Ill get it planned in to change the brake fluid then, atleast I’ll know its done then. May as well do the oil at the same time then!
I once suffered brake fade in a car - just the once. It occurred on a 1 in 4 hill, in fairly new Ford Fiesta XR2 Mk1 which I’d “breathed on” a little. It wasn’t caused by water in the fluid - it was just that the pads couldn’t cope with the type of driving I was doing that particular day. They overheated and the brakes suddenly became almost totally ineffective. Had I not known the road so well, and the car not had very good handling, I would probably have gone through a stone wall into the river below the bridge at the sharp corner at the bottom of the hill. The brakes came back again after they had cooled down - they were almost red hot when I stopped. I learned my lesson… I also changed the pads!
Anyway, I don’t take chances with brakes these days - and thirty five years on I drive more sensibly.
Well with brake fluid costing in the region of £15 to £20 to change and flush the system and get clean fluid from all the calipers.
If cash is king then a decision has to be made!!!
I on a lot of occasions when people bring there cars to me, take off all the wheels and if that pads are discs are good. I will remove all the calipers, clean out, red rubber grease the slider pins, ceramic grease the sliders for the pads and flush the fluid until all calipers are pushing out clean fluid.
Never in any case has the owner on a test drive not mentioned how much better the brakes were.
In saying that in their next car, if the brakes had got slowly less effective than they were when clean, lubed and flushed, would they get off their fat backside and do this. No, they would spend the money on 40 fags or a bottle of alcohol or whatever their choice of treats. I believe they would say that the £15 to £20 say £25 with the grease was just a luxury and they were too busy to go to the trouble of buying red rubber grease and ceramic brake grease.
Takes all sorts
I’ve replaced the brake fluid regularly on every car I’ve ever owned, usually approximately every two/three years or 30,000 miles whichever is sooner and/or conveniently close to a main service.
The difference is almost always noticeable.
However even a new car can have brake fade. I once endured (never again) a hired Megane for a fortnight in France, only about 200 km on the clock, and the brakes were Off/On when cold, but nothing there below 40kph when stopping from emergency when the Motorway suddenly ground to a halt from 130kph. I ended up on the hard shoulder alongside the car that had been two hundred metres in front of me. Stupid electric parking brake, so the only way to slow the car was jamming it into first. I can only assume it had the wrong pads fitted. The hire company’s mechanic I called out when we got to our accommodation changed them with much tutting and it was slightly better.
If you don’t have the service history maybe you should consider having the fluid completely replaced - should be done every 2 years or so in any case. And if it needs topping up, ask the question “why?”, especially if its gone down in a short time from full.
It sounds like you’re talking about something from years ago now but, just in case, it might be worth mentioning that those new-old-stock brake pads would have had asbestos in them.
Errr, they were probably there because they were contaminated with leaked brake fluid from the brake slave cylinders. That was why they did not work and why they stank when they got hot!
I suppose that would have accounted for it, but these were “new old stock”. Probably a safe assumption that they contained asbestos; IIRC in the early 70s asbestos linings were still the rule, with mechanics frequently using the air line to blow the dust out of the drums 
Brakes weren’t taken for so much for granted then. People really did “engage low gear now” for steep hills and “saved the brakes”. But those shoes must have been from another era - 1950s I think.
To keep my Spitfires on the road I frequently used to scavenge brake cylinders and shoes etc from triumph Heralds in scrapyards. These cars would be fitted with new brake components etc to get them through the MOT only to fail on chassis rot!
I still tend to use engine braking more than my brakes in normal driving and go down the gearbox when decelerating I’m afraid. One advantage is that you should always be in the right gear if you need to quickly accelerate again and for accelerating out of a corner. I know that it possibly puts more wear on the clutch and gearbox synchro cups but I don’t think wear on these is a particular issue on modern cars. Heel and toeing also helps as it matches the speed of the engine to the transmission and also reduces wear on these components.
I often see people who are constantly on and off their brakes because they are far too close to the car in front and think ‘what is the point’. Why not back off so that you can control the distance between your car and the one in front using your accelerator pedal. far less stressful and probably saves fuel too.