Pension Basics

GunJack

However, you may still be able to reclaim the tax relief from previous years when you were a 40% taxpayer... remember that tax is an annual thing...

DRS1

and that would include the current tax year 25/6 if you are only making the change for the April salary onwards.

sadpunk

Thanks @GunJack that clears that one up.

sadpunk

Thanks too @DRS1. Yes I had figured the last three years when I have been a higher tax payer I would be eligible to claim the additional 20%. I have requested the appropriate statements from Scottish Widows and will then return to the HMRC online claim I began this week to upload said documents.

Albermarle

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81930795#Comment_81930795

I am torn between transferring my private pension (Scottish Widows) into my work pension (Aegon). On the one hand it would be nice to only think about one pension and one set of charges. On the other hand the Scottish Widows pension seems to have done well (as noted by @vacheron)

I think it has been mentioned already, but it is the investments you hold in each of the pensions that perform, not the pensions themselves. For both pensions there will be a choice of investments, and which ones you pick affect the performance.

Now often with workplace pensions, the client often has no clue about picking investments, so in this case each pension has a default fund for this scenario. It is possible that one pensions default fund may perform better than another, but this would not be a good reason to merge pensions. You first need to understand why the funds behave a bit differently, and see that changing the investments in either pension would produce probably different results.

sadpunk

You are correct of course @Albermarle. I spent the weekend reading up on funds and risk strategy. I think you are spot on that the performance I have seen from the Scottish Widows pension is because of the split funds. To get similar in my workplace Aegon pension I would need to try and replicate the split. Thanks for your input.

Albermarle

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81933764#Comment_81933764

There is no problem in itself with having different performing funds in different pensions. Usually the ones that have grown more in recent times, will also be more vulnerable to a downturn.

The main point is that it is the investments that matter a lot more than the actual pension provider.