This projection is an estimate for educational purposes only and is not financial, tax, or investment advice.
No account or credit card required.
How this calculator works
We simulate your household one year at a time, from your age today to the end of the projection. Each year runs the same calculation: what comes in, what goes out, what goes to tax, and what stays invested for the year after.
The rules we model are what decide how much of your money you keep:
Your government pension: the Quebec Pension Plan (QPP) if you’re in Quebec, the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) if you’re in Ontario. Estimated from your employment income and paid from the year you retire, and that timing is permanent. Retire at 60 and the pension is roughly a third smaller for life; wait past 65 and it grows about 8% for every year you delay.
Old Age Security (OAS), including the recovery tax that claws it back once your income passes the federal threshold.
The Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), calculated on household income and reduced as that income rises.
RRSPs and TFSAs, each with its own tax treatment: deductible contributions and taxable withdrawals on one side, tax-free growth and withdrawals on the other.
The RRSP-to-RRIF conversion and the minimum withdrawals that follow it, whether or not you need the money that year.
Quebec or Ontario provincial tax tables and the federal ones, bracket by bracket, plus pension income splitting between spouses where it applies.
These rules feed each other. A forced RRIF withdrawal you did not need can lift your income enough to claw back part of your OAS, so a year where you spent nothing extra still ends up costing you more.
Every amount is in today’s dollars. A figure for age 70 is what it would buy this week. Without that you would have to guess whether a projected number is 2026 money or 2051 money, and at 2% a year those differ by more than a third.
What we assume
A projection is only worth its assumptions, so here are the ones that move the answer most. These are the values the projection actually runs on.
- Display basisDisplay convention
- Today’s dollars
- Every amount shown is restated in current purchasing power.
- Investment return
- 6% a year
- The average annual return on your savings, before inflation. Applied to every account, in every year.
- Inflation
- 2% a year
- The Bank of Canada’s target. It raises your future costs and is what every figure on this page is discounted back by.
- Life expectancy
- Age 90
- How long the projection runs. Longer than the average on purpose, because planning to the average leaves half of people short.
- Expenses in retirement
- 75% of today’s expenses
- The assumption that moves the answer most. The mortgage is often paid off, work costs disappear and the children have moved out. What is left is the cost of your day-to-day life.
- Savings split
- 60% RRSP · 30% TFSA · 10% non-registered
- You enter one total savings figure. We split it across these three account types, because the tax on a withdrawal is not the same in each.
- Government pension
- Pro-rated from your employment income
- The maximum at 65 is $1,441 a month on QPP and $1,508 on CPP; yours is scaled by your income against the year’s maximum pensionable earnings of $74,600. It starts the year you retire, never before 60. Each month before 65 reduces it by 0.5% on QPP or 0.6% on CPP, and each month after 65 adds 0.7%. Both are permanent. QPP applies in Quebec, CPP in Ontario.
- Old Age Security
- Full benefit, before the recovery tax
- It starts at 65, or the year you retire if that is later, which raises it. We assume enough Canadian residency to qualify in full.
- TFSA contribution room
- Up to $109,000, less what you have saved
- $109,000 is the room accrued by someone 18 or older every year since 2009; the most recent year adds $7,000. We subtract the share of your savings we assume is already in a TFSA, so the room we use is what is left.
- RRSP contribution room
- 18% of income, from age 22
- The CRA rule is 18% of earned income, capped at $33,810 a year. We assume that earned income starts at age 22.
- Partner’s income
- 50% of household income
- Before you create an account we ask for one household income and attribute it evenly between the two partners. That changes the tax, because each person is taxed separately.
These assumptions exist so the estimate is useful without asking you for twenty minutes of data entry. Every one of them becomes editable once you create a plan: your real balances, your real employer pension, your real asset mix.
Where this assessment stops
A handful of answers is not a plan. Here is exactly where this assessment stops, so you know how much weight to put on the number it shows you.
It knows only what you tell it
Your age, when you want to retire, your province, what you earn, what you spend, and what you have already saved. It knows nothing about your employer pension, your mortgage, your rental property, your business, when your children will move out, or the estate you intend to leave.
