Retirement Calculator

How this is worked out

The pot is accumulated month by month rather than year by year, because contributions are monthly for most people and annual compounding of a monthly contribution overstates the answer by roughly half a year of growth.

Each contribution goes in at the start of the month and earns that month's return — an annuity-due, which is how a payroll deduction behaves. The monthly rate is the twelfth root of the annual one:

monthly rate = (1 + annual return − fees)^1/12 − 1

Then the step most projections leave out. A balance in 2056 is not money in units you can price groceries in, so it is divided back:

today's dollars = balance ÷ (1 + inflation)^years

At 2.5% over 30 years that divisor is about 2.1, which is why the page leads with $506,036 and puts $1,061,445 on the second line.

One thing the arithmetic deliberately does not do is mix tax treatments. An RRSP dollar and a TFSA dollar are worth different amounts in retirement — the RRSP dollar is taxable on withdrawal, the TFSA dollar is not — so a combined pot is a pre-tax figure for the RRSP portion and a post-tax figure for the TFSA portion. Treating them as interchangeable overstates what an RRSP-heavy pot is worth, and no calculator can correct for it without knowing your bracket at 70.

The income the pot supports is solved rather than assumed: bisection finds the first-year withdrawal that survives the years you entered while rising with inflation, and the resulting percentage is reported so you can compare it to whatever rule of thumb you had in mind.

A worked example

RRSP or TFSA depends on your bracket at 70, not your bracket now

An RRSP deduction is worth your marginal rate today; the withdrawal is taxed at your marginal rate later. A TFSA contribution is made from taxed income and comes out untaxed. If the two rates were identical the after-tax results would be identical too — the arithmetic commutes, and the popular framing of "tax-free growth versus taxed growth" misdescribes both accounts.

The decision therefore turns on a comparison people find counter-intuitive: your rate now against your rate in retirement, not your income now against your income in retirement. Someone earning $55,000 who expects a similar retirement income is close to indifferent on tax grounds. Someone at $130,000 deducting at a high combined rate and drawing later at a much lower one has the case for the RRSP.

Where the TFSA wins decisively is on the benefit clawbacks, which are the part almost nobody models. RRSP and RRIF withdrawals are income: they count toward the Old Age Security recovery tax, toward the Guaranteed Income Supplement test, and toward age-credit and provincial benefit thresholds. TFSA withdrawals count toward none of them. For a modest-income retiree the effective marginal rate on an RRSP withdrawal, once clawbacks are included, can exceed the rate the deduction was ever worth. This calculator projects a combined pot and does not model any of those thresholds.

The 18% rule makes the headline dollar limit irrelevant for most people

The 2026 RRSP dollar limit is $33,810, and it is the number every news story leads with. It is a ceiling rather than an allowance. Your actual deduction limit is the lesser of 18% of last year's earned income and that dollar figure, reduced by any pension adjustment, plus every dollar of unused room carried forward.

Eighteen per cent of earned income only reaches $33,810 at about $188,000 of income. Below that — which is most earners — the dollar limit never binds and quoting it is misleading. Someone earning $70,000 has roughly $12,600 of new room, not $33,810, and the pension adjustment from a workplace plan reduces even that.

Room that goes unused does not expire. It accumulates indefinitely, which is why a person who has never contributed can have room running to six figures, and why the RRSP tolerates an irregular contribution pattern that other systems do not. The figure that counts is on your notice of assessment and in My Account; over-contributing beyond a $2,000 lifetime buffer attracts a penalty of 1% a month on the excess until it is withdrawn. The TFSA is a separate account with its own room — $7,000 for 2026, and $109,000 cumulatively for someone eligible since 2009 who has never contributed.

The FHSA does both things at once

The First Home Savings Account is the only registered account that is deductible going in and tax-free coming out, provided the money is used for a qualifying first home. The limit is $8,000 a year up to a lifetime $40,000, with a maximum of $8,000 of unused room carried into any single year — so the most that can go in during one calendar year is $16,000.

Room only starts accruing once the account is opened, which is the detail worth acting on early: opening one with a nominal deposit begins the clock even if nothing meaningful goes in for a year or two. The account has a fifteen-year life, and closes by the end of the year you turn 71 in any case.

If the home never happens, the balance can be transferred to an RRSP or RRIF without using RRSP room and without triggering tax — so the downside case is that it becomes ordinary retirement saving. That is why it appears on a retirement page at all. It is worth distinguishing from the Home Buyers' Plan, which is a loan from your own RRSP that must be repaid over fifteen years, with any missed repayment added to your income.

The year you turn 71 is a deadline, not a milestone

An RRSP must be wound up by 31 December of the year you turn 71 — converted to a RRIF, used to buy an annuity, or taken in cash. Taking it in cash makes the entire balance income in one year, which for most balances means the top bracket, so the practical choice is between a RRIF and an annuity.

A RRIF then imposes a minimum withdrawal every year, as a percentage of the 1 January balance, rising with age. There is no maximum. The minimum is the constraint people are unprepared for: it is a floor on taxable income for the rest of your life, whether or not you need the money that year, and it interacts with the Old Age Security recovery tax at exactly the point in life when it is hardest to do anything about.

Two mechanics are worth knowing in advance. The conversion can be made earlier than 71, which is what people mean by "melting down" an RRSP — drawing it deliberately in low-income years between retiring and starting benefits, at a lower rate than the RRIF minimum would later force. And basing the minimum on a younger spouse’s age reduces it, an election that must be made when the RRIF is set up and cannot be changed afterwards.

Assumptions and sources

RRSP limits

CRA "MP, DB, RRSP, DPSP, TFSA limits and the YMPE" — 2026 dollar limit $33,810, with the real limit the lesser of that and 18% of prior-year earned income. checked 2026-08-24

TFSA limits

CRA "Calculate your TFSA contribution room" — $7,000 for 2026; $109,000 cumulative for someone eligible since 2009, summed from CRA's year-by-year table. checked 2026-08-24

FHSA limits

CRA "Participating in your FHSAs" — $8,000 a year, $40,000 lifetime, at most $8,000 carried into one year. checked 2026-08-24

The arithmetic

Monthly annuity-due accumulation, inflation-adjusted, sustainable withdrawal solved by bisection. RRSP and TFSA dollars are projected together and are not tax-equivalent — the RRSP portion is a pre-tax figure. RRIF conversion deadline is the end of the year you turn 71.