What are the chances of me geting money back that I have paid into a pension, I do not wish to have a pension as I no longer require it. Can I retrieve previous funds? If not can I transfer them to someone like my brother?

Many thanks in advance,

Regards,

Michelle.

How do you mean, you no longer require a pension???

The state pension will be worthless, as will a lot of company ones. It's better to add more now, rather than try and catch up in later life.

Trust me, I no longer need one.

How do I get the money I have put in back?

retire early :D

LOL, okay 22 may be pushing it a little bit, I could wait till I am 23 in a weeks time :p :D

Serious advice please :p this is not the muppet show ;)

Weekends are where I'm supposed to get away from techie questions about pensions :rolleyes:.

OK, serious reply now (but not advice;) )

If it is a personal pension scheme then you are basically stuffed (technical pensions law term ;))- you can't get anything out without retiring and you can't retire until you're 50 (unless you're too ill to work).

If it's an occupational scheme you can normally take a refund if you've been in the scheme for less than two years. You'd either get the contributions you've paid back or the current fund value - all depends on the rules of the scheme. If you've been in for two years then you're stuffed again. Some schemes may not let you take a refund even if you have less than two years - again all depends on the rules.

If you take a refund then you'll lose the benefit of whatever your employer has paid into the scheme.

Feel free to email me about this if you want more info

G

Sorry forgot the second question :rolleyes:

Nope, can't transfer benefits to someone else - unless you get divorced;) :)

Trust me, I no longer need one.

I love loaded women :p

But to seriously answer ... if the UK is anything like Belgium, yes, you can get your money back, but they will charge you big time for it, and you will end up approx. with half the money you paid. I'm pretty sure that's correct.

Theo

You can get money out of the pension fund but it will cost you 20% of the fund value .It involves putting it into an offshore company and taking out a lone off the company which you default on but being your own company it dosn't matter to pay it back .This is frowned upon by the government but is legal.A friend of mine did it about 4 months ago and took out £120,000.If you need any info e-mail me.

Unless you're lucky enough to be a higher-rate taxpayer, pensions are not that good an investment. ISAs give similar growth and you can get your hands on the money whenever you need it.

And with ISAs there's no requirement to spend most of your pension buying an annuity. Some MPs are trying to get this restriction removed but the government don't want to.

"Trust busting" is very dodgy and no reputable adviser is going to recommend it. You need to have a SSAS to start with anyway. Is it legal? Yes - well, sort of. Is there a down side? Yes, the Revenue can withdraw approval of the scheme - and any scheme you've transferred money into it from. They then hit the trustees with a tax charge of 40% - which has to be paid even if there ain't any money left in the scheme. And you'll be one of the trustees so you get the hit! There are a lot of people who've found this out the hard way - most notably ze famous French chef Michel Roux of the Waterside Inn!

Certainly the tax advantages aren't as good as they were since dear ol' Gordie Broon did away with ACT but you still get to pay into a pension from pre-tax income.

The "why must I buy an annuity" argument is quite amusing. <declares interest: Co I work for sells annuities and also "Drawdown" contracts for people who don't wan't to buy annuities> The big issue is that most people will never have a large enough pension fund for them to be able not to buy an annuity. Most advisers look for a fund of at least £100K - and some are looking for £250K these days - before they would consider it a practical solution. "Drawing down" a pension from the fund without insuring it does give you the option of a more agressive investment policy than the insurance company will use in calculating annuity rates so you may well get more income - at least initially. The thing the insured annuity has in it's favour is what is known as "mortality drag" - basically this means that because not everyone dies at the same age, the longer lived are cross subsidised by those who die younger. This means that the longer you live, the more you have to outperform the annuity company by. You pays your money and you takes your chance;)

Few people would buy an annuity voluntarily as the annuity rates are poor, you must hand over a minimum of 75% of your pension fund forever and you cannot pass on the annuity to your dependants (except your wife if you buy that kind of annuity).

The government want their tax as you receive your pension and don't want you leaving your pension fund to your dependants but surely that's what inherintance tax is for?

I hope they do remove the compulsion to buy an annuity at 75. Sorry if that puts you out of business :(

Thanks for all your replies, I will be in contact with those of you who have offered to help me.

I really want to try and get the money back if possible, I have now
cancelled my pension with the company. The pension consisted of me
contributing 4.5% and the company 4.5% also, or something like that. II
think I may be under the two year mark with it, I am not sure, I will have
to check.

Many thanks again,

Michelle.

No prob Chelle (sorry we kinda hijacked your thread though:))

Kevin - put us out of business? By giving us more business from people with big pension funds who want to do clever (ie expensive;)) things with them? And if it happened the law would become (even) more complicated which only benefits pensions legal type people.

GM
Pensions Legal type person :D

Don't worry GM,

Thank you for helping out :D

Cheers,

Michelle.