I know nothing about them.

Say I had £300 a month to stick in a pension, where do I start?

Give it to me or set fire to it.

Then what?

Will that let me buy one of those baths that opens?

I don’t know, but I suspect most with a pension may as well do what I suggest.

I’m assuming your employer (if you have one) doesn’t have a scheme. They are usually best as the employer may contibute, effectively topping up your salary.

Bit of a cop out but I’d advise go see an IFA. There are ALOT of pensions/funds to choose from, and you need to choose carefully (fee’s etc).

Alot will depend on age, expected retirement age, fincancial circumstances etc.

A happy diversion from farce to politics there, but back to the original question…

Where to start with getting a pension?

Cheers KiD – I’m really a novice in all of this.

At the mo I’m also on short term contracts so have no idea how that fits with my employer.

If you have a financial advisor then ask them, its worth setting up as all pension payments into a properly set up scheme are tax exempt. Alos if you are self employed your pension payments from the company are NI exempt too.

I hope this is correct, its as much as I can remember from a pensions meeting at work

The tax free bit is the big deal with pensions: If you pay £100 a month into your scheme, £120 gets paid into your fund. It does count as taxable income when you withdraw the money at maturity.
I got fed up with below inflation growth and the huge whack my provider was taking for this fabulous service, so I transfered to a SIPP (self invested) and bought some shiney commodities. Fund has grown 34% in 6 months, but this is a bit of a one off; quite what I’ll do in the future with it I can’t say! At least some thieving fund manager won’t get his mits round it 😈

From reading up on it, my employer has one of the best pension schemes in the country and have recently bolstered it.

Being on repeated short term, extended contracts though I keep thinking I should get some consistency away from the company.

1) I’ve no idea what to put in
2) Stakeholder/personal/something else…. it’s all greek to me!!

What you need to do is save up for a deposit and run against George Osbourne at the next general election. Get voted in as a MP – there you go – bulletproof pension.

Pook,
Have a look at Martin Lewis’ website for starters.