The six orders it compares
With three accounts, the RRSP, the TFSA and a non-registered account, there are six ways to order them. The calculator ranks them from the best result to the worst.
Each year, it withdraws what your spending needs, after tax, and takes it from your accounts in the order shown. The three accounts are like three different woodpiles, and drawing from each one costs something different: we explain why in withdrawing in retirement.
Putting the RRSP last does not mean leaving it untouched. By the end of the year you turn 71, the RRSP has to become a RRIF, be used to buy an annuity or be withdrawn. From the year after it becomes a RRIF, the law requires a minimum withdrawal every year, and the calculator takes it in all six orders. The order decides where what you need above that minimum comes from.
An example: Ginette and Réal
Ginette is 65 and Réal is 63. They live in Quebec and spend $80,000 a year after tax. Ginette has $500,000 in an RRSP, $90,000 in a TFSA and $50,000 in a non-registered account, plus a $30,000 employer pension and $14,000 of QPP at 65. Réal has $80,000 in an RRSP, $60,000 in a TFSA and $7,000 of QPP.
These results come from this calculator, on 2026 tax tables and at a 3% real return. The order that leaves them the most at the end withdraws from the RRSP first, then the TFSA, and keeps the non-registered account for last: $625,190 after tax. The two orders that start with the TFSA leave them the least: $538,320.
With the best order, they have $86,870 more left at the end than with the worst. They also pay less tax: $409,159 over their whole retirement, against $484,244 for the orders that start with the TFSA, which is $75,085 less.
Spending the TFSA first burns the one pile that is entirely yours and leaves the RRSP pile growing, the one you share with the taxman. The RRIF minimum makes you burn it anyway, larger and later, and whatever is left at the end is taxed on the final return.
Where the gap is
Now take a single 65-year-old in Quebec. They have $400,000 in an RRSP, $80,000 in a TFSA, $100,000 in a non-registered account, a $20,000 employer pension and $12,000 of QPP, and spend $55,000 a year.
The four orders that do not start with the TFSA end up close together. The best of them withdraws from the non-registered account first, then the RRSP, and keeps the TFSA for last: it leaves $248,470. The lowest of the four leaves $240,132, only $8,338 less. The two orders that start with the TFSA leave $22,776 and $32,979 less than the best. For this household, the costly mistake is not choosing wrong between the RRSP and the non-registered account: it is touching the TFSA first.
And the order that pays the least tax is not the one that leaves the most. Look at the order that withdraws from the RRSP first, then the non-registered account, and keeps the TFSA for last. It pays $317,076 in tax, less than the best order's $337,077, but leaves $244,544. Burning the RRSP pile early pays the taxman sooner, and what goes to tax no longer earns a return.
What this calculator does not decide
A fixed order is a rule. It keeps withdrawing from the same account while there is a balance. It does not ask whether your income is low this year and an RRSP withdrawal should come early, or whether OAS starts next year and brings you closer to its recovery tax threshold.
A plan can switch accounts from one year to the next: withdraw more from the RRSP in the low-tax years before QPP (or CPP) and OAS start, and less once that income arrives. At AuraPlan, the plan decides that year by year, for your whole household. We explain it in your retirement drawdown plan, year by year.
To see what the RRIF minimum costs you each year, there is the RRIF calculator.
The order tells you which pile you draw from. The plan tells you how much, and when.