I put £900 in to pensions and when I tracked them down 27 years later they were worth £20,000

A CRICKET fan who lost track of his savings has tracked down accounts nearly 30 years later and discovered they are now worth thousands.

He only put in £900 into the pensions in total and lost track of them over the years.

After watching Martin Lewis' Money show on ITV, he was inspired to hunt down the lost money.

And he found out the lost pension pots were worth a whopping £20,000.

Ali, from Leeds, said: "I was just sat at home watching the Martin Lewis money show and the pension tracing service came up.

"I knew I'd paid in about £600 in 1995 but didn't have any paperwork.

"I thought I'd give it a go - best 10 minutes I've spent.

"I got a phone call to say they found £18,000 worth of pension for me.

Speaking on Martin Lewis' show, he said he also discovered a second pension he had forgotten about since starting it in 2008.

After putting in just £300, he found out it had grown to be worth £1,700.

He said: "In total I found over £20,000 of pensions I didn't know about, so when I do retire and I'm watching the cricket I'll definitely be raising a glass to Martin."

Ali used the pensions tracing service to track down his lost pension pots.

And he's not the only one. We spoke to 45-year old Paul who uncovered pots worth £27,000.

Millions of people are now enrolled in a pension automatically through their work.

Each time you start a new job you start a new pension, which can leave many Brits with several pots of cash that they can easily forget about.

Even before auto-enrolment, like Ali, if you were paying into a pension and moved jobs it could easily be forgotten.

Even small amounts like his contributions of just a couple of hundred pounds can add up over time.

That's because the money is invested and grows over time.

The Association of British Insurers estimates that there are around 1.6million missing pension pots, with an average size of £13,000.

In total, it says there is some £19.4billion sitting in accounts people have lost track of or misplaced.

Tracking down a pension needn't be too difficult either. In fact 200,000 have hunted theirs down recently.

Here's how to do it...