Intelligent Money - your investment questions answered

[The Stiglet]

JulianPH said:

The Stiglet said:

Like many, I've been reading this thread with interest as I too need to consolidate various pensions and also got burnt with Woodford at HL. If I'd kept my eye on the ball then I would have sold in time (plus a few house builders) last year but I wasn't paying enough attention.

I have a question for Julian or Nick - do you also offer a product that allows me to select my own investments or is it only the IM funds on offer? I could consider moving my SIPP to you but I'd still like the opportunity to select some equities or specific funds now and again.

Hi The Stiglet

Currently it is only the IM investments that are available through Private Clients (IM Optimum, IM Index & PH Equity), but we are looking at making available other equities and funds on an "as requested" basis for each individual client.

We can actually do this today on a case by case basis, but would need further systems development to automate such self selection and pull through the daily data feeds for valuations.

So in short, we do everything we can to accommodate the wishes of our Private Clients, but things such as this are not yet build into our automated process and will need to be actioned through your Private Client Manager at the current time.

I hope this helps, please let me/us know if there is anything else or this answer throws up additional questions.

Cheers

Julian

Hi Julian, thanks for your response and sorry for the delay in mine - was a busy Q4! I'll write Nik an email later today to discuss things.

[JulianPH]

The Stiglet said:

Hi Julian, thanks for your response and sorry for the delay in mine - was a busy Q4! I'll write Nik an email later today to discuss things.

No problem. As you can see, we are not pushy!

Nik will be delighted to assist you.

Cheers

[Unexpected Item In The Bagging Area]

A couple of questions if you don’t mind, gents. What does “You can use carry forward if you’re... a deferred member with paid-up pension benefits” mean? I’ve taken that from the Pension Advisory Service website.

I’m asking because my wife is looking at setting up a SIPP but I can’t work out if she can carry forward: she hasn’t been able to contribute to her old pension that she had through her firm as it became deferred when she was promoted to partner just over 3 years ago, and has no other pensions.

Also what would be involved in claiming back the 20% tax relief plus the extra 25% through her tax return? Her income level gives a contribution limit of £10k BTW. We may do this through you guys to make life as easy as possible!

[Mattt]

AFAIK (and would love to be corrected) you can carry forward the unused allowance but you can’t retrospectively adjust the tax paid for previous periods.

[Mattt]

As for the other question, the 20% is automatic but the higher rate relief is done through your self assessment (or if you don’t do a self assessment you can simply ring them and tell them your contributions).

[JulianPH]

Unexpected Item In The Bagging Area said:

A couple of questions if you don’t mind, gents. What does “You can use carry forward if you’re... a deferred member with paid-up pension benefits” mean? I’ve taken that from the Pension Advisory Service website.

I’m asking because my wife is looking at setting up a SIPP but I can’t work out if she can carry forward: she hasn’t been able to contribute to her old pension that she had through her firm as it became deferred when she was promoted to partner just over 3 years ago, and has no other pensions.

Also what would be involved in claiming back the 20% tax relief plus the extra 25% through her tax return? Her income level gives a contribution limit of £10k BTW. We may do this through you guys to make life as easy as possible!

Carry forward allows you to use any unused pension allowance from the last 3 years (providing you had a pension in place for each of those years).

An example of this is that you took out a pension 20 years ago and stopped paying into this after a few months,

20 years later you want to make a big pension contribution. You can, as you already had a pension in place that you didn't contribute the maximum or anything at all to, over the last 3 years.

Basically, providing you had any sort of pension (not including the state pension) you are eligible for this.

You can skip everything else other than knocking off anything paid in for each of those last 3 tax years. You do have to do this in order though. Nik can sort this out for you/your wife.

We (or any other pension provider, for that matter) would automatically claim back the 20% basic rate of tax. Your wife would claim back any higher or highest tax through her tax return. Her accountant would do this as a matter of course and, again, Nik can assist.

You can do this through anyone you want (not just us), but we offer named personal assistance (face-to-face, when you want) where others only provide a call centre (please press 3 for...) level of service.

Cheers

Julian

[JulianPH]

Mattt said:

As for the other question, the 20% is automatic but the higher rate relief is done through your self assessment (or if you don’t do a self assessment you can simply ring them and tell them your contributions).

Yep!

Dead easy.

[JulianPH]

Mattt said:

AFAIK (and would love to be corrected) you can carry forward the unused allowance but you can’t retrospectively adjust the tax paid for previous periods.

Hi Mattt

Sorry I missed this earlier this evening. Could you expand. Have you paid too much (or not reclaimed enough) income tax on previous contributions)?

Cheers

Julian

[Mattt]

JulianPH said:

Hi Mattt

Sorry I missed this earlier this evening. Could you expand. Have you paid too much (or not reclaimed enough) income tax on previous contributions)?

Cheers

Julian

I was responding to the other poster.

Say you earnt £120k in the 18/19 tax year but only made £10k of contribution then you’d be able to carry over the unused allowance to 19/20 (and beyond).

In an ideal world you’d also want to be able to retroactively make contributions in previous years say in the above example to reduce income to <£100k as that’s the most efficient salary - but that’s not allowed.

[JulianPH]

Mattt said:

I was responding to the other poster.

Say you earnt £120k in the 18/19 tax year but only made £10k of contribution then you’d be able to carry over the unused allowance to 19/20 (and beyond).

