One of the most common questions Canadians type into Google after filing their taxes is some version of "how much should I have saved by now?" It is a fair question, and a hard one to answer well. Headlines tell you the average Canadian has $129,000 in their RRSP. Surveys tell you Canadians believe they need $1.7 million to retire comfortably. The gap between those two numbers is enough to make a lot of pre-retirees quietly panic.

The answer is more useful than either headline suggests. The truth is buried in the difference between the average Canadian and the typical Canadian, and in age-banded data that almost nobody bothers to look up.

This post pulls every number from primary sources. Statistics Canada's Survey of Financial Security for the RRSP figures. The CRA's most recent TFSA statistics, released April 2025 covering the 2023 contribution year, for the TFSA figures. BMO's Annual Retirement Study, published February 2026, for the "what Canadians think they need" benchmark. We will walk through the numbers, explain the median-vs-average gap, lay out what the right target actually looks like, and finish with what to do if you are behind.

The headline numbers in one chart

If you only have 30 seconds, this is what the data says about your peers.

Age	Average RRSP balance	Median RRSP balance	Average TFSA balance
Under 35	$41,000	$12,500	~$12,400
35 to 44	$82,100	$30,000	~$18,100
45 to 54	$150,300	$70,000	~$22,700
55 to 64	$216,900	$100,000	~$39,200
65 and over	$224,000	$100,000	~$51,500

RRSP figures: Statistics Canada Survey of Financial Security, 2019 edition (most recent age-banded balance breakdown). Combined RRSP, RRIF, and LIRA. TFSA figures: CRA TFSA Statistics for the 2023 contribution year, published April 2025.

The first thing that should jump out is the gap between average and median in the RRSP column. By age 55 to 64, the average Canadian has more than twice what the median Canadian has. The average is dragged up by a small share of high-net-worth households. The median is closer to your actual neighbour.

Average RRSP balance by age in Canada

Let us walk through each age band, because the headline number changes meaning at different points in life.

Under 35: building the habit

Average $41,000. Median $12,500.

The under-35 cohort tells a story about timing more than amounts. Most Canadians in this group are juggling student debt, first homes, and starting a family. The median of $12,500 is roughly two years of $7,000 contributions plus modest growth. That is consistent with someone who started contributing in their late 20s, not their early 20s.

The dollars matter less than the calendar at this age. Every year before 35 that you contribute meaningfully to an RRSP is roughly five years you do not have to make up later, because of compounding.

35 to 44: the catch-up window

Average $82,100. Median $30,000.

This is the decade where the gap between the typical Canadian and the average Canadian opens up sharply. Households with two professional incomes, no childcare costs anymore, and a paid-down mortgage start putting serious dollars in. Households without those tailwinds often stay flat.

The median of $30,000 by your early 40s sounds discouraging. It is also normal. Mortgage and childcare years are real. The challenge is that the next decade is your last realistic chance to compound aggressively before retirement.

45 to 54: the decisive decade

Average $150,300. Median $70,000.

Most retirement plans are won or lost in this decade. Income is usually peak. Major expenses are starting to taper. RRSP contributions in your highest-earning years deliver the biggest tax deduction, and they have 15 to 20 years to compound before you retire. Every dollar you put in here works far harder than a dollar at 35 because the tax bracket spread between contribution and withdrawal is at its widest.

The median of $70,000 by 50 is the number that worries planners. It is consistent with a household that contributed sporadically and never got serious. To turn that into a plan that supports a comfortable retirement, the next 15 years have to look very different from the last 15.

55 to 64: the runway

Average $216,900. Median $100,000.

The runway shortens fast at this age. The typical Canadian entering this band has $100,000 saved in registered accounts. Combined with maxed CPP at 65 (around $1,433 per month at the maximum, lower for most) and maxed OAS (around $727 per month), a $100,000 RRSP at 65 supports roughly $1,500 to $2,000 per month of withdrawals over a 25-year retirement, depending on returns and tax sequencing. That is real money. It is also far less than what most Canadians estimate they need.

If you are in this band and behind, the levers that move the needle are: maximizing remaining contribution room, optimizing the order you draw from accounts, delaying CPP and OAS where it makes sense, and considering whether to keep working part-time to bridge to age 70. We will come back to this.

65 and over: drawdown reality

Average $224,000. Median $100,000.

