had this realisation, so you're in a much better position than many others and it seems that you do have the kind of income that could really turn your position around given that in your 1st post you say you could put away circa £1.5k a month.

german_keeper

Albermarle said:

However I do not think they charge this 1.8% on lump sum contributions, but you will need to double check as I am not sure .

Unfortunately they do, both on the regular monthly £500 from my wife's bank account into her pension and a couple of large payments I have made with my debit card.

ErinGoBrath

german_keeper said:

Albermarle said:

However I do not think they charge this 1.8% on lump sum contributions, but you will need to double check as I am not sure .

Unfortunately they do, both on the regular monthly £500 from my wife's bank account into her pension and a couple of large payments I have made with my debit card.

They don't charge it on transfers in from other pensions though. So a loophole there I think?