Couch potato investing for the last 18 years - tracking my progress

if you build a good TFSA and say you retire at 50, you can pull out 15k a year tax free until 65(GIS + OAS / CPP / Pension will kick in then) ... At 65 you pretty much pulled out $225k tax free.. Your TFSA contributes to the other portion of your income...From tax savings point of view say your avg tax rate was 40% on the 225k in contribution your pretty much saving $90000 in taxes and what ever % it made you in your investments....Its good to have a goal / plan so you contribute according ...RRSP can work for most

g62kc wrote: ↑ You can't really compare that way though since not all of the 126K you have in rrsp were at 47.6% rate

I was going to say the same thing, it does depend on other sources of income. It would be pretty tough to have no income other than RRSP/RRIF decumulation. It does not represent 100% of my income. Also if the RRSP/RRIF decumulation is done at a rate higher than budget, it can put the tax squeeze on future decumulation. The excess cash will likely be invested and potentially earning taxable income. I will accept that using $126k threshold is a little too one sided. Let's cut it down the middle and say ~$350k is a good threshold.

Certainly a lot to mull over, thanks for the feedback.

Another thing that I have seen is RRIF throwing a wrench at the tax burden/drag. It creates a spike in income at 71 and can cause significant clawbacks on government benefits (happened to my in-laws). In a way I think it goes away as your RRSP portfolio drains over time but we just have to plan for the early 70 with a higher tax burden.