When to start CPP and OAS — and why "take it early" is the most expensive advice you'll ever get for free. Past a short cancellation window, this decision is permanent. This book walks you through it, in plain language, with your own numbers.
"Take it early — you might not live long enough to break even" is the most common thing Canadians hear about CPP, and it is folk wisdom rather than analysis. Three things go wrong before the decision is even made:
CPP is not an investment; it is insurance against living a long time. Dying at seventy-two is a personal tragedy and a financial non-event — your money outlasted you. Running short at eighty-eight, with no capacity to fix it, is the catastrophe worth insuring against.
Almost everyone runs the decision on the headline maximum, and almost nobody receives it. Your actual entitlement comes from your contribution record, the 17% general dropout, and provisions most people never claim — and the decision looks different at $1,100 a month than at $1,507.
CPP and OAS get decided together as though they were one choice. They aren't. CPP timing is driven by longevity; OAS timing is driven by the recovery tax and where your income sits at seventy-five. The right answer is frequently a different age for each.
The mortality argument, restated honestly, sounds like this: I would like to reduce my protection against living a long time, because I might not live a long time.— Chapter 1, The Default That Costs $200,000
Most CPP calculators give you one answer built on one assumed lifespan. The CPP & OAS Timing Calculator shows which start age comes out ahead at every possible age at death, from sixty-six to a hundred — because that, and not a breakeven table, is the bet you're actually being asked to make.
It's the same math the book is built on. Run it before you buy — if deferral isn't right for your situation, it will tell you so in about two minutes.
Try the Free Calculator →No products, no sales pitch, and no assumption that deferral is automatically right. The book argues hard for waiting because that's the correct answer for most of its readers — and it tells you plainly if you're one of the people for whom it isn't.
How the pension is actually calculated, how to read your Statement of Contributions, and which dropout and credit-splitting provisions apply to you — so the decision runs on your number instead of the maximum.
−0.6% a month before sixty-five, +0.7% a month after. What deferral costs in forgone payments, what it buys in indexed lifetime income, and why the breakeven table everyone quotes is answering the wrong question.
Partial OAS and the residency formula, deferral to seventy for a 36% increase, the 10% uplift at seventy-five, and how the recovery tax at $95,323 of net income should — and shouldn't — change your start date.
Longevity, bridge capacity, GIS exposure, and marital status. Four inputs produce your answer, including the cases — genuine health limitations, immediate income need, GIS range — where taking benefits at sixty is correct.
The survivor's pension is built on the deceased's age-65 amount, so your deferral does not transfer to your spouse. The combined-benefit ceiling, the income cliff at the first death, and whose deferral actually protects whom.
The worksheet, the application timing, the twelve-month cancellation window if you've already started, and the traps in the Service Canada paperwork that quietly change your start date.
Deferring CPP creates a stretch of deliberately low income. What you draw from your RRSP during those years, before RRIF minimums force the issue, is where most of the money actually is. That's the whole subject of the first book in the series.
Read in order — each chapter builds on a figure you wrote down in the one before. Five chapters end by asking you to write something down, and those figures assemble into the worksheet in Chapter 9.
That worksheet is the actual deliverable. Plus appendices: adjustment factor tables, breakeven tables, RRIF minimums, survival probabilities, and a glossary.
The dollar amounts in CPP and OAS are indexed and change every year. The percentages are legislated and stable — and every argument in the book rests on those, not on the dollar figures.
None of these look like errors at the time. Most of them are made in a single afternoon, on the basis of something a neighbour said, and cannot be undone twelve months later.
Each book answers one question and stands on its own. Together they cover the order you draw your accounts down in, the date you turn your government pensions on, and what lands on the final return.
Withdrawal sequencing, the meltdown window, asset location, LIRA unlocking, and keeping RRIF minimums clear of the OAS clawback — the drawdown decisions between 55 and 71.
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What the spousal rollover defers rather than erases — beneficiary design, the second-death projection, donation credits, and second-to-die insurance.
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The adjustment math, why breakeven is the wrong question, OAS as a separate decision, survivor benefits and the combined-benefit ceiling — the start-date decision between 60 and 70.
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All three books in a single 278-page volume — drawdown sequencing, CPP and OAS timing, and tax at death. Three books for the price of two.
Straight answers to what Canadians ask most about when to start CPP and OAS.
Asset mixes can be rebalanced. Withdrawal plans can be revised every January. A CPP start date, past a twelve-month window, is permanent — and it sets an indexed income floor for the rest of your life and, in part, your spouse's.
It deserves more than an afternoon and a neighbour's opinion.
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