Investment Advice??

Hoenir

If you are starting from ground zero. Then robo advice may provide a step forward. As an example there's PensionBee. Not the cheapest option but avoids expensive financial advice. The important thing is to get saving. What you contribute will determine how comfortable your retirement is. 

https://www.pensionbee.com/

dunstonh

Do you guys have investments to actually grow your money as well as investing into your pensions?

A pension is a tax wrapper.  Just like an ISA or  LISA.

Inside the pension, LISA or ISA, you have the investments.  You can hold the same investments in all three.    (as well as unwrapped - not in a tax wrapper - and there are other tax wrappers)

Generally, there is a pecking order and you use them in the pecking order that matches your objectives.    So, the more you have, the more tax wrappers (or unwrapped) you will use.  The less you have, the fewer you will use.

Macka09

Thanks for all the advice. I definitely need a lesson in this kind of thing. All I’ve ever seemed to do is earn money, spend money or keep it in the current account. Embarrassing really. 

saverkev

Robo Investment Platforms can also be considered for a SIPP

I have a Wealthify Robo Sipp and a Nutmeg one

Both have fared well over the last few years even taking into account Covid and recent conflicts which have affected investments.

I pay in by Direct Debit monthly into both.

An easy option - no investment decisions required though they will assess your personal risk view (I go for high risk - losses higher when in downward spiral but gains better when investments doing well)

Macka09

I’ve managed to setup my AJ Bell account now I’ve gotta try and get the other 2 pensions across. It is a minefield isn’t it?

Hoenir

Macka09 said:

I’ve managed to setup my AJ Bell account now I’ve gotta try and get the other 2 pensions across. It is a minefield isn’t it?

Investments are a minefield. Trading them is easy. Wrong selection, wrong timing can prove extremely costly. 

dunstonh

Robo Investment Platforms can also be considered for a SIPP
I have a Wealthify Robo Sipp and a Nutmeg one

Neither of those are SIPPs.

Robos, whilst simple, are not generally good value for money unless very small amounts.

Macka09

The reason I’ve been so dubious about getting into all of this, other than the fact it’s complicated, is because there seems to be a lot of people willing to charge good money for poor advice. 

A couple of family members have recently put there faith in a friend who works in finance and they’ve both lost £25k each in the first 3 months. 

I’m unsure what they paid in and they certainly wouldn’t opt for high risk investment so god knows what it was put into. 

Roger175

Macka09 said:

I’ve managed to setup my AJ Bell account now I’ve gotta try and get the other 2 pensions across. It is a minefield isn’t it?

Macka09

Well done. Now you need to start funding the pension account. Investments aren't really a minefield, you just have to have a clear understanding of things and don't invest in anything silly. As dunstonh has mentioned above, the SIPP which you have just opened is just a wrapper, a very special wrapper, because everything you pay into it will get an automatic 25% boost from the tax relief and any growth within this wrapper will be tax free (you only start paying tax when you withdraw the money - but forget that for now as it's a long way off and there are ways of mitigating the tax and some of what you withdraw [the first 25%] will be tax free - just concentrate on building up the pot for now).

To answer your more recent question about investments - once you put the money into your SIPP, it appears in the account as cash - this will earn a small amount of interest, but nothing much. What you need to do next is invest the money within the SIPP. This is where the buying of a fund comes into play. The reason you invest in a fund is that you need your money to grow, otherwise it will just be devalued by inflation. You could put the money into what's called a money market fund which will effectively pay interest broadly similar to the base rate, but even this is insufficient to give you good growth in the long term. A fund along the lines of the one I mentioned yesterday will give you a far higher rate of growth in the longer term - look it up on AJ Bell or just google it and take a look at the performance table for say 1yr, 5 yrs or 10 yrs - you will be pleasantly surprised! You will also note that growth is not a straight line and there are plenty of ups and downs along the way, which is why you should leave it alone and treat it as a long term investment - if you start looking too short term you will surely get you fingers burnt. The fund is a basket of shares, who's values change daily and respond to market conditions, but if you leave it alone, not only will the share values generally increase but many of the companies pay dividends, all of which help the fund to grow. In many years time you will sell some or all of the holding you have bought and it will almost certainly have risen significantly in value - this is broadly how you 'make' money within your pension.

It is also worth mentioning that you will find that many funds have two versions, an ACC or INC version - this simply means either accumulation or income. In your case where you are building up your pot it is probably best to stick with the ACC version, whereas if you were retired and looking for regular income you might well choose the INC version. They are effectively the same basic thing, it's just that the ACC version reinvests all the gains (dividends etc). Otherwise you would receive an income paid into your SIPP account which you would have to manually reinvest in something.

Macka09

I really do appreciate all the advice guys. 

I did spend a couple of hours last night trying to learn a tad more about SIPPs and investments. It is a lot to take in but I’m trying my best. 

I’ve messaged both Nest and Standard life to ask to transfer my small amount but hopefully this can be done fairly quickly. As I’ve got no credit in the AJ Bell SIPP as yet I haven’t had to choose a fund. 

Small steps.