pensions

May 11, 2018

Guest Post: Property Versus Pensions – Which Is Best?

Nick Investing crowdfunding, sponsored post, pensions 4 Comments

Ever worry that your pension isn’t large enough to sustain the kind of retirement you’re looking forward to?

On average, British pensioners receive just 29% of their in-work earnings.

This small sum would leave many of us struggling to pay the bills, let alone being able to afford those long-awaited family holidays or treats. Latest figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development show that 18.5% of those aged 76+ in Britain are living in poverty.

Those dependent on state funds are the worst affected and, with pensions failing to provide a sufficient income, many retirees rely on property as an alternative source of income.

Buy-to-let property is a big commitment, both in terms of the capital you need to get started and the long-term nature of the investment. Many of us look forward to relaxing during retirement, and there really is no guarantee of ‘a quiet life’ when you invest in rental properties. If you were planning to invest all your savings in property, it’s essential to consider how your finances would hold up should the property become vacant or need substantial repairs.

If house prices fall or stagnate, you could be left responsible for a property portfolio that contributes only a minimal amount towards your retirement income. Even if the housing market continues to boom, your personal circumstances may change and, as property is an illiquid asset, it can be tricky to turn your investments into cash at short notice.

So, if you’re in search of a way to supplement your pension and bring your retirement dreams a little closer to reality, you’ll be pleased to know that buy-to-let isn’t the only way to invest in bricks and mortar…

Kuflink’s innovative peer-to-peer platform offers investors many of the same advantages as buy-to-let, including monthly interest payments and property-backed opportunities, without the hassle of maintenance or deposit costs!

Register today to view Kuflink’s portfolio of exclusive short-term property loans offering up to 7.2% interest pa gross*, and invest from just £100.

*Capital is at risk. Rate correct as of April 2018. You should seek independent financial advice.

Thank you to my friends at Kuflink for an interesting post. I would just like to add that I am an investor with Kuflink myself and so far have been pleased and impressed with the service received.

As an existing Kuflink investor, I can also offer a special cashback incentive for anyone signing up and investing on the platform via my link. If you click through this special invitation link and invest a minimum of £1000, you will receive cashback as follows:

Investment amount	Cashback due
£1,000 – £5,000	2.50%
£5,000.01 – £25,000	3.00%
£25,000.01 – £50,000	3.50%
£50,000.01 – £99,999.99	3.75%
£100,000	4.00%*

*Cashback capped at £4,000

And yes, you really can earn up to £4,000 in cashback. If you invest £100,000 or more, then in addition to the £4,000 cashback, you would receive interest of around 6% to 7%. That means over a year your total returns on your £100,000 investment would be at least £10,000 (and more if you reinvest the monthly interest repayments on Select-Invest loans). Food for thought if you have that sort of money, though admittedly not many of us are lucky enough to do so!

Note that once you make your first investment of at least £100, you will have 14 days to maximise your cashback by making further investments. The 14-calendar day window starts from the moment you make your first investment. There is no limit to how much money you can invest in this window, and the cumulative total of your investments made within this 14-day period will be the total amount eligible for cashback.

The cashback amount will be transferred six months after your first live investment is made (assuming you haven’t sold up via the secondary market in that time). If Kuflink withdraw this offer after you have invested and before your cashback has been paid, you will still receive the cashback reward. The cashback will be paid into your Kuflink wallet, and from there you can either withdraw it to your bank account or invest it in another Kuflink loan or product.

As your referrer via this link or the link above, I will receive a referrer’s fee (variable) if you invest £1000 or more. Note also that once you have invested you will be able to offer the same cashback deal to your friends and colleagues, and get a referrer’s fee yourself as well. There is no limit to the number of people you can introduce through this scheme.

Obviously, this is a generous promotional offer by Kuflink and I assume it won’t be available forever. If you want to take advantage, therefore, don’t wait too long. I will remove this information if/when I hear the offer is no longer valid.

As always, if you have any comments or questions about this post, please do leave them below.

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post by Kuflink, for which I am receiving a fee. As stated above, I am also an investor with Kuflink myself.

Update:: I have now added an independent review of Kuflink based on my experiences of investing with them. Click here to read it.

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May 1, 2018

How to Track Down Your Lost Pensions

Nick Pensions & Benefits pensions 0 Comments

Today I want to talk about what happens when you have several pensions from different periods in your career.

For most of us, the days of “a job for life” are long gone. People now have an average of eleven different jobs during their working lives, and it’s common to start a new pension at each workplace.

