merkin

www.badpension.com

download the powerpoint presentation, Very good!

TurboKitty

What's a pension?

paulr

Me too TK...i'm seriously considering buying a house to rent out as a form of income for when i'm older.(I'll wait till prices come down though)
Eventually i'll take out a pension as well but dont like the idea of piling all my money into one.Its the fact that someone else is in control of my money i dont like,no-one looks after it as well as i do.....

TurboKitty

I don't expect to live to get old so I'd rather spend it now.

image doctor

....and what if you do get old? Which I expect you will.

Scooby Snacks 23

I work in the pensions industry and I'm going to look at this - I must say, this guy has done a good job!!

TurboKitty

Then I'll starve or freeze. Problem solved.

JoeyDeacon

I too came to the same conclusions as this guy with my pension and hence last month made the pension fully paid up. You can't actually cancel it and get your money back (well whats left of it anyway) so they still have my money and want to charge me a monthly administration fee for looking after (my 3 year old niece could do a better job with her post office account) my account.

Basically for a pension to be worth anything when you retire you have to pay in a lot of money each month (at least £400). Also this figure will be based on how the stock exchange performed over the last 10 years or so and up until recently this wasn't too bad (infact in 1999 it was very good).

Of course when you do finally retire you can't get your hands on all that lovely money as you can only take 25% as a cash lump sum. You have to buy an annuity which gaurantees to pay you a monthly amount although obviously I won't be retiring for 31 years I have no idea what this rate will be. Judging by the fact that people are living longer it is a pretty safe bet that this percentage will be virtually nothing.

So you have all that lovely money sitting there which you are not allowed to get your hands on. One of the consultants here has just retired and has a 200K pension fund. Now if that was my 200K I would buy a property to rent out and live on the rent, knowing I can always sell the flat and get my money back at a later date.

The government is slightly nervous about all these people living longer who will be entitled to a state pension and hence are encouraging people to take out their own private pensions (stakeholder pensions). All those people who are worried about eating dogfood and being homeless if they don't get a pension need not worry as the nanny state will look after you.

My great aunt for instance is 80, never saved a sigle penny in her life and has just been given a brand new flat rent free, pays no council tax and receives a weekly state pension as well. She could have scrimped and saved all her life and been no better off.

TelBoy

Righty ho. Go ahead and believe that then Joey. Let's compare notes in 30 year's time...

mattstant

is that a highly dubious method of losing weight turbo kitty







sorry couldnt resist

PiNkEyE69

I agree with you there, it hardly seems worth it.
I was thinking, rather than having a pension, of opening a separate bank account and having a standard order to move some of my salary into it each month.
a) I know where my money is
b) I can get at my money if I retire
c) I know what I put is is what I will get out
d) ...and then some.
e) I can cancel the SO anytime I like, and not have to pay anyone any amount to keep an eye on my money.
f) no linked to any ftse or shares, only the rate of interest.

Either that or put some money aside in a shoebox every month
The sad thing is my mother (who should have retired 2 years ago but is still working as because I'm buying the house she lives in the council will not life a finger to help her if she retires) just bought a 5-year pep last year all that money down the drain when the shares plummeted.

[Edited by PiNkEyE69 - 2/26/2003 4:34:55 PM]

merkin

Only problem with doing that pinkeye, is that by the time you retire, inflation will have eaten your money away to the point you'd be lucky if it would buy a mars bar..

paulr

Not if you save it in a mini cash ISA merkin..that should keep up with inflation,at present rates anyway....but only just.

My only thought is if everyone buys a house to rent out,will there be enough people who want to rent one.

merkin

True, but he was talking about putting it in a bank, at most bank interest rates, you'll be screwed over time..

If I had to be in cash, agree a cash ISA about the best bet

(but what do i know, I punt it all on stock market and houses anyway )

paulr

On the subject of state assistance,my dad has just retired and put a load of cash into a pension during the last 10 years of his working life.It only gives him what he'd have got anyway if he had nothing and claimed the minimum income guarentee.
What it does do though,is allow him to work and keep the extra money.If you recive the mig then you loose it if you get a job,and lets face it,loads of pensioners now have part time jobs(B+Q).

Relying ONLY on the state will be a rather sad way to retire.

GaryK

The great pension scam rages on, every week we hear of another institute having to reduce returns to cover fees because of poor performance. I remember years ago asking one IFA the benefit of a pension and got the reply 'you cant get at your money' for some maybe thats a benefit for most intelligent people I dont see it as a benefit. Second IFA I saw some years later upon hearing my negativity gave me the best advice Id ever got, invest in property!

Why is it that the one of the most important aspects of your life (investing) is handled by someone you dont know, you never see and more importantly cannot vouch for their credentials????

I mean would you let some guy take your scoob to be serviced at a garage you've never seen or dont know about, of course you wouldnt!!!!

[Edited by GaryK - 2/26/2003 4:55:38 PM]

JoeyDeacon

If this thread proves one thing it's don't put all your eggs in one basket. Don't for instance rely on a pension to keep you in your old age, likewise don't assume that you can live off the rental income from a property either.

