Managing money can be a real pain, particularly when it comes to chasing down pension pots and preparing yourself for a happy retirement.
Somewhat ironically, pensions are perhaps the most important financial aspect in one’s later life, yet they’re also among the most difficult to understand.
For those of you wishing to get a head start on managing your pension pots, your investments, your plans, and generally anything to do with your retirement fund, here are some top tips to make life easier along the way.
Locate Your Pensions
First off, if you’ve worked a few different jobs over your lifetime, you’ve likely got multiple pension pots hanging around somewhere.
Many people even have upwards of five pensions, an accumulation of various work-related and private pensions.
It’s imperative that you find these pension pots and figure out how much they’re worth and what kind of benefits your various plans are offering.
If you don’t know these details, you can use the government’s pension finder tool on their website; you can find it here.
Once you’ve found your pensions, you can get an idea of how much money you have awaiting you later on down the line and where your money is physically invested.
Consider Consolidation
Once you’ve got all your pension pots in one place, you may want to consider the many benefits of pension consolidation.
This is essentially where you combine pensions into one easily manageable pot, allowing you much greater flexibility and accessibility with your money.
With all your pensions under one roof, you may find investing your money easier than ever before. If you don’t plan on doing any manual investing, then there’s no need to worry, consolidation is a superb way to maximize your tax efficiency too, so there are plenty of benefits for everyone.
Check on Your Investments
If you’re interested in using investment funds to grow your pension pot, it’s worth checking out where exactly your money is invested in the first place.
A financial advisor might be able to help you make the right decisions when it comes to manually investing your pension fund, but be warned, like any investment, your money is subject to risk.
This means your investments could perform badly and diminish in value, or alternatively, they could rise substantially over time.
Whatever the case may be, looking into your investments can help you get a better understanding of how to manage your money moving forward.
Maximize Tax Relief Opportunities
You’ll get 20% tax relief on your pension payments in most cases, so it’s worth taking advantage of the extra income you can generate by increasing the amount you pay into your pot each month.
If you’ve got a workplace pension, you can discuss this with your employer, and they might even be able to match your pension contributions to a certain percentage.
It’s worth taking advantage of as many pension income-boosting opportunities as possible, as it will ensure you’re managing your benefits to the best of your ability.
If you’re worried about not being able to manage your pension pots properly, you may want to reach out to a financial advisor for some professional direction. It could give you some peace of mind.
