The Canadian Retirement Tax Series

You spent forty years learning how to save. Nobody taught you how to take it out.

Canadian retirement advice mostly stops at the day you retire. What comes after — the order you draw down your accounts, when you turn on CPP and OAS, what lands on the final return — carries six-figure consequences and sits in the gap between professions. Three books, three decisions, each one quantified rather than gestured at.

Find the one you need ↓
★★★★★ 4.9 average from verified Amazon.ca purchases · read what readers said

Which decision are you facing?

Each book stands on its own. Start with the question that is actually in front of you — you do not need to read them in order.

Book One · Drawdown
“In what order do I draw down my accounts?”
For you if: you are 55 to 71, still hold an RRSP, and have not yet converted to a RRIF.
The $100,000 RRSP & RRIF Mistake cover
The $100,000 RRSP & RRIF Mistake Withdrawal sequencing, the meltdown window, asset location, and the forgotten LIRA.
Read more →
Book Two · CPP & OAS
“When do I turn on CPP and OAS?”
For you if: you are approaching 60 to 70 and weighing whether to take benefits early or defer.
The $200,000 CPP Mistake cover
The $200,000 CPP Mistake The adjustment math, why breakeven is the wrong question, OAS as a separate decision, survivor arithmetic.
Read more →
Book Three · Tax at death
“What lands on the final return?”
For you if: you have registered assets and want to know what the second death actually costs.
The $150,000 Terminal Tax Bomb cover
The $150,000 Terminal Tax Bomb Deemed disposition, what the spousal rollover defers rather than erases, beneficiary design, donation credits.
Read more →
Retirement Tax Mistakes: the collected edition
Best value

All three, in one volume

The three decisions are not independent. When you start CPP changes how much room you have to melt down the RRSP, and what is left in the RRIF is what the final return is calculated on. Read together, the sequencing across all three is where the largest numbers usually are.

Get the collected edition →
$34.99 paperback — three books for roughly the price of two

Run your own numbers first

Four calculators, free, with no sign-up and no email required. If the numbers say the savings in your situation are small, that is a useful answer and you should not buy anything.

RRSP Meltdown Calculator What a better withdrawal order is worth over your lifetime, with RRIF minimums, OAS clawback, and provincial rates modelled year by year. RRIF Minimum Calculator What the CRA forces you to withdraw at every age to 95, when it starts, and how many years you have left before it does. Terminal Tax Estimator What the final return costs when the whole RRIF lands in one year and every gain is realised at once, plus probate by province. CPP & OAS Timing Calculator Which start age wins at every lifespan, rather than a single breakeven number that assumes you know when you will die.

Every rate, rule, and assumption behind the models is published in full — read the methodology.

Trevor Carson, CFA

Trevor Carson, CFA

A CFA charterholder and chief financial officer in Calgary. Twenty years of capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, and finance leadership — raising more than $2 billion in debt and equity, executing more than twenty acquisitions, and building finance teams through an IPO and a private equity exit. Past President of the CFA Society of Ottawa.

Discount rates, tax drag, and the cost of deferring a liability are routine on the institutional side. Almost none of that reasoning reaches the households who need it. These books are the same analysis, pointed at the household balance sheet instead.

No investment products, no insurance, no advisory services, and no referral fees from anyone who sells them. The books, the math, and the free calculators are the whole offer. None of it is financial or tax advice — it is meant to help you have a better conversation with a planner or accountant who knows your full situation.