Martin Lewis advice helps couple recover £2,600 in savings - here's how they did it

A woman has explained how she helped her husband recover £2,600 in pension savings after following advice from Martin Lewis.

There is an estimated £50billion worth of lost assets in the UK - including in lost bank accounts, Premium Bonds, pensions, investments and insurance policies.

But tracking down forgotten cash is free to do - and you could end up thousands of pounds better off as a result.

One couple was inspired to check for lost pensions after watching an episode of the Martin Lewis Money Show Live on ITV.

The wife, known only as Julia, emailed MoneySavingExpert in August, saying: "Martin, after watching your TV episode on forgotten pensions, we contacted the number on your site for the companies my husband worked for 40 years ago.

“Gave them all the information and within four weeks received a cheque for £2,669 for pension contributions he never realised he'd paid. Thank you."

Pension savings are easier than you think to track down (Getty Images)

It can be easy to lose track of pension schemes, with the average person having 12 jobs during their lifetime.

If you still have old paperwork from a pension scheme, you can contact the company directly.

Failing that, you could try contacting the HR department of your old employer, who should be able to point you in the right direction.

If that still doesn’t help, there is a free tool called the Pension Tracing Service.

This service won’t tell you whether you have a pension, or what its value is - but it lets you search by employer, and then find pension schemes linked to them.

This should then help you track down the relevant contact information, so you can contact the pension provider yourself.

You can also use the Pension Tracing Tool to find contact details for someone else’s scheme if you have their permission.

If a close relative has died without taking their pension, you may be eligible for that pension fund cash too.

If you’re dealing with someone’s affairs after their death, you should check their paperwork to see if they had any personal or workplace pension schemes in place.

The Pension Tracing Tool can only help you find private and workplace pensions - not your state pension. There are over 200,000 pension schemes in the UK.

You can find out more about how to find lost money here.