Oh and the best person to look after your finances is you, don't rely on what some IFA has told you (they are on a commision)

As of now the FTSE 100 is at 3593 and while once this would have made headlines it's as if nobody even cares anymore.

PiNkEyE69

Good in theory, however you need the money there to buy the house in the first place.
Luckly I bought mine from the council 4 bedrooms, 2 gardens, 2 toilets = £67,000. Was supposed to be £115,000, now I've seen houses in the same area but with 3 bedrooms going for £125,000.
Houses, the only sure way of making money in this life.

Given the option of giving £300 a month to a pension fund or £300 a month as a mortgage payment, I'd go with the mortgage.

But the way pensions are going, you can say the same for them, when compared to the amount the state would give you. What about opening a few accounts (say an account with 5-10 differing Banks/B.S.'s and moving a little into each a month?
Isa sounds good, but in lthis life nothing's certain.


[Edited by PiNkEyE69 - 2/26/2003 5:00:13 PM]

JoeyDeacon

PaulR

On the subject of state assistance,my dad has just retired and put a load of cash into a pension during the last 10 years of his working life.It only gives him what he'd have got anyway if he had nothing and claimed the minimum income guarentee.
What it does do though,is allow him to work and keep the extra money.If you recive the mig then you loose it if you get a job,and lets face it,loads of pensioners now have part time jobs(B+Q).

Relying ONLY on the state will be a rather sad way to retire.

But then paying into a pension for 10 years so you can have the benefit of working at B&Q when you retire for £5 an hour isn't the biggest insult ever? Think of what he could have had if he had invested those 10 years of pension payments into a property instead. Then he wouldn't have to work in B&Q just to make ends meet then.

Tiggs

lol- soooooo many inacurate statements in hurts

there needs to be a new abreviation added to the world of online advice that sums up the fact that the person making the statement is unqualified to do so and as such may be talking twaddle!

paulr

What worries me is that when my dad took out his pension with the Equitable,there was a GUARENTEED annual return of 5%(approx).
Recently Equitable said they couldnt honour this.
Well from what i see this was a legally binding contract that was broken.Its like you handing over 15k for a new car,then to be told "actually we've now put the price up to 30k".

Only in the pensions industry could you get away with this.No wonder no-one has confidence.

JoeyDeacon

Tiggs,

Happen to work as an IFA by any chance? ;-)

He's probably more qualified than the person who advised him to take the pension out in the first place. Not that they would have been affected by the large commision they were about to receive.....

PiNkEyE69

Tiggs
Are you talking about the powerpoint presentation or us?

[Edited by PiNkEyE69 - 2/26/2003 5:06:54 PM]

paulr

JoeyDeacon..my dad doesnt work in b+q.He actually has a pretty good job as a part time hgv driver.
Anyway dont knock £5 per hour,thats not a bad rate for some pensioners.

And Tiggs......what innacuracies are there please.(not being sarcastic)

Tiggs

joey, i was refering to the posters on here not the original bloke with the anti ZAN stuff.

JoeyDeacon

PaulR,

The point I was trying to make was that your dad paid into his pension to pay for his retirement. Surely retirement means not having to work anymore?? I think it is shocking that all his 10 years of pension contributions allow him to do is have a part time job as well.

It wasn't a dig at your dad it was a dig at how f**ked up this whole pension thing is.

Tiggs

paul,

there are 2 problems:

1 is actual mistakes...ppl saying things that are not true.

the other is ppl making statements that while not wrong will lead ppl to take action that will not be correct. this is the bigger issue and one that everyone is guilty of from the man in the pb to the media.

for example, in the late 90's accurate infomation was presented in a way that made ppl belive that to not have an ISA/stockmarket investment was mad......lots lose money.......now accurate (ish) infomation is presented in a way that will encourage millions of ppl to hold their money as cash, dump their invetments, dump their pension, etc......in 40 yrs time i wonder how happy they will be about that!

T

[Edited by Tiggs - 2/26/2003 5:12:57 PM]

paulr

Sure mate,i understand.
The real reason he works is because he actually likes working.He now works the hours he wants and to be honest i'm not sure retirement is all its made out to be.I know quite a few people over 65 who are still working.Unless you have wadges of cash i'm sure retirement can be pretty crap for some people.

He also has the most important thing...good health...

PiNkEyE69

I'll let you know when I'm sitting on a beach earning 20%
Seriously, I don't pretend I know the in's and out's of the financial system in our country, in fact I know I don't know all the ins and outs of the system, I just go by the experiances I read and hear, and at the moment they seem to be more bad than good. People get paid to give other people advice on these matter, so therefore anything I say is worth exactly what you pay for it.

Does anyone have a good pension experiance to talk about. Not taking the pish, seriously interested.

I work bloody hard for my money, I don't fancy the prospect of handing, say, £200 a month over to a system that only going to give me maybe a small percentage of that when I retire. It sounds like gambling and I can't say I'm in a comfortable position to play those kind of odds.
I inherited 200+ shares in Rolls Royce, man when that price plummeted was I not happy. Having said that they were free to me so I have nothing to lose.



[Edited by PiNkEyE69 - 2/26/2003 5:22:14 PM]

paulr

Tiggs...how do you intend to fund your retirement,if i may ask?