St. James's Place in the news recently.

Bostonerimus1

michaels said:

Qyburn said:

michael1234 said:

How can they "steal" 20% without you noticing ?

Maybe he's thinking of an advice fee of 0.5% being taken every year for the duration. Although I'm not quite sure that's how the maths works, if I paid 2% fee and kept the policy for 50 years would that amount to taking 100% of my pension?

8%+6%+4%+2%

If it's a fee it will compound negatively ie for 2% it would be (1-0.02)*(1-0.02).....down the years, and like wise for a gain of 2% it will be (1+0.02)" (1+0.02)....

Bostonerimus1

People often have confirmation bias and a fear to look dispassionately at their financial results and there's also often a lack of mathematical knowledge to do the analysis.

If the OP is happy with the performance of SJP then that's fine for them, but they will most likely have paid quite a bit in fees for that happiness. If they had gone with an IFA they would probably have paid a lot less and if they had DIYed the cost in fees would have been even lower. However, we can't know what the returns of those different approaches would have been. So the only certainty is that you can control the level of fees that you pay if you understand the options you have. My approach is to minimize the fees as it's a guaranteed saving and then believe that I can manage my finances at least was well as a financial professional...there's that hubris and confirmation bias again.