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Pensions (doesn't apply to those in final salary schemes)

1 reply

Thesearepearls · 12/08/2018 21:25

I've finally got around to tidying up my pensions, and it is something I should have thought about properly years ago.

My pension schemes are essentially all personal pension schemes. The employer makes a contribution and I make a contribution but essentially these get defined as personal pension schemes.

Two of the funds have been massively underperforming (should have spotted that) and have been doing so for years. I should have switched out of those funds before now.

Plus one of the schemes should have been charging an annual management fee of 1% whereas it should have been charging 0.45% per the scheme documents. This is an error that is not easy to pick up - the statements don't show the charges being made. I had to dig pretty deep to uncover it. Over the past 16 years I reckon this has cost around £40k. It is going to take me forever to sort this out.

I kept lazily thinking, oh well it's probably okay, oh that fund doesn't seem to be doing well but it's the firm's managed fund so maybe it will work out. Plus I need to feed the kids and clean the house and get on with the day job.

So really, just a salutary tale. But please review your pensions really properly and take the time out to think about what's going on. I genuinely thought I was financially savvy but I think my two mistakes above have cost an awful lot.

OP posts:
lizzie1970a · 20/09/2018 23:27

Thanks for the tips. Sorting out pensions is on my list of stuff to do, not that I have much. One is a final salary one though.

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