financial hardship

What do you picture in retirement? Is it an early exit from the rat race to travel the world, a gradual step back and a bit of golf, or working until state pension age and then spending some time treating the grandchildren?

We will all have a different image in our heads of what our retirement years might look like, but whatever that is it is important to think about another question: could you afford to do those things?

While most of us will be saving into a pension, we often have little idea how much income it will need to provide when we retire and how big the pot will need to be to do that.

Stepping into that gap is the now regular report from the Pension and Lifetime Savings Association, which helps paint a picture of what a minimum, moderate and comfortable retirement would look like – and crucially what it would cost.

On this week’s podcast, Georgie Frost, Simon Lambert and This is Money’s pension and investment editor, Tanya Jefferies, delve into the report and look at what it found.

How do those retirement standards translate into reality, how much will the state pension cover, how much on top of that will people need and why has the minimum retirement income rocketed 20 per cent – far above official inflation?

Simon speaks to Sam North, of eToro, for our weekly market update, who explains how a bang on expectations US inflation figure was received and why the FTSE 100 has made a good start to the year.

Later on the podcast, the team look at inheritance tax, why it is catching more people in its net, how high house prices mean more families are seeing hundreds of thousands pocketed by the taxman and what can be done to make the much-hated tax work better and feel fairer.

And finally, does using cash help you budget or is it a false economy. Simon says for him it’s the latter, but what do Georgie and Tanya reckon?