Thanks, Phil, and I'm sure our kids would help, were I to ask them, but that would be a last resort. Young families have enough financial problems of their own these days.
We're lucky, we have stuff we can sell, even though they are things we care about and, at the end of the day we'll survive in reasonable comfort.
It's simply that it's difficult to accept that the retirement we had planned and saved for isn't at all what we had hoped.
We had hoped we would be able to help our children and grandchildren, rather than asking for help ourselves.
I'm really very grateful for all of you EFers taking the trouble to give an opinion and for your kindness.

Hi Matron,

If we go back to February 1971 the NASDAQ was 100 & there was 4.3 chf to the $.

Whilst the dollar has lost 80% of it's value NASDAQ has risen 2700% over 40 years, quite a compelling to invest in risky shares v a safe currency.