If you were 19 yrs...

He should think about sorting out his own investments as they can no longer be entrusted to pensions/investment companies. Remove antispam and add 670 after bra to email

Be a good Global citizen-CONSUME>CONFORM>OBEY

Circumcision- A crime and an abuse.

In message , Troy Steadman writes

Are the (current) employers contributing (and if so how much) to the new scheme?

There is a generous top-up by the employers but I'm thinking far more along tarquinlinbin's lines that whatever is put in will dribble away over 40 years of takeover, inflation and mishandling.

These days (arguably) your pension needs to be where you can see it and see what is happening to it, be flexible and capable of being switched. I certainly don't think he will want dozens of small pensions generating trivial annuities.

The trouble with this line of reasoning is that it assumes that you can do it better yourself. How many people make their own share investment decisions and actually make money?

It is very fashionable to knock pensions/investment companies - in some cases for good reasons. But to say "He should think about sorting out his own investments" means what exactly?

Rob Graham

X-No-Archive: yes In message , tarquinlinbin writes

You know, I wanted to say that but was too much of a coward because it seems to be offensive view that flies in the face of accepted behaviour. My son started up on his own four years ago and asked me much the same question. I said that as far as I was concerned, pensions were little more than tax-deferment schemes and that he ought to take a deep breath, pay the tax, and plough up to the maximum into reasonably well-performing ISAs and spend the rest of on a spread of other investments.

That was four years ago and, even if it was poor advice, now he's rather chuffed that his fund is worth a respectable amount, and that it's all under his direct control. This has encouraged him to up his investment to around 25 per cent of his disposable income.

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In message , Rob graham writes

I do via my SIPP and I'm no financial wizard.

One big mistake I made when I was running my own private portfolio. About ten years ago I became convinced that security and identification protection was going to grow into a big business, so I bought some Photome stock and watched it slide into oblivion.

I also bought City Centre Restaurants stock because I thought they were ripe for a take-over and, although they didn't have much in the way of property assets, their Garfunkle chain did have a lot of prime site leases. One of the perks of having their shares was vouchers for freebe meals in Garfunkles'. Not having any use for them, I gave them to my editor who was delighted with them. 'Just the thing,' she said joyfully. 'Finding somewhere to have lunches around here is a problem, but Garfunkles' is always empty at lunchimes!' Loud alarm bells, and doh...

But the SIPP does well mainly because the keeper of the portfolio does provide some good advice for his annual fee.

Put the money in an ING Direct account.

A Final Salary Scheme is a Defined Benefit Scheme. What you mean is a Defined Contribution Scheme, also known as Money Purchase.

As long as the employer will contribute a significant amount, it's worth taking it up.

Do you mean a Pension Account or a Savings Account? Nationwide do a Pension Account (as it were) where you can move your money around between funds, but you don't seem to be able to withdraw it to (say) put a house or land into your pension fund, something you can utilise now and know *for certain* will be there in 10-30 years time.

If you mean savings, after a year of saving diligently the Porche is taking care of what is left of his savings (third party fire and theft £2,000 so lets hope he keeps it on the road!) :)