Bank Holiday boredom? 5 financial jobs to tackle

21/04/11
Annuities

The plethora of Bank Holidays coming up over the next few weeks will hopefully give you the chance to a bit of ‘R & R’. However, it could also be an excellent time to tackle a few financial jobs that you may have been putting off for a while.

We thought we’d help you along with five things you could take a look at over the longe weekends ahead.

1. Review your savings

So many people are getting a poor rate of interest on their savings; did you shop about for the best rate a few months or even years ago and then do nothing? You are not alone.

The chances are your bank or building society have reduced the rate of interest and what you are now getting is not competitive.

Use best buy tables to find the best accounts for your circumstances.

This job doesn’t necessarily have to be time consuming and you could really do something positive to make your money work harder for you.

Why should your bank or building society get away with offering you an uncompetitive rate of interest?

2. How is your pension doing?

Unless you are lucky enough to have a Final Salary or Defined Benefit pension, the value of your final pension pot is partly dependent upon the performance of your pension savings, but do you know how they are performing?

Most people know how much a litre of petrol or diesel is, and many of us will know how many miles our car will do for that litre, or gallon to use ‘old money’. However, how many of us actually know how our pension is performing?

There are a huge number of online tools now to help you review the performance of your pension, alternatively speak to an IFA, who not only will be able to discuss with you the performance of your pension but will be able to show you how this compares to other alternatives.

3. Make a Will

You won’t find many Solicitor’s working over the bank holiday period, however that doesn’t mean you can’t dust off your Will, have a read, and make sure it reflects your current situation and wishes.

If you have been planning to make a Will but not had time to get round to it (how many people fall into that category!) now is the time to write yourself a note and make a call to your local Solicitor first thing on Tuesday morning. The consequences of not making a Will are serious and are so easy to avoid.

4. Review your utility providers

We all know utility bills have risen significantly over the past year or so, but the complication of moving provider puts many off changing to an alternative.

Utility providers, like banks, to a large degree rely in the inertia of their customers, why should this be the case?

Take some time, use sites such as Energy Watch or Which? and see how much you could save.

Why should the utility companies get away with charging you more than you should be paying?

5. Shop about for the best Annuity rate

If you are approaching that time in your life when you need to convert your pension pot into an income it is likely that you will be considering buying an Annuity.

According to PICA (Pension Income Choices Association) only about one third of people shop about for the best Annuity rate.

This really does not make sense, to start with Annuity calculators are easy to find online, secondly the average Annuity purchase price probably falls somewhere between the cost of a car and a house, do we shop around for these items? Of course we do, so why don’t we when it comes to an Annuity?

If we ever find the answer out to that question we will of course let you know, in the meantime don’t be one of the two thirds of people who might not get the best Annuity rate possible, shop about!