Simon Lambert

We've then seen bond yields soar when interest rates rose.

And the corresponding element of that is that prices have gone up and down quite substantially.

So at any given time, you could actually find that it's the safe part of your portfolio, the bonds, that have actually suddenly caused it to drop in value.

And as most people with defined contribution pensions are now keeping them invested, arguably they shouldn't be lifestyling at all.

They should remain invested in the stock market because their investing time horizon has suddenly gone way into the future.

No longer does it stop at the age of 65, 66 or whatever.

It goes all the way to the day that they die.

And actually, they want to remain invested in order to get the growth that they possibly can from the stock market.

And it might be they want to be a more cautious investor, but they certainly probably don't want to be anywhere near as cautious as these lifestyle funds are.

And the problem with the lifestyle funds is different lifestyle funds do it in different ways.

So some of them have actually delivered quite good returns, especially when you take into account, you know, the risk that they're taking.

and others have delivered really quite lousy returns.

So it's something of a pension fund lottery.

What should you do?

In all honesty, I would look at this and say to myself, what am I going to do with my money in retirement?

If I am going to buy an annuity, if I do want that pension pot to be a certain amount when I retire, maybe I'm planning on trying to take it all out.

There's a big tax hit on that, so don't do that.

But maybe you're trying to take it all out to do something with it.

Then maybe lifestyling is right for you.

I would also look at how the fund does the lifestyling as well.