SIPP or Pension fund

Brricktop69

Hi all,
Just after some advise, me and the missus are looking to put money away for retirement.
Ideally we would want to have this money in some form of joint account, looking to out in around £750 a month growing with inflation for the next 15 years.
I was considering using the Vanguard retirement 2035 fund as I already have a stocks and shares ISA with them. However I am not sure if these accounts can be in joint names?
The other option would be to open an individual account for each of us or a SIPP.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

jaybeetoo

You cannot open a pension in joint names

george4064

As jaybeetoo pointed out, all the tax efficient wrappers (ISAs, pensions and SIPPs) are all for individuals only, so by limiting yourself to joint accounts you are ruling out all types of tax efficient wrappers.

For retirement savings, you will want to put your money into a pension product. If you are still working your first port of call should be your employers pension scheme, which you should be a member of. An alternative is to setup your own pension (either SIPP or Personal Pension) with an investment platform.

In your case, you should take a holistic view of your retirement savings/plan with your missus and decide how and where to allocate your contributions to each of your pots together.

dunstonh

Just after some advise, me and the missus are looking to put money away for retirement.

It is sensible to try and balance retirement provision out.   So, that is the right thing.

Ideally we would want to have this money in some form of joint account, looking to out in around £750 a month growing with inflation for the next 15 years.

Pensions, like ISA, are an individual allowance. Not joint.   So, you do one each.

Are you employed?  What does the workplace pension offer?

Notepad_Phil

Generally it is best to try to get an equal amount into each of your pensions at retirement age, but there may be reasons why that's not possible e.g. someone who is not in employment can only put in a max of £240 per month (which will get £60 added on), or one of you may be on a higher tax rate so there may be scope there for the higher rate person to put in more so that the pension contribution goes further.

You've not mentioned current workplace pensions, is that because you're not employed or is there some other reason why you've not mentioned them?

Brricktop69

Thanks for the comments, to answer some of the questions asked.
1. I am in a company DC pension, I put in 9% as does my employer. this is the most they will pay until I get to 60 but I am looking to put an additional £100 a month in from next month. This will put the total monthly contributions to around £680. At present this fund has around £120k sat it it.
2. My wife works in a school on DB scheme that is forecasted to pay out around £9.5k a year.
We have around £1800 surplus each month of which I want to put around £850 - £1000 towards retirement, My wife is keen to put it in our savings account where I am keener to invest it.

Notepad_Phil

Given that your wife is in a very good DB scheme which just by itself is going to go a long way to using up her personal tax allowance then it may make more sense to put more of the contributions into your pension rather than just splitting the contributions evenly into two - you're probably looking at needing somewhere in the region of £250,000 to £320,000 in a DC pension to generate an income of £9.5k (with the higher the sum the more sustainable that income will likely be).

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with savings accounts but the problem is that it can be very difficult (if not impossible) to keep pace with inflation (especially for larger sums) whereas investing sensibly is almost certain to comfortably beat inflation over a 15 year period. The best of both worlds would be to have enough in investments to comfortably provide the income you're looking for whilst also having enough in savings to cushion you when the markets go on one of their periodic downhill roller coaster rides.

Albermarle

In the spirit of marital harmony , I suggest you split the £1000 a month between savings and investments . At the same time you could increase your pension contributions by more than £100 per month to compensate .
Make sure you also are fully up to speed and happy with the investments in your workplace pension , as often they seem to get forgotten about .