Aging is not for sissies. Not only will your body start reminding you of all of those merry days and nights when you ignored it, hoping faintly you could do so for ever and with impunity. Your income will change dramatically, too.

Now what? Well, you have a simple choice: accept it, sit down in your rocking chair and wait till death do us part. Or, on the other hand, you will NOT accept it and live life to the fullest. You will find that – theoretically, at least – you ought to have much more time to live life to the fullest now that you don't have to be in the office from nine to five. Guess what? You're barely coping.

That's called the Parkinson's Law effect: work (or any other activity, for that matter) fills the time that is available. (You should obtain a copy of the law in any good bookstore. You won't regret it. It will add more laugh wrinkles to your face, and these are the best wrinkles one can have.)

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Walletpop Canada sat down and interviewed Gail Vaz-Oxlade and discussed her new book 'It's Your Money: Becoming a Woman of Independent Means' at the offices of Harper Collins Canada.

Vaz-Oxlade hopes her book will get people to stop being scared and start taking action. While the book is geared toward educating and empowering women about issues such as divorce, becoming a parent, or becoming widowed, there's also lot of great information for men as well. It's never too late to improve your financial health and the sooner you do, the better.

"I think it's really important that we come to realize that life is about balance, that it's not all or nothing. It's not spending every waking moment thinking about money or spending no time thinking about money," says Vaz-Oxlade. "Managing money isn't really that hard. It requires some discipline and there is some detail involved, but in reality it doesn't take that much time and the payback is huge."

Click on the picture below to view our gallery 'The Top 9 Financial Mistakes People Will Make in 2012'. Vaz-Oxlade interview continues below.


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This time of year tends to be the really stressful time of year when it comes to finance.

Are you contributing enough to your Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP)? are you paying off that holiday debt and are you set to do your taxes? And finally, do you have enough money saved to retire in a few years?

It turns out that only 16 per cent of Canadians have some sort of idea about their retirement and 38 per cent of Canadians have some sort of retirement plan.

Yikes.

One of the interesting things is who's actually doing the saving. It's not who you think.

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CBC reported the benchmark index of the TSX recorded gains or losses of at least 200 points on 20 trading days in the three months ending Nov. 30. In one September week, the index lost 925 points, or almost 7.5 per cent. On one day (Sept. 22), the range between the high and low readings for the index was a stunning 535 points – or almost five per cent of the index.

The peaks and valleys were often even more pronounced in New York, where the Dow Jones industrial average moved more than 400 points on four consecutive trading days in September.

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I like to explain it this way: think of your RRSP as a garage. It's essentially an empty structure. You still need to put cars into your garage. These cars could be GIC's at your bank, stocks, bonds, mutual funds or just about any combination and more. But without carefully choosing which cars go into your RRSP and periodically changing those cars up, many Canadians aren't optimizing their RRSPs.

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I must preface that if you have any high interest credit card debt, that should be the first focus. With those rates hovering around 11-29% interest, it always makes more sense to get rid of that debt first.

Let's assume that you doesn't have any other debt and are simply wondering if the RRSP is the better way to go or, should you fast track paying down your mortgage?

Read on to find out which is the better option, or, if you should opt for a blend of both.

Retirement is a complicated thing. Many look forward to it. Many dread it.

But no matter how anybody feels about it, retirement is here. Except, rules change from time to time, and they will do so again, as of New Year's Day 2012.

So, what's going to be new?

If you are already getting payments from the Canadian Pension Plan (a.k.a. CPP) or the Quebec Pension Plan (a.k.a. QPP), and you're not working, either, you can stop reading now. These changes won't affect you. But if you are an employee or a self-employed person between 60 and 70 years of age, read on.

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The first days of a new year always bring with them a need to clean the slate and pledge new resolutions with the best of intentions behind them, but while the focus of these are usually on health and wellness, many forget that a healthy financial life is just as important in many ways.

Not only can such a thing free you to pursue your many life goals and dreams, but free you emotionally from the added stress of crushing debt.

This is why these days you see just as many money motivated resolutions right alongside the recommendations that deal with diet and exercise.

Yet with so many out there to follow, it can be hard to determine what is the best and most universally applicable financial advice. So here are ten diamonds in the rough we think everyone should take notice of.

1. Resolve Your Debts -- This is the one resolution that must be tackled before everything else, but it's also the one that takes the most discipline. The quickest path to living debt-free is to cut your spending and put the extra money in your budget towards paying off your debt a little at a time. The key is sticking with it, but you don't have to do it alone. A credit counselor can go over your strategy and support your effort, while a debt reduction service can settle debts over $10,000 to a smaller, more manageable amount for a fee.

Here go the boomers, setting that bar again. It's long been noticed that the whole "Freedom 55" notion is a bit of a joke or a dream, depending on who you ask, but the official numbers are out to confirm for the rest of us what Walmart HR departments probably know already: People are beginning to forgo or put off the traditional retirement so many dream about, to work longer and later into their lives.

Shocking, I know. If you want some official facts and figures about the phenomenon though, if you want to know how long you might be in the workforce for yourself, or if you just want to know more about who's likely be around to play with when you finally reach your prime golfing years in the future, this study on delayed retirement is a good place to start.

The question comes up every year - can boomers actually retire? A recent TD Investor Sentiment Survey suggested that the majority of boomers might be putting their retirement goals at risk by not choosing to invest.

The survey, which polled Canadians between the ages of 45 to 64, found that boomers have reduced their investment activities for many reasons. One is having less money to invest and another is a lack of trust in and discouragement by market volatility. Finally, some Canadians are choosing to direct any spare cash to other financial obligations instead of their retirement.

Despite this seemingly bleak picture, Thomas Dyck, President, TD Mutual Funds, says, "If you look at all the studies, the majority of Canadians can retire comfortably. What they need to do is take an active role in their retirement plan. They need to sit down with a financial planner and discuss what retirement looks like for them."