It's Pensions Awareness Week!

Today, Tuesday 15 September, is Pensions Awareness Day, part of Pensiosn Awareness Week – 14-18 September. Find out more at pensionawarenessday.com – including free events organised by pension industry players led by the Pension Geeks.

Usual disclaimer: I’m not a financial adviser and you shouldn’t take anything in any of my blogs as financial advice!

What can you do to be more aware of your pension?

Check you’ve got one (or more)

If you’re working for a UK employer, you’ve probably got a workplace pension. You might have been automatically enrolled into it (automatic enrolment into pensions was introduced in 2012 in an effort to get more people saving for their retirement).

If you haven’t taken much notice of your pension before, now’s the time! Your employer’s probably written to you about it – if you can’t find any details, ask.

Workplace pensions are good because:

• your employer pays into it - basically, you get free money from your employer for being in the pension scheme
• you don’t usually pay income tax on pension contributions – so your money builds up faster.

If you’ve had more than one job in your life, you might have a few pensions scattered about. Think you’ve got a pension somewhere but don’t have the details? Use the Pension Tracing Service at www.gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details.

Save more to get more

With pensions, as with everything else, the more you put in, the more you’re likely to get out at the end. Could you save more into your pension? 

Some employers do ‘matching’ contributions where they put in more if you put in more (usually up to a limit). If you’re not contributing at the highest rate that gets matching contributions, you’re basically missing out on free money from your employer. Why not check today?

Opted out? You can opt back in

If you were automatically enrolled into your employer’s pension but opted out, don’t worry – you can opt back in at any time. It’s usually as easy as asking your employer to put you back into their pension scheme. Check with your employer today!

Do they know where you live?

Make sure your employer – and anyone else you’ve got a pension with have up-to-date personal details for you, especially your contact details! A good wheeze is to give your personal email address as these tend to change less often than work emails.

Don’t forget your State Pension

You’ve almost certainly got one of these. You can find out how much State Pension you might get by asking for a State Pension forecast. And don’t forget to check your State Pension age. This keeps going up, so it might be later than you think. Have a look at the Government website at: www.gov.uk/browse/working/state-pension

Be aware of pension scams

Sadly, one of the rules of life is that unscrupulous people want your money. If someone offers you a free review of your pension the safest thing to do is ignore it, even if it claims to come from a Government organisation (it won’t). I’ve done a previous article about pension scams, and have a look at the Financial Conduct Authority’s Scamsmart website at fca.org.uk/scamsmart.

Let’s all be more aware of our pensions. Don’t forget to join me on my #PensionAdventure blog at felicitymorganwriter.com as I look into putting all my pensions together – coming soon! #LoveYourPension #PensionsAwarenessDay #PensionsAwarenessWeek