Charges are a really important factor to consider when choosing your pension plan, and unfortunately it's not always easy to work out what impact they will have. 'Cheap' products may not necessarily be the best deal, whereas you don't want to be paying too much for investment expertise you might not need, or guaranteed returns you might not want.

For pensions, the Government has introduced some stakeholder guidelines. This means that any pension product bearing the stakeholder name has its charges capped (currently at 1.5% for the first ten years, reducing to 1% thereafter). You can be confident that your fund will not be subject to charges in excess of this if you choose a stakeholder pension.

However, if you want more flexibility with your choice of investments, you may well choose a non-stakeholder product. You'll need to look carefully at the charging structure, because high set-up charges at the start could make a big dent in your fund. You will need to decide whether any additional charge you pay for advice will be outweighed by the potential performance of your fund. Best-buy tables are useful for comparing the charges on similar products.

What to look out for:

• The cheapest pension won't necessarily give you the best return on your investment.
• High charges can make a huge difference to otherwise identical plans.
• Ask what effect the charges will have on the performance of your fund - the person selling you the product should be able to tell you.
• Much depends on how well your investment performs and how much you pay, not just how much it costs.