Can you believe that it’s 2018 already? I know I can’t. The years just seem to be flying by these days, don’t they?
This swift passing of time only serves to highlight the need for people to sort out their pension now, rather than putting it off year after year, reducing the amount of time they have left to put enough money aside for their retirement years.
There’s a real fear emerging that the current generation of workers might never be able to retire at all, as they simply aren’t saving enough and they also aren’t doing anything to make the most of the money they are saving.
With this in mind, what can you do to make sure that you don’t fall into this trap? Here are three important steps you should take.
Step 1 – Find Your Old Pensions
The first thing you will want to do is to find any old pensions you may have dotted around with previous employers, or, that you may have contributed to privately in years gone by.
The process shouldn’t be all that difficult and you could even use a company like profilepensions.co.uk to do the hard work for you. They will locate your old pensions for free and tell you all about them. They can then help you to facilitate Step 2.
Step 2 – Move Your Pension to Make Your Money Work Harder
Once you’ve found all your old pensions, you’ll then want to look into moving them to a new provider, to cut down on any fees you might be paying and also to invest in a fund that has a better projected performance.
The amount of money that is charged in management fees by some pension providers can be unnecessarily high and this can really eat into your pension pot over time.
With this in mind, it makes sense to move your pension to a better provider, to make it work harder for you and maximise its potential return.
Step 3 – Start Saving More
Now we come to Step 3, Start Saving More! If you want to be sure of living comfortably in your retirement years and you suspect that you aren’t putting enough money away to make this happen, then you are quite simply going to have to start saving more.
The key here is to come up with some sort of figure that you would like to have available as an annual income during retirement and then work out how much you’ll need to save each month to reach that goal.
If you find that your expectations are going to be difficult to meet, then this might help you to reevaluate your current spending and make some changes.
You might not need to put away a crazy amount of money to enjoy a decent retirement either, as one report released earlier this year from Which? suggested that putting away just £40 a week might be all that’s needed to enjoy a happy retirement.
If you want to live a more lavish lifestyle then you will obviously need to put away more than this.
Time to Stop Kicking the Can Down the Road?
So, will you keep kicking the can down the road when it comes to saving for your retirement? Or, will you take control in 2018 and get a grip of your pension savings, to ensure that you can not only retire but also have a happy retirement?
As we’ve seen from this post, it’s not that difficult to get your pension organised and there are even companies out there who can help you with the process free of charge.
