[Closed] Boring but, please can someone tell me about SIPPS?

Depending on your level of financial expertise - i.e. are you happy making some investment decisions yourself?

If so (as in at least what sort of equities you'd like to buy), then Alliance Trust Savings do such a SIPP - there is a yearly fee but it aint much, other than that it's transaction based so if you punt some cash in, and regularly top it up - and especially if by default you allocate some cash to buying Alliance Trust stock -- it's really not bad on expense ratio.

Performance will be as good as your own research. Can be done pretty much online.

I'm a customer though not an expert. Or get sorted with a fee-based adviser (think they may all be that these days).

been looking into this recently, basically a sipps pension gives a wider range f investment opportunities such as comercial property etc, but the investment must be completely unrelated to your own business. If you wish to use your pension to in your own business then the pension is a SSAP, howvere there are some strict criteria

Mrs S and I (both fairly financially literate, even if I say so myself) have just been assessing whether or not we wish to use a SIPP.

Upsides are the tax rebate on moving assets into it, which would represent quite a windfall, but the restrictions on drawings (rightly so, though, I do agree that they need to be there) are just too much for us to work with. Id rather pay tax on our investments but have greater flexibility on how we use the capital. However, we are still some way away from "retiring" (even if we never actually stopped doing some fee paying work) so we may change our view when we get closer to it and not need so much flexibility with capital.

I think the SIPPS is worth a lot if you are financially astute enough to manage the capital. Generally the more you have to put, and the higher rate of tax you pay, the more they make sense. I have some friends who made 100% returns in 2 years during the 2008-9 crises because they had SIPPS and where willing to take some risk and made the right calls.

I think they are pretty good and have just opened a second one (to spread the risk of the provider cocking up). Hargreaves Lansdown and CS Direct. Basically as people above say.

The sort I have are for people with (expected) pension pots of a £100,000 plus and I'm pretty sure they cannot accommodate commercial property, antiques, vintage cars and that sort of exotica. Basically its all about units trusts/funds and shares and a bit of cash. Everything is online and v easy to do. I just spread it around - tracker funds, some v big household name funds, a few FTSE 100 shares and stick some more in every month or so. The tax rebate comes through a few weeks later. The top rate tax rebate element (20 - 40%) is claimed back via annual tax return so don't forget to tell employer or accountant what you are doing.

My only suggestion would be to use your full ISA annual allowance first (c. £11,500 per annum) as that money can be accessed at any time and not just when you are at retirement age.

See Hargreaves Lansdown as an example provider - there are lots of others.

*Sipp - only if you are prepared to put in annual/regular effort to review and manage your fund(s) and understand the fund charges/market - or, say you owned a bike and left it in the shed for 30 years - do you think it would work and be up to date when you wheeled it out ?

Also note that if you use an adviser you will either pay a one off or commission (*and fund charges) and the hard maths is that if commission and fund charges are > than return = you made a loss

If you want an adviser I have one and I think he's ok (*recently has given me some imho good pointers)- post here if you want his details. I also have a H&L SIPP which I manage myself - eggs,basket.

Note that you CANNOT get at pension funds till you are 55, but can then take 25% pot tax free. I am now evaluating VCTs (*risky) as another option.