From the start to the finish this is Richard Smith at the controls.

Dashboard isn’t any thing that matters , it’s just a window- like the window on a train to Edinburgh. It’s something that you look through as you get to know what’s out there.

In this podcast Richard takes you on the equivalent of your train journey – except it’s to your retirement income. Destination is Edinburgh  ( a complete view of what’s ahead from a new capital from where you started). And the journey to that new view is the view from your seat out over the changing landscape, of York and Newcastle to Edinburgh.

How do you get on the train and to that window?

1. Scan your ticket – it’s the identity service – get through the barrier and you’re onto the train
2. Pay attention to caveat information – next you get to hear what you won’t see from the train window if your ticket is invalid  – then you can get underway (knowing their may are other ways of travelling to Edinburgh)

Richard urges us to take some time on a   Money View , a view of the people who use the dashboard. Less than 10% of people are clever enough not to need to use the dashboard, they are the clever clogs who are known as “Bob”s

Money View reckon there’s 65% of us in the middle, who aren’t experts but are concerned enough to use the dashboard and will  get  useful travel as you would from London to Edinburgh – useful in getting to know what’s out there.

So the train sets off and the first thing that you find is that you are underground – the train’s going under Regent’s Canal

1. You are in blackout leaving Kings Cross on a train/on the Dashboard.

2. You will now get to the trophy room of your dashboard/ the trophies of Arsenal Emirates . Most people will only go as far as the trophy room, so amazed will they be what they see when they see the certain sources of your retirement income, the equivalent of the Premiership trophy that’s yours to keep

3. You will get  possible matches when you find your pensions, These are  pots/pensions that look like  being yours but the dashboard can’t be sure.  I’m not quite sure what the train trip analogy is for this.

4. But now is the really good bit, which is that when you’ve worked out what’s yours, you can get an ERI which tells you where you’ve got to on your journey to Edinburgh. This gets a bit complicated as you’re probably overestimating your progress to your desination.

5. That’s because you’ve got an Estimated Retirement Income which is almost certainly wrong because you’ve got to knock off tax from the income that’s shown (it’s shown gross), the amount you’ve taken as tax-free cash and the cost of upgrading to an inflation linked income that will knock down the initial income.

6. Somewhere along the way I missed Newcastle and the beautiful coast up to Berwick and the excitement of getting into Edinburgh but by now we had got into the excitement of Richard in full swing!

The point that Richard’s excellent takeover of the Podcast made was that if people are going to take control of their finances in retirement they are going to have to organise them around things they understand.

Richard compares the Britain that can be revealed from the window of a northbound train. It’s like the screen revealing your estimated retirement income on a dashboard – it’s a revelation either way.

There will of course be “Bobs”, the kind of guys who understand financial services like the experts we are supposed to be. But for the “expert less” who neither are one or know one, the dashboard is a revelation. It is nothing but it gives access to everything from Kings Cross in London to Waverley in Edinburgh.

Credit to Nico and Darren for letting go of this podcast.

Richard’s journey pulls into Edinburgh half an hour late , but we’ll forgive him that, it was a wonderful trip.