Personal pension

[louis wu]

Hello,

At the age of 17 I was asked to meet a "friend" of a work colleague for a lunch time chat at the pub. This "friend" worked for friends provident, and convinced me over the course of the 1 hour lunch break (and a couple of fosters) to opt out of whatever pension I was currently involved with (probably just the state pension) and join FP.

I dont think I ever paid a penny into the pension, and found out the other day that I have about £4000 in it, available to me at age 65.

I still have no idea about pensions, dont know if this constitutes miss-selling, and wouldn't know how to go about claiming it was. I dont even know if £4000 is a good return....36 now.

Does anyone have any ideas or gone through anything similar themselves. looked through the other posts and only found 1 refence to pensions and it wasn't relevent. Could this be put in the same catagory as miss-selling an endowment?

Thanks for reading this post, and please feel free to comment, any advice would be much appreciated

[Rich44]

If you never paid a penny in and now have £4000 I would say thats a very good return

[louis wu]

Yes it does, dont think I explained it too well.

I think this £4000 represent what used to be call the "state pension" and is made up from the pension part of my national insurance contribution.

Thats the point, I am now in a pension scheme, NHS, but at age 36 I have only accrued £4000 in my state pension....and when you think of it like that, its not very much.

[Rich44]

Ahhh I see its difficult to say without all the bits n bobs but someone on here more versed in such things can probably help you.

To be honest I would hope that a friend wouldnt try to sell you a pension because they will get commision on it but rather that it is such a great product but again I couldnt comment on specifics as to whether it is or not

[louis wu]

I am sure the product was fine, but to be honest, I didn't have a clue what was going on, and cared even less.

Ignorance is not the greatest of excuses, and I feel a bit sheepish using it, but it genuinely is the case here.

[pmhread]

As the Government are always tinkering with the state pension, the money you could have been paying in for the past 20 years may well not exist when you retire. You don't actually build up a fund with SP2 (used to be SERPS). You are paying for the current pensionsers. With mortality rates as they are, things are not going to get any easier for this fund hence the governments push on private/company pension plans.

I think your friend was right to contract you out (they will have been paid commission). To prove any miss selling, you would have to prove that you are financially worse off which in all honesty, I don't think you are.

[louis wu]

Thats fair enough, cheers PMH.

As you can tell, I am not comfortable with this subject, and regardless of what happened 20 yrs ago I know I need to sort something else out.

Thanks for the advice.

[pmhread]

The scheme your in now is one of the best (as long as you stick with the NHS!)

An IFA should give you a free initial meeting if you want to top up your pension investment or if your still worried.

Bear in mind the £4000 portion should be a very very small part of your overall pension plans. It won't buy an annuity that will keep you in cigars, champagne and caviar (in fact, if you start smoking the week before you retire, you'll get a larger monthly income!)