The following is a transcript of a bonus episode of The Pension Confident Podcast - How to stick to your financial resolutions. You can listen to this bonus episode or scroll on to read the conversation.
PHILIPPA: Hello, and welcome to another bonus episode of The Pension Confident Podcast. February now, and maybe you’ve been making progress with your new year’s resolutions and making some changes for the year ahead? Well, to help you along, we’ve been digging into some of our best-loved episodes for nuggets of wisdom about financial resolutions.
Before we get into it, just remember, anything discussed on the podcast shouldn’t be regarded as financial or legal advice, and when investing, your capital is at risk.
So what does 2025 hold for you on the money front? Maybe you’re thinking it’s about time you traced an old pension pot you’ve lost track of. Back in episode 32 I spoke with Tim Hogg, who’s a Behavioural Economist & Director at Fairer Finance, Financial Journalist Faith Archer from the Much More With Less platform; and PensionBee’s Senior Team Leader, Alex Langley about that. Here are Alex’s top tips…
ALEX: It can be a bit difficult to track down a pension. One of the best ways is to speak to your previous employer. If you’re able to get in contact with them, they’ll be able to tell you which provider they were using and paying into when you were with that employer. If you don’t know how to get in touch with your employer, you can always use the government’s Pension Tracing Service. You input some of your information, and then the government will tell you which providers they think your pension might be with. It might not always be the most accurate - the information there. The best way is to speak to your previous employer. You can speak to other colleagues that you might have had. You might also want to look back at previous bank statements, because that can give you a clue as well. Those are some ways of finding out.
PHILIPPA: Yeah. I mean, I’ve done this actually. Has anyone else done this?
TIM: I started to do this earlier this week, prompted by recording the podcast.
PHILIPPA: Did you?
TIM: I realised I’d actually forgotten the name of one of my only two pension providers! So, I only had to remember two names - and I’d forgotten one of them. So, I had to route around in my paperwork folder and find out who they were and then dig around in my emails for them. And I thought, “well, if I can’t keep track of two names, it’s going to be hard for people with more than that”.
FAITH: I wouldn’t necessarily blame yourself because it can be a moving target. There’s a lot of pension companies that have merged, been taken over.
PHILIPPA: Yes!
FAITH: At the time, you might have worked for a company that has merged, that has gone bust.
PHILIPPA: This is exactly what happened to me. Hard to track down.
FAITH: It can be tricky. Certainly, if you’re going to use the government’s Pension Tracing Service, if you can get as much information together about: what the name of your employer was; and roughly when you worked there, in months, in the year you worked there. Also, there are other services. There’s a service called Gretel, for example, that’s another free service that exists to connect people with assets beyond just pensions. So, putting your data into that.
PHILIPPA: Lost savings account, that sort of thing?
FAITH: Yeah, exactly. Savings, investments, life insurance. It might be worth plugging your details in just in case you’ve lost track of something else as well.
PHILIPPA: Christmas and new year can put a major dent in your finances despite all your resolutions about not overspending. It’s not just the festive season. It can be hard to say no to social events, and we never want to seem penny-pinching to our friends, right? We talked about how to manage those social pressures around spending with Psychologist Dr Tara Quinn, Niaz Azad who co-founded Millennial Money UK and PensionBee‘s Head of Brand & Communications, Brooke Day back in episode 27.
Should we talk a bit about how to handle situations? Because it feels OK-ish to be ‘hard up’, maybe when you’re at school or are a student. Certainly there’s this acceptable thing around being ‘hard up’. But when you start working full-time, it just becomes a lot clearer, doesn’t it, about how much people have got different levels of income, whatever job you’re doing. You’re working in the city, you’re earning a lot more than if you’re in teacher training or whatever it might be.
And then you get different attitudes to spending, don’t you? We talked about it a bit, either you’re not bothered, it’s fine, I’ll catch up sometime, or you’re a saver. So even if you’re earning quite well, excuse me, you don’t necessarily want to spend it all on your social life. So how do we navigate that? How do you meet in the middle with your friends?
BROOKE: A few things I’ve done. So whenever I’ve gone on big group trips, we’ll use an app called Splitwise, and I’m sure there’s many others.
PHILIPPA: Oh, yeah.
BROOKE: And so then it takes away the awkwardness of, I guess sometimes you feel like if you’re owed £10 by the end, you don’t really want to ask for it. When everyone’s putting all of the different expenses on there and who bought things or shared things with, it rounds it all up and at the end, it splits it. So everyone gets what they put in. So some of my friends will like to go away with no cash, but they know, “oh, it’ll all be figured out towards the end”. Whereas I think I’m a bit more like, I like to know what I’m going with. But then equally, I’m going to get some back later on. So win-win from the situation.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, I’ve used those apps. I really like them. I’m thinking about also picking venues because talking about normalisation again, if you’re in a high earning job in your late 20s, early 30s, whatever it is, where you go is where your colleagues and your mates from your work circle go. But there’s an awkwardness around suggesting somewhere that’s obviously cheaper sometimes, isn’t there, though?
