After you've reviewed your pensions and sorted out the policy paperwork, you need to do the same thing for any investments, savings and life insurance policies you may have.
Investments and Savings
You need to do much the same exercise for any investments and savings plans that you have. Fortunately, these are generally much simpler than pensions, with fewer historical wrinkles that you need to be aware of.
Again, separate each of your plans into its own pile, organised in date order with the newest stuff on the top. If you don't have a statement dated within the last year, you need to call the provider and ask for one. While you are at it, 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?
- What are the costs of the plan?
- Are there any charges if I transfer away?
Obviously, bank and building society accounts are the simplest form of investment, and all you really need to know here is how much is in there. It might be that you have some fixed term investments like structured products which you can't break before a certain date.
If that is the case, then make a note of that date on your calendar, with a reminder four weeks earlier so that you can begin the process of withdrawal IF you decide that is the right thing to do.
Life Insurance
Finally, you may have some life or health insurance and you should get current on these too. Unless these have an investment element, then you may not be getting regular statements.
Chances are, you haven't heard anything from the provider since you took out the policy, or since the provider changed its name – as they all seem to do with alarming regularity! This time your questions for each provider are as follows:
- What is the remaining term on the policy?
- What is the sum assured? Is this level, decreasing or increasing?
- How much is the premium? Does this ever increase?
- Is the policy held in trust? If so, who are the beneficiaries?
- Will the policy be reviewed in the future?
- What are the options at the end of the policy?
Again, summarise each policy on a one-page document.
Summarise
You will want to gather the outline information on all of these plans into a summary document so that you can see the combined value of your pensions, investments, savings and insurances in one place. This can take the form of a spreadsheet or a printed page, whatever works best for you.
If you have never been very good at managing your financial paperwork, then all of the above might sound like an ordeal. Hopefully by making it fairly turn-key for you, it shouldn't be too much of a burden.
Rather than attack this all in one go, which might take a while, commit to calling one provider per day in your lunch break. Sort through one pile of paperwork for one policy after dinner and then call it a day. Do another pile tomorrow.
Buy a pack of cardboard files and some sticky labels so that you can build a uniform filing system (again, more in that old episode from season six). Once a filing system is built, it is much easier to maintain. And as always, the thought of completing a project like this is much worse than actually doing it.
If you're happy with this, let's crack on.
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