By Sheryl Smolkin

This week our favourite bloggers have been writing about getting ready for retirement.

On Boomer and Echo, Boomer asks Have You Made Your Retirement Plans? — not only saving enough money, but deciding where you plan to live and how you will fill your time.

However, for RetiredSyd, retirement is a already full-time job. She is thrilled to finally be learning to play the piano and improvising retirement as she goes along.

Canadian Finance blogger Tom Drake de-mystifies Locked in Retirement Accounts.

RetireHappy gives you the facts so you can decide whether an annuity is right for you.

And on Brighter Life retiree Dave Dineen realizes he and his wife have 27 bank, investment, credit, and insurance accounts, so it may be time to shut a few down.

Do you follow blogs with terrific ideas for saving money that haven’t been mentioned in our weekly “Best from the blogosphere?”  Send us an email with the information to so*********@sa*********.com and your name will be entered in a quarterly draw for a gift card.

By Sheryl Smolkin

Happy New Year to all! This week’s roundup includes blogs that recap the best of 2012, and encourage “financial fitness” that can save you money in 2013.

If you ran out of vacation days long before the end of last year, you will not be surprised by results of a Mercer survey I reported on in my moneyville blog Eye on Benefits that reveals Canadians alone in preferring time off to a raise.

On squawkfox.ca Kerry K. Taylor reprints her top blogs in 2012 including “This is going to be expensive… but who cares!” which announces the adoption of her infant daughter Chloe.

Retiree Dave Dineen writes about ways we can add meaning to our lives in New Years- A time for rediscovery on brighterlife.ca

For those of us who struggle with making and following a budget, Boomer and Echo blogger Robb Engen makes the case for Why budgeting is not a waste of time.

And finally, for those of you who have budgeted for upgraded tech gadgets even after your holiday spending spree, moneyville blogger Marc Saltzman says there are rumours that New Apple iPads set to debut in March?.