It optimizes nothing
It projects one path; it does not search for the best one. Withdrawal order across RRSP, TFSA and non-registered accounts, drawing an RRSP down early through low-income years, deferring QPP or OAS past 65: those decisions are often worth tens of thousands of dollars, and none of them is optimized here.
It calculates on 2026 rules
Tax tables, contribution limits and public-program rates are the ones published for 2026, then indexed forward. The rules will change, and a projection made today will need to be run again.
It covers Quebec and Ontario
Those are the two provincial tax systems modelled today. Federal rules apply everywhere, but provincial tax, credits and thresholds differ from one province to the next, so each one is modelled properly before it is offered. More are on the way.
None of this is a flaw: it is the exact distance between a two-minute estimate and a retirement plan. Read your result as a first measurement, accurate enough to tell whether you are on track, not fine enough to set your retirement date by.
Questions this assessment answers
Here is precisely what you will know two minutes from now.
Will my savings last?
You see the age your money runs to, with tax and government pensions taken into account. If the savings run out before the end of the projection, you see at what age.
How much will I have saved on the day I retire?
The projected value of your savings at the moment you stop working, before you start drawing on it, in today’s dollars.
Where will my retirement income come from?
The chart breaks each retirement year down across QPP or CPP, OAS, GIS where it applies, and what you draw from your savings. You see how much of the load the public plans actually carry.
Can I keep my current lifestyle?
Your net income each year is compared against your projected expenses, so you see whether the gap runs in your favour.
What happens if I retire two years earlier?
Change the retirement age and run it again: the whole projection recomputes in seconds. It is the fastest way to see what moving your retirement date costs, or earns.
What is left at the end?
The projected net worth at the end of the projection. Useful if leaving something behind is one of your goals.
Frequently asked questions
Is the calculator really free?
Yes. The full projection appears with no account, no credit card and no email address. You create an account only if you want to keep your results and refine them.
Do I need an account to see my result?
No. The result appears as soon as the form is filled in. An account is what saves the projection, replaces the assumptions with your real figures and lets you compare scenarios.
How much do I need to retire in Canada?
There is no universal number. It depends on your expenses, your retirement age, your government pensions and the tax you will pay on withdrawals. That is exactly the calculation this page runs, on your own figures and on Quebec or Ontario rules rather than a rule of thumb.
How much will I get from the government pension?
Your benefit is estimated from your employment income relative to the year’s maximum pensionable earnings, then paid from the year you retire. Retiring at 60, the earliest either plan allows, leaves it roughly a third smaller for life; every year you wait past 65 adds about 8%. It is an estimate: your Retraite Québec statement gives the amount based on your actual contributions.
When is OAS paid in the projection?
OAS starts at 65, or the year you retire if that is later. Waiting past 65 raises it by about 7% a year, and the projection reflects that. The recovery tax applies if your income passes the federal threshold.
Can it tell me whether I can retire at 60?
Yes. Enter 60 as your retirement age and run the projection. You will see immediately how long the savings hold, and what the years cost while your savings and a reduced QPP or CPP carry the expenses, before OAS starts at 65.
RRSP or TFSA: which should come first?
This assessment does not decide: it splits your savings between them in fixed proportions. The answer turns on the gap between your tax rate today and your tax rate in retirement, and that trade-off is what the full plan calculates.
Will I pay tax in retirement?
Almost certainly. RRSP and RRIF withdrawals and government pensions are taxable; TFSA withdrawals are not. The projection calculates provincial and federal tax every year instead of applying one average rate.
Do the amounts account for inflation?
Yes. Your future expenses rise with inflation inside the simulation, and every result is then converted back into today’s dollars, so nothing on screen is a future-dollar amount.
Does it work for a couple?
Yes. Add your partner and their age: the projection models two people, two government pensions and two tax returns, with pension income splitting where it applies.
Does the calculator work for Ontario?
Yes. Quebec and Ontario are the two tax systems modelled. In Ontario the government pension is CPP rather than QPP, and the provincial brackets are Ontario’s.
How accurate is the result?
It depends on the distance between your real figures and our assumptions, all published above. This assessment carries a fixed baseline accuracy score, because it asks the same few questions of everyone; the score becomes a real measurement once you create a plan and replace each assumption with a real number.
What happens to my data?
Your answers are used to compute your projection and are kept only if you create an account to save it. Nothing is sold or used for advertising.