Ferguson Financial Planning of CI Assante Wealth Management Ltd.

Two people can want $10,000 a month in retirement and need very different portfolios to get there.

The difference usually comes down to income mix. CPP, OAS, and any workplace pension form a floor of guaranteed income, and the stronger that floor, the less your investments have to produce. A household without a pension may need a meaningfully larger portfolio for the exact same lifestyle.

The number that matters isn't your total spending target. It's the gap left after guaranteed income is subtracted.

Before comparing yourself to anyone else's “number,” ask: how much of my monthly target is already covered by CPP, OAS, or a pension, and what's genuinely left for my portfolio to fund?

Without a pension behind you, that gap is likely bigger than you think.

Low taxable income in early retirement doesn't always mean low long-term spending pressure.

A lifestyle can feel easy to fund when cash flow comes from accounts that don't create much taxable income: cash, TFSA withdrawals, non-registered principal. The real test comes later, when more of that same spending needs to be supported by CPP, OAS, and RRIF withdrawals that are fully taxable and no longer optional.

Early retirement spending is worth treating as a draft, not a permanent setting.

Before locking in a lifestyle, ask: if this spending continues after 71, what gross taxable income would the plan actually need to support it?

Check that before the pattern hardens, not after.

Retirement income surprises are usually stacking problems, not single-account problems.

A pension, CPP, OAS, RRIF withdrawals, and non-registered income can each feel manageable individually. They don't arrive on separate returns, though. They land together, on the same line, in the same year.

The useful shift is moving from planning year to year for cash flow, to modelling what total taxable income looks like once every source is active at once.

Before your next withdrawal decision, ask: if every income source I expect were turned on today, what would my total taxable income actually be?

If you haven't added them all together yet, that's the number to check before defaulting to the easiest option.

Your spending goal and your withdrawal target are not the same number.

A lot of retirement plans quietly under-deliver because the after-tax spending goal is clear, but the pre-tax amount needed to produce it gets ignored. $10,000 a month from a TFSA is $10,000 in your pocket. The same $10,000 from an RRIF is taxed on the way out, so the real withdrawal has to be higher.

Same lifestyle. Different gross requirement, depending entirely on which account funds it.

Before setting a withdrawal plan, ask: how much of my monthly spending is coming from a taxable account, and what does that mean for the actual amount I need to withdraw?

If your target is after-tax, check the source before you finalize the order.

A TFSA withdrawal is invisible to the OAS clawback calculation. An RRIF withdrawal is not.

That difference makes the TFSA one of the more underused tools in a retirement income plan, since a full RRSP tends to get all the attention while the TFSA gets treated as an afterthought. Because TFSA withdrawals aren't included in net income, they can fund spending without pushing you any closer to the $95,323 OAS threshold.

The account you draw from can matter as much as how much you draw.

Before 70, ask: is my TFSA room maximized, or has it been left behind while contributions kept going to the RRSP?

If it's the latter, that's worth fixing now, not later.

A market drop in your first year of retirement can matter more than the same drop happening ten years later.

That's the risk of sequencing. If you're forced to sell investments to fund spending during a downturn early on, that loss gets locked in and is harder to recover from than a later dip. A cash or short-term bond buffer covering 12 to 24 months of spending exists specifically to prevent that kind of forced sale.

It isn't about playing it safe. It's about protecting the sequence.

Before your first withdrawal, ask: if markets dropped 20% in year one, what would I actually be selling to cover spending, and is there a better source?

If you can't answer that with your actual numbers, that's worth building out before you retire, not after. The link in my bio is where that starts.

OAS clawback in 2026 starts at $95,323 of net income, and plenty of retirees reach it without anything that feels extravagant.

A pension, CPP, and RRIF minimums alone can do most of the work of getting there. Add a capital gain, some consulting income, or a slightly larger RRIF withdrawal, and the line gets crossed. Above it, OAS is reduced by 15 cents for every dollar over.

This isn't a lifestyle problem. It's an income-stacking problem, often built years before it shows up.

Before you assume OAS clawback doesn't apply to you, ask: how close is my pension, CPP, and RRIF income alone to $95,323, before anything extra is added?

If the answer surprises you, that's worth checking now, not after the clawback shows up.