Help! In my forties and still no pension!

If you're a late starter you aren't doomed to a retirement in poverty as long as you start to turn things around today.

There could be 30 years left to build up a healthy pension pot

If you haven’t yet started a pension, you can overt a potential financial crisis in the future by taking some decisive action today. There's still time to build up a decent retirement fund even if you’re already in your forties and you don’t have a single bean in your pension pot,

Follow these steps to find out how...

Are things really as bad as they seem?

Although you might not be saving into a pension now, do you have any old pension schemes which you no longer contribute to? If you’ve been working for twenty years or more the chances are you may have a couple of old schemes that are left forgotten.

Have a good trawl through all your paperwork and see if you can find any literature relating to these old plans. Once you’ve done that, contact each of the relevant pension companies and ask for the following information:

• A current valuation of the scheme
• A summary of all the contributions made into the scheme
• Details of exactly where your money is invested
• A projection of future benefits based on the value of the plan

Once you’ve gathered these details you should be able to get a picture of how well these neglected schemes have been performing.

By now you should have a more accurate idea of your total pension savings. If you really have lost track of things but you have an inkling there’s an old plan out there somewhere, you can help recover lost schemes using the Pension Tracing Service.

Until da next tyme!