Understanding Your Pension

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Understanding your pension

I came across an example of an experience that most financial planners have from time to time. An adviser took on a new client. The clients believed that they had about, (let’s call it X) in their pensions, it surprised them and their adviser to learn that in fact they were worth considerably more (X + about £300,000).

The way the story was framed within the financial pages suggested that the adviser had created a huge return, in fact this was nothing to do with the adviser and rather missing the point. The point being that many people simply do not know what their pensions are worth. I do not believe that this is because of a lack of intelligence, but rather the very confusing statements issued by most pension companies.

Have a look at your pension statement, does it actually tell you what your pension (or investment) is actually worth? There’s the rub, sometimes admitting not understanding something because we are told “it’s rather obvious” is a very difficult admission. Yet I cannot emphasise enough that there are no stupid questions when it comes to your money. Any adviser that dismisses your question as “stupid” should be dismissed. His or her job is to sufficiently explain what you have, what it does, what it’s worth and why you’ve got it. If you don’t know, change your adviser.

There is no stupid question

Sadly it would appear that even senior economists that advise the Bank of England fail to understand their pensions – dare I suggest that such a statement may also be true of those that determine pension laws and tax rates.

In essence the concept of pensions is basic. Here it is. You save over time to enable you to live off the proceeds when you retire. There are really two types of pension. One that is purely investment, so the size of the pot fluctuates daily, what you get is what you get. The other is a final salary pension – based on how long you worked for your employer and what your final salary was – you get a percentage of your final salary for life, with inflation. This type are now the equivalent of “gold dust”.

There are of course complexities, all of which were dreamed up by meddlesome politicians and their advisers to either encourage or discourage certain behaviours so that they could give the appearance of actually reflecting their stated manifesto values and aims. The UK pension system is particularly complex, the principles are not. To make matters worse, the jargon used has been made up by parties with vested interests (including financial advisers).

So help me to help you… to understand what you have so that you have a basis on which to make some sensible decisions. Do not leave it to the political elite.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Understanding Your PensionDominic2023-12-01T12:19:12+00:00

Pension Tax Relief Changes?

It would appear that further changes for pensions are likely. Pension tax relief has been “under review” which I always take to mean a report into the impact of a decision has been already made. At present whatever your rate of tax you receive as relief for any pension payment that you make.

As outlined within this blog before, in practice this costs HMRC a lot of money and is essentially a gift back to anyone that appears to be deemed as “rich” which as far as I can tell from Government and Opposition policy is anyone earning something between £50,000 and £1million as anyone with an income above £1m seems to largely avoid paying any tax her in the UK.

The expectation is that relief will be 33% so that a neat little explanation of tax relief can be spun by the media – 2 for 1… that is £2 from you £1 from the Government. Personally I fail to see how this is sensible as it’s an extra 13% for most people and a reduction of only 7%-12% for higher and additional rate taxpayers. It would be more sensible to have a standard rate of 25% which then at least correlates to the 25% tax free cash lump sum. 3 for 1 is just as simple to spin.

Constant Changes to Pensions

This comes on the back of other pension reforms

Pension freedom – abolition of any requirement to buy an annuity, retaining your pension as an investment portfolio.
Reduction in the Lifetime Allowance (£1m from 6th April 2016)
Online application for Lifetime Allowance Protection
Reduction in the Annual Allowance to £40,000
Annual Allowance tapering for those with income of £150,000+ from 6th April 2016 reducing the annual allowance to a maximum of £10,000.
Auto Enrolment or Workplace pensions
Changes to what constitutes a “year” input years are reverting to tax years.
Flat rate State Pension
Changes to the State Pension Age
Legislation to give HMRC the ability to take money from your bank account

Some of these changes are welcome, some are not, and many seem to be altered each tax year, making planning for the future somewhat awkward to say the very least.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Pension Tax Relief Changes?Dominic2023-12-01T12:19:34+00:00

Pensions – more needless headaches the Lifetime Allowance

Pensions – more needless headaches

You may recall that Mr Osborne in his great wisdom has decided to reduced the current lifetime allowance even further, just to clarify – the Lifetime Allowance is the value of your pensions, either in payment or being built up. It currently stands at a figure of £1.25million but from 6th April 2016 will reduce to £1million.