The 65-plus number barely moves from the 55-to-64 band, which is exactly what you would expect: at 65, contributions slow and withdrawals start. The story this number tells is that most Canadians enter retirement with substantially less than the headlines suggest.

Average TFSA balance by age in Canada

The TFSA picture is fresher and tells a different story. The CRA released 2023-year statistics in April 2025, so the numbers below are very current.

The TFSA was introduced in 2009. Cumulative contribution room for someone who has been 18 or older every year since is now $109,000 in 2026. That includes the new $7,000 of room added January 1, 2026.

• Under 35: roughly $12,400 average. Many in this group only became eligible recently and are just starting.
• 35 to 44: roughly $18,100. Households are using the TFSA for emergency funds and short-term goals, not retirement.
• 45 to 54: roughly $22,700. Still well below the cumulative room available, suggesting most Canadians in this band have not used the TFSA as a serious retirement vehicle.
• 55 to 64: roughly $39,200. The number rises here because households start moving non-registered investments into the TFSA as they approach retirement.
• 65 and over: roughly $51,500. Retirees use the TFSA aggressively to shelter income that would otherwise count against the OAS clawback threshold ($95,323 of net income in 2026).

The lesson here: the TFSA is criminally underused by working-age Canadians. By 55, the average household has $39,200 in a vehicle that has $109,000 of available room. The catch-up potential in the TFSA, especially in the years just before and just after retirement, is one of the most tax-efficient moves available in the Canadian system.

Median vs average: the gap that explains everything

Every set of numbers above has a mean (average) and a median. The mean is what you get when you add everyone's balance and divide by the population. The median is the middle Canadian. Half are above. Half are below.

In every RRSP age band, the mean is roughly two to three times the median. That is because the top 10 percent of households hold a disproportionate share of registered savings. A handful of households with $1.5 million RRSPs pulls the average way above what most Canadians actually have.

When you read "the average Canadian has $129,000 in their RRSP," what you should hear is "the typical Canadian has well under that, and a small share of high-savers is doing the lifting in the average."

This matters for one practical reason: if you compare yourself to the mean and feel bad, you are comparing yourself to a benchmark that does not represent half your peers. If you compare to the median, you get a more honest baseline. Then the only question worth asking is not "am I above the median," but "am I on track for the retirement I actually want."

How much should you have? The Fidelity benchmark, adapted for Canadians

The most widely cited age-based savings target comes from Fidelity Investments. It uses your current salary as the multiplier. The rule:

• By age 30: 1x your salary
• By age 40: 3x your salary
• By age 50: 6x your salary
• By age 60: 8x your salary
• By age 67: 10x your salary

For a Canadian household making $100,000, that target says you should have $1 million saved by 67 across all retirement accounts (RRSP, TFSA, non-registered, and pension value).

The Fidelity rule was built for the United States, where retirees rely much more heavily on personal savings to fund retirement. In Canada, public benefits do more of the lifting. CPP and OAS together cover roughly $1,500 to $2,000 per month for the average retiree, sometimes more if you delay. That makes the Canadian salary-multiplier target slightly lower in practice, somewhere around 7x to 9x of pre-retirement income for most households, rather than 10x.

The number in the BMO 2026 Annual Retirement Study tells the inverse story. Canadians say they need $1.7 million to retire comfortably, up $160,000 from $1.54 million in 2024. 36 percent of Canadians say they are unlikely to hit that target, up from 29 percent. British Columbia residents target $2.2 million. Atlantic Canadians target $928,000.

The honest read across both sources: most Canadians need somewhere between $700,000 and $1.7 million across registered and non-registered accounts to fund the retirement they describe when surveyed, depending on geography, lifestyle, and how much they expect to leave behind. The median Canadian is currently far below this. That is the gap retirement planning is trying to close.

2026 RRSP and TFSA contribution limits

Whatever your starting point, the contribution-room numbers for 2026 are:

• RRSP 2026 dollar limit: $33,810. The actual contribution room is 18 percent of your prior-year earned income, capped at this dollar figure. Unused room from prior years carries forward and can be used at any time.
• TFSA 2026 annual room: $7,000, unchanged from 2024 and 2025.
• Cumulative TFSA room since 2009: $109,000 for someone who was 18 or older in 2009 and a Canadian resident every year since. If you have never contributed, you have roughly $109,000 of room available right now.

