Pensions have a reputation for being complicated. They're full of jargon, they feel decades away and, for many people, they're something to deal with later.

But retirement is one of the biggest financial goals most of us will ever have. And despite years of progress, women in the UK are still reaching later life with significantly less financial security than men.

In this week's episode of The Wallet, Emilie Bellet spoke to Susan Hope, Business Development Director at Scottish Widows and one of the leading voices behind the Women and Retirement Report, one of the UK's longest-running pieces of research into women's financial resilience.

The conversation wasn't simply about pensions. It was about why the gender pension gap still exists, what has improved over the past two decades, where the system still falls short, and what women can do to feel more in control of their retirement.

I talked to the European Central Bank about money stress. Here's what came up.

By Emilie Bellet, Founder of Vestpod

I was invited onto the European Central Bank's podcast, What the Euro?!, to discuss the rising cost of living and the effect it's having on the way people think and feel about money.

What struck me most wasn't the discussion about inflation itself. It was why they wanted to speak to Vestpod in the first place. They weren't looking for economic forecasts or commentary on interest rates. They wanted to understand how people are experiencing these economic shifts in their everyday lives: what happens when the headlines about rising prices start showing up in supermarket receipts, energy bills and bank balances.