The recent economic turmoil has brought the importance of financial security to the forefront, but do you know how safe your savings really are?

A few years ago I returned to the UK after living abroad for a while. I kept my bank account open, not being sure whether or not I would return – I didn’t, and no longer have cards or paperwork relating to that account. There wasn’t a lot of money left there, just a few pounds, but it remains in situ and is, in theory, an unclaimed asset.

A Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP) is a pension plan that allows people to decide exactly how they want their savings to be invested.  Funds can be built up in a SIPP over a period of time using either regular or one-off payments, and savers can manage and change their investments as they see fit.

Saving money is hard. We know, because we've done it. Over the course of 2 years, we saved enough money to live our dream of travelling around the world. We are certainly not rich, but we actively made the choices it takes in order to make this the number 1 priority in our lives and adjusted ALL our spending to ensure we could hit our goal.

Mortgage fraud continues to be a problem across the UK, and recent figures released by the National Fraud Authority estimate that it now accounts for around 2.5 per cent of the £38 billion that is lost to financial criminals every year.