Pension Planning And Sipps: Considering A Sipp In Your Pension Planning

When it comes to pension planning exercising choice and making active decisions is almost as important as the simple act of saving in the first place

. Having choice and not using it can be worse than not having any choice at all.

I am currently working with a campaign called Pensions Income Choice, which is looking at ways to make it easier for pension investors to shop around with their pension fund at retirement. The idea is to ensure than when investors reach retirement and need to convert their accumulated pension fund into an income, they get the best possible value from their savings. The only way to make sure this happens is to encourage everyone to stop and look around at their various options, before committing themselves to a particular income arrangement, such as an annuity (remember, with most annuities, once you have bought it you are then locked into it for life).

This principle of choice extends beyond annuities. Some pensions offer a default investment fund and perhaps a default contribution rate as well. This is all very well and these defaults can be useful for getting people started on saving for retirement in the first place; however I believe they are almost invariably going to be a less-than-perfect choice for most investors. Default options are lowest common denominators - they are the option which is going to be least wrong for most people. As a result most investors can get better value by tailoring their retirement savings to meet their own needs.

If you're happy making your own investment decisions, the Vantage SIPP puts you in control. You can manage your pension online and choose from more than 2,000 funds, shares, investment trusts, gilts, corporate bonds, exchange traded funds, and cash. Find out more about the Vantage Self Invested Personal Pension. We believe this low cost, easy to manage SIPP is one of the best on the market, and we aren't the only ones, After studying more than eighty different SIPPs, I've plumped for the award winning HL Vantage SIPP from Hargreaves Lansdown - If you can find a cheaper SIPP, then please let me know...

Cliff D'Arcy, The Motley Fool - personal finance website At the point of retirement it is almost impossible to have a default retirement income solution. The best way to get the most out of the pension that you have worked so hard saving for is to shop around. If you opt for an annuity then it is likely the income offered by your pension provider will be less than you could get by shopping around - you could get up to 30% more. Actions speak louder than words and so we are not just campaigning on this we do not have a default annuity for our SIPP, clients choose whatever suits them best and gives them the highest income.

Our free online annuity search engine allows you to get quotes from the most competitive annuity providers quickly and easily. See how much income you could get.

Personally, I would like everyone to be making active and informed decisions about all aspects of their retirement savings, not just at retirement but right from the outset.

by: Tom McPhail

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