Doesn't this negate the idea of an open market? Can I engage an independent actuary to check the calculations? DC, Epsom.A: Pensions adviser Peter Miller, of Hacker Young, says "open-market options" and "transfer values" from final-salary pension schemes are different concepts. The benefits an employee gains from a final-salary pension scheme depend on the years of pensionable service and your final pensionable salary. The scheme promises a minimum level of pension on retirement, and the cost of paying the pension is borne by the scheme. Future payments may be made out of the scheme's future investment income.If you request a transfer value from the scheme, you are effectively requesting a payment to settle any benefit entitlement from the scheme, severing links with it. The benefits payable from the scheme assume you stay in the scheme and participate in the future investment income from it. The result of this and other assumptions by the scheme's actuary is that the transfer value will probably secure lower benefits elsewhere.An open-market option applies to pension schemes operated on a money-purchase basis.

A money-purchase (or defined contribution) scheme builds up a fund based on contributions made. Payments are, in part, based on the terms of the annuity purchased with the employee's fund. Annuities are offered by many institutions so there is a competitive market and employees may find annuities with better terms than those offered by their employer's scheme. Employees are permitted to use the 'open market option' to compare providers' annuity terms.You may query your transfer value by writing to the trustees of your pension scheme. But you should take professional advice if you seriously consider challenging the pension fund's actuarial calculations.. Low returns on cash deposits, and the buy-to-let market in most areas reaching saturation as the stock markets tumble, have left nervous investors worried about what to do with their money.

Stanley Gibbons, the 128-year-old stamp dealer, recently reported a three-fold increase in profits this year to more than £200,000. It seems investors have been shunning the stock market and piling in to stamps to build up a nest egg. Moneynetlifeinsurancesearch Low returns on cash deposits, and the buy-to-let market in most areas reaching saturation as the stock markets tumble, have left nervous investors worried about what to do with their money. The stock market was then in the doldrums, inflation was roaring and alternative investments seemed the ideal way to make money. Some people were very successful, but for many it all ended in tears.The general perception is that alternative investment is as easy as falling off a log. After all, the most valuable single item in the late Queen Mother's estate was Claude Monet's study of rocks, Le Bloc.

Purchased in 1945 for £2,000, it is now estimated to be worth £15m. A 749,900 per cent rise in value over 57 years is surely proof that alternative investment produces superb returns. But flurries of alternative investment over recent decades have ended in disaster.From the mid-Sixties, Georgian silver was in great demand, principally fuelled by it being effectively exempt from estate duty (now known as inheritance tax). Auction prices rose dramatically.But when the 1969 Budget closed the tax loophole, the buyers sold their treasures. Then, with shocked disbelief, they watched prices fall by 70 per cent in nine months. It took a long time for the market to recover.Coins attracted investors from the late Sixties until the early Eighties.