Two things almost nobody tells you. First, RRSP contributions are deductible the year contributed but you choose what year to claim the deduction. If your income will be higher next year (a promotion, an inheritance bonus, a pension lump sum), contributing this year and deferring the deduction can squeeze more value out of the same contribution. Second, the TFSA dollar limit is not lost when you withdraw. The amount you take out gets re-added to your room the following January. A $30,000 TFSA withdrawal in 2025 means $30,000 of new room in addition to the $7,000 annual amount in 2026.

What to do if you are behind

If you are reading the table at the top of this post and seeing yourself well below the median, here is the realistic playbook. The good news is that the levers that matter most are not "save more" (that is rarely the binding constraint at this stage). They are sequencing and tax efficiency.

1. Map your full contribution room

Log into CRA My Account. Both your RRSP and TFSA carry-forward room are listed there. Most Canadians have far more room than they think because TFSA room compounds every year you do not contribute. A 50-year-old who never contributed has $109,000 of TFSA room and likely tens of thousands of unused RRSP room.

2. Rebalance the contribution mix

If your current and projected retirement income will both be in middle brackets, the conventional "max RRSP first" advice often is not the optimal answer. The TFSA shines when your retirement tax rate would otherwise be in the 30 to 40 percent range. The RRSP shines when your contribution-year tax rate is much higher than your retirement-year rate. Most households use a mix of both, calibrated to the income they expect each decade of retirement.

3. Plan the withdrawal sequence, not just the contributions

The order in which you draw from your accounts during retirement determines lifetime taxes more than the size of your accounts does. The conventional advice ("pull TFSA last, defer RRSP as long as possible") is right for some Canadians and wrong for many others. Households with substantial RRSPs at 60 and a low-income window before CPP starts often save thousands by drawing the RRSP early in low-tax years. Households heading for the OAS clawback often save thousands by accelerating RRSP withdrawals between 60 and 70.

This is exactly the calculation Optiml runs across thousands of scenarios. The right sequence can shift lifetime taxes by an illustrative 3 to 15 percent, depending on the household. That is real money over a 25 to 30 year retirement.

4. Time CPP and OAS deliberately

Deferring CPP from 65 to 70 grows the benefit by 8.4 percent per year, locked in for life. OAS grows by 7.2 percent per year deferred. Most Canadians take both at 65 because that is what their parents did. For households that have other income to bridge those years, delaying often wins by hundreds of thousands of dollars over a 25-year retirement. This is one of the highest-leverage decisions in Canadian retirement planning, and most plans never model it carefully.

5. Run the actual model

The numbers in this post are population averages. Your plan is a single household. The right answer for you is not the average. It is what the math says when your real income, real expenses, real assets, and real retirement timeline are run through a model that knows the Canadian tax engine.

Where Optiml fits

Optiml is the Canadian retirement planning software thousands of Canadians use to do exactly this. It models your full retirement horizon year by year, considers every Canadian account type (RRSP, TFSA, FHSA, LIRA, RESP, RDSP, pension, non-registered, corporate accounts), every CRA rule, and every government benefit. It runs the math on the questions this post raises: where do I stand, how much do I actually need, and what is the optimal way to draw from what I have.

Over 125,000 retirement plans have been built inside Optiml. There is a 14-day free trial on every tier, and a free version called Optiml lite that gives you a quick snapshot of where your plan currently sits.

If the table at the top of this post made you stop and reflect, the most useful next step is to find out where you actually stand against your own retirement, not the population average. Run a free plan and you will see in three minutes whether you are on track and, more importantly, what specific moves change the answer.

The honest takeaway

The typical 55-year-old Canadian has $100,000 in their RRSP, not the $216,900 the average suggests. The typical Canadian's TFSA holds less than half the room available to them. The retirement most Canadians describe in surveys costs roughly $700,000 to $1.7 million depending on lifestyle and geography. The gap is real.

The gap is also closable, especially if you have 10 to 20 years of runway left. The biggest wins between now and retirement come from sequencing decisions, not from saving more. CPP timing. OAS timing. RRSP-vs-TFSA prioritization. Withdrawal order in retirement. Each one of those is worth thousands of dollars in lifetime taxes if you get it right, and runs the other way if you get it wrong.

Knowing where you stand is the first step. Knowing what to do about it is the next one. The data above is the first step. The plan that closes the gap is the next one.