In an ideal world you’d also want to be able to retroactively make contributions in previous years say in the above example to reduce income to <£100k as that’s the most efficient salary - but that’s not allowed.

Hi Mattt

Sorry my confusion.

You have to max out the current year's contributions before using carry forward and then your retrospective contributions start at the furthest year away, moving to the second year and finally the previous year.

Whilst you need to have had sufficient net relevant earnings in all of those previous tax years to make carry forward contributions I am pretty sure that this does not adjust historic tax codes and that the entirety of the carry forward contributions reduce your taxable income in the current year.

I better check this with Nik when he is free though as this is very much his area!

[Unexpected Item In The Bagging Area]

Thanks for the replies, Julian and Matt, it was all extremely useful.

[JulianPH]

Unexpected Item In The Bagging Area said:

Thanks for the replies, Julian and Matt, it was all extremely useful.

No problem - and cheers Mattt.

[Kingdom35]

Hi Julian

A pretty simple question no doubt, but we have two young girls aged 15mths and 3yrs old, both have Junior ISA's and a fair amount in (combined just over £5k). Rates are poor around 2% or just over with Nationwide.

Im looking at something with a bit better return.

What do IM offer for a long term 15+ outlook? Plus what kind of fee's would I be paying with yourselves.

Im thinking I can move them individually across at some point soon

Thanks in advance

[JulianPH]

Kingdom35 said:

Hi Julian

A pretty simple question no doubt, but we have two young girls aged 15mths and 3yrs old, both have Junior ISA's and a fair amount in (combined just over £5k). Rates are poor around 2% or just over with Nationwide.

Im looking at something with a bit better return.

What do IM offer for a long term 15+ outlook? Plus what kind of fee's would I be paying with yourselves.

Im thinking I can move them individually across at some point soon

Thanks in advance

Hi Kingdom35

You are right in your assessment that cash rates are not conducive with 15 year investment horizons if you want to maximise the growth potential and protect against inflation.

We offer a wide range of options from fully managed portfolios of index trackers (IM Optimum - 0.87% a year fully inclusive of all costs), to purely passive index trackers (IM Index - 0.57% a year, again fully inclusive) and a fully managed "buy and hold" core equity portfolio that invests directly into global brand stocks (PH Equity - 0.67% a year, also fully inclusive).

For my own daughter's Junior ISA I have split this between IM Optimum Global Growth and PH Equity as I believe this creates an excellent balance for growth and defence.

For you a completely different approach may sit better.

I would have a chat with Nik ([e-mail]) and let him go over all of the options with you.

Alternative PM me or ask more here.

We can't "advise" you on where to invest, but we can fully explain to you, in plain English, about how the different portfolios and approaches work so that you can make an informed decision.

Cheers

Julian

[superlightr]

Hi Julian

On your website have you stopped offering the IM index funds and the PH Equity fund? I can only see the IM Optimum ones?

[JulianPH]

They are still there under Private Clients, the home page menu is just not configuring properly (on tablets) after we.added the British GT section.

Thanks for letting me know about this, it will be fixed in the morning.

Cheers

Julian

[Kingdom35]

JulianPH said:

Kingdom35 said:

Hi Julian

A pretty simple question no doubt, but we have two young girls aged 15mths and 3yrs old, both have Junior ISA's and a fair amount in (combined just over £5k). Rates are poor around 2% or just over with Nationwide.

Im looking at something with a bit better return.

What do IM offer for a long term 15+ outlook? Plus what kind of fee's would I be paying with yourselves.

Im thinking I can move them individually across at some point soon

Thanks in advance

Hi Kingdom35

You are right in your assessment that cash rates are not conducive with 15 year investment horizons if you want to maximise the growth potential and protect against inflation.

We offer a wide range of options from fully managed portfolios of index trackers (IM Optimum - 0.87% a year fully inclusive of all costs), to purely passive index trackers (IM Index - 0.57% a year, again fully inclusive) and a fully managed "buy and hold" core equity portfolio that invests directly into global brand stocks (PH Equity - 0.67% a year, also fully inclusive).

For my own daughter's Junior ISA I have split this between IM Optimum Global Growth and PH Equity as I believe this creates an excellent balance for growth and defence.

For you a completely different approach may sit better.

I would have a chat with Nik ([e-mail]) and let him go over all of the options with you.

Alternative PM me or ask more here.

We can't "advise" you on where to invest, but we can fully explain to you, in plain English, about how the different portfolios and approaches work so that you can make an informed decision.

Cheers

Julian

Thank you, I will email Nik.
Thanks again. Great thread :-)

[JulianPH]

Kingdom35 said:

Thank you, I will email Nik.
Thanks again. Great thread :-)

No problem, happy to help and Nik will be able to be of even more assistance.

Thanks for your comment on the thread too!

[superlightr]

The PH Equity..... did you have some of the allocation into companies that manufacture face masks?!

its increasing pretty well just recently...…. !!

well done wherever its in.

[ziontrain]

Hi Julian

Probably a very obvious question compared to some of the others here, but I'm trying to figure out whether I'd be better off overpaying my mortgage each month or chucking the equivalent amount in an ISA. Presumably, the key point is whether I'm looking to make money (higher return in the ISA v the rate on my mortgage) or reducing my debt level. I've only recently taken out the mortgage so it still has many years left to run.

Cheers