at what stage is an IFA worth it?!

[Twiceasnice25]

I've seen one for a free review recently

They recommended moving my pension pot to another provider with better performance record and move cash isa to S and S isa

Fee is 2% of transfer value and then 1% fee every year after to manage

Does anyone just do it themselves?

I would say it depends on

1. How much money you have
2. How much knowledge of the market you have
3. How much time you have

We use an IFA and we get quarterly letters/booklets from them to let us know whats going on, updates etc, but for us it’s absolutely worth it because we don’t have the in depth knowledge of the s&s market especially or the time to dedicate to keeping on top if it, knowing when to buy/sell- it all goes totally over my head. My husband is a mortgage & protection adviser so although he does have some knowledge he absolutely isn’t an expert in the s&s market or pensions and so it is worthwhile us having it managed for us. The amount of changes they make, sometimes daily, buying xyx then selling xyz, that we see in the quarterly reviews is what makes me realise that neither of us have the time to do it ourselves, even if we had the knowledge!

How much money have you got?

TBH anything sitting with pension or ISA wrappers is very easily managed yourself IMO as there are so many cheap access platforms which you can use with managed funds etc.

I only think an IFA is really useful once you have large sums of cash outside of that you’re investing / managing invest pots to specifically fund eg school fees and so on.

Giving someone 2% of your pension and ISAs to transfer them to another pension and ISA when you could do this yourself seems insane to me.

Ihave had one for 10 years ...I couldnt manage without him. Worth every penny.

You can do both of things yourself for free, or perhaps a very small exit fee for the transfer (but this is pretty rare).

Choose a passive fund with low costs and the growth comes from the fund itself. The IFA literally does nothing to get you any more money. Something like 90% of actively managed investment funds fail to keep up with market indexes over 10 years - in other words you are very unlikely to make some extra gain by trying to pick specific investments... or by your IFA doing that.

A management fee of 1% a year is high - that will sap ~20% of your growth away over the course of your pension. An annual fee of 0.25% is more normal.

We do it ourselves and have taught DC as they grew up. You need to put a bit of effort in and learn about financial markets but it's perfectly doable.
If someone is very wealthy say investing over a million, then it would be different

We got one recently to look at dh"s pensions as he had just about reached pension age and had 5 pensions, some of which had done very little. He suggested merging them and organised it all. It has now gained more than we paid for advice and gained more in 2 months than 1 of them had in 10 years! So for him it has definitely been worthwhile. He looked at attitude to risk and need for funds in future plans.

DH uses a financial advisor to do our big family investments.

I have my own little self managed SIPP that I do. I invested in tracker funds with low fees.

in the 5 years we’ve been doing it this way I have matched or exceeded the FA every year!

This is the way. Low cost trackers generally outperform managed funds over time.

if I suddenly inherited £1m+ I might consult an IFA. Less than that you can learn everything you need in a few hours internet research / reading.

Thanks everyone

I don't have that much and it seems a bit silly to pay someone 2 per cent of what I do have to do 2 transfers

I've started doing the rebel finance course so I think I will DIY