About Canadian Retirement Tools

Why this site exists

I built it for myself first. I kept asking the same two questions — when can I actually retire, and which levers change the answer — and I kept ending up with eight browser tabs open, none of which talked to each other.

One site would give me my RRIF minimum. Another would tell me about the OAS clawback. A third did tax by province. None of them knew that the RRIF withdrawal was what pushed me into the clawback in the first place, or that it mattered enormously whether the money was in an RRSP or a TFSA, or that turning 65 changes what a couple can split. Every calculator answered its own question honestly and left me to assemble the actual decision myself. Most of them were also American, so they quietly ignored CPP and OAS — which in Canada is most of the answer.

So I put the pieces together: one profile, entered once, feeding a projection that runs your real accounts through real Canadian tax year by year — and levers you can pull to see what actually moves the outcome. Spending turns out to matter more than almost anything else. Which account your money sits in comes a close second. The return you assume matters far less than people expect.

It genuinely helped me plan. I hope it helps you too. This site is run by one person in Canada — not a company, a bank, or an advisory firm, and nothing is sold here.

Why one shared profile instead of twenty separate calculators

The decisions that actually matter aren’t isolated. How much to withdraw from a RRIF this year touches your income tax bracket, the OAS clawback threshold, and — for some retirees — GIS eligibility, all at the same time. A government page will tell you the RRIF minimum. Another will tell you the tax brackets. Another will tell you the OAS threshold. None of them show what happens when all three collide for your specific numbers. That’s why every calculator here reads from one shared retirement profile: change an assumption once, and you can see how it moves through RRIF minimums, income tax, the OAS clawback, and GIS together, instead of doing that math by hand across four different sources.

We also cover a question most Canadian retirement sites skip entirely: what happens to a 401(k), Traditional IRA, or Roth IRA when you retire in Canada. The Canada–U.S. tax treaty rules are real, specific, and often misunderstood, so alongside the standard Canadian calculators there are dedicated tools for Americans retiring in Canada.

This is an independent site, not a bank, insurer, or advisory firm. It doesn’t sell financial products, and it isn’t affiliated with the Canada Revenue Agency, Service Canada, or any government department. It’s built and maintained the way a lot of useful calculators start: by someone who wanted a clear, no-login answer to their own retirement questions and figured other Canadians could use the same thing.

How we verify every number

Every table on this site — RRIF factors, tax brackets, OAS and GIS thresholds, TFSA and RRSP limits — is checked by hand against a named government source (CRA, Service Canada, or a provincial finance ministry) before it’s published, and each one carries a “last verified” date. Nothing is scraped or auto-generated. Currently 21 government sources back the figures on this site; you can check every one of them, and the date it was last checked, on the data sources page.

When a number isn’t yet verified for a given tax year or jurisdiction — a province’s brackets, for instance — the tool says “coming soon” instead of estimating. We would rather show nothing than show a guess dressed up as a fact.

What we believe

• Enter once. One shared profile feeds every calculator.
• Your data is yours. No accounts; everything stays in your browser.
• Verified or absent. Every table cites a government source with a verified date — and when we haven’t verified a number, the tool says “coming soon” instead of guessing.
• Estimates, not advice. These tools help you ask better questions of CRA, Service Canada, and your own advisors.

Spot an error?

These are simplified models of genuinely complicated rules, and simplifications are documented on each calculator page rather than hidden. If a figure looks wrong, the first place to check is the data sources page — it links directly to the government page each number came from, so you can compare it yourself. The data tables are re-verified on a regular schedule rather than left static — government figures move on their own timetables, with OAS and GIS revised quarterly and CPP and the tax brackets each January.

Start with your retirement profile, then explore the calculators.