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Nathan Denette



Never Too Late - Take Control of Your Retirement and Your Future

By Gail Vaz-Oxlade

Harper Collins, $21.99

THE DISCOVERY

Saving even a small amount for retirement will give you a nice heap of savings.

THE QUESTIONS

Banks try to scare us all into saving for retirement early. Your message of 'it's never too late' is much more uplifting, but is it realistic?

That's exactly why I wrote the book. I am so tired of the pessimism and the 'you can't do enough to have enough' message that the industry has been putting out there. I do believe that everybody can do something and that you need to create a custom plan that will work for you. You have to educate yourself. But do you actually have to do something? Totally. If you're sitting there waiting for some magic to happen, you need to grow up and figure out what you have to do to have the life you want.

In the book, you say you don't believe there's a magic number - for example, $1-million - for retirement savings.

I do not believe in a magic number because I think every individual is so different and their expectations for retirement are so different. The pictures that were created to entice us to save for retirement - the silver-haired tanned man with the woman in her late 50s on the sailboat - that's just a picture, it's not real life for 98 per cent of us. It's the same thing with the numbers. What are they basing it on? Are they basing it on my current lifestyle that requires income of $1-million? Or am I currently living a lifestyle where I'm doing just fine, thank you very much, making significantly less than that? When I retire I'll probably need between 60 and 80 per cent of that income to continue to live in retirement. Let's deal with the reality of life as opposed to some arbitrary number.

How can people carve out money from tight budgets to save for retirement?

Even with as little as $1 a day, you can start yourself on the road to savings and then what will happen is you'll find more places to save money. Look at your spending. Drill right down to the pennies that you are spending and figure out where that money is going and if that is, in fact, where you want your money to go. If you want to spend all your money on coffee and shoes, by all means feel free. You just can't turn around and whine to me later that you have no money for retirement, because you made that choice.

Why we should trust her

Gail Vaz-Oxlade gets hugged by strangers in supermarkets and she doesn't mind one bit. Why? Because she hosts the popular television shows Til Debt Do Us Part and Princess and is happy to dole out the tough, no-nonsense money advice we all secretly need. What with writing money-management books and a personal finance blog, the TV host doesn't have a lot of spare time, but she does listen to about 100 audio books a year in her car. Her favourite? Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie.



This interview has been condensed and edited.



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