It is very easy to calculate the value of your pensions, provided that they are purely investments pensions, such as personal pensions, SIPPs (self-invested personal pensions). You can also exclude the value of your State pension.

However, if you have an annuity in payment or old final salary pensions or perhaps simply a current final salary (or career average) pension (called a defined benefit pension scheme) such as the NHS or Teachers Pension, the sums are considerably more complex.

Long story short, once the value of your pensions has been calculated you may find that you have exceeded the lifetime allowance – which is reducing. So you will need to do something about this, which may well involve some uncomfortable decisions about future membership of pensions, even or perhaps especially, good ones, which is utterly daft.

Another bonkers pension policy

Yes, I did say bonkers. Despite what Mr Osborne may say about helping people to help themselves, he is actually restricting the amount that you can build in your own pension, actively discouraging saving, which does seem to be rather at odds with any historic Conservative policy in history, unless you count the lamentable decision by Norman Fowler to remove the rule that enabled employers to make membership of an occupational pension scheme a condition of employment, allowing the employee to contract out and not join the pension scheme. In fairness to Mr Osborne, with the benefit of hindsight, Mr Fowler probably takes the prize for arguably the most loopy pension decision for generations.

Mr Fowler was under the misguided impression that this brought about freedom for employees to decide if they really wanted to be in their employer’s pension. Mr Osborne can only be motivated by collecting more tax as there are 55% tax charges applied to amounts that exceed the lifetime allowance, unless you have the relevant protection, which is also not really guaranteed.

We are not talking about small sums of money here. So you need to gather your information, for two specific dates 5th April 2014 and 5th April 2016. This creates a headache for you, a massive task for me and in my opinion the lifetime allowance is one of the worst pension ideas in history – penalising both those that save and a successful investment strategy. This is a subject that I will return to frequently before 6th April 2016.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Pensions – more needless headaches the Lifetime AllowanceDominic2023-12-01T12:19:50+00:00

70 is the new 60…. well for the State Pension

70 is the new 60….for the State Pension

One wonders what we are doing to future generations. Today I read an article suggesting that the State pension age will inevitably become 70, all due to the fact that more people are living longer. The State pension age used to be 60 for women and 65 for men, this has undergone a period of “equalisation” and will be 65 for both men and women from 2018. As this ideological “hurdle” was achieved some time ago, successive Governments have simply made plans to extend the age at which a State pension is provided. The State pension age will be 66 by 2020 and 67 from 2028.

The reason is really two-fold, cost and longevity. The State pays pensions in various forms, the most obvious being the State pension, which now costs about £110bn a year. Disability pensions costs around £42.2bn and survivors pensions about £1.1bn, amounting to roughly £153.3bn which is about 20% of all Government spending and by far the largest component of Government spending. Details here (click).

Looking ahead

In essence anyone born since 1960 can expect to have to work longer. Given the increasing life expectancy and inherent problems with ageing, care costs are expected to soar, resulting in further dilemmas for Government about how to meet costs…. from a population that is having fewer children.

Episode IV – A New Hope

Consider those that graduated this summer and are just starting out on their careers, born in the early 1990’s they were only just teenagers when the credit crunch occurred the property boom had happened. If you understand my heading (refering to the very first Star Wars movie in 1977) this generation can be forgiven for thinking that the Star Wars films were made sequentially when episode I was actually released in 1999 – they were 7). Student loans are now part of their deductions each month, along with compulsory pensions. I don’t like to be a pessimist, but the generation just starting out have inherited the debts of previous Governments (currently interest payments are around £40bn a year), have little prospect of “getting on the property ladder” and an ageing population that received their State pension many years younger than they will. Any academic results they achieve are met with accusations of “easy exams” and employers seem almost eager to say “we cannot find good enough people”. Not even to mention the problems with the environment. I appreciate that you already know this.

