Tracking retirement accounts in one place means putting every pension, 401(k), IRA, SIPP, RRSP and ISA on the same set of books, so contributions, investment growth, and employer match are visible as distinct flows rather than a single moving balance. Scattered across separate provider portals, those accounts never add up to one number — and that missing number is the one that actually answers whether retirement is on track.
Why scattered retirement accounts are hard to see together
A typical working life accumulates retirement savings in fragments. A workplace pension here, an old employer's plan left behind there, a personal account opened in a good year, a spouse's plan that belongs in the household picture. Each lives behind its own login, reports in its own format, and refreshes on its own schedule.
The consequence is that no single screen ever shows the total. A provider portal shows one account's balance and a percentage move; it cannot show the sum across providers, and it certainly cannot show how that sum relates to the rest of a household's net worth. The questions that matter at retirement — how much is saved in total, how fast it is growing, how much of the growth is the holder's own money versus the market versus the employer — are unanswerable from inside any one portal.
The Retirement / Pension template in HQ Wealth exists to close that gap. It seeds a chart of accounts tailored to retirement saving, tracks pension, 401(k), IRA, SIPP, RRSP and ISA in one place, and rolls them into a single view alongside every other portfolio the holder runs.
Contributions, growth, and employer match are three different flows
The single most useful thing a unified view does is separate the reasons a retirement balance moved. A provider's balance went up — but why? Three distinct flows feed it, and conflating them hides the answer.
- Contributions are the holder's own money going in. This is the lever the holder directly controls, and it is the figure that matters for annual allowance and contribution-limit questions.
- Employer match is money the employer adds, often as a percentage of salary up to a cap. It is not the holder's contribution and it is not market growth — it is compensation, and a household that does not track it cannot tell whether it is capturing the full match on offer.
- Investment growth is the market doing its work on the balance already invested. It is the part nobody controls, and the part that should not be mistaken for saving.
Booked as double-entry, each flow lands in its own account. A contribution is a transfer of the holder's cash into the retirement asset. An employer match is income that arrives as a credit to the same asset. Growth is a revaluation of the asset against its market price. Kept separate, the books can answer a question no single balance can: of the last year's increase, how much did the household put in, how much did the employer add, and how much did the market provide.
Account types are jurisdiction-specific
Retirement accounts are creatures of national tax law, and the wrapper determines the tax treatment far more than the investments inside it. The template recognises the wrappers rather than flattening them into a generic savings bucket.
- In the United States, the 401(k) and the IRA carry their own contribution limits, employer-match mechanics, and rules on when withdrawals are permitted.
- In the United Kingdom, the SIPP and the ISA are distinct wrappers with distinct allowances, and an ISA is not a pension at all despite often sitting in the same retirement plan.
- In Canada, the RRSP and the TFSA play complementary roles, one tax-deferred and one tax-free, with their own contribution room.
Keeping the wrapper attached to the account matters because the tax question at drawdown depends on it. This is general information rather than advice for any specific situation, and the rules vary by jurisdiction and change over time — the point is simply that a unified view has to preserve the wrapper, not erase it. HQ Wealth supports 12 tax jurisdictions and produces accountant-ready tax packs, so the wrapper travels with the account into whatever filing the holder eventually has to make.
Projecting drawdown
A balance answers "how much is there now." A drawdown projection answers the question the balance cannot: how long it lasts. The template carries drawdown projections precisely because the accumulation number is only half of retirement planning.
A drawdown projection takes the current balances, an assumed growth rate, an assumed withdrawal pattern, and the dates each wrapper becomes accessible, and projects the trajectory forward. Done across a single unified view rather than per account, it can sequence withdrawals across wrappers — drawing from one type before another where the holder's plan calls for it — which is impossible to model when each account is an island in its own portal.
The projection is a planning tool, not a promise; markets and rules both move. But having every retirement account on one set of books is what makes any projection honest, because it is working from the whole position rather than a fragment of it.
Takeaway: Retirement savings scattered across six provider logins never add up to the one number that matters. Putting pension, 401(k), IRA, SIPP, RRSP and ISA on a single set of double-entry books separates what you contributed from what your employer matched from what the market grew — and only the whole position, with each jurisdiction's wrapper preserved, makes a drawdown projection worth trusting.