Managing my own pension

[dubrov]

Hi all.

I am looking to manage my own pension.

Having worked in the financial sector, I realise what investment advice is worth, nothing. As a result, I want to try and minimise pension fees so as to maximise the pension's final value

Now I am not foolish enough to think that I know where the stock (or other) markets are going or that I can pick stocks that will outperform.

However, doing a quick two minute calculation with some basic assumptions tells me that if a pension fund manager is taking 1% a year then over a 40 year period I am looking at somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of the final value disappearing in fees.

Some actively managed funds I have seen are considerably more expensive than that even though they generally underperform their passive counterparts

What I will pretty much will do is replicate (more or less) the types of funds that are already out there. This would be quite cheap and easy to do as there are loads of execution only brokers who charge very little for their services.

My question is this:

Is it possible to manage you own pension fund and avail of the associated tax breaks?

I am PAYE at the moment but chance are I will be self-employed at some point if this makes a difference.

 

[Dave Vanian]

Yes you can set up a Self-Directed Personal Pension or Occupational Pension Scheme or a Self-Administered Pension Scheme, whichever is appropriate to your needs. However, you will still pay a fee to the pension company for setting it up and maintaining the pension structure as well as your usual transaction costs (stockbroker etc.) If you don't know what generic type of pension product is most suitable for your needs you may also have to pay for advice in this regard at the start.