The Breakfast Club

I am reminded of the 1985 film, “The Breakfast Club” written and directed by John Hughes, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. This was a group of teenagers held back in detention one Saturday morning and who eventually reveal the stories that brought them there. Vernon, the supervising teacher, representative of a now uncaring, disillusioned, bored older generation loathes the fact that he is also forced to spend his Saturday supervising misfits. He is caught by Carl, the caretaker, fishing through the personnel files hoping to find scandal that he can use against his peers. This results in a conversation between the two, in which he complains about the youth of today and ends with this dialogue.

VERNON: You think about this…when you get old, these kids; when I get old, they’re gonna be runnin’ the country.

CARL: Yeah?

VERNON: Now this is the thought that wakes me up in the middle of the night…That when I get older, these kids are gonna take care of me…

CARL: I wouldn’t count on it!

No… neither would I…. perhaps we all need to think rather more carefully about how we are planing not just our own future, but that of future generations… as Simple Minds remind in the closing title music – Don’t You Forget About Me. Perhaps there could be some redemption… even Darth Vader managed to salvage something with his own offspring.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

70 is the new 60…. well for the State PensionDominic2023-12-01T12:19:59+00:00

Ten million don’t check pensions

Wow! according to research conducted by AVIVA (who used to be Norwich Union) about ten million people are not checking their pensions. That is staggering. For many people their pension will be their second largest asset, their home being the largest.

ICM research surveyed 1500 people online, who were 45+ but under retirement age. A staggering 63% did not bother to check their pensions. AVIVA have extrapolated data from their research and widely known information about pensions published by the Office of National Statistics (ONS). Their data suggests that there are about 8.1m active occupational pension scheme members and about 8.2m with active private pensions. Active doesn’t necessarily mean “paying into” – after all these are pensions that alter in value each year (or day) and ultimately have a maturity date. Breaking down the numbers (a precarious exercise) results in AVIVA concluding that about ten million people do not check the value of their pensions.

So what?

Even if the numbers are vaguely correct, there are probably a variety of reasons why people do not check their pensions. Frankly it could be as simple as they lost them or didn’t know they even had them (from former employers). It might be the constant name changing of pension companies due to all the mergers and acquistions that have occurred over the last 20 years. It may be that they realise that the pots are so small that to check them seems rather trivial. Equally it may be that because they are small, few wish to be reminded of the reality of the pension provision.

Not always the ostrich

It isn’t as simple as dismissing ten million people as little more than the proverbial ostrich. The reasons can be rather more complex. In any event, whilst the ostrich is known for its head-in-the-sand behaviour, it does have a rather large nest-egg and of course, whilst flightless, is a very fast and powerful runner, even being raced…

One problem is the simple number of pensions to keep track of . The research found to be the main reason why people consolidated pensions (of those that did). Consolidating pensions can make a lot of sense, but it needs to be done very carefully – some older style pensions have various guarantees which may be worth keeping. Some may have very high penalties for transferring them to a different pension.

Making the best of things

Whatever the reason, being prepared for retirement and knowing what you are aiming for is important to us all…. ask any pensioner! As a financial planner, I work with what you have built up and then we figure out together what you need and how to best get there. May I urge you, if you are not a client to begin by downloading my free guide to regaining control of your pension. If you are a client, please share this information. Drifing into retirement will result in serious disappointment.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Ten million don’t check pensionsDominic2023-12-01T12:20:04+00:00

Lost your pension?

Many people have lost track with old pensions, frankly it is hardly surprising given the number of name changes, mergers and acquisitions of various pension companies over the last 40 years or so. Perhaps you have lost your pension too.

Consider the various jobs that you have had over the years, however small, perhaps there is an old pension lurking somewhere in the midst of your curriculum vitae.

