These are the big questions facing John, a 51-year-old selfemployed engineer, and Marian, his 52-year-old wife.

Neither of them has much by way of a pension, other than the social-welfare entitlements that kick in from age 65.

But this has not stopped them dreaming of retirement in about five years' time. With considerable property assets and low debts, they believe they should have the money to make their dream come through.

They have accumulated equity of about 800,000 in two buy-to-let properties in Dublin. When the mortgages of 72,000 are paid off in about two years' time, the properties will yield a net rental income of about 30,000 a year . . .

unfortunately, not enough for John and Marian to live on when they stop working.

They also have two properties overseas: a rental property in France worth 220,000 bought with an interest-only mortgage of 160,000;

and a holiday apartment in Spain worth 120,000, with 15 years left on the mortgage of 31,000.

Their family home is worth about 1.2m and John and Marian plan to pay off the 51,000 left on the mortgage next year when their SSIAs mature.

"We have no pensions so we're hoping to use our buy-tolet properties to finance our retirement, ideally in five years' time, " says John. "In the meantime, we'd like to maximise our earnings and investments and put in place a strategy for achieving our goal."

The plan is that their three children . . . two daughters in their early 20s and a teenage son . . . will have moved out of the family home by the time John and Marian give up working. "Upon retiring we envisage spending up to six months a year abroad, in Spain or Italy for example, " John says. "I'd love to be able to trade up from the Spanish apartment to a villa. It might cost 150,000 but it means we'd have some place decent for the six months of the year we'd be living there."

Having profited handsomely from the Irish property boom, John believes the time may be right to cash in their gains. "I'd like my properties to work for me and, as I feel the Irish market has maxed out, I was considering selling the two buy-to-let houses and investing the money for a few years and then using it to provide an income when we retire, " he says.

Assuming they invested the 800,000 they hope to get from selling the two Dublin houses, John estimates it could have grown to a nest egg of just over 1m when they retire in 2012. By drawing an income of 55,000 a year after that, index-linked by three percent a year, the money should last for about 22 years, according to John's estimates. By that stage, the couple would be in their late 70s.

Alternatively, John and Marian are thinking about hedging their bets, selling one of the Dublin buy-to-let properties which would probably release enough money to buy a small apartment block in the former East Germany.

One option that is definitely not up for consideration is selling the family home. "A house similar to ours has just sold for 1.3m and, while Marian and I have discussed selling our home and trading down, she won't hear of it at the moment, " John says.