Where to invest: TFSA, RRSP or Non-Reg?

Uses 2026 federal, New Brunswick, Ontario, and British Columbia personal tax rules. All brackets, rates, credits, surtax thresholds, premium thresholds, and reduction thresholds are held constant in today's dollars, equivalent to indexing the modeled tax system fully with inflation. The engine includes the income-tested federal basic personal amount, provincial basic personal amounts, Ontario surtax, Ontario health premium, and Ontario/BC low-income tax reductions. Other credits and provinces are excluded.

Enter your full taxable income for the current tax year, before subtracting any RRSP deduction. A deduct-now claim is applied to that income at this year's marginal rate, and its refund is modeled as arriving the following year. A first-60-days contribution deducted against last year's income is not modeled separately — if that is your case, enter last year's income instead.

The optimizer chooses how much to place in TFSA, RRSP with an immediate deduction, RRSP with the deduction carried forward, and non-registered. The full entered lump sum is invested now. Only RRSP deduction claims can be delayed, potentially across multiple future ages. A deduction carried to a future year is assumed to stack below that year's fresh RRSP room (18% of the prior year's income, capped), since new contributions are assumed to claim that year's top rate first — so deferring helps only when a genuine higher band remains. Pension adjustments are ignored. Refunds arrive the year after deductions are claimed and are invested in available TFSA room, then non-registered. Amounts above available room spill into non-registered investments. Existing room is fixed nominal dollars, so unused room loses real value to inflation. Room is static and does not accrue annually in this version.

Non-registered distributions use an interest-income proxy; eligible dividend gross-up and credits are excluded. Reinvested after-tax distributions increase ACB. Capital losses receive no offset benefit. The RRSP withdrawal rate is a flat haircut on the whole RRSP balance. The entered capital-gains tax rate is the effective tax on the full unrealized non-registered gain after the inclusion rate. OAS clawback is not modeled; raise the RRSP withdrawal rate to approximate it.

Deduction claims are optimized only through the year before retirement. Retirement-year and post-retirement deduction claims and their later refunds are outside the at-retirement objective.

Result amounts are shown in nominal (future) dollars. Preset income curves hold real income flat or compound at 1%, 2%, or 3% above inflation for 15 years, then plateau. The custom curve uses the entered real growth rate and growth period.

Deterministic illustration only. Returns, tax rules, room, and income can differ materially.