Advice sought (max out contributions or continue to invest)

moore82

Registered User
Messages
21
Hi all. I posted in this forum a few years back (here) and I'm looking for some advice again.

Age:

39

Spouse’s/Partner's age:

39

Annual gross income from employment or profession:

55k

Annual gross income of spouse:

45k

Monthly take-home pay:

3100

Type of employment:

Private sector

In general are you:
(a) spending more than you earn, or
(b) saving?


Saving.

Rough estimate of value of home:

Renting.

Amount outstanding on your mortgage:

n/a

What interest rate are you paying?

n/a

Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc:

None.

Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month?

Yes.

If not, what is the balance on your credit card?

n/a

Savings and investments:

20k KBC Extra Regular Saver Account
21k Prize Bonds
25k Investments

Do you have a pension scheme?

Yes. Company contribute 10% and I have put in variable amounts throughout the years. Ranges from 2.5% to 20%, but it's usually on the lower end. Value of the pension is 50k (employee and employer contributions total 34k). Fund is the Zurich Dynamic Prisma.

Do you own any investment or other property?

No.

Ages of children:

None.

Life insurance:

None.

What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?

Back in 2017 when I first posted my issue was a lack of savings/savings plan. I have since increased this from 12k to 66k (and then moved 25k of this to investments). I'm still renting and no plans to purchase at the moment but the savings account and prize bonds are there for any potential deposit and also acts as my emergency fund.

My pension pot has also grown since and I'm wondering if I should avail of the tax benefit and contribute the full 20% each month or instead reduce it to 2.5%/5% and increase my take home pay. With the former I'll take home 2700 whereas the latter will leave me with 400-500 extra p/m. As the pension fund can't be touched until retirement, I would like to invest in the short to medium term (5-15 years). Is it foolish to forgo the tax benefits of maxing out my contributions and personally invest instead? The dynamic fund covers 400+ companies and is quite US focused (60%).

Thanks.
 
To be blunt, yes it is foolish.

Tax free compunding of the greater pension contribution vs investing a smaller amount of personal monies
 
Thanks Gordon. Part of me is looking at the length of time the funds will be sitting in th pension pot. It would be nice to possibly have some returns prior to retirement age.
 
Thanks Gordon. Part of me is looking at the length of time the funds will be sitting in th pension pot. It would be nice to possibly have some returns prior to retirement age.
Funds can be accessed at age 50 if you’ve left the relevant employment.

There’s a trade-off…tax free compounding and generous tax relief versus slight inflexibility in terms of timing. But is that such a bad thing? If people could access their pension funds at any time, they’d probably panic even more when market get choppy and they’d also probably use their pension monies to buy cars etc.
 
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