TARA: I bring that in, status. It’s a thing, isn’t it? Depending on where you work and how you work, you can get sucked into new circles. So friendships change, you may have your friends from school, you may have friends you’ve met at other forums, and then you may have friends that are more related to your work. And then you might then have to balance that across all those groups. It could be hard. You can easily get caught up. I guess a good friend might also be able to ground you and help you have those conversations, what we call the ‘tricky, cringey’, you know, ‘sweaty hand conversations’.
PHILIPPA: If you feel you really do need to say no, well, our guests had some thoughts on that, too.
TARA: - as a psychologist it’s really important. Think about your own footprint, so how your body and your mind responds when you’re under stress. So that can be stress around money, gifting, going away for the weekend. If you recognise how it shows up, that will help you to know when there’s a problem and then help you think what you’re going to do about it. So for me, sweaty hands is my number one thing that I notice when I’m under stress. If my hands are sweating, if I get an invite to something or I’m worried about money, it’s a sign that I need to take some time and think it through. Take a moment. Is sweaty hands your guys’ thing? I don’t know. Or what is your footprint for -
BROOKE: That’s really interesting.
TARA: - feeling awkward or stressed?
BROOKE: I used to feel like that a lot about saying “no” to my friends, interestingly. I feel like I’m naturally a bit of a people pleaser. I used to find that really, especially in my 20s, I’d feel like if I say “no” to this, I’m not going to be invited again. They’re never going to speak to me again. They’re going to think I’m the worst person.
PHILIPPA: I think everyone feels that when they’re really young.
BROOKE: Yeah, I had to really work on it. Sometimes I now find that especially, I guess, if I’m tired and stressed, I just want the conversation done. I have a tendency to just say “yes”. But I really tried to practise because otherwise, I know what you mean, I do notice that I start to experience the physical effects of not actually doing the thing that was true to me.
NIAZ: I’m the same. It’s actually a big development point for me to lean into more difficult conversations.
TARA: My favourite phrase, too.
NIAZ: Because I’m quite conflict avoiding as well. But I’ve tried to think about how to better communicate in those instances, which, again, I’m probably not the best at yet. But like you, I’ll probably just be like, “yeah, OK, fine, whatever”. I’ll just put myself through some pain.
BROOKE: Just to get it done.
NIAZ: Just to get it done.
TARA: That, for me, is such an important point that sometimes as human beings, we get stuck on those goals. “I need to be able to have this perfect conversation about money and put these perfect boundaries in”. It never works out that way. So even if you can get to the point to go, “I find this really hard”. What can I do even with this anxiety? Can I even just start to maybe draft a text about the money situation? I might not send it for a day. Can I think about what the conversation would look like even if I don’t do it? Just those little baby steps which help you make room for that stress or that anxiety, and then you get used to it and it’s less of a threat.
PHILIPPA: Getting back to those new year resolutions and maybe 2025 is the year you want to start investing. Research shows that women are particularly wary about getting into that - we tend to prefer saving, apparently. We got into that in Episode 21 with the brilliant Ayesha Ofori, Founder and CEO of Propelle, Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen, Co-Founder of Female Invest and PensionBee‘s Independent Non-Executive Director, Lara Oyesanya. If you’re thinking that you can’t afford to invest, you might be surprised by what Ayesha had to say about that.
PHILIPPA: OK. Here’s another question for you - is there a sense that investing is just for the rich? Do you think people don’t understand you can start really small?
AYESHA: I often say, “Do you have a pound?”, “Well yes, obviously”, “Well, then you can invest” and then they, sort of, give me blank stares. But, start small, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a lot of money to invest. The beauty of investing is compounding. And what that means is that over a long period, you’re getting returns on your returns and it adds up quite substantially.
PHILIPPA: OK. Before we get too carried away, I’m going to talk about things that might trip you up, like fees and charges. So, what should women be looking for there?
AYESHA: So, fees are absolutely one of the key things to look out for. Now, companies should be making their fees very transparent. But if it’s something that you can’t find or you’re not able to easily calculate what you’re being charged, then you absolutely have to ask. Because the numbers might not seem like big differences, but again, over time it matters.
PHILIPPA: Well, they work on percentages, don’t they? So this stuff ramps up. These are significant sums of money.
LARA: To add to what you’ve just said, is the fact that if you’re selecting your own investments, the fees are cheaper compared to if somebody else is making the selection or managing it for you.
PHILIPPA: It feels quite daunting.
