Best ready made pensions

[Feelinglucky2025]

I’m looking to take out a ready made pension pot for both myself F38 and my husband M39.

Im not sure if we are better off going to a financial advisor to set this up for us or or if there are any decent ready made pension providers that we could go to and set it all up ourselves. I’m trying to figure out if the cost of a financial advisor would be worth it.

I have been looking online but I find the different types of fees quite confusing so just looking for any suggestions you may have.

I already have a decent pension pot with my past employer of 15 years but did not return to work after my second child 2 years ago so this is now closed for new investment. My husband only has a very small pot from a past employer but has worked for himself for the last couple of years so we do need to look to set something up for the both of us soon.

I just use PensionBee. You can amalgamate old pensions in it, put employer’s contributions from your own business etc. Really easy to use and mine has done well.

OP if you go through the website Nuts about Money, you can get a free £50 when you join Pension Bee

This is something I'm interested in too. I'm self employed and no idea where to start

Martin Lewis’s site has a guide to pensions, or you can listen to his podcast series - link here

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/discount-pensions/

I’m self-employed and have small pensions with Pension Bee and Penfold. They’re “robo” pensions in that you don’t choose where the money is invested. Their fees are percentage-based so OK if you don’t have that much money in them (like me) and you can always transfer out later.

Thank you all. I will take a look at your suggestions

Vanguard
Maybe Vanguard Target Retirement Date pension
Or
Vanguard life strategy 80 per cent
Or
Vanguards managed personal pension

Do you want a managed fund or an index global tracker?

For a managed fund, take a look at Dodl. Run by AJ Bell and is their app only simplified platform, with a platform fee of 0.15%

For pensions, their Pension Builder managed fund (fees 0.30% on top of the platform fee), or one their AJ Bell funds - 7 fund categories based on your risk appetite from cautious to adventurous and global growth. Fees are 0.31%

However, over the longer time frame of a pension, it's very unlikely that a managed fund will beat a tracker fund - so you could just opt for a Global tracker fund or ETF on a low cost platform. It's likely to be the cheapest option and fees can have a big impact on returns over the longer term.

InvestEngine seems to be the cheapest platform. It does not charge a platform fee for a self-invested pension.

Vanguard, mentioned earlier, is also an option once investments are above that £32K threshold - they have a minimum fee of £4 a month so smaller investors or those starting out are disproportionately hit by fees (the Dodl minimum platform fee is £1 per month), ...but you could just choose a Vanguard Global or All World ETF through the InvestEngine platform and avoid the platform fees altogether.

(I'm not an IFA and these are just my own ideas and not advice).

Yes you could choose Vanguard Life strategy on dodl.

The actual Vanguard Platform has got more expensive for small amounts but I like to be able to call people up whereas dodl you can only talk to them on the chat function.

But you can use vanguard products on other platforms like dodl. The reason I thought of Vanguard is that they also do a managed pension which isn't too expensive if you need some hand holding plus you can call them up if you feel a bit confused or nervous.

On dodl there is a global tracker called HSBC Global All Cap which they call On Top of the World on their platform.

Based on my limited knowledge.

Go on the money saving expert forum under pensions and read up a bit.