Pension evolution…. perhaps revolution

Pensions have improved dramatically over the years and almost unrecognisable from those I first understood over 20 years ago. The evolution continues and something that adviser firms like ourselves spend a lot of time researching and reviewing. Cheap is not always best, but then neither is the most expensive.

The media, consumer groups and various politicians have regularly made statements about the charges on pensions, some of which are accurate, some are not. However, I imagine you would like to know if your old style pension could be brought up to date.

Free-report-How-to-regain-control-of-your-pension

Find your lost pension

The Pension Tracing Service (PTS) was set up to help find lost pensions. In essence everyone has a National Insurance number that is unique to them, this is the main tool used to search for lost old pensions. It is believed that there could around 50million dormant or lost pensions “in the system” by 2050 due to the growing number of small pensions (due to auto enrolment, or workplace pensions).

Once lost, now found

Last year the PTS was contacted over 145,000 times and we expect this to increase considerably. They aren’t always successful in tracing pensions, but last year managed to trace 87% of those believed to exist.

Regain control of your pension

So it would be advisable to check if you have any lost pensions and then check them (and any old pensions that you haven’t lost) to determine if they can be improved. I have put a free guide together about this, which I have called “Regaining Control of Your Pension”. You can download it for free (tell your friends and colleagues) simply by completing the online request below this item.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Lost your pension?Dominic2023-12-01T12:20:09+00:00

Pensions: Annuities starting to improve?

Annuities starting to improve?

We appear to have witnessed a small upturn in annuity rates. In June the best open market annuity for a male aged 65, with £100,000 seeking a single life, level income with a 5 year guarantee rose to 5.35% or £5,350 in April and May the rate was 5.09%…. technically a modest increase of £260 a year in this example, but equivalent to an increase of 5.1% (Ok it is starting from a very low point).

Why?

Well, gilt yields have increased modestly too, these essentially drive annuity rates, along with mortality rates (as well as other health and geographic factors). The 15 year gilt yield bottomed at 1.76% in February this year, but has slowing started to increase. All this suggests a possible interest rate rise is probably coming.

Back in the day…

I wonder what your feelings are to this news. In October 1990 the same £100,000 for a 65-year-old male, also buying a single-life level annuity with a 5 year guarantee would have received an annuity rate of 15.64% or £15,640 a year (nearly three times as much). At the time the 15 year gilt yield was 11.74%. Gilt yields have historically always been less than annuity rates, tracking a very similar path but 2-3% less.

Of course to buy an annuity in October 1990 you would be born in 1925, the year Clara Bow starred in “The Plastic Age” and you would now be 89. Most men born in 1925 do not live to 89, (and some may have fought in WW2… just, being 20 when it ended) but for those that have survived until 2015 the average man would live another 4.32 years according to the ONS. Some will obviously live longer, some less (hence it being an average figure). If you are lucky enough to have a 15.64% annuity rate that started in October 1990 you would have already had £400,384 by the end of June 2015 from your £100,000. Living until the average 93.3 would provide a total income of £458,252… which really isn’t too bad is it.

What about inflation?

Since 1990 until the end of last year (2014) the average rate of RPI was 3.1%. As a result anyone with a level annuity has seen the effective value reduce by 3.1% a year (assuming that you believe the RPI data and buy the same goods and services – which is a significant point). Of course £15,640 today is £15,640, but if we back date this to 1990, its worth the equivalent of £32,746, in other words a little more than twice as much…. or to put it another way £15,640 is worth about half what it was worth in the space of about 25 years.

Planning your retirement income

If only life were as simple as buying the best deals. In practice planning your retirement income is a fairly involved task, there are lots of choices – loads in fact. How much income you need and your thoughts about inflation are part of the discussion. The new pension freedoms make this a more valuable discussion than simply having to buy an income and living with the consequences, the downside is that greater choice, brings greater complexity and possibility.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Pensions: Annuities starting to improve?Dominic2023-12-01T12:40:16+00:00

Pensions: Lifetime Allowance and Mad Max

You have probably heard of Mad Max – its latest incarnation is currently in UK cinemas. You may have heard about the Lifetime Allowance – which has been part of the pension vocabulary since 2006 or “A-Day”. Suffice to say that I believe that the Lifetime Allowance is rather mad.

