OMG the fee's

sgx2000

It  is a managed fund with Aviva
I will look into it....

I am 62 potentially retiring within the next 4 years....
So its amazing how interesting pensions suddenly become...lol

dunstonh

While it was just a cursory look the fee's astonished me

So, you used a generic calculator with a range of assumptions. Rather than the real figures.     As we enter page 2 of this thread, we still don't know what these charges were.  Give us the figures.

If I have it right (probably not)  There is a set fee and a % fee based on remaining pot

Not with most pensions but is possible with some.

Albermarle

TELLIT01 said:

It's the different fees that are getting my head spinning too.  With the old 'company' pensions (for want of a better description), come retirement you got a letter saying that you can take X tax free and will receive a pension of £Z per month.  No separate on-going costs for administering your individual pension.  I'm sure they were there, but built into the package.

Now there are so many potential providers with differing charges and differing growth projections, it's difficult for the layman to work out the most cost effective option.  I fear that with many smaller pension pots, annual administration and drawdown fees will exceed any growth from investment.

There is a lot more difference than just charges ,  between a Defined Benefits pension , that you describe in your first paragraph, and a Defined Contribution pension which you talk about in your second paragraph.
They are totally different types of pension,  and the DB type ( now mostly only in the public sector )  are in general much better than the DC type, mainly because the employer funding is much less . Which of course is why the large majority of private sector companies have closed their DB schemes.

On the other hand it is unlikely even with a DC pension that charges will negate investment growth . Typical average charge will be less than 1 % for everything nowadays  and can be less than 0.5%

sgx2000

Given that most of the calculators suggest you will have 20 years of pension.... I wonder exactly how much of my pension they will ' have off ' .....

dunstonh

sgx2000 said:

Given that most of the calculators suggest you will have 20 years of pension.... I wonder exactly how much of my pension they will ' have off ' .....

Probably less than you pay in charges on a savings account with the bank.  The difference is one is explicit and the other implicit.

eskbanker

sgx2000 said:

Given that most of the calculators suggest you will have 20 years of pension.... I wonder exactly how much of my pension they will ' have off ' .....

This is all getting somewhat circular, in that it really doesn't matter what the calculators say, when using generic assumptions - what matters for you is what charges are actually associated with your pension, so if you haven't found that out yet, there's little point in complaining about notional numbers!

grumiofoundation

sgx2000 said:

Given that most of the calculators suggest you will have 20 years of pension.... I wonder exactly how much of my pension they will ' have off ' .....

If you do provide numbers someone will probably tell you - that is the beauty of this forum. 

Otherwise as above if you don't provide any numbers you will probably just keep wondering...!