8 Top Tips For Improving Your Pension Pot!

Millions of people in the UK take the first important steps of setting up their pension & retirement plan, but fail to follow them up by making sure their pension is prospering.

According to research, 1 in 4 people have never reviewed their pension plan, whilst this will not affect your daily life- it could have a serious effect on your comfort in retirement.

We advise you to review your pension to ensure it's on course to provide your retirement income needs. 

Many of us gather pensions through the workplace, when leaving jobs we tend to leave behind separate pension pots. They may be easier to manage if they are consolidated, you should consider transferring them under one platform such as Personal Pension or Self Invested Personal Pension. 

It is important you seek financial advice before considering combining your pensions, personal circumstances and risk profile means the advice for one person may not be the same for everyone. There are of course some pensions which it may not be wise to transfer, therefore seeking advice is vital. 

With our Portfolio Management Service (PMS),  we have developed and constructed risk rate portfolios to ensure that our recommended asset allocation closely matches your personal circumstances.

The performance of your pension fund can make a huge difference to your retirement, our clients receive investment proposals detailing how, and where is best to invest your portfolio. We take into consideration your retirement plan, attitude towards risk and current market conditions.

If you have a pension which was set up between 1980 - 2000, charges were often much higher than they are today. Plans set up back then may have you paying more in charges, they tend to take a fixed monthly fee or a percentage of the monthly contributions. 

Contributions into a pension will almost certainly be invested and therefore subject to investment risk.

Risk is one of the most important factors when it comes to investing your money for the future. We carry out an attitude to risk questionnaire to find out the risk balance between the amount of risk you are willing to take, and the potential return you're likely to get over your investment period. 

If you have a long time before you retire, you may be prepared to take a bigger risk with your investments, as you get closer to retirement you will be more cautious. 

We advise our clients to continually review their investment position as past performance does not reflect on future investments. This helps to manage investment risk and prevent any loss. 

Pension contributions are the single most effective way of boosting your retirement fund. Many people start saving for their pensions later in life, quite often people have periods where they don't contribute at all. Most people pay too little into their pensions throughout their working life.

It makes sense to top up your pension wherever possible, this could be a lump sum or monthly contributions. You should consider keeping on track of your payments to ensure you reach your retirement goals and income needs.

You can usually make additional savings to your existing workplace pension scheme. Alternatively, you should consider taking advantage of pension tax relief. The higher rate of your tax, the more tax relief you can receive, including non-earners. Basic-rate tax relief of 20% is added automatically. 

For example: if your contribution is £400 the government will add £100. If you are a higher taxpayer, you can claim an extra £100-£275 depending on individual circumstances.  

Salary or bonus sacrifice arrangement may not be the most popular way to improve your pension, but it can be one of the most efficient ways of contributing. Arrangements involve giving up some salary in exchange for a pension contribution from the employer. In doing this, you will pay a reduced amount of income tax, and usually make a saving on National Insurance tax.

You can invest into a pension for a non-working spouse or partner, it is one of the most tax-efficient ways to save, and could provide additional tax-free income in retirement. Pension income can be one of the best ways to make use of both tax-free allowances. 

It is worth considering saving into pensions in both names, even if one of the the couples does not work. This helps to use both personal allowances when retirement incomes are taken and could potentially boost the amount of tax-free income as a couple.