Consolidating pensions.

rosebrid12

So I am in the process of tidying up some accounts. Soon to be 49, full time worker.My Sipp is with Hargreaves which is near 23,000 now, it has delivered very well for me since 2016. It is in a broad range of funds, predominantly global, US and Far East. I contribute 200 a month into it. I have my ongoing workplace one with NEST, which I moved into a higher risk fund myself as the default lifestyle one wasn't doing much. There is near 4,000 in it now. My previous workplace pension Pension Bee managed to find and is currently with them. It is about 3500 and I am contributing 50 a month into it. It is in a fund that aims to return 4% and is doing all right. They don't charge for top ups but they charge 0.95% a year. HL charge 0.45% and admin charges. My question is, would you consolidate it into HL? I quite like having a different fund and have no complaints on Bee really. My aim is broadly to have some options on downscaling work at 57 if possible so I am piling as much as possible into pensions as I can now. Is it worth consolidating? HL is a broad church of funds all returning well barring a couple, but I can easily change them when it suits and I like how the monthly savings and choosing funds works with them.

Albermarle

 HL charge 0.45% and admin charges. 

HL have a platform charge ( a kind of admin charge ) of 0.45% , then the investments you hold have their own charges. So the total charge could be anything from 0.6% to 2 % depending on the investments you hold.

Pension Bee's 0.95% includes all charges.

Ideally you should be aiming for a total charge of around 0.5% .

I do not want to be too negative but a total pension pot of £30K at 49 is not very much. If you can afford it you should look to be adding more each month if possible.

rosebrid12

Hi appreciate it may not seem a lot but I only started full time work in 2016. I wasn't in a position to do much before that. 

QrizB

rosebrid12 said:

Hi appreciate it may not seem a lot but I only started full time work in 2016. I wasn't in a position to do much before that. 

That makes sense.

A very rough guide is that, when you start saving for retirement, your pension contributions should be "half your age" % of income.

As you started at 42, you should be saving about 21% of your income (including employer's contributions). How close are you to that?

penners324

I'd move away from 4% fund in PensionBee. Their high risk fun is generating far more returns.

Sounds like you need to up the payments from salary into pension as much as possible

rosebrid12

QrizB said:

rosebrid12 said:

Hi appreciate it may not seem a lot but I only started full time work in 2016. I wasn't in a position to do much before that. 

That makes sense.

A very rough guide is that, when you start saving for retirement, your pension contributions should be "half your age" % of income.

As you started at 42, you should be saving about 21% of your income (including employer's contributions). How close are you to that?

At the moment on a monthly income of around 1600 I am saving a combined 450. I am in the process of closing a small sipp by AJBell and consolidating into HL which amounts to £900.  Misprint, my HL is actually about 24.000.

rosebrid12

Also to the above I have a HL stocks ISA at around 10,000. 

QrizB

rosebrid12 said:

QrizB said:

rosebrid12 said:

Hi appreciate it may not seem a lot but I only started full time work in 2016. I wasn't in a position to do much before that. 

That makes sense.

A very rough guide is that, when you start saving for retirement, your pension contributions should be "half your age" % of income.

As you started at 42, you should be saving about 21% of your income (including employer's contributions). How close are you to that?

At the moment on a monthly income of around 1600 I am saving a combined 450.

Sounds like you are on track, then.