I WAS ACCIDENTALLY dragged into the new state pension scheme in January, and trying to escape it has been an experience, to say the least.

I’m still not entirely sure how it happened. I do have a private pension already, but I changed jobs last year, and there was a fair amount of paperwork in switching things over.

Maybe the mistake was on my side, or something wasn’t processed on time. Either way, I was pulled in.

The MyFutureFund website assured me that even if I had just started paying into a new private pension, my contributions to the State scheme would be stopped automatically.

So I waited a few weeks to see if it would correct itself. I tend to do this with a lot of things in my life, and honestly, you would be surprised at the number of things that just fix themselves once they realise that I fully intend to ignore them forever.

Unfortunately, this was not one of those problems.

Once it became clear that I was going to have to actually look for a solution, I set out on a search for contact details, an email or a phone number I could use. I finally found a phone number, spent close to 2.5 hours on hold and eventually spoke to a human who said he was going to post me out a form that I had to print (this was a whole other ordeal in itself), fill in, attach all of my payslips with to show that I was indeed already paying into a pension, and then post it all back.

He finished the phone call by saying that once he received everything, it would be sorted within 6-8 weeks.

Posting it back then set me off on another series of side quests as I had to visit three shops before I found somewhere that not only sold stamps but also was open outside the hours of 9 am and 5 pm, only to then realise that the postbox........

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