Self Employed

Are you on your own? If you are self-employed, a sole-trader or not able to join a company pension scheme then you’ll need to sort something out yourself. The original way to do this was through personal pensions, though the mis-selling crisis of the 1980s put people off the plans for a while. So-called ‘stakeholder pensions’ were launched to try and clean up the sector, offering low cost, easy to understand alternatives.



There’s more details of those later on as well. If you take one out then chances are you will be the only person contributing to them – so you may well have to pay in more than you might think to get a decent retirement income. Take a look at the new Pension Pot Calculator under Tools & Calculators at www.thisismoney.co.uk to see how much you should be paying in. The good news is that for every pound we all pay, the Government tops our money up with extra money in the form of tax relief. Higher rate taxpayers can effectively claim extra top-ups through self-assessment forms. It’s a way to make pensions seem more attractive.