Early in the year, we talked about taking time to think and analyze the possibilities surrounding future withdrawals from our investment accounts. In the initial stage, our reflection concentrated on questions like how? And how much? At this point, we will sadly report that our efforts have not significantly paid off. We have not demystified the 4% rule yet. Neither did we develop or stumble upon a better alternative.
All that analysis still eventually oriented us towards the when?
Too Much RRSP May Equal Too Much Tax
As a result, we recently discovered our RRSP value may be too high and are now considering withdrawing money from it sooner than expected. In that context, it looks like we will deregister an important portion of our RRSPs to avoid future tax problems. Essentially, we discovered that too much money in our RRSPs may result in paying a lot more tax later in life or having a big tax bill attached to our heritage, mostly destined to our lovely daughter.
We will admit having too much money is a good problem to have. But it’s important to start taking measures now to possibly avoid wasting an important chunk of it later. With retrospect, investing more in TFSAs instead of RRSPs would have been a better choice, from a fiscal standpoint at least. Fortunately, it’s not too late for some type of gradual rebalancing.
Our RRSPs grew up faster with larger contributions and higher returns than projected. In that regard, part of the credit can be attributed to our successful DIY investing approach.
Changes in our pension plan conditions also greatly impact our future financial situation. Unfortunately, planning for an early retirement kind of goes against the grain. Consequently, we made very conservative assumptions during the last round of negotiations as initial talks amputated pension benefits by almost half for early retirees like us.
The final agreement was better or less bad than anticipated, we will only lose about 10% of our retirement payouts. Again, this will probably end up generating additional taxable income later.
With all those factors combined, the perspective of paying more tax during retirement than in active life unexpectedly becomes very probable.
As an example, you can see from the Leaving Money in RRSP Chart that, just a 100K$ portion accumulated in your RRSP today, at 45, could generate a nasty tax bill of more than a million bucks 40 years down the road. RRSPs can be a great tool to avoid paying taxes now as it differs your fiscal obligation. But if your ultimate tax rate is high like in this example at 50%, you might end up paying a big chunk of that deferred tax back.
As an example, you can see from the Leaving Money in RRSP Chart that, just a 100K$ portion accumulated in your RRSP today, at 45, could generate a nasty tax bill of more than a million bucks 40 years down the road. RRSPs can be a great tool to avoid paying taxes now as it differs your fiscal obligation. But if your ultimate tax rate is high like in this example at 50%, you might end up paying a big chunk of that deferred tax back.
Now that we know we are going to take money or stocks out of our RRSPs, it’s time to explore related technicalities.
Gradual Transfer to Tax-Friendly TFSA
Let’s briefly get back to how much? Projecting income and corresponding tax levels over an extended period is far from exact science. You can still have a general idea of fiscal implications and take actions that should improve the situation.
