Why you should keep tabs on your pensions...

So, most of us have been working for about 20 years (or more) now. That's a hell of a lot of pension payments isn't it?

Well, if you're like me, and 'hop around' jobs (to my family's disgust and horror, cos unlike me, they have not moved with the times, and realised that a job is not for life like our grandfathers etc, and you can actually move around, and better your circumstances that way)......

Anyway, back to the original thought... if you HAVE moved around, you'd end up with a few pensions, which you did the following with:
- either you cashed them in and spent the cash (my first pension)
- you left the company and put the funds into a Retirement Annuity (RA) , (my second pension)
-you cashed it in and bought shares (my third pension - you get the idea by now....)
- you transferred into the RA you already had ( yup!)
- you left it where it was but transferred it into your own name (yup again)

OK, so having all these tiny 'pots' lying around can be good and bad. First, some could grow and some stagnate but basically that means that in the end it'll even out which is a good thing.
Diversification is good.
A bad thing, is you forget all the pots you have, and 'lose' one or two as time goes by, (and as you move continents multiple times etc). That's a bad thing.

The latter happened to me, until recently, when I was trawling through paperwork from 9 years ago, and realised that one of the 'pots' must still be there, but I had no idea how much it was worth. So, I chased it down, and wrote to the copanies involved, and after a long set of letters, I finally got a result!!

The result is GOOD NEWS!! My pot has doubled in the 6 years it's been going, which is pretty good, cosidering current circumstances. That means it has increased by 16.6% annually, which I can say I am most pleased about. So thank you Universe!!!!

And the rest of you - go chase down that old paperwork!!!