HI Guys
Are you only allowed 1 SIPP per person.
Like my work based 1 only have 4 funds which are not very good and expensive.
Am i stuck with it or can you open more than 1?
There is no limit on the number of pensions you can contribute to. See the following government website info:
https://www.gov.uk/plan-retirement-income/your-pension-options
As stehuk said you can open as many SIPP’s as you like - but the overall limit is still 100% of your UK salary per tax year up to including £60K. This goes for all of your pensions - workplace pensions, SIPP’s, stakeholder pensions…
Also, the more you open the more fees you may have to pay. And providers may limit the number of SIPP’s you can open with them.
Monevator has a good overview on providers:
HI
I am trying to workout am i paying in enough to my SIPP already and to move over to a ISA now.
Can i ask in here or should i find a more informed SIPP forum based website? (No Offence Intended)
Hi,
I don’t think that anyone is able to advise you on this - as this comes close to giving personal advice without knowing your full financial and private circumstances. All we can do is give an opinion based on the details of your financial and private circumstances you feel comfortable sharing here.
I think overall that it comes down to what you want to do with your SIPP and ISA in general as well as how old you are, for instance.
I have always paid money into both a SIPP and a S&S ISA because I have always paid into my workplace pension to get max employer match and then paid in extra on top of that to reduce my overall tax burden.
Like Pinch said, none of us can advise you or provide any financial advisory services, but we can at least express our opinions.
Personally I dump every spare penny I have in both. With pension contributions you get “free money” in the shape of tax relief and/or employer contribution and no taxes with the ISA
…broadly speaking of course.
Here’s a fun little online calculator you can play to see what you might have available to you when you decide to retire some day:
Just enter your info in all the fields as best or accurate as you can
This query is for my other half as i do the finances.
They have a wage approx £40000 and pay into workplace pension.
The company pays on
- Entire salary.
- They match 6%
- They allow salary sacrifice calcs (The calculation for this is 22.28 * 6.9% = 1.54(rounded) plus your employer rate of 6% = 7.54%)
My partner is 50 yrs old paying 22.28% of salary into pension approx £620 a month.
Provider is Aegon i think its the default fund Growth Tracker (Flexible Target)
My thoughts are this is a good contribution into the work place SIPP my only thoughs was to change fund to the following https://digital.feprecisionplus.com/factsheethtml/aegonc/en-GB/aegonc/?TypeCode=FA:MVMY&specialunittype=ORDN&MPCategoryCode=&Category=&priipproductcode=&documentcountry=&Category2=&RangeCode=87200180
THe default fund is
So as they are paying a good amount into the pension i think it may be a good idea to open a S&S ISA on Invest Engine to offer flexibility to the portfolio and access to cash if needed.
So i appreciate you do not provide financial advice and any decisions are down to us.
But my query is as follows.
- Are we paying in to much to the workplace SIPP for max advantage.
- Is it a good idea to change fund which is only 0.5%
- Does getting a S&S ISA sound like a good idea?
- Finally my partner has 2 other pensions one is a local government which i think we cannot transfer (but told not to touch it by financial adviser a few years ago) But the other is also a Aegon it only has £360 in it should we transfer it?
If i have missed anything out you need to know let me know.
Any questions you have about the FIRE calculator - you could contact them directly
Hi,
Anything that follows is my private opinion - formed by my biases and needs to be taken with a pinch 
of salt, always. Or a bucketload come to that.
I’m not able to give advice but… I can point out what I like and don’t like when I look at these funds and why.
Therefore this post can only give you pointers to maybe look at certain things and come to a decision about it.
With that out of the way… let’s have a looksee:
I think paying over 20% into a workplace pension is quite good. I would leave it at that and open a SIPP and a Stock & Shares ISA elsewhere. Due to tax relief into the SIPP you could pay more into the ISA and still come out equal in terms of money paid into each account each month.
The default fund - Aegon Growth Tracker (Flexible Target) Pn, ISIN: GB00BYM2YH69
This fund is 8 years old and has a size of around £5.9 Billion - I think that’s a good size.
Tab Overview
The charges are quite high with over 1%.
Looking at the Asset class breakdown - I don’t particularly like what I’m seeing here.
