Gail Vaz-Oxlade: Get your money under control
If you haven't discovered Gail Vaz-Oxlade, host of SLICE's Til Debt do Us Part, you should. The 50-year-old's no-nonsense manner and concrete advice is entertaining on television—but also a useful way to start the process of getting control of your money.
Here's our Q&A with the author of Debt Free Forever
If you're a woman over 40 and you haven't saved a lot for retirement at this point, what should you do?
The first thing you have to figure out is what you're likely going to receive from all your various sources. People have pension plans, there's Old Age Security, there's CPP. You have to actually start by figuring out what you're going to get.
Once you've done that you also have to sit down and figure out what you'll likely spend. Hopefully once you move into retirement you've done away with all your debt: Your car's paid off, your mortgage is paid off or close, and you have no consumer debt at all. And that means you're taking care of your most basic needs.
So you sit down and you do a budget. Then you do a comparison of what your costs are and what your income is. Then you figure out what the gap is. That's what you have to save. You have to save enough to produce the income to fill the gap. I mean this is not rocket science; this is basic stuff.
If you don't have the means to fill that gap, then you have to adjust your expectations about what you're going to spend. Or you have to find more money: Maybe you'll only retire somewhat. Or maybe what you'll do is change your housing expenses...there are heaps of ways to do this.
I think part of why we are so afraid is because we think there's only one right way. There's no such thing as one right way. Each person has to find the way that suits her the most.
