Getting Current – Reviewing Pensions

Now you've reviewed your retirement provision, you need to look at your pensions and organise your paperwork.

Everything You Need to DO

Collect all Your Files and Info Together

Firstly, you need to collect everything together in a big pile. Every envelope you’ve opened, looked at the contents and then put the contents back IN the envelope – get it all together. If you have digital records, then you’ll need to go through these too, but when it comes to investment and pension accounts, you’re probably still getting paper statements.

Listen back to an episode I did back in Season 6 called Auditing Your Paperwork. If you’re bad at maintaining a good filing system, then this will really help you. It’s one of the episodes I’m most proud of.

I suggest you do three sweeps through this mountain of paperwork you probably now have. Firstly, sort the piles into ‘savings accounts’, ‘investment accounts’, ‘pensions and insurances’. You may need a pile labelled ‘stuff I have no idea about’ too.

Then do another sweep and go through each pile and sort into piles of unique plans. So, collect everything together for Legal & General pension policy number XYZ123456 into one pile and do that for every plan you can find a unique policy number for. Finally, put everything in each pile into date order, with the most recent stuff on the top.

Pensions First

We’re going to deal with pensions first. Take a piece of paper and list each plan you have found paperwork for. Next think back over your career – are there any gaps where you think you should have had pensions, but you don’t have any paperwork for?

If so, then you’re going to need to do some digging. Consider the government Pension Tracing Service. For each pension plan, find the most recent statement. If it’s more than a year old, then you need to contact the provider of that plan and ask for a current statement. When you speak to them, ask the following questions:

• How much is in the plan?
• Is anything being paid into the plan currently?
• How is the fund currently invested?
• What are the investment options in the plan? Is there a fund list?
• When is the retirement date?
• What are my options at retirement?
• Are there any guaranteed benefits or safeguarded rights on the plan? Will I lose these if I transfer away?
• Who are the nominated beneficiaries if I die?
• What are the costs of the plan?
• Are there any charges if I transfer away?

Make a sheet of all this info for each plan. The key part, of course, is the value. But when deciding whether or not to simplify and consolidate, you’ll need the other info too so you can weigh the pros and cons of transferring. Create a one-page sheet for each plan and keep it at the top of your file for that plan. That will serve as an at-a-glance summary sheet that you can refer to quickly.

OK, ready to move on?