In the last week, there was ‘National Pension Tracing Day’ (who invents such things?) which took precedence over all your plans, resulting in the cancellation of parties and holidays.
If you did miss it, which is possible, here is what you missed – popcorn at the ready. We used to have a folder at home with our financial documents, which may or may not have gone awry. Most items today are captured digitally, so little is lost or even forgotten to review.
However, given their longevity and cauliflower-like attraction, they can quickly push allowance to the back of the lowest drawer in the fridge, and well, you know the rest. This happens significantly in a company pension scheme for someone who automatically joins a plan and forgets about it. Pensions are a long way away, not a priority, and not a good strategy – think cauliflower.
Dormant, or even lost, pension pots are on average worth around £9,500, and there are around 2.8 million of them in the UK worth around £ 26 billion, which is a lot of cauliflower.
These are worth £442 per year to the average household.
This can happen through job changes. The average time in a role in the UK is five years, with the ‘average’ consisting of those good organizations with strong ESG credentials and loyalty and others where an annual job hop is considered okay.
What happened from 2019 to 2021 knocked the stuffing out of most people, with our sense of purpose, autonomy, goals, and participation in the community ripped out from under us. It’s okay to feel bad or bewildered about that. For example, let alone the back of a smelly fridge drawer, thinking about your income 30 years from now in the freezer section.
Unsurprisingly, from 2018 to 2022, the increase in lost pension pots rose by £ 7 billion, i.e., well over a third of the above number.
And that is why y’ national cauliflower fridge drawer clean-out day’ is probably a great idea.
It is not just the younger with this problem (who have either been furloughed, made redundant, or just left employment); missing pensions and assets are everywhere. The Unclaimed Assets Register located all sorts of other assets like bank accounts, ISAs, investments, etc. Nearly £ 50 billion, which sounds like a lot when I type it. Sadly, after many years, this lost asset’s service has been ‘lost,’ decommissioned in August this year.
You can still find such accounts via the ‘estate search’ service, which finds lost assets and has a simple live link up with what you have. In 30 days, all positive matches are sent to you of investments that match you or perhaps an elderly or deceased person where the probability of misplacing a document is understandably greater.
Gretel is another service just like this. Its chief executive has reunited people with six and seven-figure sums that have been forgotten. Often some of the old oil companies that have rocketed of late it’s the dividends that have accumulated with a share certificate or two bought by your parents or grandparents and capital gains.
The possibility exists that some of these assets will be released for “worthy causes,” so it is wise to take action before they are released.
Consider all the child trust funds you automatically received, I just realized you received them after you moved home, and now they are hidden, with five company names changed. There is likely to be around £800 for the average person who just received the money and didn’t add to it.
Aside from that, think of the management of the money. A recent column showed the difference between the best and the worst performing scheme was more than 900 percent over just 20 years.
Your independent financial advisor will ensure that this is the best-performing solution.
They will keep a record of everything for your plan and email your family or trustees to explain who your independent financial adviser, solicitor, and accountant are.
Take advantage of national cauliflower day by digging through those drawers.
