Fun Online Polls: Flat-chested Celebrities & National Employment Savings Trust

Thanks to everybody who took part in last week's Fun Online Poll.

Who is your favourite flat-chested celebrity?

Keira Knightley 32%
Natalie Portman 28%
Sienna Miller 10%
Kate Lawlor 7%
Zhang Zhi 7%
Paris Hilton 4%
Fearne Cotton 3%
Paula Radcliffe 3%
Mena Suvari 3%
Kate Hudson 2%
Shell Jubin 0%

Well done Keira!
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The government's new brain-dead scheme to 'encourage pension saving' is to automatically enrol every employee into the scheme, and there'll be extra forms and hassle if you want to opt out. I can tell you right now that I'll be opting out. As I've said before, the only people I trust less than the government are insurance companies.

From the NEST website:

It is proposed that NEST will initially have a combination charge made up of an annual management charge (AMC) of 0.3 per cent* and a small contribution charge of around 2 per cent.

If you compound that over a few decades, you'll find it will eat away a large chunk of what you think you've saved

Don't forget - if you're a basic rate taxpayer, you can effectively invest in shares income tax free, even outside your ISA allowance, because there's no income tax on the dividends (these are after corporation tax, of course, but so are dividends received by a pension fund) and it's not too difficult to ensure that you never exceed the capital gains annual exemption of about £10,000.

And if you're a higher rate taxpayer, the best thing you can do is pay off your mortgage as quick as possible. Either way, the additional flexibility of having instant access to your money usually outweighs the net value of the tax breaks (which you are paying for via the income tax and NI on the rest of your earnings).

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll: "Will you opt out of the National Employment Savings Trust?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.
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* It's also instructive to compare that 0.3% annual charge with the costs of administering the State Pension (see article in Daily Mail), which is stated as £5.40 per pensioner per year, or about 0.13% of the average amount paid out - which by definition includes the costs of maintaining records throughout your working life and paying it out again after you retire.

That article also tells us that the average annual cost of paying out the means-tested and thoroughly objectionable Pensions Credit is £54 per pensioner per year, or about 1.8% of the amount paid out. By definition, the costs of adminstering a Citizen's Pension would only be half as much as the cost of administering the State Pension, i.e. next to nothing (£30 million a year or something).