Fancy a Ferrari, trip to the Caribbean or a brand new, top-of-the-range kitchen? All you have to do is keep getting older and you’re there.

I’m talking about the changes to pensions, announced in George Osborne’s Budget last month.

If you’re one of the millions of people with a pension plan, you’ll know the Government is going to make it easier for people to cash-in pension pots. The amount of pension savings that someone can take as a lump sum has almost doubled, from £18,000 to £30,000. But the biggie, which starts from April next year, is that over-55s will be able to take their pension pot how they want, rather than being forced to buy an annuity when they retire from work.

In theory, annuities are a great idea because they provide you with a guaranteed yearly income until you pop your clogs.

So what’s not to like? Quite a lot, actually.

For starters, the amount they pay out each year, has fallen drastically.

And many of us don’t realise we can shop around for one, so end up just taking what’s on offer from our existing pension provider.

So, having the option of drawing down your pension as a lump sum, rather than having to fork out for a poor-value annuity could be a good thing.

If you want to splash out on that Ferrari or exotic holiday, no one will be able to stop you. Of course, if we all rush out and splurge all our money in one go, there is the downside that we’ll have nothing left for our old age.

And given that we’re living so much longer, our pensions have to last 10 or even 20 years more than they used to.

But all this makes the gigantic assumption that we all have big, fat pension pots waiting to be cashed in.

Sadly, that’s not the case. And guess what? It’s women who are particularly at risk of missing out.

Because some of us take time out of work to have children, or step back from being the main bread-winners, we are far less likely than blokes to have a comfortable financial cushion to fall back on in retirement.

According to research by Prudential, one in seven of men and women planning to retire this year do not have a personal pension. But it turns out that one in five women have no pension savings, compared to less than one in 10 men.

As a result, the state pension makes up almost half of women’s retirement income, compared with just over a quarter for men.

More worryingly, more than one in three of both sexes who will retire in the next few months either didn’t know how much the state pension was worth, or thought it was more than it is. It’s £113.10 a week, by the way, which is not a lot to live on, even if you like lentils.

Hmm. When it’s my turn to bow out, maybe I’ll skip the Ferrari and stick to the bus instead.