We are constantly being lectured about how we should save more for our retirements. Maybe we should. But what happens next? It’s all very well having assets when you get to retirement age, but that still leaves another 20 years or more to manage and make use of them. How we do that can have as much impact on living standards in retirement as the amount saved in the first place.

A new report from my colleagues at the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests that many of the assets that people retire with are still with them 30 years later. They live on their pensions — state and private — but neither use much of their savings nor unlock their housing equity. We put all