Future Investment/Pension

konn1ch1ha

eskbanker said:

konn1ch1ha said:

eskbanker said:

konn1ch1ha said:

eskbanker said:

Pension is the obvious vehicle for retirement planning given the tax advantages - if you're already paying into one then can you simply pay more into it?

Quite possibly, yes. To be honest, I'm not particularly au fait with pensions. If I leave my salaried job, do I lose the pension too?

As above, the short answer is 'no', but if you're only earning £4K salary then the pension provision will presumably be practically negligible anyway, so it really would have made sense to have started paying meaningful amounts into pensions as soon as you started self-employment, but it's never too late!

You mention that you're planning to buy your wife out of her half of an unmortgaged property, which would suggest that you have access to significant savings, which are likely to be relevant when considering your financial situation?

I don't have any meaningful savings. I would need to get a secured loan or mortgage on the house.

OK, but even if succeeding in obtaining such finance on a modest income, servicing it may be challenging, in terms of the incremental monthly cost over and above your current outgoings, so it may not be the most realistic time to be looking at building up a retirement pot?  No wish to pour cold water on your aspirations, but just suggesting that you may find you need to prioritise the short term over the long term if there's not enough in the kitty to do both....

Makes sense, thanks. The mortgage/secured loan I would require would be of around £50k over about 10 years. I did get an agreement in principle at about 4.5% a few months ago. 

I think you're right re waiting until after divorce etc, however, I do think setting something up asap is important and I'm just looking art my options of what.

konn1ch1ha

Albermarle said:

eskbanker said:

konn1ch1ha said:

eskbanker said:

konn1ch1ha said:

eskbanker said:

Pension is the obvious vehicle for retirement planning given the tax advantages - if you're already paying into one then can you simply pay more into it?

Quite possibly, yes. To be honest, I'm not particularly au fait with pensions. If I leave my salaried job, do I lose the pension too?

As above, the short answer is 'no', but if you're only earning £4K salary then the pension provision will presumably be practically negligible anyway, so it really would have made sense to have started paying meaningful amounts into pensions as soon as you started self-employment, but it's never too late!

You mention that you're planning to buy your wife out of her half of an unmortgaged property, which would suggest that you have access to significant savings, which are likely to be relevant when considering your financial situation?

I don't have any meaningful savings. I would need to get a secured loan or mortgage on the house.

OK, but even if succeeding in obtaining such finance on a modest income, servicing it may be challenging, in terms of the incremental monthly cost over and above your current outgoings, so it may not be the most realistic time to be looking at building up a retirement pot?  No wish to pour cold water on your aspirations, but just suggesting that you may find you need to prioritise the short term over the long term if there's not enough in the kitty to do both....

To add a bit more cold water, it is unlikely that a financial advisor will be interested due to the small sums involved. Plus they would be reluctant to get involved during an ongoing divorce.

So as per the above post, probably best to get the current financial/divorce difficulties sorted first, and then start planning for the future after that.
Is there any chance you can move to better paid employment at some point ?

I do have options to add more hours, yes.