He stopped paying into three of them last year when he took over the mortgage on his house. Altogether they are worth £35,000.His Musicians’ Union-organised stakeholder scheme is still going: he pays £1,733 per annum and his employer pays him an additional salary of £1,222 earmarked for pension contributions only. Solution 2: Pension Mr Finlay has four personal pension schemes. When this Isa has built up a bit he should switch it to an equity Isa. Ms Shalton thinks his current Skandia Pep is good but that he should still keep an eye on it to see how it is doing and never rule out switching.Mr Grennan says Mr Finlay needs to build up a bigger short-term stock of money to access in emergencies.

If it is a with-profits fund he might incur a penalty.On the other hand, Mr Grennan thinks that when Mr Finlay remortgages he might want to consider shifting part of his mortgage to capital-repayment from interest-only. This would diminish the problem of still paying into his endowments after he had retired. In effect Mr Finlay would then be over-paying on his mortgage between the ages of 55 and 60 but this would give him a lot of leeway in later years.Ms Shalton thinks Mr Finlay should not cash in his endowments since they are still on target. When he goes into semi-retirement at 60 he should reduce his mortgage payments and when the Scottish Life endowment matures in 2022, when Mr Finlay will be 63, he should be able to clear most of his mortgage and still have a little left to add to his retirement fund. Both are on target to meet the required values at maturity.Mr Roe says Mr Finlay should keep paying his monthly premiums into each scheme.

He should use the Allied Dunbar endowment, when it matures in 2014, to pay off a large chunk of his mortgage. One is with Scottish Life which matures in 2022 and is estimated to return £54,000 For this he pays a monthly premium of £99.14. He has another with Allied Dunbar which matures in 2014 and should return £46,000, for which he is paying a monthly premium of £83.83. Mr Grennan points out that when Mr Finlay remortgages he must bear in mind solicitors’ fees and other costs. She also says that since he has so much equity tied up in the house it might make sense for him to think about moving somewhere smaller when he retires and live off some of the profit. Ms Shalton suggests Mr Finlay should consider renting out a room in his house.