You can thus accumulate a number of pensions and it can be easy to lose track of and even forget about some of them.

Tracing Lost Pensions

In most cases, thankfully, tracing old pensions isn’t too difficult.

For one thing, all pension providers are legally required to send you an annual statement showing how much your pension is worth and how much income it could provide in retirement.

If you’re no longer receiving these statements, maybe because you’ve moved a few times, there are various options open to you.

The first thing you should do is contact your old employer in the case of a workplace pension, or the pension provider in the case of a private pension. When contacting a previous employer you will need to provide as much of the following information as possible:

Date of birth
National Insurance number
When you started and stopped working for the company
When you joined and left the pension scheme

With a private pension provider you will need to provide:

Plan number
Date of birth
National Insurance number
Date your pension was set up

Obviously if you don’t have all this information it’s not the end of the world, but it may be harder for the scheme managers to track your pension down.

Ask the provider for as much information as possible about the pension. This should include what type it is (e.g. defined benefit or defined contribution), how much is currently in the pot, how much income it’s likely to provide in retirement, and (very importantly) whether it’s possible to transfer the pension to another provider and any charges this would incur. The Money Advice Service has template letters you can use when writing to a former employer or private pension provider for this purpose.

The Pension Tracing Service

But what if you’ve lost track of a pension and don’t have contact details for the provider? In that case, the government’s free Pension Tracing Service may be able to help.

All you need to know to use this is the name of your previous employer or pension provider. But before contacting the PTS, gather as much information as you can about the employer and/or the scheme, including the information mentioned earlier.

You can then call 0845 600 2537 or visit the PTS website and they will check your information against their database of over 200,000 pension schemes. They should be able to give you details of the scheme’s administrator, and you will need to contact them for further information as above.

Note that the PTS will only give you contact details for your scheme’s administrator. They won’t tell you whether you have a pension or what it is worth.

Consolidating Pensions

Rather than having lots of small pensions, it can make sense to consolidate them in a single pension.

This will simplify the admin and make it easier for you to see how much you have in your pension pot and what income it may be able to provide for you in retirement.

In addition, if you combine your pensions, you can choose a new one that can be easily managed online. You could, for example, use a self-investment platform such as Hargreaves Lansdown, Fidelity or Bestinvest (which I use myself). Another possibility is PensionBee, which specializes in consolidating multiple pensions into a single one you can manage online 24 hours a day.

You can then log into your account from any device to check your balance, make a contribution or see your projected retirement income. And you can choose an investment plan that has lower fees and is aligned with your expectations and attitude to risk.

To consolidate your pensions you will need to contact the providers to get transfer values, and then ask them to transfer the funds into your new scheme. This is generally a simple, straightforward procedure, though it can take a few weeks (or longer) for the transfers to go through.

Boosting Your Pension

Finally, here are a few more ways you may be able to boost the size of your pension.

Increase your state pension by deferring taking it (see this recent post).
You may also be able to increase your state pension by making additional National Insurance contributions to fill in missing years from your record.
Set up a private pension and/or pay extra contributions into your workplace pension, up to the maximum allowed.
Set up an ISA and/or LISA (under 40s only) for additional tax-free saving.
Consider peer-to-peer lending and/or property crowdfunding as further ways to diversify your retirement saving.

Finally, if you’re a house owner aged 55 or over, you may be able to use equity release to extract some of the value of your property, either as a lump sum or a monthly income. Most commonly, this involves taking out a mortgage on your home which is only repayable when you die or move into long-term care. I wrote about equity release in this recent post.

As ever, if you have any comments or questions about this post, please do leave them below.

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October 17, 2017

How to Check What Your State Pension Will Be

Nick Pensions & Benefits pensions, benefits 2 Comments

Today I thought I would discuss the state pension. This is a subject that concerns everyone, but may be of particular interest to readers of this blog who are approaching retirement age.

Of course, many people have one or more workplace or private pensions. However, the state pension is still a very important component of most people’s income in later life.

And unlike many workplace/private pensions, it rises automatically every year at the rate of inflation or above (under the current triple lock guarantee). That makes it increasingly valuable as you get older.

In this article I’ll be revealing how to check how much state pension you are due and when. But I’ll start with a look at the various changes to the state pension in the last few years and how they affect anyone coming up to pensionable age now.

Speaking of which, let’s start with one of the biggest changes…

Your State Pension Age

It’s unlikely to have escaped your notice that the pension age is rising. At present men can access their state pension at 65 while women get it at around 64. The age for women is in transition at the moment as it rises to equalize with men in 2018.

