{"id":392038,"date":"2026-04-10T18:46:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T18:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/392038\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T18:46:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T18:46:17","slug":"i-tracked-down-52000-in-lost-pension-pots-after-years-of-job-hopping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/392038\/","title":{"rendered":"I tracked down \u00a352,000 in lost pension pots after years of job-hopping"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jack Thompson thought he had done everything right when it came to saving for retirement \u2013 paying into a pension every time<\/a> he changed jobs.<\/p>\n

But over the years, he has been left with a scattered trail of pots across different providers and no clear sense of how much he had in total.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always knew I had multiple pots as I have changed jobs every few years since I took my first one out in the early 2010s, and had a new pension every time I moved jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had some idea of where they were as I have been getting occasional mailers from them all,\u201d he told The i Paper.<\/p>\n

New FeatureIn ShortQuick Stories. Same trusted journalism.<\/p>\n

Working in consultancy for a digital agency, he had built up pensions<\/a> with Royal London, Nest, Hargreaves Lansdown and Standard Life.<\/p>\n

Like millions of UK workers, each job move added another scheme. Research from the Pensions Policy Institute suggests there are now more than three million lost or dormant pension pots<\/a> in the UK.<\/p>\n

Collectively, they are worth tens of billions of pounds, as automatic enrolment and job mobility create an increasingly fragmented system.<\/p>\n

For Jack, from Ashurst Wood in Sussex, the money wasn\u2019t gone<\/a>; it was just difficult to manage. He added: \u201cI never really managed them because the websites were always hard to use.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only pension I ever really engaged with was the one I set up myself when I ran my own business for four years, that was through Nest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was also the first time I combined pensions as one of my former employers had also used Nest, so I rolled both of those pensions into one.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was the moment things started to click. After tracking everything down, he found he had around \u00a352,000 across four pots.<\/p>\n

\u201cInitially, I was contributing the maximum that my employers would match, which equalled 10 per cent \u2013 5 per cent from me and 5 per cent from them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince then, I have always aimed to contribute a total of 10 per cent through a combination of my own and employer contributions. The split has been different for each place I\u2019ve worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

There has been an increase in people looking to find their missing pension pots, with 839,000 Brits contacting the Pension Tracing Service last year, according to analysis of Freedom of Information request data from the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) by pension-finding platform Raindrop.<\/p>\n

The figures reveal that 770,000 people made an online query with the Pension Tracing Service during 2025, with a further 66,000 contacting the service via phone.<\/p>\n

There were 65,919 phone enquiries in 2025 alone, up from 56,111 in 2022, highlighting increased interest in finding retirement funds.<\/p>\n

Married with two children, Jack also saves through ISAs<\/a> and prefers ethical investments, balancing long-term retirement planning with shorter-term goals.<\/p>\n

Jack, who used Penny to track his lost pensions down, added: \u201cI have a wife and a 12-year-old son, so I think it\u2019s important to plan for the long term, which is what my pension is for, as well as having a pot for shorter-term needs like holidays and home improvements, which is what my ISA is for.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also contribute to a junior ISA for my son so that he\u2019ll have a pot of money to hopefully continue to invest in himself once he turns 18. We\u2019ll see how that pans out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having visibility of all of his pension savings in one place gives him confidence that he is on track for achieving his goals of a comfortable retirement for him and his wife, Carolyn, 44, without putting any financial burden on his son to have to look after them.<\/p>\n

That picture could soon become easier for others to achieve as the long-awaited pensions dashboard \u2013 a government-backed digital tool designed to let savers view all their retirement pots in one place \u2013 is expected to begin rolling out in the coming years.<\/p>\n

It aims to tackle the growing problem of lost pensions and make it simpler for people to track, consolidate and engage with their savings.<\/p>\n

All UK pension providers and schemes in scope must be connected to the dashboard\u2019s system by 31 October 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Thompson thought he had done everything right when it came to saving for retirement \u2013 paying into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,1558,174,175,1611,2987],"class_list":{"0":"post-392038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-pensions","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance","15":"tag-retirement","16":"tag-savings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}