@calmmoneycoach: WITHDRAWAL ORDER Stop asking which account first. Ask how much from each, this year. Withdrawal sequencing is worth a quarter of a point, not two. Here's what is worth two. "Non-registered first, RRSP second, TFSA last" is a US rule. Reichenstein and Meyer, Financial Analysts Journal, 2015, built for a system with no GIS, no OAS recovery tax, and a Roth that doesn't behave like a TFSA. It got imported without the paperwork. The Canadian sources that actually modelled it don't endorse it. Doug Chandler's stochastic study for the FP Canada Research Foundation in 2022 found the value of accelerated RRIF withdrawals gets overstated when you use an average return and ignore variability, and his bracket-filling case came out slightly worse. Owen Winkelmolen at PlanEasy ran seven scenarios where non-registered-first cost about $100,000 in lifetime tax against about $56,500 for RRSP-first. Fred Vettese, who gets named as the source of the rule constantly, argues the opposite: draw from all your accounts each year in proportion to what you hold. Allan Norman found no significant estate difference across orders at all. And the "worth one to two percent a year" number. That comes from Morningstar's gamma research, and if you open the table, tax-efficient account location and withdrawal sourcing is 0.23 percent. The 1.59 percent is the whole bundle of five planning decisions, and the largest single piece of it is dynamic spending, at 0.70. Not tax. Also US research, built on 401(k)s and IRAs. No TFSA in it anywhere. Where the order does matter enormously: GIS. Every dollar of RRIF income cuts GIS by 50 cents, and across a band from roughly $2,000 to $10,000 of other income it's 75 cents, before any income tax. That is benefit reduction alone. C.D. Howe found effective rates often exceeding 75 percent and over 145 percent on the first $2,000 in Saskatchewan. Chandler modelled a four-year RRIF-to-TFSA drain for a GIS household and ruin probability fell from 54.1 percent to 37.7 percent. One correction most content gets wrong: drain it before the year you turn 64, not 65, because GIS is tested on the prior calendar year's income. Thirty small decisions beat one perfect rule. Educational only, not advice. Gamma is US data. Your province, your income, your accounts.

Brian | Calm Money Coach

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Friday 21 August 2026 22:19:07 GMT