Today was a good day... I managed to locate a long lost but still growing pension pot, I started over 20 years ago and only paid into it for a few years before the financial shit, hit the bankruptcy fan...
But that pension pot was forgotton and left to die lonely. Until I accidently discovered an old letter about a year ago, that showed there was indeed a pension, and who administered it. Barclays...
But after a bit of chasing, it turned out Barclays, had sold their pension business on to L&G who in turn sold the old pensions on to Re-assure... A long chain of emails ended up in a dead end when I didn't have the specific policy details and got no reply to emails.. so I gave up, and left it....lying there somewhere...
After mentioning this online to old collegues, it was suggested to get an advisor to hunt for it.. and as luck would have it, the sister of an old collegue is an advisor, agreed to check for me... and she found it... it was with Re-Assure, she confirmed they had it, and it was just a case of making direct contact with an 0800 number, but I can't use them here in NL, so after a bit of hunting around... 2 dead phone numbers later, and 30 mins on hold..
I got hold of the lovely Shannon, who indeed confirmed they had a pension, and... it was worth, a pretty penny... (not retire now on this pretty, but it adds a fair chunk to the pot).
So thank you so much to Sadef Latif, and her brother Amir, for helping me to locate the pension.
After updating Re-assure with my details, and confirming my ID, I can now make use of that pot at any time, either by transferring to a pension or cashing it in... Cashing it in has a tax hit though. It will be best if I leave it for a couple more years till we're ready to jump and get a bit more of that high interest savings action on it.
I won't say exactly how much it is, but it will help fund some of our plans to retire early which is a massive boost..
Yup, today was a good day.
I got hold of the lovely Shannon, who indeed confirmed they had a pension, and... it was worth, a pretty penny... (not retire now on this pretty, but it adds a fair chunk to the pot).
So thank you so much to Sadef Latif, and her brother Amir, for helping me to locate the pension.
After updating Re-assure with my details, and confirming my ID, I can now make use of that pot at any time, either by transferring to a pension or cashing it in... Cashing it in has a tax hit though. It will be best if I leave it for a couple more years till we're ready to jump and get a bit more of that high interest savings action on it.
I won't say exactly how much it is, but it will help fund some of our plans to retire early which is a massive boost..
Yup, today was a good day.
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