Pension critique

noclaf

I am changing employer fairly soon, decided to leave my current and primary pension with Standard Life due to reasonable charges, it's a DC pot.

Seeking feedback/thoughts on my overall pension allocations and choices, it's been difficult to resist tinkering but as this is the larger of my two DC pensions am keen to get the basics right. I have included my SIPP value (DC pension 2) so that all can be considered when appraising the allocations. My S&SISA and LISA are both invested into Vanguard Global equity funds and ETF's respectively, both 100% equities.
All the funds below with the exception of the Schroder fund are held with SL.
SL total value - £91k, SIPP with Schroder fund - £26k

My rationale for fund choices:
- The vast majority of my funds are skewed to Growth hence the Schroder income fund in my SIPP to provide some balance. However it's a expensive fund, hoping the Divi yield will  help offset some of the fees
- BNY Mellon fund, yes it's quite expensive relative to the Vanguard passives but has a lower US equity weighting ( 50% Vs 70% in the passives). I'd rather not use the BNY Mellon fund as a standalone Equities fund as then I am concentrating my risk in a single fund and overall fee's will be higher. This explains my reason for using 3 global equity funds, there is a lot of overlap but gives me comfort spreading risk.
- I added bonds this year but unsure how much value this is adding for 'diversification'...20% bonds or higher might be too high for my age? The bond fund is a composite of 3 Vanguard bond funds including Uk govt and inflation-linked
- Not necessarily confident the UK will outperform but more nervous about US Large cap (esp 'growth') due to Feds QT and EM does not appeal due to the geopolitical headwinds....maybe I am overthinking and just need to go All World and forget about it..who knows.

 I am 41, no DB pensions and no other investments such as BTL. As such between now and 57-60 I need to grow these DC pots as much as possible, typically putting away £1500-1600 per month but where possible I will try to increase this.

All feedback, positive/negative is welcome! 

Fund name	Total fund charge	Allocation %
BNY Mellon Global Equity Fund Sterling Income (GB0006779986)	0.62%	17.98%
Vanguard ESG Developed World All Cap Equity Index Fund GBP Acc (IE00B76VTN11)	0.18%	21.89%
Vanguard mixed bond index fund fund ( U.K. Long Duration Gilt / U.K. Inflation-Linked Gilt/U.K. Investment Grade Bond)	0.18%	4.78%
Vanguard FTSE Developed World ex UK Common Contractual Fund (IE00BYMSV959)	0.18%	41.56%
Vanguard FTSE U.K. All Share Index Unit Trust GBP Acc (GB00B3X7QG63)	0.18%	8.54%
Standard Life Property Pension Fund (Uk/Eu properties)	0.22%	5.25%
Pension 2(SIPP) Schroder Income Fund Z Income GBP (GB00B5WJCB41)	0.89%	21.90%

tacpot12

I think you have got quite a good arrangement; by luck or judgement the charges you are paying are quite reasonable. Generally your asset allocation seems ok, but I would say that you are investing too much in Income-focused or income producing funds (BNY & Schroder Income). It's just my opionion, but for retirement investing, I found growth funds were the best for me when I was in my 'accumulation' stage. 

I understand the idea of using of an Income Fund to provide some cash to pay SIPP charges, but if it is producing a lot more income that you need to pay the charges, you might be better of shifting some money to a growth fund to get better performance.

I think you will be ok if you follow your plan of paying in as much as you can. Your new employer will probably not use Standard Life for its pension, so it is likely you will have some new funds to consider when selecting where to invest your new pension. Don't forget to look into what contribution matching the employer will make. It would be best to pay more into your new pension if this means that your get a bigger boost from your employer.

Also check your state pension forecast if you haven't done so, and consider make up any missing years if you can - retireing at 60 is retiring 'early' according to the current government, so its less likely that you will make all the NI contributions you need via employment.

noclaf

Thanks for the input Tacpot12, I am fortunate that current employer matches 12.4% to my 8% contribution however I tend to contribute above 8% most months. The Vanguard passives after employer-secured discount are 0.177% which is great, the active BNY Mellon fund increases costs but not astronomically. My next employer will match my 8% with 11.5% so a reduction but can't have everything and again I intend to contribute above 8% and max out to the extent I can push it.

Originally my SIPP was all invested into HMWO then got nervous about US markets and switched to the much more expensive Schroder income fund which is UK focused...maybe I should go back to basics and stick to HMWO or VEVE which is marginally cheaper and higher Divi yield.

I checked my SP forecast earlier this year...I have 8 years remaining to get full SP....but of course anything could happen or change in the next 20+ years e.g: govt increase SP age or remove it worse case scenario

Edit: I checked my SP record and it says the following:
You have:

- 21 years of full contributions

- 27 years to contribute before 5 April 2049
- 4 years when you did not contribute enough

The 4 years where I did not contribute enough were during university.

So assume(and hope am correct) that I need to work another full 6 years before 2049 to qualify