r/FIRECanada

Retire at 53 with 6.2m and paid off 1.5m house or keep working until 58ish with 10m. Market assuming 8% and saving 300n a year. Looking to spend 200-240k a year pretax.

Your FIRE number is fake Or at least it is incomplete unless vou know what account the money is in "I need $1.5M to retire" sounds precise, but $1.5M in a TFSA is not the same as $1.5M in an RRSP taxable account, LIRA, pension, or some mix of all of them. That sounds obvious, but I think it gets glossed over. Th common FIRE number is usually based on spending, like "I spend $60k/year, so at a 4% withdrawal rate I need $1.5M." In Canada, the account type matters a lot:

• TESA withdrawals are tax-free
• RRSP/RRIF withdrawals are fully taxable
• Taxable accounts depend on gains, dividends, interest, and cost base
• CPP/OAS add taxable income later
• RRIF minimums can force withdrawals

The same headline portfolio value can support very different after-tax spending I put together a Canadian example article comparinc RRSP, TFSA, and taxable accounts and better approximation of the FIRE number.

I’m 41M and my wife 40F. We own a $1.5 mil home in Ancaster(8 years old), Ontario.(Paid for.) We have zero debt. Two moderate cars. 3 children age 10, 8 and 4.
My non registered $145K
My tfsa $160K
My rrsp $545K
Kids resp $50K
My wife’s non registered $55K
Wife’s tfsa $145K
Wife’s rrsp $50K
My income is $150K+ per year
Wife’s $75K per year.
Thinking of getting a rental property as well but don’t want to deplete our retirement money. A few years of saving up for a down payment.
Thoughts?

Federal public servant approved to take Early retirement initiative (leave with immediate start to pension without penalty) . Started public service career late so pension would be 56k a year, indexed.

Married, 2 young adult kids,one done school and another has resp to see them thru remainder.

assets:
~900 k equity in a 1.3M home
~ 1 M in 60/40 index funds and cash/GIC
~500 k in spouses retirement funds (RSP and US 403b).

no other debt (2 cars paid off)

Spouse, same age, makes about 110k and doesn’t want to retire until 60.

I don’t really want to retire either but have had it with my current work. Concerned in job market at my age that i won’t find work that is more rewarding, if less pay.

If worst case, I can’t find work and spouse loses job or health issue prevents work for example, are we good? Financial advisor models say yes, I’m just wondering about real world perspectives.

Monthly spend is estimated at 8k including mortgage/ property tax etc. and we like to travel so another 15-20 k for that a year.

TL;DR: I was planning our joint retirement, but my wife prefers to postpone her savings to enjoy the present and asked me to just take care of my own retirement planning for now. By planning only for myself, I realized I am already almost Coast FIRE. I feel uneasy about this. How do you manage this mismatch in vision as a couple?

​I'd love to hear your thoughts or experiences regarding couples' dynamics when it comes to money and retirement. ​We're slowly approaching our forties (together since our early twenties). About 10 years ago, I took charge of our finances. I have a mathematical mind and enjoy this stuff, which allowed us to structure our budget, our goals, and get out of debt. Today, I feel it gave us good discipline to live within our means. The only things left are my wife’s student loan and, obviously, the mortgage.

​I make around $90K and my wife around $35K (she's waiting for a permanent position in the healthcare system). I am also the more frugal of the two—let's say I'm relatively simple/cheap and I own it, though my wife isn't a big spender either. Our household income is around a 75/25 split, and I've always shared all my income for the couple and the family.

