It’s imperative that retirees embrace an optimized retirement cash flow plan. Over decades, these plans can often “find” tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars of income. And out of the gate, a retirement cash flow plan addresses a retiree’s number one concern – the fear of running out of money. The cash flow plan makes the best effort to ensure that does not happen. The plans optimize taxes, demonstrates how to take full advantage of CPP and OAS, and then how to use your RRSP/RRIF/LIFs, TFSA, Taxable accounts, employer pensions, real estate and other income. You’ll discover when to draw from these accounts, and then how much. You can learn how to protect a spouse/heirs and how to be “estate efficient”. You don’t want your executor to write a massive cheque to the CRA. Retirement funding is a bit of a dance, the cash flow calculator is the choreographer.
At Retirement Club for Canadians we created a how to use MayRetire 101 video.
You can also look to the written-form MayRetire Tutorial. It is very thorough and very good.
Use the Contact Dale button if you want to join us for a MayRetire 2.0 Zoom Call session.
Can you self direct your retirement?
That’s a personal call. My take is that you can certainly self direct your retirement from A to Z. That said, many with more complicated scenarios will also call on qualified professionals for tax planning and estate planning. You can also call on an advice-only planner who is a retirement specialist. Many Retirement Clubbers self direct, but also get an opinion and input from a retirement planner.
With enough research and the ability to use tools such as the MayRetire calculator you might be able to go it alone. Retirement Clubbers report back that after they consulted with an advice-only planner, the process merely confirmed they were ‘doing it right’. In a few cases they discovered their own plan was superior.
It’s also very encouraging to see that when Clubbers present their plan (or we do a plan with them for a Retirement Club Zoom presentation), they usually have much more than they can ever spend. It often becomes an exercise in how to gift money in the most generous but responsible way. They want to gift, but not gift themselves short.
Retirement Income Pillars
You’re retirement will likely be built upon the three retirement income pillars.
In the intro MayRetire video we ran a simple plan using Government benefits (CPP and OAS) and Personal Savings. Personal Savings will include your investment accounts, from RRSPs to Taxable accounts. To keep things simple we only employed RRSPs/RRIFs and the TFSA in that video. In the next video we will add taxable accounts and a defined benefit pension.
Here’s Rhys from Well Built Wealth with the latest on CPP, OAS and GIS.
We will also model a U-shaped spending plan. We might spend more in the early go-go years, less in the slow-go years and see an increase in the no-go years when healthcare and residence costs can surge. Every retirement is different of course; you might use a U-shaped, flat or ladder down spending plan.
We will also look at how to optimize your cash flow plan by dialing in your optimal tax rate. Pushing and pulling on the tax lever will help you adust (with precision) any RRSP/RRIF meltdown strategy.
We will also touch on how your assets are treated with respect to taxes, when gifted with a warm hand, and how they are treated in the final estate. For example …
Other must reads:
This may be my favourite retirement article on Cut The Crap Investing. It is so encouraging to know that we can do most of the heavy lifting with just a few key moves.
The simple strategies that set you up for retirement success.
Most investors are curious as to how much they might be able to spend in retirement. Here is a post that demonstrates a few cash flow plans and spending levels.
Can you retire with one million dollars in Canada?
A retirement plan is a living strategy
A retirement plan isn’t a “set it and forget it” document; it’s a living strategy. Flexible and evolving. Initially built to enable your life plan. What do you want your retirement to look like? How much will that lifestyle cost? We start there.
Your retirement plan evolves based on:
- 👉 What happens in your life
- 👉 How your investments perform
Think of that initial conservative spend rate as your margin of safety.
Retirement funding is a marathon. We don’t want to sprint out of the starting gate, you (your investments) might not make it to the end. So we begin at a reasonable pace.
Join us for the MayRetire 2.0 Zoom Call
Dale will take you through those next steps in learning how to create an optimized retirement cash flow plan. Use the Contact Dale button at the top right of this page. If you have already notified us that you’d like to join these sessions, there is no need to reply. You are on the list.
Use Contact Dale if you’d like to sign up for Retirement Club. We’ll accept 10 new members who will be in catch-up mode. We’ll catch up on the 4 educational sessions that we’ve offered so far in 2026, and you’ll continue with the group for the remainder of 2026 and beyond. Subscriptions are one calendar year. There is a small fee.
More Sunday Reads
At Findependence Hub Jonathan Chevreau looks at some FIRE bloggers who are looking to retire in their 40’s and 50’s. That post will link to Jon’s Retired Money column at MoneySense.
One of those bloggers is Bob Lai who run the Tawcan site. You can catch up with Bob’s portfolio and progress here.
The Canadian banks reported earnings this past week. Dan at Stocktrades takes a look …
The bank index was down 2.3% for the week. The market was not impressed enough with the earnings, or the outlook. Or perhaps it is because Canada has entered a recession?
We can swoop in to get a look at Dividend Hawk’s portfolio news for the week. That will include a look at a few of the Canadian banks – he’s holdin’.
At Retirement Manifesto – Just make the coffee. We’re talking about charitable actions here, not saving a few bucks by avoiding Starbucks.
Million Dollar Journey looks at the best bank accounts for seniors. You might also look at traditional free banking at Tangerine, EQ Bank and Simplii.
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ETF Portfolios / Stock Portfolios / Retirement Strategies / Wealth Creation/ Retirement Club
Thanks Partners
Earn a break on fees by way of many of these two partnership links.
Here’s Canada’s top-performing Robo Advisor, Justwealth. You can get advice, planning and low-fee ETF portfolios all at one shop. Canadians can have it all. That’s a wonderful shop for retirees who want planning and low-fee portfolios.
Consider Justwealth for RESP accounts. That is THE option in Canada with target date funds that adjust the risk level as the student approaches the College or University start date.
Our savings and GICs
Make your cash work a lot harder at EQ Bank. RRSP and TFSA account rates are at 1.50%, other savings rates up to 2.75%. You’ll find some higher rates on GICs up to 4.00%. They also offer U.S. dollar accounts at 2.75%. We use EQ Bank, they have been awesome.
Join Retirement Club 2026
Do retirement right. … a series of monthly Zoom Presentations, newsletters, plus a secure and private online space where we learn, share ideas and connect with members. Here’s the Retirement Club overview page.
Hit Contact Dale at top right of this page for details or to sign up.
We’ll take you through the three pillars of Retirement Club.
Make sure you’re doing retirement right. It’s also suitable for those who are approaching retirement, we need to prepare in advance and understand what we’re ‘getting into’.
You can also sign up for the MayRetire retirement calculator Zoom Sessions.
While I do not accept monies for feature blog posts please click here on the mission and ‘how I might get paid’ disclosures. Affiliate partnerships help me (try to) pay the bills for this site. But they don’t, ha. That will allow me to keep this site free of ads and easy to read.
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