Managing Your Pension Pot Effectively-Odunze Reginald C

Image credited to yourpension.org

Tom Macphail in an article captioned “10 costly Pension Mistakes” noted that “If you have a pension, have you ever reviewed it? Millions of people haven't. Moreover, recent research revealed more than two in five adults (41%) - 8 million people - cannot remember how their pensions are invested. Why is that alarming? Performance can vary quite dramatically across investments and even a seemingly small difference could have a significant impact on the size of your pot”

Continuing he stated “that these are just projections. Investments will not always go up in value, they also go down, so you could get back less than you invested; what is certain is that they won't perform as predicted. Also, these values are in today's terms, without considering inflation, which will reduce the spending power of your money over time “

Macphail concluded that “Therefore checking your pension pot is very essential in avoiding mistakes”.

And according to Walter Updegrave in an article captioned “Three Little mistakes that can sink your retirement, which appeared in Yahoo Finance it states that “It’s almost become a cliché. Virtually every survey asking pre-retirees what they plan to do in retirement shows that the overwhelming majority plan to work.

Indeed, a recent Merrill Lynch survey found that nearly three out of four people over 50 said their ideal retirement would include working. Which is fine. Staying connected to the work world in some way can not only offer financial benefits, it can also keep retirees more active and socially engaged.

How then do you increased your pension pot, experience has shown that majority do not realize the importance of the pension pot until a year to their retirement when they suddenly realized that the total savings could not carry them through. 

The best approach is to use the pension calculator, contributors should make it as a duty to check their pension pot from their Pension Fund Administrators or they make online pension calculator which has in built mechanism capable of calculating the contributor’s likely expected values and returns based on a projected contribution and an expected income.