@calmmoneycoach: THE MAP. WHO OWNS WHAT Why "the TFSA is better" is the most common mistake in Canadian retirement Start here. This one plays first in the series for a reason. The trap in the video is worth restating slowly, because it's the single most common error in Canadian personal finance commentary and it gets repeated by people who should know better. $10,000 out of a RRIF at a 30 percent rate leaves $7,000. $10,000 out of a TFSA leaves $10,000. It looks like the TFSA wins by three grand. It doesn't, and the same arithmetic proves it. At a 30 percent rate, $10,000 of income buys you $10,000 inside an RRSP or $7,000 inside a TFSA, because the TFSA contribution is made with money you already paid tax on. Grow both at any rate for any number of years and they land in exactly the same place. Poschmann and Kesselman worked this out in a C.D. Howe paper in 2001, five years before the TFSA existed. What actually decides it is whether your rate coming out is higher or lower than the rate that applied going in. That's the whole reason the rest of the series exists. Three things I couldn't fit. The LIRA. It's taxed like the RRIF but it runs on pension law, not tax law, and it runs on the law of wherever the original pension was registered, not where you live now. Saskatchewan hasn't allowed a new LIF since 2002 and uses a prescribed RRIF instead, with no withdrawal ceiling. Newfoundland still allows an LRIF. There's a federal RLIF. Manitoba has a PRIF. Quebec dropped its LIF maximum for holders 55 and over on 1 January 2025. Unlocking differs everywhere too, and Alberta's is age 50, not 55. No withholding on the RRIF minimum. Regulation 103(6)(d.1) carves it out and CRA tells payers not to withhold on it. So the money lands whole and the tax bill arrives in April. It surprises somebody every single year. And the TFSA-last rule. It's not a rule. If you're going to land in the GIS band, GIS takes 50 cents of every dollar of RRIF income from the first dollar and up to 75 cents through the top-up band, which is five times the OAS clawback rate. For that person, emptying the RRSP early and leaning on the TFSA later is often the stronger move. Richard Shillington called the people who get this backwards futile savers, in the 2003 C.D. Howe paper that proposed what became the TFSA. He found they keep at most 29 percent of what they saved. The 30 percent rate in the video is illustrative and it's labelled that way on screen. At $60,000 of taxable income in 2026 the real combined marginal rate is about 29.65 in Ontario, 28.20 in BC, 28.50 in Alberta, 35.45 in Nova Scotia and 36.12 in Quebec. Your province, your income, your accounts.

Brian | Calm Money Coach

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Tuesday 08 September 2026 17:37:35 GMT