Other women' s husbands call them by endearing pet names. Mine refers to me as 'the walking pension plan'.
He's joking - I think - about his fond imaginings that, since I'm a lot younger than him and a financial writer to boot, I'll be maintaining him in style in his dotage. Well, he can hope.
But I suppose I only have myself to blame, because thanks to a combination of my job and my ingrained northern thrift, I am a fully-fledged pensionista.
Not only do I contribute as much as I can to my own pension fund but, given half an opening, I'll try to convert other women to the joys of retirement planning, too.
Mock my pension fetish if you must - and plenty of my friends do - but now I'm in my 40s I see it as a key part of my age-proofing regime, along with the moisturiser and the Pilates. It's a three-pronged strategy: face, figure and finances.
But there are a whole raft of reasons why women are at greater risk than men of financial hardship in their later years.
The big pension killers for women are unequal pay, taking career breaks to care for children, bereavement and divorce.
Tough economic times, and the threat to many families of losing their child benefit, are likely to widen the pensions gender gap still further, as women are less likely to save and more likely to use their money to make sure their families don't go short.
Dr Ros Altmann, director-general of Saga and a former adviser to No 10, says: 'Women are still very much second-class citizens when it comes to pensions - and what is worse is that it's barely even acknowledged.'
Much of the problem stems from the fact that the foundations of our current pensions system were laid in the postwar period and do not reflect the realities of modern women's lives, juggling work and home.
Recent developments have not helped. Fewer female workers have access to a top-quality final-salary pension scheme at work than men.
Just over a third of women are members of a final salary plan, compared with more than 40% of male employees, and many firms are closing these funds because they have become too expensive to run.
The Government's plans to scale back public sector pensions may be necessary, but they will also have a big impact on women, who make up more than 60% of the membership.
Typically, most women still earn less than their male counterparts, so can't save as much and, as we tend to live longer, we have more years to fund in retirement.
The result is that fewer than half of British women are saving enough for an adequate pension, says research by Scottish Widows. A quarter save nothing.
Ros Altmann: 'Women ares second-class citizens when it comes to pensions'
No surprise then that, according to the Office for National Statistics, the average annual income for a lone female pensioner is just over £13,700 a year, and that single, divorced and widowed women make up a high proportion of the 1.8m retired households living below the poverty line.
No one likes to think it will happen to them, but experts warn even comfortably-off middle-class women could struggle to maintain their standard of living.
'It is easy to be lulled into a false sense of security,' says Professor Karen Pine, of the University of Hertfordshire, the co-author of Sheconomics, a book aimed at helping women gain financial control.
'Many women find that a middle-class lifestyle is much harder to keep up, especially if they have given little or no thought to a pension in their own right.'
But the practical barriers facing women are only one part of the problem. Experts warn there are also psychological forces at play. For while men think of pensions and investments purely in financial terms, for women money is inextricably linked with emotions and relationships.
There are three distinct female mindsets that can sabotage women's pension planning as they pass through the phases of their life: Cinderella Singletons; Money Martyrs and Trusting Traditionalists.
Young single women can morph into modern-day Cinderellas, where they struggle to pay off student debt, and getting on to the housing ladder seems overwhelming.
Instead, they opt out of financial planning, in the hope that their prince will arrive and bail them out.
And, as Amanda Mackenzie, a senior executive at insurance group Aviva, points out, these young women are missing a valuable opportunity to make tax-efficient savings before they take time out to have children.
'There's never an easy time to start paying into a pension for women, as once the student loan gets paid off, there's the deposit on a home to think about and then children. But it is important to make it a priority to save.'
Motherhood often lures women into the trap of Money Martrydom, where they put everyone else's needs ahead of their own.
Research by Scottish Widows shows that family life triggers a 'selfless gene' in women, that prompts them to spend on others, even if it compromises their own long-term financial well-being.
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Mothers are not the only martyrs. Morris says single women who give up work to look after elderly parents can also end up sacrificing their financial future. 'It is great that women take on a caring role, but the price can be high,' she adds.
But, she argues, Money Martyrs could end up being a burden on their children when they are older.
'Adult children may have to help support you financially if you haven't got a decent pension of your own, and they might not be so grateful for the sacrifices you made,' Morris says.
Politicians have belatedly made improvements to the basic state pension system to reflect the fact that many women take time out of the workplace.
For women retiring on or after April 6, 2010, the number of qualifying years needed for a full basic state pension has been reduced from 39 years to 30.
It is a welcome change, but to put it in perspective the basic state pension is currently £97.65 a week, and women who do not notch up those 30 years of NI contributions will receive a fraction of this.
Plus women will have to wait longer to receive it in future, as the female state retirement age is being raised progressively over the next ten years from 60 to 65.
There are longer term plans to raise the retirement age for both sexes to 68. New low-cost pension accounts aiming to help women and lower paid workers to save are being phased in from 2012.
By 2017, all employers will have to automatically enrol staff earning above a certain threshold into a pension scheme. Employers will also have to contribute at least 3% of income towards it.
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But financial advisers say these will still exclude large numbers of women. Tom McPhail, of financial adviser Hargreaves Lansdown, says: 'Women working part-time, or doing a few jobs each paying below the threshold, could miss out.
'It will be an improvement, but there would still be millions of women left without a pension plan.'
Another improvement in recent years is a concession allowing the partners of non-working wives to put up to £3,600 a year into a tax-efficient pension plan on their behalf, but this is not well known.
Which leads us to another vulnerable group - the Trusting Traditionalists; women dependent on their husbands to provide for them in retirement and who have left it too late to build up savings of their own.
As the Prudential's pension guru Vince Smith-Hughes says: 'Relying on someone else's pension is risky.'
The Trusting Traditionalists may believe they are happily married, but divorce in later life can have a devastating financial impact.
As well as this, thousands of widows are being stripped of their financial security because, unbeknown to them, their husband has signed up for 'single-life annuities', a pension which stops payment on the death of the holder.
Says Altmann: 'Women are being left absolutely destitute. Many of these men are loving husbands who would be horrified if they had known, but they don't understand the risks.'
Altmann rightly describes it as a scandal, but it is just part of a much bigger one - that millions of women in this country who work hard all their lives inside and outside of the home are missing out on a decent retirement.
That is why I am not apologetic about being obsessed with my own pension. They should be a much higher priority for politicians and the financial industry.
And I'd love to see magazine editors featuring more finance articles alongside the fashion and beauty, helping readers become women of style and substance.
As Professor Pine says: 'We buy all these age defying-serums, but you can't defy the fact that women need a pension. There's no cream for that.'
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