Lockdown Checklist

2020 has certainly been a year like no other. Most of us have been at home a lot more than usual and many businesses and individuals have faced unprecedented financial insecurity and concern. With this in mind, IEP Financial, an independent financial advice firm in Hove, have been on hand to assist existing and new clients. We have also produced a guide with some ideas to ensure you retain some control over your finances. These include:

1. Consolidate old pensions.
We can track them down for you. Any pension funds which you have accumulated in your working life could make a real difference to your overall pension savings and could be accessed from age 55.

2. Update your pension beneficiary form.
Pensions don’t normally form part of your estate for inheritance tax purposes and therefore are not covered by your Will. Nominating beneficiaries wisely could also help with inter-generational tax planning.

3. Check your State Pension.
The majority of individuals are unaware of how much they may be eligible to receive as their State Pension, or at what age they will qualify for it. Check yours at https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension.

4. Review old life insurance policies and set up new.
Check your direct debits – what are you really paying for? We can check what policies you have in place and advise on their suitability and value for money by comparing to the whole of market.

5. Review your investments.
2020 has been a true test for investments and stockmarkets have behaved differently than expected and previously seen. We can analyse the performance and risk of your investments.

6. Establish a Power of Attorney
which allows someone to make welfare and/or financial decisions for you, or act on your behalf should you no longer be able to, or if you no longer want to.

7. Write a Will.
Recent research indicates that 54% of adults in the UK do not have a will and six out of ten parents do not have one, nor do they have guardians in place who would look after their children.

8. Budgeting.
With any extra time on your hands, go through the exercise of seeing what you normally spend. Check your direct debits, review your mortgage with one of our brokers, maybe consider a mortgage payment holiday and check what you pay on energy bills with the latest falls in oil reducing tariffs.

9. Government Schemes to deal with impact of COVID-19.
Keep up to speed with the financial assistance available to you. Get in touch if you’d like more information.

We hope the above overview has been a useful guide, and if you’d like to speak to one of the team at IEP about any of these points, we can be contacted on 01273 208813 or by email to info@iepfinancial.co.uk.

For further information, see our website www.iepfinancial.co.uk

IEP Financial Ltd are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)