In the event that you are a politician and reading this, may I ask why you think pensions are important? To my mind, pensions should be encouraged. The end result of a pension should be that people living in the UK are able to provide for themselves above the State Pension, so support their lifestyle. This has several obvious benefits – creating financially independent adults, not requiring State support. Having income means that income tax can be levied and collected to help pay for our society. Let’s also not forget that income is there for using (spending) which enables trade to occur and wealth to be created and so on.

A World of Plenty?

It would seem that politicians generally think not having a rising burden on the State is a good thing. Indeed encouraging pensions with tax relief is the “sweetener” or “bait”. Much like the film Mad Max, we probably don’t want to create a society reliant upon the occassional benevolence of the prevailing “Lord”. Surely we would like a society where all prosper? OK we know the UK has limited resources, so adjust the tax relief, but don’t make it hard or even pointless to save. Even the current regime isn’t tempting enough for millions of people that don’t or cannot save for their future.

Scarcity

At present pension contributions are restricted, which seems fair enough, but the amount that the pension pot grows to is also restricted by the Lifetime Allowance. This is currently £1.25million, which sounds like a reasonable sum, but in practice isn’t as much as you’d like to think, given that it has to last for the remainder of your life. The Lifetime Allowance has already reduced over the years from £1.8m and if the Chancellor does what he suggested he would in the last Budget, it is likely to shrink to £1.0m next April. In other words £250,000 of the Lifetime Allowance will be lost – or more accurately invoke a tax penalty of £137,500.

Mad Max and Excess Tax

If the Lifetime Allowance is exceeded, there is a tax charge of 55% on the excess. OK there are some ways that you can protect your higher pre-legislation allowance, but these are designed by bureacrats and “problematic” to say the least. Essentially this excess tax charge punishes those that save or get good investment results…. let’s not forget that the income from pensions is subject to income tax anyway. So I fail to understand why we don’t simply abolish the Lifetime Allowance and all the protections that have surrounded it. Your pension fund should be just that – a pot that you can actually use with confidence.

Mad Max – Fury Road is currently in UK cinemas, starring Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy and Nicholas Hoult. The Chancellor, George Osborne has his next Budget on 8th July 2015…

Dominic Thomas

Pensions: Lifetime Allowance and Mad MaxDominic2023-12-01T12:40:10+00:00

Pensions: Taking Your Pension? Beware of Tax

Taking Your Pension? Beware of Tax

When the Chancellor announced the abolition of the requirement for most people to buy an annuity with their pension fund, it was somewhat unexpected. Arguably it was one of the most radical shake ups to pensions in decades. However as time progresses, the wisdom of allowing people to do whatever they want with their own money is experiencing some problems. If you are taking your pension, you need to beware of tax.

Tax

The main advantage of pensions is tax relief. At the moment (who knows if things will change in the Chancellors budget next month). Currently most investors will receive tax releif of 20% higher rate taxpayers get 40% – though the difference has to be claimed via self-assessment tax returns, not granted automatically.

Money in a pension has tax advantages

Whilst invested as a pension, the funds are free from income tax and capital gains tax – which means that they grow faster (free from tax). If you take money from a pension, (possible from age 55) 25% of the fund is tax free and the balance when taken as income (regular, ad hoc or all at once) is taxed at your highest rate of income tax. On death the new rules mean the pension fund can pass to the estate without inheritance tax.

Taking money doesn’t have to be taxing

It would appear that due presumably to a belief that pensions are “bad” some people have been rushing to withdraw their pension in entirety, which of course results in a signficant income tax bill and the realisation that once its gone… well, it’s gone. The media initially joked about people buying a Lamborghini and the prospect of access to wealth attracting the wrong sort of attention. For those that don’t spend the money all at once it means that they seek other ways to use the money to generate income to support a lifestyle…. which means investing it. See my earlier post about this.

