Cost of Pension Advice

[rb7883817]

I am just starting up a private pension to give some flexibility over retirement and because I won't be able to get my occupational one until age 68.
I have a financial advisor who has given advice on this and life insurance etc.
I am well aware that this advice has been free, and that they make their money from commission.
The fees for the pension they have recommended are 50% of the first year's contributions. So if manage to find £1000 a month, they will get £6000 from this transaction.
This seems an AWFUL lot of money to me. We've had a couple of hours face to face, and I appreciate they have backroom staff etc. My question is: is this a normal amount of fees?
There will be a small servicing cost as well, which I presume goes to the Pension company.
Thank you.

That's very high IMO. Surely you can negotiate. I charge a set fee to start a pension and it's certainly not £6k.

thank you

Shop around, I have lots of clients that pay IFA's and I'm sure they don't pay anywhere near that

Why dont you start your own SIPP (self invested personal pension). There are plenty of providers out there, you may even be able to go direct to the company that the IFA recommended.

DH and I use Hargreaves Lansdown, an online stockbroker for ISAs and SIPPs, but there are other similar companies.

You Have to pick your own funds, but you can pick a selection to lower the risk, and always make sure you feed money in monthly to 'smooth out' the peaks and troughs of the market.

My DH got personal pension advice and it cost about £750 to move the pension and then his advisor had 'trail commission' also which we eventually got removed on the basis that it was one off advice.

A SIPP is easy to set up and administer yourself - I use Bestinvest and drip feed in as has been suggested. Bestinvest (and other companies) have research and analysis to help you make the choices. My motto is that no one looks after your money better than you do if you are prepared to put a bit of time in - apologies to the IFAs out there.