Investing in your pension is the best way to invest money for the long term, how can you suggest it isn’t? I understand liquidity would put an ISA up there, but for long term savings pension is absolutely king.
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Money is tied up until 55, which is not good. Employer matching is good, but returns are average. All pension funds do is buy an index fund, you can do much better.
Money is tied up until 55 currently, which is good as it means you have no choice but to invest for the long term.
The tax benefits, both income tax, capital gains, and being outside of your estate for IHT, is huge and massively beneficial.
Default schemes are generally split into passive trackers and mutual funds, I agree. Compounded growth from these is generally very good, and the best option for the majority of people. If you wanted to self invest in the pension wrapper you can in a SIPP.
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I prefer an ISA over a pension, but that is just me. I have a fair deal of experience in stock picking (msc in finance and doing a phd in finance), so I feel I can buy better companies.
Problem with SIPP is the money is tied up.
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Is anybody planning to have accounts with multiple platforms ?
I have a couple of holdings on Wisealpha, but only because individual bonds aren’t available on Freetrade (yet…), for anything equity based I’m moving what i have to Freetrade 
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I prefer having both a sipp and isa. Sipps are bqsu ally isas with some providers but others will restrict you to certain funds.
Still I find the immediate 20 or 40% gain offsets that issue given that you’re investing in them without first paying income tax so compounding would be supercharged compared with a similar isa.
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Yes! Wisealpha is quite great. I also wish that they’ll add the option to buy individual bonds on Freetrade through few amazon tricks. Please acknowledge the request of us people.
We’ve explained why we don’t currently offer bonds on Freetrade & whether that might change here -
Please vote for that idea if you’d like us to add them 
Hats off to you if your skills beat the index plus the guaranteed free return of an employer match in a pension. (Personally, I like that the SIPP is tied up - though in my case it’s not so far off now!)
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But you’re still going to need money when you turn 55, aren’t you?
The tax relief in pensions, the employer match and the compounding on top really can’t be disregarded. Most decent schemes allow you to choose where to invest, so if you don’t want to just invest in an index fund, you can do better, as you say.
Even without the employer match, SIPPs are still worth considering and I do hope Freetrade have SIPPs available at some point.
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With such a weak sterling, you should be focusing on UK stocks. Everyone buying US stocks now is going to be down 15-20% even before they start as the pound recovers.
Needless to say, that’s not a certainty
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Historically the pound has never been this low, the only way is up. Either there is no brexit (good for pound) or a deal (again, good for pound).
7 o’clock tonight. Get the popcorn in
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This is why we have a market, some people believe that & others don’t 
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Even Theresa May is voting against no deal, that vote is a foregone conclusion. I don’t know why they’re bothering with it. Doesn’t actually exclude a no-deal outcome though.
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Yeah, Just because it’s low doesn’t mean it guaranteed to go up, and it doesn’t mean the dollar is guaranteed not to go up or down independently either, Forex is not that easy…
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Agree that sipps tend to be better than ISAs on most metrics, however it’s also worth remembering that if you exceede the lifetime allowance value of £1,030,000 then anything above that is taxed to the point that it negates any benefit you would have got from the tax deduction contributions.
Also when you do drawdown from your sipp post 55 then you will be eligible for income tax on it (after subtracting the 25% of the pot you can withdraw tax free).
Conversely an ISA is always going to be tax free, if you can get yourself in a situation where you are earning a solid income in dividends and capital gains then you will never pay a penny in tax on them.
It’s a case of horses for courses in my opinion, as well as how much you can invest each month and what your medium and longer term financial goals are. I don’t think it’s a bad idea to speak to a financial advisor about such things.
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