Most alternatives are subject to tax

Investments are subject to income tax, inheritance tax and capital gains tax…. with a few exceptions such as ISAs – but with limits on the amount that can be invested each tax year. Other tax favourable investments tend to be much more “entrepreneurial” in flavour – EIS, SEIS, VCT for example, most of which carry significantly higher risk due to a small focus on shares in a single company or a very small number of companies.

So be careful – get advice, there is much to consider. Pensions aren’t “bad” in fact they can be really rather good if set up properly. The issue is really to ensure that your pension (which is just a term for income in retirement) suits your planned lifestyle….

Dominic Thomas

Pensions: Taking Your Pension? Beware of TaxDominic2023-12-01T12:40:10+00:00

Pensions: New Freedoms

Pensions Freedom

Have you heard about pensions freedom? Are you approaching retirement and thinking that this is excellent news, you can have your entire pension? Well you are right, but as ever there is a catch. You are free to self-destruct, it is your right to do so (and I’m not being patronising).

On the one hand freedom is good right? but with it comes responsibility (why do I sound like a Spiderman scriptwriter). By responsibility I mean, once you spend it, whether thats taking it as a lump sum or buyng an annuity or leaving it as a Flexible Access Drawdown pension, once it has gone – that’s it. Nothing left… except any other pension income you may have such as the State pension.

So this is all about knowing what you have and what you need. Something that no British Government has ever managed to get right for themselves, yet here we are, with new freedoms. So you have to figure out how long you will live to work out how much you can afford to take out each year. Actually rather more than that, you have to predict future inflation rates, mortality rates, investment returns and tax rates…. to name a few “elements”. Of course you could get a financial planner like me to help by doing some cashflow modelling and explaining the options and reviewing progress regularly or you could do it yourself.

Today I learned about a term called the IKEA effect. This is when we place a disproportianately high value on something that has been partially made us. Go on look it up. This is precisely what happens to DIY investors… that portfolio I built, its not bad. Actually the truth is rather different. I mean no disprect to IKEA or DIY investors. This is about a price-point in the market – what you can afford. Arguably you will have to live with both (furniture and your DIY portfolio) but your portfolio has to last your lifetime. I’m all for consumer empowerment and the removal of elist jargon and ivory towers, but information is not the same as experience or indeed knowledge. I wonder if you remember the John West tinned fish TV adverts? its the fish that John West rejects that make them the best. In other words, selection, some might call it curation – is vital.

Building the right portfolio to last for life is a fairly daunting challenge, for a few this isn’t going to be much of a problem, but for the vast majority of people it will be. Most people do not pay attention to the holdings in their ISAs or pensions. Most are in the funds or more likely single fund, that the adviser put them in when they started their pension. Little attention has been paid to assessing the level of contributions needed, frankly its more like lucky dip… and who can blame them! the jargon is a huge barrier, statements are fairly unclear and the rules keep changing, little wonder people don’t spend much time looking after one of their largest assets. Yet suddenly at the point of retirement, they are expecting to become investment experts. Whilst the Government may say that people should be trusted with their own money, thats fine if it relates to the straight-forward stuff of running a budget and basic banking, but when it comes to understanding asset allocation, volatility, sequencing risk, safe withdrawal rates, reductions in yield… well frankly its taxing even for the experts. Your pension is not a shelving unit from IKEA, its more like fitting a pace-maker, one that has to keep you going.

My advice is to get advice – don’t get sucked into short-term thinking and getting some degree of satisfaction from raiding your pension to show your displeasure with the pension company. Certainly there are better pensions, but you really need to get sensible advice to explore your options properly. You wouldn’t build a house without architectural plans (I hope)… the same is true when it comes to designing a portfolio for life.

Dominic

Pensions: New FreedomsDominic2023-12-01T12:40:08+00:00