Sarah asks:

I am a 38-year-old woman earning £60,000 a year. I changed jobs in May 2009 to an organisation that does not pay any money into employee pensions. I’ve paid into a personal pension in the past (a Friends Provident ethical pension, but I’m not sure it’s doing very well) and also have a company pension from my previous job.

I am trying to work out whether I should go back into paying into my previous pension or start something different, such as a stakeholder pension or a different personal pension. I am finding it very difficult to work out how to choose the appropriate pension company for me.

I have tried a couple of financial advisers but so far they have been advising me to go for rather complicated products which they have not been able to explain to me sufficiently well to make me want to take them out.

The choice of pension plan will depend on what you want to your pension to achieve.
Your first step should be to review your existing pension provision:

Is the Friends Provident pension plan an old style charging contract or on stakeholder terms (which means lower charges)?
How does the scheme compare to new contracts available in terms of charges?
How much pension have you built up and what retirement income are you expecting?
What level of pension investment do you need to make to ensure you have sufficient income in retirement?
What level of investment return do you need to achieve? 
How complicated do you want your pension investment to be? For instance will you want to hold individual shares and higher risk investments? Or do you want the pension fund to effectively run itself?

A good independent financial adviser should be able to provide you with a review of your existing pension provision (as detailed above). With the input from you on your needs and objectives, the choice of pension plan should be easy to identify. I’d recommend that you to pay a fee for your advice, (you should be given an estimate upfront), which will ensure you get unbiased advice that will not be influenced by the need to sell you a product to cover the cost of the adviser’s time.

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