It is not just pensions that people are having to unlock in the current economic climate.

There is an ageing population who are facing climbing food bills, rising heating costs and a general increase in the cost of living. This older population generally has a large amount of equity tied up in their property. It would take a crash of collossal proportions to wipe out the rises in house prices over the past say 40 years.

Cashing in your pension is one choice people have been making, but now we are seeing many homwowners looking to the capital invested in their equity as potential spending money in these tough times.

It could be said that homeowners have been lied to for the past 40 years. As house prices have appeared to rise, the population has belived that it is becoming richer and richcer. However, at the end of the line they are bein forced to sell off this trapping of wealth to pay for theie later years - in other words to pay off the false economies of yesteryear.

For the lenders, it is an easy loan. There are no montly repayments to monitor, the lending company has a right to their loan sum when the property is sold.

This sympton of the credit crunch is particularly prevalent amongst private sector employees as they are generally not party to the generous terms of those in the public sector - to say the least.

So, in these rather troubled times, when some economists are suggesting that this is only the tip of the iceberg, many people are looking at unlocking money from privately owned equity as well as pension unlocking.

It was a last minute break we kind of sprung on a friend out of nowhere. Last month several of us smooched off to Portugal for a weekend of surfing and eating. The surfing came first of course, but it was always followed by enough food and wine to make sleep a necessity in good enough time to ensure an early morning the next day.

we chose Portugal for the fair weather and excellent surfing conditions. We were north of Lisbon in the pretty town of Peniche.

Suffice it to say that the stay was thoroughly enjoyable and the town left a lasting impression on all of our party.

Soon after we returned to England we all met up and talked about the area with nostalgia and intent.

It was not long before we were avidly discussing how we could go again, even how we could all chip in to buy a property over there. We all went our separate ways to look into options available to us.

One of our party found an apartment for sale in the region for €300000 and we quickly assessed the costs, with the current exchange rates not being exactly favourable for the UK consumer this worked out at over 40 thousand pounds each. We discussed this for a while - the thought of owning a property in Portugal being extremely exciting for all of us.

Luckily one of the crew of potential investors was rather more canny than the rest of us, he did indeed work in the property market and had learned of a process referred to as off plan investment. This is the process whereby you can invest in a property during the pre build or pre construction phase. Off plan allows the developer to gain capital during the build and, at the same time, allows the investor to purchase at a discounted rate.

We looked at off plan investment in Portugal and quickly established that for far less of an investment we would be able to purchase ( off plan of course ) a far superior property.

We did, the off plan investment was sound and, although we had to wait for construction to complete ( 18 months ) we soon were the owners of a lavishly appointed Portuguese property. The off plan purchase having been mutually beneficial for both us and the developer. The investment has also seen a very favourable capital growth for all of us.

So, now we visit our Portuguese palace and fly through the surf, quite regularly.