Have you had your eye on those dazzling Topshop shoes or that luscious sequined designer dress for months? But that one thing is stopping you from purchasing your dream wardrobe items, and it's not the fact that you may have a couple of sequined dresses stored away in your humble abode- no, it's the lack of funds.
As we are well aware, money doesn't grow on trees (we can only dream…) but for many young women of today, they are suffering financially.
Not only are women seeing the back of life's luxuries, many find it difficult to put money aside into a pension fund due to limited disposable income.
With the uncertainties of the future with job cuts and money being stretched that extra mile, it's vital that we have a backup plan.
However, being paid less than our counterparts- despite the Equal Pay Act coming into force over 40 years ago- just keeps us that one step back from succeeding our financial goals.
What's more, 22% of UK employees admit that the stress of their financial situation impacts negatively on their work productivity.
Pining for the champagne lifestyle on a lemonade budget certainly is a tough challenge to tackle, particularly for 18-34 year olds who are worst effected by financial stress.
And when it comes to saving for our pensions, no thought has been spared!
As 'The Great British Bake Off' has had us gripped over the last few weeks and we're suddenly SO into baking, it seems that you lot would find it easier to bake a cake without a recipe, than check the balance of your pension, according to Friends Life.
Although baking a cake sounds more appealing- hello chocolate sponge- putting in place a pension is the stability for the future that is a given.
Personal finances are often considered to be a private matter but it's time you got a little more vocal and get to grips with the idea of saving for a pension.
Dale Critchley, Pensions Expert at Friends Life, said: "Baking without a recipe is difficult unless you have memorised every step or you are willing to take the chance to bake blind. However, checking and managing your pension should not feel harder than this. Online tools make keeping an eye on your pension a painless task."
To demonstrate, here is a simple 'Pension's Recipe' to help savers through every step.
Dale's Pension Recipe:
Size: Decide how big you want your (pension) cake to be - it will depend how much you are going to need to live off and what ingredients you have available.
Ingredients: Check what 'ingredients' you have available - your employer may contribute.
The basic 'pension' mix includes contributions (yours and your employers), tax relief and the raising agent - the potential return you get based on your 'investment' choices.
Method: Combine the ingredients, and keep a close eye on your how things are progressing over time.
Mixing: If things don't look as though they are going to plan top up with extra ingredients - feed the mix more contributions or change the investment mix to try and help it 'rise'.
Timing: It's difficult to over bake a pension so generally the longer the better, but if you only have a short amount of time you may have to temper your ambitions re size.
Note re cooking time: While it's important to keep an eye on your pension you can over work it, it's a long term investment and you have to accept it won't always be a smooth journey.
Temperature: depends on how long you've got, in the early days (years of saving), high temperature (riskier investment types) could result in higher growth - but as time goes on you may want to turn the temperature down (start life styling, de-risking your pension) to stop your cake getting burnt - be careful though, turning down to soon could mean you get less volume.
Decoration: You will find your cake automatically comes out with icing on the top, leaving your pension cake with a ratio of a tasty topping of 25% Tax Free Cash and a sustaining 75% which is taxable.
It's time to get money savvy ladies- get to work on your future plans today to secure a comfortable lifestyle.