She and her husband also have shares in BT, National Grid, the insurer CGNU, BAA, the airports operator, and 700 Abbey National shares. Ms Shelton warns against holding on to the Barclays shares out of sentiment, which many people do when they have worked for a company for a long time. Mr Rennison thinks the Slater-Holroyds should aim for a better spread across the markets, but Ms Storrow thinks they should clear out of equities. She says shares are good for a hobby but are worthwhile only if you have at least £150,000 to invest, otherwise you do not have enough to spread the risk. She says the Slater-Holroyds would be better off putting their money into a unit trust and letting the professionals take care of their money.Solution 4: PensionAs well as that long-lost French pension, Mrs Slater-Holroyd spent 11 years in the Barclays pension scheme. This was a non-contributory final-salary one which will pay 1/60th of her final salary for each year she completed in the scheme.

So when she reaches 60 she will receive 11/60ths of her salary when she left Barclays She is on a similar scheme now at Xania. Mrs Slater-Holroyd also paid into an Equitable Life Additional Voluntary Contribution fund (AVC), attached to her Barclays pension fund, in which she has amassed £10,500. She has a new AVC attached to her Xania pension fund, this time with Norwich Union, which stands at £1,000. With the French pension fund, the IFAs say she should find out from the firm she used to work for the terms for accessing it. The advisers are less sure about the broader goal of retiring early. So much depends on what the Slater-Holroyds would deem a comfortable living and what they plan to do when they retire. But the IFAs stress that with two children the Slater-Holroyds should sort out life assurance and income insurance before they start thinking properly of retirement.

Ms Shalton says Mrs Slater-Holroyd should ask Barclays about changing the Equitable Life AVC but she should stick with the Norwich Union one. Ms Storrow says there is no better way to save for retirement than a non-contributory pension scheme and Mrs Slater-Holroyd should keep going at Xania.And there are penalties for accessing pension schemes early, Mr Rennison says. Ms Shalton also says that when you are 50 you are legally entitled to get all your pension funds and can put them together. Perhaps this should be the time when Mrs Slater-Holroyd finally decides if she is ready to realise that dream of early retirement.. Along with puffball skirts and Kajagoogoo, negative equity is a term which we’d all hoped might remain an Eighties relic.

But recent warnings suggest that dreaded condition may return as first-time buyers who bought at the peak of the market with 100 per cent mortgages find that property values have dipped. Moneynetmortgagesearches Along with puffball skirts and Kajagoogoo, negative equity is a term which we’d all hoped might remain an Eighties relic. Historically, lenders asked for deposits which acted as a cushion to protect homeowners. In the Eighties, boom lenders relaxed the deposit rule and 100 per cent mortgages were commonplace, so, when interest rates rose to 10 per cent and property values fell, many buyers and particularly first-time ones, were in the negative equity trap.Kate Green (not her real name), of South Norwood, London, says: “In 1988 I bought a two-bedroom flat for £110,000 – many of my friends had bought and seemed to have made pots of money.”I had no deposit so I took out a mortgage for the whole lot. Two years later it was worth £20,000 less than I’d paid and dropping further in value My mortgage was becoming unpayable. I panicked, as I wanted to leave London, and ended up giving back the keys and the flat.” Sadly, there were many enforced repossessions.In 1988 the average price of a house in the South-east was £105,000 but four years later it fell to £74,000. Some lenders have already said they are reducing their mortgage offers to buyers in certain London postcodes.