Retirement Calculator
Our free retirement calculator will help you understand how much you'll need to save for retirement. Get started by telling us about your current financial picture.
I'm
years old.
I make
per year.
I have
in savings.
of my savings are in registered accounts like a TFSA or RRSP.
Save smarter for retirement with Wealthsimple.
More details
Adding these extra details will help make your results more accurate.
Province of residence
If you don’t enter your province, we’ll base our calculations on average tax rates across Canada.
Expected annual retirement income
Things like rental, property, and business income or inheritance. We already take your maximum OAS and average CPP into account. If your partner also receives these benefits, add their estimated annual benefit here.
Marital status
My partner's annual income
My partner's total savings
Our assumptions
We’ve made some assumptions about your situation and market performance, but you can adjust them to see how they’ll affect your results.
Investment return
What do you expect your investments to return between now and retirement?
Life Expectancy
A life expectancy of 95 years is a common financially-conservative estimate for Canadians.
How does our retirement savings calculator work?
Our retirement savings calculator will give you an estimate of how much you need to retire and how much you have saved already. The calculator takes into account your registered and non-registered savings, annual returns, investment fees, income tax, and inflation to compute these estimates. Here are some market assumptions baked into our calculations.
- Inflation rate of 2%.
- Yearly salary increase of 2% per year up to the age of 45 and none thereafter.
- Annual management fees of 0.60%.
- Rate of return in retirement net of fees 2.77%.
- Ongoing monthly contributions will max out registered accounts first. Excess contributions will be treated as taxable investments.
What questions does the retirement calculator help answer?
Our retirement savings calculator can help you answer all the questions that make your head spin, like:
- How much do I need to retire in Canada?
- How much should I have saved for retirement?
- How much will I have when I retire?
- Am I saving enough for retirement?
- How much can I spend in retirement?
How to get retirement ready
Open a retirement account. If you have access to a GRSP, you should at the very least contribute the amount of money your employer is willing to match. You should also open a RRSP if you don't already have one. A RRSP is one of the most popular ways to save for retirement in Canada and it comes with nice tax benefits. Learn more about RRSPs and GRSPs.
Avoid paying high fees. Fees are like savings termites — they'll chew right through your savings. When you invest with Wealthsimple, we charge a 0.5% management fees when you invest up to $100,000 and 0.4% when you deposit more than $100,000. That's significantly less than the 2% fees paid by traditional mutual fund investors in Canada.
Make smart moves. Begin saving for retirement as early as you can and take advantage of the power of compounding. Create a budget that includes retirement savings, learn how investing works, discover smart retirement strategies and understand what it takes to retire early.
A word of warning
Our retirement savings calculator is not financial advice; it is for illustrative purposes only and the results are estimates. The calculator may be a useful tool in helping you estimate how much you need for retirement, but you should understand that it has limitations. For example, the calculator does not anticipate or take into account future changes to government retirement programs or tax rates. Also, rates of return on investments may vary.
FAQ
There's no set retirement age, but 65 is the retirement age in Canada that you'll often hear. That's because when you turn 65 you can take advantage of the full benefits that come with the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Old Age Security (OAS).
How much you need in retirement will depend on how your income and expenses change when you retire. As a general rule, you'll want to aim for at least 70-80% of your pre-retirement income for each year of your retirement. In retirement you may spend less money on savings, housing, tax, and transportation to work, but more on hobbies, utilities, and healthcare. Ask yourself — when I retire will I need same amount of money I'm earning now or less? You could use a tool to figure out your ideal replacement ratio.
There’s no sure way to determine how long retirement savings will last. That said, you can use our retirement calculator to determine how much you'll have if you spread your retirement savings out from the year you retire until you turn 95 years of age.
Yes, our retirement calculator can be used by couples or individuals. To create a combined retirement plan for you and your partner, enter their income and savings into the extra fields below the calculator, and be sure to check the 'I have a partner' box.
We charge a fraction of the fees that traditional mutual fund investors pay. Our management fee is 0.5% (it drops to 0.4% when you invest more than $100,000), plus underlying fund fees of about 0.1%. The average mutual fund investor pays 2% in fees.
Our smart technology helps keep your portfolio on track with auto-deposits, automatic rebalancing, and dividend reinvesting. And, we have a team of experienced financial advisors available to answer your questions and provide advice - whenever you need it.
Note: the total savings above, calculates the what you'd save if you were investing with Wealthsimple Invest compared to a traditional mutual fund investor. We compare the growth of your current savings between now and your retirement based on the rate of return selected. All figures are for illustrative purposes only, actual results will vary and fees among other factors are subject to change.
The amount of CPP you receive in retirement depends on how long you've contributed and how much money you've contributed. We've included the average CPP payment for 2018 as the default value in the calculator. To make it more accurate you can calculate your exact CPP payment and add it to the retirement calculator.
Eligibility for Old Age Security depends on how much income you earn. The default value in the calculator is the 2019 maximum monthly payment regardless of your marital status. You can check the latest Old Age Security payment amounts to find out exactly how much money you'll receive - and add it to the calculator for more accuracy.
There's no way of predicting your future salary however you could expect that it will track the inflation at a rate. Research shows that generally salaries peak when people are middle-aged. We've capped our assumed salary increase at 45 years to reflect this.
For starters, people are living longer. Even though the average life expectancy in Canada is 82 years, many people live past this. It's better to have more money tucked away for retirement than to run out of savings. Extra savings can always be passed down to your beneficiaries. You can change the default life expectancy if you think you'll live a longer or shorter life.
Our retirement calculator takes into account the average Canadian retirement income from the Old Age Security (OAS) and Canada Pension Plan (CPP) for 2018. You'll need to input how much you extra you expect to get in the retirement income field, otherwise, we'll assume average numbers.
Our retirement savings calculator is not intended to be used outside of Canada. It only takes into account Canadian tax rates and retirement accounts.
Yes, you can use the calculator to help determine your shortfall in retirement savings based on how much you plan to withdraw each year of your retirement.
No, the calculator won't tell you how much your pension will be. The calculator assumes you'll get the average OAS payment. If you think you'll gain an above average OAS payment you should add the excess in the “expected annual retirement income” field above.
Yes, we've designed the calculator so it can be used if you want to retire early or late. Just input the retirement age you plan to trade in the work grind for a life of leisure.