- US is only just about one third of what the All World trackers have US at (60%+)
- There’s quite heavy bias towards UK with over 30% (UK Equities and UK Gilts)
- All gilts and fixed income together are at over 22%
- Global Emerging Markets are only at 7% whereas the All World trackers have it at 10%.
Looking at the top holdings
As benchmarks there are quite a lot of ESG indices in there. I’m not going into ESG here but you need to be aware that ESG indices by nature are excluding (lots of) things, depending on their own methodology - something worth looking into, methinks.
Klement has an interesting article on ESG investing, in case you want to read up - The quantification of ESG investing - by Joachim Klement
Looking at Regions it shows the UK bias even more
As for the other fund - Aegon Adventurous Tracker (Flexible Target) (ARC) Pn, ISIN: GB00BYM2XM48
This fund is also 8 years old but only has a size of around £44 million = £0.044 billions. What happened, why is this fund not larger?
The ongoing charge is given as 0.05% - I would question this - why is it that low?
The Asset Allocation and Geographical breakdowns show that the bias toward UK is even higher than in the Growth fund - UK weighs nearly 50%! It is a form of Adventurous, for sure, but hardly the form I want it to be, tbh.
Adventurous - I was thinking more along the lines of higher Emerging Markets, Emerging 4 Tigers or Emerging Asia - Ex 4 Tigers and definitely some Frontier Markets thrown in for good measure. You know… adventurous stuff, things that aren’t fully worked out, where the risks are higher but the rewards could equally be higher.
Looking at the holdings - this doesn’t look “Adventurous” to me at all!
With no disrespect to anyone but I don’t want to invest like that.
As I live in the UK and earn a salary in the UK I already have home bias anyway - I would actively look to balance this out in my investments - part of which is my workplace pension.
So, when it comes to these 2 funds - not sure I would want to invest in either of them. But as part of an overall portfolio, made up of all the “little bits” everywhere including my Stock & Share ISA’s and SIPP’s and Premium Bonds and Savings accounts and properties etc. etc. … maybe they can just stay put and I’ll balance this out with my investments elsewhere.
I would “go away” and see if I can get answers to some or all of my questions. The end result may well be to leave everything as it is in the workplace pension and go full steam into a Stock & Shares ISA and SIPP with other providers whether they be IE or Vanguard or anyone else.
With regards to your question 4 - transfer of the little Aegon pension
Check if there are any stipulations that any fees will be charged if you transfer this fund - Aegon should be able to advise on this. If not, I think it may be worth transferring this find but I would first check which fund this teeny tiny pension is invested in and whether this fund would be more suited than either the Growth or the Adventurous funds above. In which case… maybe change the fund the big pension is invested in? And then transfer the little pension.
For comparison - this is my workplace pension.
MT Future World Global Equity Index Fund, Legal & General fund code: BXM3 Internal code: 36670/848 Underlying fund code: GPGE
The fund is 3 years old and has a size of £0.089 billion.
It is more of a world tracker.
Hi @osopolar as you look for feedback, 3 considerations for me :-
- Destination: appropriate amount of pension and savings contributions can’t be considered without the goal in mind. Some simplistic examples further on.
- Starting point: Your partner pension contributions don’t look right. People don’t generally put in 22.28%, it’s normally a whole number, such as 5%/7%/10%. You could check on payslips or get them to create a logon for Aegon to find out what it actually is. I would discover what the local gov pension pays too.
- Route: You are looking at aggressive funds (80% or 100% equities). The funds de-risk during retirement lead-up (aka. Lifestyling), but this depends on what retirement age is nominated. I would want to be satisfied that they had a suitable tolerance for the chosen portfolio, mixing equities with lower-risk assets to achieve.
Eg. 1 plan to retire as soon as possible, no other future income- put the maximum you can into pensions and savings.
Eg. 2 plan to retire at normal retirement date with a pre-existing final-salary pension or rentals, just wanting a nest egg- put sufficient in pension to attract maximum matched employer contributions, put some in an ISA.
In summary, plans and suitable portfolios vary depending on the aim, current position and risk attitude/capacity, and practicality.
Consider contacting an advisor for a quote for building a plan, if you don’t feel confident.