Retirement planning in Calgary
Retirement planning in Calgary for physicians, business owners and high earners. Kaetyn St. Hilaire, CFA, builds your plan from your real spending, where your money is held and when you want to stop: CPP and OAS timing, RRSP and RRIF withdrawals, pension income splitting and the order you draw on each account, for clients in Calgary and across Canada.
What a retirement plan covers
The No. 160 was built one mechanism at a time, each fitted to the last. A retirement plan works the same way: six complications, fitted together. Each one has a free calculator or a plain answer you can read before we meet.
Your real spending
Twelve months of actual outflows, minus what stops at retirement and plus what starts, with essential spending separated from discretionary. Retirement is funded out of spending, not income.
CPP and OAS
When to start CPP, and which years to realize income around the OAS recovery tax. Deferring CPP from 65 to 70 increases the payment by 42 percent, permanently and indexed.
The RRSP to RRIF years
Using the low-income years between leaving work and 71 to draw registered savings down at a bracket you choose, before the RRIF minimum sets your income floor.
Where your money lives
RRSP, TFSA, non-registered and corporate dollars are taxed differently on the way out, and the order you draw on them can shift the lifetime tax bill by six figures.
Pension income splitting
The split that lowers household tax in each year, which is often less than the maximum 50 percent, worked out again every year.
Sequence risk and early retirement
Testing the plan against a poor first five years, and carrying the full cost of living before CPP, OAS and any pension begin.
“The retirees who pay the least tax over their lifetime are not necessarily the ones who defer everything as long as possible. They're the ones that understand timing matters.”
Kaetyn St. Hilaire, CFA, in The ONE Trick Can Save Canadian Retirees Thousands in Taxes
How a retirement plan is built
The framework Kaetyn uses with clients: four steps from your real spending to a plan that holds. The number that matters is not a national average. It is yours.
Your baseline
Housing, food, utilities, insurance: the non-negotiables. Start from twelve months of actual outflows, strip out what stops at retirement (savings, corporate contributions, debt that will be retired) and add what starts.
Guaranteed income
Add CPP, OAS and any workplace pension, using realistic start dates and after-tax figures. A significant portion of your baseline is often covered before you touch a single dollar of savings.
The gap
The gap between your floor and what you actually want to spend is what your portfolio has to cover. Most people have never once calculated it, and it changes everything the moment they do.
Stress test
Test the withdrawal rate against your timeline, investment mix, taxes, fees and inflation, and specifically against a hard market drop in the first five years, when you are forced to sell into weakness.
“How much do I need to never run out of money is a security question. How much do I need to live the retirement that I actually want is a lifestyle question.”
Kaetyn St. Hilaire, CFA, in How Much You Need to NEVER Run Out of Money in Retirement (as a Canadian)
The full timeline, week by week, is on our What to expect page.
Who retirement planning is for
High earners, incorporated professionals and business owners approaching or in retirement with significant savings.
Physicians and dentists
Much of the wealth sits inside a professional corporation, already taxed once and taxed again on extraction, so the order you draw on each account matters as much as the balance.
Business owners
For owners, the single largest variable is usually the exit: shares or assets, the lifetime capital gains exemption, and whether the sale happens on your timeline or someone else's.
Retiring early
Retiring at 55 means carrying the full cost of living for a decade before CPP, OAS and any pension begin, through whatever the market does in those first few years.
Kaetyn St. Hilaire, CFA
Kaetyn is a Calgary-based financial advisor who works with high earners and medical professionals, particularly physicians and dentists navigating the financial complexities that come with high-income careers. He focuses on actionable strategies: the salary-dividend mix inside a professional corporation, RRSP and TFSA contributions, and a long-term investment plan.
Designations
CFA, CIM, CIWM, FCSI, CEA
Retirement planning questions
Honest answers to the questions we hear most often.
There is no national retirement number. Kaetyn separates two questions: how much you need so you never run out of money, which is about security, and how much you need for the retirement you actually want, which is about lifestyle. The answer is built from your actual spending, your account structure, your tax exposure and how long the money has to last. For most of the incorporated professionals and business owners we work with, it tends to land between $3 million and $6 million of investable capital, but the range is wide enough that the average is meaningless.
Deferring CPP from 65 to 70 increases the payment by 42 percent, permanently and indexed. For a healthy high earner with capital to bridge the gap, deferral is frequently the highest-return, lowest-risk decision in the plan. The CPP calculator compares start ages from 60 to 70.
Once your individual net income passes the OAS recovery threshold, OAS is clawed back at 15 cents on every additional dollar until it is gone. Forced RRIF withdrawals stacked on CPP, OAS and pension income are a common cause, and Kaetyn has seen widows lose their entire OAS benefit because of an inherited retirement account. It is a reason to plan which years you realize income.
Drawing down an RRSP on purpose in the low-income years between retiring and the start of RRIF withdrawals, paying tax at a bracket you have chosen. Kaetyn works it in four steps: find your low-income window, calculate the room in your lowest brackets, decide where the money goes (TFSA room first, then non-registered investments, then spending), and repeat every year until the window closes. It does not suit a modest registered balance or a window already filled with other income.
Not always. Moving the maximum 50 percent is sometimes right, but the best split is often 20 or 35 percent, or none at all, because the election moves more than just taxable income. It has to be worked out again every year.
No. In Kaetyn's experience the financial plan is only half the equation. Research on retirement satisfaction keeps pointing to purpose, daily structure and contributing to something beyond yourself, more than a bucket list, and he has seen clients with everything figured out financially and nothing figured out personally.
We generally work with clients who have $500,000+ in investable assets or a household income of $200,000+. That said, we're happy to have an introductory conversation regardless. Sometimes the right time to start planning is before you've accumulated significant wealth.
Book a free wealth review
A complimentary, no-obligation conversation about your goals and current situation, and a clear explanation of how we can help. No pressure, just honest advice.