Struggling to keep track of your finances? Here’s how to simplify your financial life

Uncertainty around the US election, Brexit and dwindling returns on your savings aren’t exactly making things easy for savers and investors. And that’s before the potentially devastating effects of a second wave of coronavirus infections.

Now more than ever, it’s important to focus on what you can control. That includes making sure your financial future is in the right hands. Yours.

Where do I start?

Uncertainty in the economy is always a challenging time for investors – but it can also bring opportunities. At times like these it’s a good idea to look at your investments and make sure they still meet your objectives, goals and attitudes to risk.

If you’re worried about the ups and downs of the stock market, remember it’s important to have a diverse and balanced portfolio. This means having a mixture of assets (like shares and bonds), geographies and investing styles. That way your portfolio is likely to be more sheltered from market falls as something else could be working well for you.

It’s also a testing time for savers. Millions of people will see their returns plummet after National Savings and Investments (NS&I) announced it will slash its interest rates from November. Savers will need to keep a close eye on their money and be ready to switch to get a better return on their cash.

Read more on what the NS&I interest rate cut means for savers

Knowing where you stand with your savings and investments becomes a lot harder when you have multiple providers. So the first step is to take stock of all your accounts.

Set aside some time to look through your online or printed statements and get all your account numbers. Then, once you’ve pulled them together, you could start to think about bringing them all under one roof.

How to make things easier - less hassle, more control

It’s not easy juggling savings and investment accounts with different providers. There are multiple management fees to keep on top of, various annual statements to get to grips with, and not to mention more than one set of log in and security details to remember.

We think combining your investments with one provider is key to taking control of your finances. You can:

• See the bigger picture

  It’s hard to get a clear overview of your savings and investments if you’ve got more than one provider. Bringing them together means you can easily check whether all your investments are on track and working together to achieve your goals. And if they’re not, you can make changes based on the bigger picture, rather than having lots of isolated views.

• Save time

  It’s true what they say, time is precious. You can get back hours of time by only needing to deal with one provider. Rather than having to make multiple phone calls and logging into lots of different websites, you can check everything in one place.

• Spot tax saving opportunities

  It’s harder to work out how much of your tax-efficient allowances you have left each tax year when your pensions and ISAs are scattered across different companies. Having them all in one place means less time and admin – extremely helpful if you’re up against the end of tax year deadline.

Your financial future in the right hands

1.4 million people trust HL to help them make the most of their money.

Whatever the coming months hold, we’ll be there to give you the help and information you need to make the right decisions. By consolidating your investments and savings with HL, you’ll get:

• Expert knowledge and research – whether you’re new to investing, or you’d just like a helping hand choosing funds, we’ve got the tools and knowledge to help. We provide research, ideas, and updates to help you make your own investment decisions.
• Easy management with the HL app – you can check your entire investment and savings portfolio at a glance. You’ll have one client number and one log in for all your accounts. You can also top up your account and give investment instructions whenever you need.
• Access to competitive savings rates – choose from a range of savings products across multiple banks and building societies, all through the convenience of one online account. See your savings alongside any other HL accounts when you log in.
• A knowledgeable helpdesk – our helpdesk are on hand to answer your questions six days a week. No question is too big or small, they’ll be happy to help. While they can’t give personal advice, they can always put you in touch with our Advisory team to discuss if advice could be right for you and the charges.

If you’re considering transferring your investments, you need to be aware that pensions are usually transferred as cash. This means you’ll miss any market rises or falls for a period. When transferring investments as they are, you won’t be able to sell them during the transfer, for example to protect yourself from falls or realise gains. You should also check that you won’t lose any valuable benefits or need to pay high exit fees before you apply to transfer, and compare charges – view our platform charges.

This article isn’t personal advice. Unlike cash, investments can go down as well as up in value, so you could get back less than you put in. Tax rules for ISAs and pensions can change and their benefits depend on your circumstances. If you’re unsure what to do, please ask for advice.

More on transferring to HL