Pensions Pensions everywhere.

An article in the Telegraph today kind of covered in some detail, the link to this is here.

One of the problems faced by all of us that are in our 40’s and 50’s are the issues of record property prices, the most expensive food and utility costs and the mother of all recessions. None of this has passed yet.

It does get worse, the level of charges within most personal pensions schemes is high and getting higher despite what the Financial Services Authority will tell you, with record numbers of complains against many high street pension advisers it might
be some time before consumers come back to thinking seriously about pensions.

There are further problems:-

Despite all of that most working people in the UK get the fact that they need to make pension provision they just don’t really understand the best way to go about it.

A pension is nothing more than a lump sum of money to be used at some stage in the future with a view to it producing an income.

It should not matter how you build one up, either in formal or informal arrangements but it’s clear you should and soon.

The level of government support for pensions, in particular state pensions is falling through the floor and unlikely to get better anytime soon.

So that’s the gloom and doom out of the way. There is a lot you can do to make matters better.

There are investments that are returning more than 8% per annum with a lot less investment risk than you would imagine with very few so named Independent Advisers recommending these, there are also many ways of investing within pensions without the level of charges you see in large sections of the market place.

The problem with both of the above is that consumers and investors need to be seeking these alternatives out and the industry knows that in the main pension investors probably won’t bother. But for those that will there are some pretty cool options.