SJP Retirement plan

But nonetheless, even though the IFA's advice fee is top-of-the-range, a saving of £9,000 over 11 years (OP says 14 years but I assume they aren't posting from a Tardis in 2021) from lower charges alone would still be perfectly plausible if the IFA had used a low-cost mostly passive portfolio rather than SJP's expensive dogs.

£9,000 extra over 11 years is a difference in reduction of yield of only 0.6%. If anything that's conservative. A passive-focused portfolio can easily come in at 0.2% - 0.3%pa without artificially restricting asset allocation. SJP's funds have annual expenses of well over 1%, much of which goes into their pocket.

If the OP's IFA does not use mostly passive funds and the difference is supposed to relate to investment performance rather than lower charges, then the comparison is of course hogwash.

Unless you are very knowledgable and happy with a range of risk factors, keeping the DB pensions makes sense, as they plus your SP will be a secure index-linked base income, allowing you to have less worry about the DC part of your pension money.
Its usually costly to access a pension specialist to deal with it, and even if the advice is not to transfer (as it may well be) you still have to pay for that advice.

OldMusicGuy wrote: »

Moving DB pensions is a very big decision. Speaking as someone with a large DC pension pot and no DB pension, I would say a combination of both DB and DC pensions is the best of both worlds. I would much rather be in your position than mine because I am risk averse.

Don't consider moving the DB pensions unless you are really sure you want to.

A big second to that advice! I also have a large DC pot only and there is no certainty at all in that setup. I'd love an extra small DB pension to provide a worst-case fallback when the global economy takes a big dump.