​The journey so far ​About 5 years ago, my employer started offering a group RRSP, so I began contributing 3% to get the employer match. That was the trigger to start saving for retirement, and I've educated myself a lot since then. I realized we had accumulated "delay" and missed out on some of the compound interest of our youth. So I started investing on my own via Wealthsimple less than 5 years ago, a bit more "aggressively." Result: we just crossed our first $110K in savings 🎉

​I did the math for the future: with a joint target of $75K per year in retirement, I was aiming for retirement at 65 (ideally 60!). In my mind, I was preparing all of this for both of us globally, so she wouldn't have to worry about it. She works just as hard as I do, so I don't see why she should be penalized just because of her lower salary. ​The friction point

​We had a discussion recently, and she told me clearly that she's not interested in thinking about retirement for now. She appreciates what I do, but she prefers that I "figure it out" on my side and she'll look into it later, around 40-45. She will have access to the RREGOP [public sector pension plan / Québec Pension Plan equivalent] (which is great), but since she started at 35 and wants to work part-time (around 25 hours a week), her pension should be around $15K.

​I understand her stance and I can't (nor do I want to) force her to save. She clearly prefers to enjoy the present a bit more and "save less as a couple to spend more."

​The unexpected discovery: ​Recently, I played with a financial calculator in "if I only look after my own retirement" mode. I realized I am already practically Coast FIRE: if I simply keep contributing my 3% through my group RRSP until retirement, I literally don't need to inject another single dollar. I could in principle retire at 60 without any problem. ​It's nice to discover, but I'm still uneasy...

​My questions: ​I had good intentions of building financial freedom for both of us, but she seems to prefer a lifestyle where she pushes it off to later. I have to accept it, but I find it weird to think I could be "ready" and financially free, while she will probably have to work until 65 or more given her desired lifestyle.

​How do you manage this? Are there people here where only one spouse aims for financial independence/early retirement while the other is in standard/late work-and-retirement mode? How do you navigate this mismatch in your couple's vision?

​I feel like I'm in a grey zone where my "excess" savings put me in a super comfortable position, but I struggle with the couple dynamics that come with it.

​Note 1: Don't worry, the family doesn't lack anything, we treat ourselves often, go on trips, and she buys what she wants. Of course, for big expenses or major projects, we talk it over as a team!

​Note 2: Yes, yes, I used AI, I was feeling lazy, long live upcoming vacations haha)

​Edit: For the Coast FIRE portion, those were the broad strokes regarding my share of yearly expenses. Yes, I am frugal. ​But yes, at $110K + my RRSP contribution + employer portion, at a 5% return (net of inflation), I reach $700K at 65. If I factor in $25K from QPP [Québec Pension Plan] and OAS [Old Age Security], there's only $10K to $15K net left to cover my lifestyle.

​So even drawing down $20K gross, at $700K the math checks out, right?

Hi everyone,

I've been thinking a lot about how people actually model their path to FI.

I'm a CPA, and I ended up building a personal finance app with my sister because I couldn't find something that let me easily model the messier parts of real life.

Most FIRE calculators seem to assume a fairly straight line: current net worth → annual contributions → retirement → withdrawals.

But real life isn't always like that.

The part I built that I'm most interested in is phase-based projection.

You can set up different periods of your life with different assumptions, for example:

Working → Career break → Back to work → FI

Each phase can have different income, spending, contributions, withdrawals and return assumptions.

Then you can create separate scenarios and compare them.

For example:

• Keep working until 40
• Take 2 years off at 35
• Work part-time for a few years
• Increase savings by $10k/year
• Move somewhere with a lower cost of living
• Retire earlier but spend more

And see how each one changes the projected net-worth trajectory.

The rest of Anvi is the more traditional personal finance side — statement importing, smart transaction categorization that learns from your corrections, spending analysis, budgeting based on historical spending, recurring transactions, net worth tracking, etc.

One other difference: there are no bank connections. You upload a PDF/CSV statement and Anvi extracts the transactions. The original statement is discarded rather than stored.

It's live at myanvi.co and works in a browser on phone or laptop. We're planning App Store/Google Play availability in September.

I'm not really trying to convince anyone to use another finance app. I'm more curious about how other people here actually do this.

Do you model different life scenarios when planning for FI, or do you mostly use one projection and update it as things change?

If you already have a spreadsheet/tool that does this really well, I'd genuinely be interested in seeing what your setup looks like.

I've love to hear your thoughts/ideas! Thank you!