By 2020, the pension age for both men and women will go up to 66. Between 2026 and 2028 it is due to rise again to 67, and under current government plans it will go up again to 68 in 2037.

You can check when exactly you can start to claim the state pension by entering your date of birth and gender at this government website.

The New Flat Rate Pension

This is the other major change to the state pension in recent years.

Prior to April 2016 everyone received a basic pension (currently £122.30 a week). This was (and still is) topped up by additional state pension elements (S2P and Serps) which you accrued during your working life.

Anyone retiring from April 2016 onwards now receives a ‘flat rate’ pension currently worth £159.55 a week. If, however, you ‘contracted out’ of S2P and Serps at some point in your working life, you may get less than this. The presumption is that your contracted-out pension will provide another source of income for you, so you don’t need (or qualify for) the full flat-rate pension.

A further complication is that the government doesn’t want people who accrued large state pension entitlements under the old scheme (basic pension plus S2P and SERPS) to miss out. So when you reach pension age your entitlement under both the old and new methods of calculation will be worked out and you will receive the larger of the two. That means some people could actually qualify for more than the new flat-rate pension (£159.55 currently). If this is the case, it will be shown separately as a ‘protected payment’ on your state pension statement.

Also, to get the maximum new flat-rate pension you need to have at least 35 years of qualifying National Insurance contributions at the full (non-contracted-out) rate. If you have less than that you will get a reduced pension; and if less than 10 years, nothing at all.

In some circumstances – which I’ll discuss shortly – you may be able to pay a lump sum to fill in gaps in your record. Even if you do have 35 years or more of contributions, though, it may not entitle you to a full pension. The government website (see below) tells me I have 37 years of contributions, but because I was contracted-out for some of these years and so paying a lower rate of National Insurance I still have to contribute for another three years to get the full flat-rate pension. Here’s a screen capture of my actual statement:

If you’re confused by all this, I’m not surprised. The rules are complicated and still being tweaked. So to avoid any nasty surprises it’s important to check what you are due to receive as well as when you are due to do so. There is now an official website where you can access all this information in one place.

Checking Your State Pension

Anyone aged 55 or over who has lived and worked in the UK for 10 years or more (even if they are not British citizens) can now visit https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension to get an estimate of how much state pension they will receive when they retire.

Doing this is a bit more involved than just checking your start date on the pension age site mentioned earlier. You have to sign in with proof of identity, so allow a bit of time for this. If you already have an HMRC online tax account, the good news is you can use this to log in.

Once you’ve done so, you will see a forecast of how much state pension you will get once you’re eligible to start receiving it. This is based on current figures, so if you won’t reach retirement age for a few years yet, it will of course have risen by that time.

Boosting Your State Pension

If you’re disappointed by the amount forecast, one thing you can do to boost your state pension is defer taking it. Under the new rules you will receive an extra 1% for every 9 weeks you put off claiming.

Obviously, to benefit from this overall you should be in good health. For women especially, as their life expectancy tends to be a few years longer than men, deferring your pension (if you can afford to do so) could well be a profitable option. In a way this is a form of investment, underwritten by the government.

No special action is required to defer taking your pension. You just delay claiming and it will be assumed that you wish to defer it.

Another thing you may be able to do to boost your state pension is buy extra voluntary contributions to fill in any gaps in your record. Buying a year of extra contributions (normally Class 3 National Insurance) costs around £733 and will boost your pension by around £230 or £4600 over a 20-year retirement. This can be well worth doing if, for example, you were contracted out for several years.

There are some restrictions, however. In particular, as a general rule it must be done within six years of the end of the tax year concerned. So if the gaps in your record go back further than this, it’s unlikely you will be allowed to make up the whole shortfall in this way.

There’s also the question whether paying voluntary contributions to fill gaps in your record will be cost-effective for you. There is no easy way of calculating this, and I highly recommend getting advice from an independent financial adviser specializing in pensions if you are thinking of going down this route. It’s also a good idea to contact the government’s Future Pension Centre to find out what your options are.

Finally , it should be said that while the state pension provides a baseline income (currently equivalent to around £8,300 a year), on its own it won’t stretch to many (or any) luxuries. Most people will have private or workplace pensions and perhaps other investments as well, and this will be very important if you hope to enjoy your retirement rather than merely survive it. I will look at these in more detail in future posts.

As ever, if you have any comments or questions on this post, please do leave them below.

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