Newcastle ranks as one of the most pension aware cities in the UK

Newcastle is the UK city with the second highest number of pension-related queries, leaving London far behind, according to the latest Google trends and search queries for the first quarter of 2019.

Other than the monthly reminder on your payslips about you pension contributions, most people don’t actively think about the amount they are saving. However, recent pension contribution increase has brought pension investments to the fore of the nation’s attention.

This has also been reflected in Google search queries suggesting that January, February and March this year have seen spikes in people’s interest for their pension funds. The first quarter of 2019 has seen a number of searches for the term “pension calculator” reaching over a million per month and queries for “pension” being just short of one million.

When it comes to the top UK cities where people are actively searching for pension related queries, London is not listed amongst the top 10. Instead, Norwich takes the top spot on the list of UK cities with the highest number of queries for the word “pension”. The second place belongs to Newcastle upon Tyne followed by Bristol, Hull and Edinburgh.

Lisa Caplan, head of financial advice at Nutmeg advises: “Keeping a close eye on pension schemes that you are making contributions towards is essential, as is being aware of any pension pots that you may have stopped paying into, perhaps because you’ve changed job. It’s important to ensure you don’t have money sitting in a poor-performing pension or one that’s suffering from high annual charges, or else it could damage your returns and impact your target retirement age.

“Consolidating old pension pots into a current scheme, or with one provider, could prove beneficial. For one, it can help you keep track of your future finances more easily by having all your pension pots in one place. You could also save on fees, which will be key if your plans to retire at 55 are to become a reality.”