Perhaps I shouldn't say too much, or as my Mum used to say; don't tell the Devil your secrets, but here goes anyway

The kids have grown up and left, we no longer have to pay anything for them, apart from the occasional present
I am retired and my pensions are OK but not huge
My wife is 59 and works part time, but her wages are quite low
We can tick over and manage like this indefinitely, but we're getting fed up of managing, we want to relax a bit!
And that includes not having to put a new tyre on a credit card instead of buying it outright; and we've been putting off having the gable end re - pointed for a couple of years now. You get the idea

Like a lot of women of her sort of age my wife is caught up in the mess of pension reform (ie cutback!). She was content to get her head down and focus on giving up work in 12 to 18 months time, but not at all happy about having to work for another 7 or 8 years

So equity release seemed a neat way of getting some money quickly, and leaving it to the kids to sort out the mess when we pop off