Changing fund in Aegon Pension

fletch2ndTime

Hello all

Am looking for guidance please. My husband has a small pension with Standard Life, maybe £10,000.  He has another pension with just shy of £90,000 with Aegon.  He wants to transfer the Standard Life to Aegon.  As he has had the Aegon for some years now he needs to choose a fund to replace With Profits fund.  The other is Scottish Equitable Mixed fund I think.

he has spent years paying £30 a month into it and it is now quite healthy when you think of it.  He is 61 so another 6 years to save. He has upped his contribution to £100pm also but needs to choose another fund

Should we just be looking at the top performing fund over last 10 years and go there o should we be seeking more nuanced guidance. 

Also, I note £900 in annual fees. Am I misreading that?

I would be grateful for any guidance

fletch2ndTime

I have moved this from another part of forum on advice, thank you.

I had an answer and yes, since turning 60, he is more focused .  He has checked his state pension.  Been in full time employment since forever

LHW99

fletch2ndTime said:

I have moved this from another part of forum on advice, thank you.

I had an answer and yes, since turning 60, he is more focused .  He has checked his state pension.  Been in full time employment since forever

He has read all his forecast? Because the oft reported "35 years" isn't relevant unless you started work after 2016. People here have needed a range of between around 29 and 50 years to get a full state pension.

dunstonh

Also, I note £900 in annual fees. Am I misreading that?

Probably not.  if its an old pension scheme back from the days when 1% was the benchmark, then 1% of £90k would be £900.

If both the Std Life and Aegon pensions are old then neither is likely to be optimal.  Although not all old options are bad.  There is the odd gem out there.

Should we just be looking at the top performing fund over last 10 years and go there o should we be seeking more nuanced guidance. 

No. That is the worst way to pick investment funds.

fletch2ndTime

Thanks all for taking the time. I am grateful.

Someone said maybe it shouldn’t just languish but languish it has for a very long time and it has done very well.  He paid a mere £15 pm for like a decade and a half. Then up to £30 for maybe 20 years. All in all the outlay has been under £15,000 and it worth like £88,000 now. 

I on the other hand had a Prudential pension worth maybe the same. It was an old employer scheme and it lost like 11% in a year. I have moved to my new employer scheme now 

Husband was only in two funds; mixed and with profits.  I have read fund factsheets on many of their funds but don’t know what to look for. I have read somewhere that it should be lower risk for this final 5 years. He has also upped his contribution to £100pm. 

I wonder if he should just put 100% into the Mixed fund?

I could look and read and read and read and still be unable to make an informed decision.  

JohnWinder

If we saved you having to 'look', would it still be read and read and read without the desired result? 

fletch2ndTime

I am sorry but I do not understand your question.

you are not saving me looking because I have been looking.  Are you telling me I haven’t read enough to merit guidance?

JohnWinder

Sorry to be unclear. You wrote that you could look and read, yet still not be able to choose wisely. I couldn't be sure whether you felt your looking would let you down, or whether you thought your critical appraisal reading skills would let you down. If it were the former we might be able to assist.

fletch2ndTime

Hi. No I do feel it the latter.  Fund factsheets are not for the faint of heart.  I feel a bit like I am looking for a good holiday. In the end you go round in circles

his current mix is High Equity WP fund, Mixed Fund and WP Endowment. Going forward it be 50/50 High Equity and Mixed.

I will go back to the fund sheets 

JohnWinder

Hi. No I do feel it the latter.  Fund factsheets are not for the faint of heart.

To back up a step, if you want to deal with retirement funding yourself (easy enough if you're interested enough and have a few 'smarts'), choosing the investments as you're now agonising over is one part of it, how and how much you'll draw from them in retirement is another, and how to avoid silly mistakes like panic selling when values fall or chasing better returns by frequently changing funds is another.

I'd guess the factsheets have most of the information you need for fund choosing. To read them informatively you really need a bit of background understanding of personal investing: what are the different asset classes (stocks, property etc); how are those expected to benefit you and with what risk; how diversified should your holdings be; how much do you invest in your own country or other countries etc.

If you want to understand those issues that will help you decipher factsheets, as well as understand about personal investing as productively as most professional advisers, you can hardly do better than to read a book like Tim Hale's Smarter Investing (probably in your local library). The alternatives are paying for advice for which there can be no assurances that you'll recover the extra costs by better investments compared to informed DIY, or following the suggestions of one thread on one website (not pretty in my view).

fletch2ndTime

Well the way we are looking at it is we didn’t interfere for 3 decades and it did well. We don’t want to jinx it and maybe enhance it a little and thought, possibly naively, that a fund similar to those already in use would jump to someone’s mind.  I get it way more nuanced.