In this day and age, free advice is becoming more and more accessible. Some free advice is not really worth the page it’s written on but here at PensionAdvice, our trained staff are here to give you free advice that really is worth something.

Determining the best pension option is suitable for you is really the crux of the whole pension purchasing planning process. There is no point receiving information or pension advice that is really not applicable to your unique financial and personal situation, so providing accurate information is really key to the whole endevour.

So in order for any free pension advice to be valuable you need to ask yourself a few questions, so that you know what you are looking for and can narrow down your choices to get closer to finding out what will really work for you.

So you might want to ask yourself:

• How much can I afford to invest regularly into a pension plan?
• When do I want to retire – how many years do I have left?
• What other investments or savings do I have?
• Do other members of my family have pension plans?
• What should I receive from the State Pension?
• What kind of risk am I willing to take with my money?

Any before taking advice from and advisor you should ask the following questions:

• What type of investments will work for my situation?
• How much money do I need to save in order to get the returns that I will need?
• What options are available based on my current job, my current assets, how long until I retire etc?

Once you have determined that the pension plan that you want to invest in is the right one then your
advisor should provide a certain amount of information about the pension scheme including:

• All the details about that features of the pension plan
• How it works
• All the benefits of the plan
• The cost estimations of how much income you will receive upon retirement – these are forecasts and can fluctuate depending on how much investment you make
• All the applicable fees and other charges that you might incur
• How all your contributions will be invested within the plan
• Any other features such as when you can change your mind about investing if you change your mind.