We are all afraid of change. Most of us work all our working lives and don’t feel comfortable on having to make big decisions about money like “spend, spend, spend”,

Robin Powell, on another blog I publish this morning, asks us to consider getting into partnership with an adviser who can get to know your circumstances and help you with a financial plan for your time left on the planet (not beyond!). I know many people want a financial guide and Robin and his team are good examples for those who can afford one.

Jonathan Guthrie,writes an opinion column having been in conversation with Steve Webb where he outlines an adviser free approach to drawing down from the pots without a financial planner holding your hand.

Perhaps excel is your best bet to avoid becoming the lady who predicted

“I’m going to spend, spend, spend!” .

That was Viv Nicholson’s response to her husband’s big 1961 win on the football pools, a popular flutter at the time.

You, being a reader of this blog, may not hang out with people who don’t do spreadsheets and don’t understand charts such as those produced by the University of Bath (whose Nick Pearce will be working out “adequacy” for the next 18 months). Here are two charts designed to show retirement from the perspective of a spreadsheet

It shows that well-off householders have lower housing costs than those who live in social housing (we used to call it “renting from the council”. Amazingly, the University of Bath’s dissection of extreme old age, does not show as the horror we imagine it.

In further  study, The FT’s Jonathan Guthrie is very level

However, just 2.5 per cent of the retired population live in care homes, an expensive form of assistance with daily life. In my view, ruinous care bills are a relatively low risk for better-off retirees though as Stierman remarks: “These costs are frequently a place holder in our minds for everything that might go wrong — a legitimate way of phrasing broader fears.”

He picks up on  work by NMG consultants who provide research for financial advisers to do the financial planning Robin Powell is writing about

“Financial advisers often try to encourage clients to spend more,” says Miba Stierman of NMG Consulting. Resistance is high, however. Retirees routinely cite potential “care costs” as a reason for thrift.

I would like to put forward a third view of retirement, that of a pensioner. I am one and when I get to 67 I will become more dependent on pensions paying me than by capital or odds and sods of work from my jobs. That’s partly because of the state and partly because I want to swap my pot for a pension , a proper pension – not this second rate annuity stuff I dismissed in 2014 when the Chancellor said I could be free of it.

I will do what people hate doing and may be defaulted into doing, which is give up control of my pot in return for a retirement income that lasts as long as I do (and my wife if I ever marry my partner – or my partner!)

I do not want a spreadsheet to organise my life, I want to know what’s coming in and to live to what I can afford, I want a little money put by for emergencies. That is the third way and it does not require a lot of financial planning and an ongoing relationship with a financial planner who knows me well enough to give financial advice.

This is of course important to most people, because most of us do the plan ourselves and take decisions based on what everyone else does. We seem to retire at 66 today, 67 in a year or two and 68 or later by which time I’m done (the rules are different).

Many people take their tax free cash when they are 55, the Financial Lives work done for the FCA shows that people allocate to cash (capital to the FT readers) because they fear the unexpected and the Pension Schemes Bill/Act is trying to change that so the norm is not cash but income.

I seem to be the only person this morning, reminding myself that I saved all my life to have pay in retirement which will enable me  to walk away from work (if I choose to).

Rather wonderfully, Jonathan Guthrie tries to rewrite the lady in the sixties and the Smiths song, dragging in that Brummie , Steve Webb to counter Mancunian extravagance

Sir Steve warns against overindulgence in financial modelling and to look after the partner

“Most people reach retirement as part of a couple. But one of you will be going first. You could be bequeathing a complex strategy and set of financial products to someone who does not wish to engage with them.”

Jonathan Guthrie fantasises about a spreadsheet alternative for Viv

Even so, I like to imagine an alternative reality in which Viv Nicholson, a picture of concentration beneath her beehive hair-do, bashed away on a mechanical calculator to project orderly decumulation of that pools win.

The Smiths’ subsequent single “Financial Planning Makes You A Happier Person” would have flopped, returning singer Morrissey to obscurity and limiting the audience for his misguided opinions.

Both outcomes would, I believe, have left the world a better place.

Of course Viv Anderson and her husband would this day have a better state pension and a workplace pot to become a pension. Social insurance is in the payroll deduction, unless we opt out of work or out of auto-enrolment we will have tax free cash and income for the rest of our lives.

The Plowman advice is to start with your pension and work out what you can afford after speaking with the dashboard!