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The dreaded tax time is upon us - but there are ways of making it less painful.

Keep your receipts and forms in one easy to access place and forget about filing out forms: in short, do digital.

One of the fastest growing categories of tax filing is online, via easy to use software such as TurboTax, UFile, Netfile and H&R Block at Home. It's made life easy for those of us who have little time and want to make sure we do it accurately.

While online software has plenty of foolproof ways to make sure we pay what we owe and get some discounts too, can it answer every tax question? Here's a list of things to consider when using online options to pay your taxes.

In the past few years, the median average for Canadian families hasn't gone up, but it hasn't gone down.

The average income for Canadians has stayed stable in the most recent analysis of incomes from 2010.

And that's better than our friends south of the border, where the recession has taken its toll on average income of couples and families.

According to Statistics Canada, Canadian family income stayed at $65,500 on average in 2010, unchanged from the previous year. Americans faced a sharp decline of 7.7% in their family income in the same time period.

So it a good thing for Canadians? If you're a two parent family or a single parent family, life has many challenges, but income has been holding steady for you too.

With the recent popularity of a new home show on HGTV teaching owners how to turn their house into an income generating property and with some of the grants many cities offer, I'm often asked by Canadians about the viability of turning their home into a money maker. Could being a landlord be a lucrative side venture for you?

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Canadians have begun to react to fears about record debt levels with household debt rising at its lowest rate in 15 years in November. But while growth has slowed significantly, it is yet to reverse the rising trend, meaning the record-breaking run of mounting debt continues.

The good news is that Canadians are starting to take better care of their finances. Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC, said household credit, once adjusted for inflation, rose by only 0.27 per cent in November. Meanwhile, data for the third quarter of last year showed that household credit rose at its slowest pace since 2001. The number of unpaid credit card bills has also stabilized at below one per cent.

Despite the improvement, Mr. Tal says there are still some concerning developments in Canada's debt situation.

Two of Canada's largest life insurers have significantly hiked their rates on some permanent life insurance products and more companies are set to follow suit as insurers buckle under the pressure of low interest rates, a wealth advisor says.

Insurance companies Sun Life and Manulife have increased the cost of Universal Life insurance by as much as 22%, according to an article by the Financial Post's Wealthy Boomer, Jonathan Chevreau. He quotes John Nicola, chairman and CEO of Vancouver-based Nicola Wealth Management as saying that this is the start of a trend that will see other insurers significantly hike premiums, possibly by as much as 50%.

Young Universal Life policy holders or joint-last-to-die policy holders have been hit with the largest increases.

People always want to know how they're doing compared to the neighbours and their colleagues. As luck would have it, Statistics Canada has that information.

Their reports are always a little behind the times – I imagine it's no small feat to compile country-wide family income data – but this month's report provides a pretty clear picture of how much families were earning as we began to slide into this latest downturn.

There are some great money-making opportunities in Canadian real estate at the moment, particularly with low interest rates and affordable house prices. However, you have to know what you're looking for. Serious property investors always do their homework before buying a property, and there are a number of signs they look for in order to maximize their profits through property appreciation and rental income. Right now, those signs point to Calgary as being the best place in Canada to invest. In fact, three other areas in Alberta also make the list, making it the hottest property investment province in Canada.

Before choosing an investment, look at factors that could increase a property's value. For instance, are there any large development projects slated for the area? Is the property near an area that will benefit from planned transport infrastructure? Is there potential for jobs growth in the area? Is the population of the area increasing faster than average? Does the area have easy access to services and schools?

Finding this information by yourself can take a lot of time. Thankfully, the Real Estate Investment Network of Canada puts out a list of the top 10 hot spots in Canada based on these factors, making the research process much quicker and easier for you.

It's a scary fact that if you live in Newfoundland, you're three times as likely to suffer a heart attack as someone living in Nunavut, or BC.

According to a report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, heart attack rates vary considerably depending on which province you live in. Furthermore, the report has found that Canadians living in the country's least affluent neighbourhoods are almost 40% more likely to have a heart attack than those living in the most affluent areas.

So which areas are the riskiest places to live?

I work at home and thanks to regular deadlines and meetings, my day is scheduled just like my colleagues who work in a traditional workplace. But I admit, I sometimes procrastinate and switch on the television as distraction, easily sucked in by daytime programming, such as Dr. Oz.

His program last week was a discussion regarding how health and lifespan are affected by stressful behaviours. For example, if a spouse snores, the partner will lose on average an hour of sleep a night, and shorten his or her life by four years while if a spouse constantly nags, the recipient can have their lifespan shortened by eight years. Both of these behaviours contribute to stress, and can affect workplace productivity.

According to a Health Canada report, the annual cost of depression and distress at work is $14.4 billion, with $8.1 billion in lost productivity.

An article in Maclean's in 2007 spoke of the effects of lost productivity as presenteeism, in which stressed-out workers show up to work but make little difference in their job. Stress has become the unfortunate explanation for many health problems, and there's one possible solution.