any tips on SIPPS

Discussed at length on:

354411&bidQ267 might be worth a look. HTH, Alan

Far from it. It's obvious that that is what you should *not* do.

The SIPPS that are regularly mentioned as being about the best are Sippdeal, Hargreaves Lansdown and Cavendish Online - . SIPPS often better value for money than strakeholders.

I use Sippdeal and can recommend them, £0 for setup at the moment and £0 annual fee. Charges here -

hth

Daytona

Have you ever questioned why you had half your pension fund in Japan? Half! I find that amazing. I think you might as well use a well trusted Horse Racing Fund.

Rob Graham

This isn't half of his entire pension fund, it's half of his (presumably £3600) stakeholder, which may well be the only high-risk part of his balanced portfolio of pension-capable investments. He has gold too, I understand, not to mention a USS final salary scheme. Perhaps he also has shares in coffee plantations on Bioko.

You know him then?

Incidentally, why *(presumably 3600)*?

R

Not personally, but how can anyone from here not know him?

Isn't that the max you can put in a stakeholder in any one year? He didn't say anything about having had the fit again, which is why I assumed he'd only done it once.

Could have been less than £3600, I suppose, but would hardly have been worth the effort of licking a stamp.

Have a look at the Hargreaves Lansdown Vantage SIPP

You'll get discounted dealing charges, a large choice of funds, and online access for valuation and to trade,etc. Many funds add insult ot injury in that the expert management turn in a performance which is below the relevant index. Best thing is to look for funds which are long-term higher performers. You'll get some recommendations on their site, and 'money observer' magazine has league tables and performance data as well as occasional articles on long-term performers under stable management - see e.g issue 312, July 2006.

Toom

80-90% ISTR

Well actually, no. A stakeholder is just like any other personal pension when it comes to maximum contributions. Pre-6th April 2006 the limits were based on your age and earnings. Now they are 100% of earnings for anyone. The 3,600 rule was introduced at the same time as stakeholders were and it is common assumption that the rules are linked. But they are not.

The 3600 rule was that anyone could put that amount into a personal pension - stakeholder or otherwise - even if they had no earnings (and provided they earned no more than 30K if they were a member of an occupational pension scheme). Now all that is swept away and the rules are as in my first para.

Rob

Or use Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) at a total cost of ~0.4%pa.

Daytona

You mean you can no longer put in £3600 if you have no earnings?

Yes, you can. Sorry, I didn't make that clear.

Can't remember the figures I've seen quoted, but yes, they were spectacularly high. The main thing is to realise there are a lot of non-performers, and not to hang on expecting it's bound to come right. It's like old issue non-performing bank accounts; people either don't notice they ain't perfoming or there is the inertia factor. That's why it's an advantage to have SIPPs, PEPs, and ISAs online with a discount place, and to review constantly and trade when necessary.

Toom

I thought he had all his money in property :]

I've just noticed the Fidelity do SIPPS too. Can't comment on their charges - have a look under

What I can say is that under their Fundsnetwork you can get access to a wide range of funds, manage them online, and I've found their initial charges and transfer charges to be very low. Toom

It seems odd, if your motivation was support for local business, that you should have opted for the Jap fund at all, let alone to the tune of half your investment.

Scottish Windows [1] may have their HQ hives [1] at the foot of Arthur's Seat [2], but their shareholders are everywhere. That can't be the "local" bit, then, so it must be something in the other 50%. Is it?

RR> M Holmes wrote: >> In a fit of supporting local business I took out a Scottish >> Widows stakeholder pension in 2000. In the past 6 years it has >> barely grown in value. To add insult to injury, their Japanese >> fund, which I had half the pension in, has dropped 10% this >> year while the Nikkei went up considerably.

RR> It seems odd, if your motivation was support for local RR> business, that you should have opted for the Jap fund at all, RR> let alone to the tune of half your investment.

RR> Scottish Windows [1] may have their HQ hives [1] at the foot RR> of Arthur's Seat [2], but their shareholders are everywhere. RR> That can't be the "local" bit, then, so it must be something RR> in the other 50%. Is it?

RR> --

RR> [1] Note the "n". For the benefit of non-locals, their main RR> building is all-glass, and shaped like a cluster of hexagons, RR> hence "hives".

Haven't they moved their main operations to Morrison Street?

All Mike's money is in the form of gold ingots disguised as old floppy disks in a cardboard box under his desk at work :)

Cheers,

Kenny.

Yes, their website confirms this, but they prefer the posh version of the address ("Port Hamilton" - which isn't actually where the original Port Hamilton (the terminus of the old Union Canal) was (it was behind was used to be the ABC cinema), but never mind).

Must be because they didn't get planning permission to add as many extra hexagons to their Windows site as they wanted.

As a member of the desk*top* services team, you have no business snooping *under* peoples' desks. Shame on you!