Financial Advsers
The two years I spent in the financial services put me off financial advisers, the companies they work for and the shitty under performing products they flog for the rest of my life.

Take my advice; try to limit the number of financial products you pay into. Fair enough, if you want to buy a house you will probably need a mortgage, if you have a family/dependants you should get life assurance, but that's about it. If you have spare income that you want to invest stick it in a high interest savings account, the online bank Icesave has an easy access savings account that pays over 6% interest.

I could spend pages ranting about all this, but I will pick my number 1 hated financial product: The Personal Pension (not to be confused with company pensions). Here are the things they don’t tell you about your pension.

(1) The financial advisers commission will be the first 2 years worth of your contributions.
(2) Administration charges are surprisingly high.
(3) You never see your money again. When you retire you can take 25% tax-free but the rest has to buy you an annuity (a yearly income).
(4) The annuity is taxable income.
(5) The annuity is based on the interest rates when you retire. Who knows what they could be in 20, 30, 50 years.
(6) It's not quite true that pensions grow in a tax free fund. Gordon Brown changed that in 1997, any dividends the invested funds earn is immediately taxed at 10%.
(7) Your fund value depends on the competence of a string of wide-boy city fund managers.
(8) There is a good chance that at some point in the decades you pay into your pension, all your information will be lost when the company you originally invested with got bought/merged for the 48th time and the ancient legacy computer system couldn’t cope anymore.
(9) Most pensions under perform, so after 50 years of working yourself stupid the payoff is a huge disappointment.
(10) Future benefits are likely to be means tested, which means that anybody who paid into a pension will get sweet fuck all, and those who pissed it up against a wall will get their bills paid for them by the government.

I am all for saving money, just don’t trust everything that financial adviser tells you.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Tue 2 Oct 2007, 15:09, Reply)