A ripoff is a bad financial transaction that often refers to a situation where a   person overpays for something. For instance, there are several cases of a ripoff in a pension fund where you pay more money than meant to be.

A lot of pension funds, particularly older ones are with profits funds. The ‘with profits’ words may sound sensible but in truth are actually bad news.  The idea about this is the fund holds back some profits in years when the stock market is good so it can pay more when the market is down thus the return of the investor will be smoothed between good and bad times. The problem is, most funds paid out a lot of money in the good years and result to not being able to deliver the smoothed return in bad times. Charges for this are quite high, so avoid this as much as you can.

A charge of 1.5 percent is too high per year. While it may not sound much, it could build up to a considerable amount over a long period of time. Opt for pension funds that charge only 0.9 percent annually. You can find several of these on the internet.