How do I deal with a personal pension plan?
I have a couple of plans that I no longer add money too, but once a year I need to adjust the balance up or down to keep track of the Transfer Value of the plans.Whats the best and easiest way to achieve this?
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1 Posted by Tom Freeman on 30 Jun, 2016 08:31 PM
If you can provide more details on how the plans are set up I can better suggest methods to account for the increase/decrease in value.
Tom Freeman
Infinite Kind Support
2 Posted by tinat on 01 Jul, 2016 09:42 AM
Hi Tom
Well its very simple really, many moons ago the companies that I work for paid into a pension fund for me. I have opted to leave these funds with the different providers so there is no ongoing movement into these funds except for the interest every year. Mostly this is positive so the fund value increases but it can be and has been negative. I have used Quicken for some 20 years, but the continuing updates to Windows 7 are slow destabilising the last version (2004) marketed in the UK. Within Quicken I entered the annual movement as Interest Income and if all else fails that’s exactly what I’ll do again, I just wondered whether there was a better way to enter the figures.
So an example of what I get from the pension value is this:
Last years plan £72,810.04
Current plan value £74,982.81
Value of plan Units Bid Price Fund Value
Gilt & Fixed Interest Pension Fund 1323.707 5.807 7686.75
UK Property Pension Fund 8791.016 5.984 52605.42
UK Growth Fund 1942.180 7.564 14690.64
I have no control over where my funds are invested other than to stipulate, low risk, some risk, medium risk, high risk.
Currently as I said I just enter the year on year difference here £2,172.77 as Interest Income, but in your program I would have to stipulate a Category and I don’t want to do this as it then appears in my Income & Expenses report.
On top of these 2 investments I have a 3 pension fund that has the same annual growth as illustrated above but I also make regular monthly payments into the fund. I pay £160 from my bank account but the fund receives £200 the difference is tax relief. Currently I have set up an Income account called Tax Relief on Pension where I split the payment so that £200 goes into the pension fund & £40 goes to Tax Relief, but the bank account payment is only £160. Not ideal because again the Tax Relief on Pension appears on the income & Expenditure report.
I hope I have given you enough to give me some suggestions of how I should go about recording my pension funds.
Regards
Tina
3 Posted by Tom Freeman on 04 Jul, 2016 08:53 PM
How do you have these in MD?
In the traditional investment model Gilt & Fixed Interest Pension Fund would be a security in the pension fund. You would set an initial buy entry for the shares you own at the cost basis. To update the current price you would click on the security in the portfolio view to bring up the securities detail window. Here you would click the history button and just edit the current price field. Or you could download the security price entry extension and this would allow you to update all your fund prices from one table.
If the fund distributed new shares you would record them as a divreinv transaction. If the fund distributed cash you would record this as a miscinc transaction.
To keep the income out of your income and expense report you would just edit the report to exclude the pension categories
About the tax relief how does this show on you paycheck? I would assume that your gross tax is shown to include that tax relief, By putting 200 GBP into your pension you reduce your taxable portion by 40 GBP, instead of going to the taxman this goes to your pension. It can be dealt with by a split on your payroll transaction. This would zero out the tax relief category.
I have attached a pic to illustrate. I am not knowledgeable about UK tax forms so I may be off on this.
If you are not that attached to keeping track of the share cost and dividends of your individual funds, You can set them up as asset accounts. The create an income category called gain/loss on pension fund. You would make a periodic adjusting entry to these asset accounts to keep the value curretn. When running your income and expense report just edit to remove these accounts from the report.
Tom Freeman
Infinite Kind Support
4 Posted by tinat on 18 Jul, 2016 10:48 AM
Thanks for your suggestions below Tom, and my apologies for not thanking you earlier. The asset suggestion in particular works great.
Re the tax relief, this might be the case if I was in employment, but as self employed it doesn’t work the same. I think I will use the asset method again and just put the other side of the tax relief entry in the Gain/Loss on Pension Income Category, then I have only one category to remove from the Income & expense report something I haven’t done yet but will in the future.
Anyway I just wanted to say thank you and what a great little program.
Regards
Tina
System closed this discussion on 17 Oct, 2016 10:50 AM.