Last week, I had one of the most intimidating meetings of my life – and I’ve met prime ministers, a US president – and once had one-on-ones with Rupert Murdoch. It was a 90-minute Microsoft Teams “chat” about my retirement future with a financial adviser, who has become my trusted guide through the Stygian darkness of my own earnings, pensions and investment future.

These subjects have induced hives all my adult life. There’s a reason I became a journalist and then a teacher of English and literacy – not an accountant or banker. I truly hate thinking about this stuff. But think about it, we must. We have one year now before so much changes and many of us are sleepwalking into potential pensions penury.

For decades, I treated my pension as an afterthought; a line on a payslip; a digital folder I would “get round to”. Retirement was a hazy future beach house, pensions the dreary scaffolding. Except now it is urgent. Next year’s........

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