AYESHA: It can, but it really doesn’t have to be. There are, absolutely, some funds out there that are actively managed by fund managers and therefore will have higher fees because there’s a team of people somewhere actually making decisions. But there are funds out there such as exchange traded funds (ETFs) that have significantly lower fees because they’re passive funds. So, you can still get a wide range of diversification through funds like that, but the fees tend to be quite low. Again, a great place to dip your toe in.
PHILIPPA: Trouble is, it often feels so much easier to spend than to save or invest, especially at this time of year when you’re bombarded with sales, offers, and discounts every time you go online or walk down the high street. It’s all so tempting, especially if you’re feeling you need a bit of a boost. So how do you resist that urge to spend? In episode 23 Lynne Beattie from Mrs MummyPenny; Ola Majekodumni from All Things Money and PensionBee’s CMO Jasper Martens talked very frankly about some of the financial mistakes they’ve made and Ola had some great tips about not getting sucked in by all those offers and sales.
PHILIPPA: What do we think about sales generally? Is that the same?
OLA: I think it’s about - what do you want to buy? And what are you buying for? It’s so easy to shop in the sales just because something’s on sale. I think going into the new year, what do you want to purchase? Is there anything that you’re looking for in particular? For me, I always look at if there’s any deals on flights and things like that. Whereas when it comes to clothes, clothes are on sale all year round.
PHILIPPA: OK, so we’re resisting that emotional boost of buying.
LYNN: Is it worth touching on emotional spending though? Because that’s something that I’ve really struggled with my whole life. When you’re feeling sad, or feeling happy, or feeling angry, my ‘go to’ position has been to spend some money on something. Whether it’s lipstick or an item of clothing. This is what I’m trying to do now - I’m trying to be more mindful about it, to maybe go out for a walk, or go for a run, or go to the gym, or stroke the dog or the cat. Just do something that takes your mind off that immediate dopamine reaction of, ‘I have to buy something’.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, distraction. Don’t give into the marketeers like Jasper!
OLA: And I think it’s interesting, like you said, Lynn, I think it’s also important to identify what your triggers are. So what has triggered you to make you feel sad, or what has made you feel so low in the moment that you feel the need to shop. I have to talk about this with my clients a lot and sometimes it’s about setting barriers in place, like deleting all the shopping apps off your phone and unsubscribing from the mailing list of your favourite retailer. The emails are what catch you out saying things like, “Ola, I hope you’re having a lovely week. Here’s 20% off”. And I’m thinking, “a treat on my Wednesday? I didn’t know I deserved that!”. It’s things like that. So, put those barriers in place to hopefully curb that impulse spending.
PHILIPPA: We’re nearly at the end of this bonus episode now, but before we wrap it up, how about a pay rise? Maybe it’s one of your resolutions to ask for one this year? Not an easy request to make. So here are some great thoughts from Social Entrepreneur and Broadcaster, Natalie Campbell MBE from episode 25 about how to prepare yourself for that conversation.
PHILIPPA: As your career progresses, and obviously, you’re thinking you’re building up skills, you’re building up experience, you’re looking for more pay. We know that men are better. Data tells us the men are much better at asking for it. And they’re much better at getting it. Nearly one in every three men who ask for more pay get it. For women, it’s one-in-five. Now it speaks to confidence, what else does it speak to here?
NATALIE: There are organisations that just perceive we’re adding less value. So what can we do about that? Talk up the things that you’re doing, don’t do the work and then hope that someone knows that you delivered X or Y that delivered additional value for the business. Find opportunities to talk about the work that you’ve done. Even if you have to create the opportunity, you have to create a lunch and learn to say, ‘there was no strategy for this thing, this is the way that I did it’, or you take the organisation on a journey of having a conversation about something that they’ve never spoken about before. It might be [Artificial Intelligence] (AI), it might be digital marketing, whatever it is, show up. Because men show up in the social spaces, men show up in moments in meetings where they just add that idea. I used to say to all of the women that I worked with and that worked for me, “never go into a meeting and not contribute. You’re not here to take notes”, and at the point when someone says, “who’s taking notes?”, put your pen down.
PHILIPPA: It’s definitely not you! Absolutely - I entirely agree with that!
Good, isn’t she? Good luck with all your financial resolutions. Don’t forget, anything discussed on the podcast shouldn’t be regarded as financial or legal advice. When investing, your capital is at risk.
If you’d like to hear those discussions in full, you can listen back to all those episodes wherever you like to get your podcast. The Pension Confident Podcast is on YouTube and the PensionBe app, too, of course. Why not make subscribing to the series your first new year’s resolution? Remember to keep an eye on our feed too, our next episode will be live at the end of the month.
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Thanks for listening.
Risk warning
As always with investments, your capital is at risk. The value of your investment can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. This information should not be regarded as financial advice.
