Lets Talk About Pensions

I am absolutely not an expert on this,. I am so so far from it. I don't even have a pension (I bet so many of you are sitting there shaking your heads at me), but I wanted to share this tool Find my lost pension information and this is the reason why..

When I joined the place I currently work at back in 2009 I didn't really understand the whole pension thing and I guess I didn't absorb all of the information available because I naively thought that it didn't really matter to me at the time. Which really isn't usually like me - I'm the person that tends to worry about things far far in advance. I actually had an emotional moment at lunch today talking to Adam about when the boys are older and have flown the nest, to which Adam exclaimed that Logan was ' ONLY THREE MONTHS!'...! I'm a worrier and I shout at myself every day for even having not yet made our wills (it's on the list!!).

But anyway, back to 2009 - despite not fully understanding it all, I opted in to our pension anyway. Sadly a year or so later I took myself out, due to having to change my hours of work and cut them down because it was when I started to really suffer with back pain due to scoliosis. We needed the money I was putting in to the pension so it had to be done. When I moved departments I was always going to be going back in to the pension, but I didn't get around to doing so before falling pregnant with Ethan. And then with me then going back to work part time, we again, needed the extra money. And so that's why I don't have currently have a pension. Perhaps I could join a personal pension scheme?.. I've really never looked in to it too much, but I think I should maybe consider doing so.

And as for the pension I did have for a short while.. I have no idea how much is in that, or even how to go about finding out anything about it. All the paperwork for it ended up being merged in with the handbook for my new job, the new contract and other pieces of training material paperwork. Oh how irresponsible I was! You'd never have guessed that when I first started, someone actually told me that the best thing I could do was join the pension!

I don't know if it's just me that has got and gets a little bit lost with it all (probably)?! BUT if you have been a little bit like me, then as I mentioned at the start of the post, there is hope of finding any lost pensions that you might have. The free pension tracing service via this link: https://www.lendingexpert.co.uk/find-your-lost-pension/ allows us to complete a short form which the pensions experts then use to quickly find any pensions that we may have as well as all of the details and information we might need for them.

So that's me off to dig out any pension related paperwork I can find.. Do you have a pension yourself? If so, do you have any advice that you can offer in regards to personal pensions?