help! I know nothing about pensions

You are not alone! Many people delay thinking about pensions because it all seems too difficult or complicated. Retirement can seem a long way off, and it’s easy to think that pensions can be put off until tomorrow.

But while the detail of pensions can get complicated, the basics are not that hard. And the most basic and simple pensions fact is that the earlier you start planning the better.

Ensuring a decent pension is never going to be cheap, but the longer you leave it the more expensive it will become, as you can find out from the workSMART pensions calculator.

Put in your details, and then try doing the same but increasing your age by ten years to see how much more expensive your target pension becomes.

You may also be missing out on potential help with a pension from your employer or tax rebates.

So it makes sense to give yourself a pensions check up.

You can find out a great deal about pensions from looking at the questions and answers on workSMART. The government’s Pensions Service has a helpful website for people thinking about pensions for the first time.

You can also download the clearly written A guide to your pension options as a PDF from http://www.thepensionservice.gov.uk/resourcecentre/downloads.asp#planning.

You will need to think about the three ways that you are likely to get a pension when you retire:

• state pensions and benefits,
• an occupational pensions scheme set up and run by your employer and
• a personal pension (a savings plan you join as an individual, although they may be promoted to you by your employer, they will not have a role in running the scheme)