Pension Benchmarking

KRfifteen

I'm going to sit down later and read those replies in depth, thanks for the input. FWIW I hope to retire next year (57), the fund is what I would call and off-the-shelf product that came in varying shades of risk, when I did a questionnaire on my attitude to risk it was suggested that fund 3 would be suitable for me, I'm now on 4. I believe it goes up to 10 which is probably quite a volatile ride. It may be that my attitude to risk has a huge input to how it's playing out. 

My take on this is that I pay my FA and the fund and between them I get the best advice and returns commensurate with my attitude to risk. Once I start looking under the bonnet I'm not sure what I'm looking at, hence paying for mechanics. That's a poor analogy but hopefully you get my drift... I just need to know that I'm at the right garage.

Linton

KRfifteen said:

I'm going to sit down later and read those replies in depth, thanks for the input. FWIW I hope to retire next year (57), the fund is what I would call and off-the-shelf product that came in varying shades of risk, when I did a questionnaire on my attitude to risk it was suggested that fund 3 would be suitable for me, I'm now on 4. I believe it goes up to 10 which is probably quite a volatile ride. It may be that my attitude to risk has a huge input to how it's playing out. 

My take on this is that I pay my FA and the fund and between them I get the best advice and returns commensurate with my attitude to risk. Once I start looking under the bonnet I'm not sure what I'm looking at, hence paying for mechanics. That's a poor analogy but hopefully you get my drift... I just need to know that I'm at the right garage.

Surprising that this was a single off the shelf product - it would be very interesting to know more about what it is.  Are you dealing with an I(ndependent) IFA or a restricted salesman from the company providing the funds?

ader42

Low risk = low reward.

My pot is higher risk but is larger now than in Dec 21, but I had to yawn through a 35% dip. 

dunstonh

KRfifteen said:

I'm going to sit down later and read those replies in depth, thanks for the input. FWIW I hope to retire next year (57), the fund is what I would call and off-the-shelf product that came in varying shades of risk, when I did a questionnaire on my attitude to risk it was suggested that fund 3 would be suitable for me, I'm now on 4. I believe it goes up to 10 which is probably quite a volatile ride. It may be that my attitude to risk has a huge input to how it's playing out. 

My take on this is that I pay my FA and the fund and between them I get the best advice and returns commensurate with my attitude to risk. Once I start looking under the bonnet I'm not sure what I'm looking at, hence paying for mechanics. That's a poor analogy but hopefully you get my drift... I just need to know that I'm at the right garage.

If you have an IFA, then the info and discussion on this thread is what you are paying them for.    At the moment, you are paying for advice but coming to the internet.

If its an FA, then restricted offering may limit that advice/information they can give you.  Some FAs are spoon fed by their tied company and most don't have the software/functionality to do whole of market comparisons (understandably given the restricted nature of FAs).

KRfifteen

I'm with a FA so he will be tied in to some degree with recommended products and advice. I'm low risk so low reward and we're at a less than stellar place in the economic cycle. More time required for the fund to settle down into average return territory ie Time in the market. I don't know enough about the individual parts of the fund making up the whole to take much from those comments. Getting a comparison is not an easy task as I need to compare apples to apples.

It could be better and could be worse I suppose. 

Thanks for all the advice. 

Linton

dunstonh said:

KRfifteen said:

I'm going to sit down later and read those replies in depth, thanks for the input. FWIW I hope to retire next year (57), the fund is what I would call and off-the-shelf product that came in varying shades of risk, when I did a questionnaire on my attitude to risk it was suggested that fund 3 would be suitable for me, I'm now on 4. I believe it goes up to 10 which is probably quite a volatile ride. It may be that my attitude to risk has a huge input to how it's playing out. 

My take on this is that I pay my FA and the fund and between them I get the best advice and returns commensurate with my attitude to risk. Once I start looking under the bonnet I'm not sure what I'm looking at, hence paying for mechanics. That's a poor analogy but hopefully you get my drift... I just need to know that I'm at the right garage.

If you have an IFA, then the info and discussion on this thread is what you are paying them for.    At the moment, you are paying for advice but coming to the internet.

If its an FA, then restricted offering may limit that advice/information they can give you.  Some FAs are spoon fed by their tied company and most don't have the software/functionality to do whole of market comparisons (understandably given the restricted nature of FAs).

So now we know the OP has an FA with what appears to be a restricted set of pre-defned portfolios can you understand the inusual spread of equity investments? 

JohnWinder

Broadly, there are two issues you and the rest of us need to deal with: what is the mix of assets we should have (the ‘asset allocation’); and what are the funds we should have to achieve that?
There are books on that: Hale’s Smarter Investing might be at your library; Bernstein’s Four Pillars of Investing, or The intelligent asset allocator; Ferri’s All about asset allocation.
As to which funds, I doubt Vanguard UK (and perhaps other fund houses) offers commissions to advisors to push their products, in which case you might be missing out on some of the better options with an advisor who won’t choose Vanguard et al for you.

Linton

JohnWinder said:

Broadly, there are two issues you and the rest of us need to deal with: what is the mix of assets we should have (the ‘asset allocation’); and what are the funds we should have to achieve that?
There are books on that: Hale’s Smarter Investing might be at your library; Bernstein’s Four Pillars of Investing, or The intelligent asset allocator; Ferri’s All about asset allocation.
As to which funds, I doubt Vanguard UK (and perhaps other fund houses) offers commissions to advisors to push their products, in which case you might be missing out on some of the better options with an advisor who won’t choose Vanguard et al for you.

No fund houses in the UK pay commissions to advisors. It is banned. You pay advisors to advise. Perhaps you are confusing the UK with the US. As most people in this forum are UK based perhaps it could help new investors if you make it clear that you are commenting on on the situation elsewhere.

I agree that having identified objectives the first question in investing is asset allocation. The second is not “which Vanguard fund should you choose?”.   To best achieve your desired allocation it seems sensible to me to consider the full range of funds available to you and not to restrict yourself to a particular fund house or fund style.

NlghtOwl

Agree with comments above, your allocation doesn’t have much in equities, especially USA. Developed world Equities do the heavy lifting of performance. If your risk tolerance is low then that’s okay, but only expect a couple of % a year over a longer term. This doesn’t mean you should suddenly change tact and go high in equities because if you get spooked after a drop then you’ll lose any gains, just accept the choice. Good luck 

Ciprico

....you're paying over 10k in fees per year to listen to a salesman sell you his limited products.

It would not be in HIS interest to recommend a low cost global tracker, with maybe a few years worth of "safe" money invested in individual short term Guilts or a money market fund,  to see you through the first few years of retirement if the tracker tanked....

Do the maths of what 10k pa, compounded over many years has actually cost you, and is continuing to cost you...

Take any of your individual funds and compare to a global tracker (example HMWO) and see how they have compared. They are unlikely to have beaten it in the past - or the future, especially when you factor in the fees. You can produce comparison graphs on morningstar website. Here's a global tracker showing the wobble and flat last year you experienced with your funds. (as did most people - however they were invested)



Using a fix fee platform and DIY'ing choosing funds, the SIPP cost would be iro  £120 pa