melonfool wrote:Matt/Mel - transferring pensions is easy. It's just a form or two.
So, were I to ditch my IFA (or at least go ahead and undertake the admin myself), then when you say "a form or two", is this just a case of phoning the pension firm and getting a paper form sent out? Would I be right to guess that the better administrated websites might even permit the whole operation over an E-form?
melonfool wrote:Try to separate in your mind the 'wrapper' and the 'investment'.
Ok, so I'm going to attempt to confirm in my mind these terminologies:
So with our shares, bonds and funds, they are the 'investments', and our IWeb ISA is the 'wrapper'. Furthermore the 'wrapper' in this case has a charging structure (so too do any investment fund investment entities, however, their fee should be transparent).
And with my pension, the discrete packaged up funds within are the 'investments'. And the analogous 'wrapper', is either the pension firm, e.g. Aviva, or the administer of the SIPP?
melonfool wrote:You say you're currently researching investing so don't have time to look at pensions too - but it's the same thing, just with a slightly different objective perhaps.
Yes, you've got a good point. Part of my apprehensiveness is psychological, i.e. up until about age 50, I've ignored any type of pension admin. and really just "keep paying the contribs.", so it's just been a blackbox.
With investments, once upon a time, Mel were content to put any savings we had in building society interest bearing account, or into NS&I bonds. But of course ever since QE/credit crunch, that seems to have become pointless, and we've spent about the last 10 years, not really being too bothered by this.....but after clearing the mortgage, it become apparent that our savings were doing nothing and that's why we undertook our investment idea.
I will get the time to research pensions in more depth, but currently, we are focussing our little free time, on figuring out schemes to determine which companies are good/bad investment vehicles (e.g. margins, ratios, FCF, ROCE) so in that time, we are playing with spreadsheets and annual reports etc. - since buying into the market now (we think) is quite fraught, lots of assets highly priced, uncertainity in the UK and abroad, and so on. (To be frank, this time of year is very labour intensive for us, we have a fair bit of home/garden maintenance, and our kids are both teenagers, vying for free-taxi services!).
Anyway sorry to waffle! I just want at least find out what a SIPP actually is...before I deduce exactly what to do with these pensions.
melonfool wrote:You could start by moving the smallest one and see how you get on. I use YouInvest as I like the website and the fee structure.
I probably will Mel, but as I said above, I do need to slow down my current activities first. I will definitely get back to this subject very soon....but I've already learnt many useful things from this thread, and I'm already starting to act on one of them, i.e. to detach the IFA from the Aviva fund and start learning and managing these things myself.
many thanks
Matt