What age should I start my RRIF?

A RRIF is a tax bill you choose when to pay

Every dollar in an RRSP is taxed on its way out. The required minimums from age 72 are the tax collector setting the schedule; opening the RRIF sooner is paying in instalments, at a rate you pick. So the real question is which years have the cheapest rate, and that moves with everything else landing in those years: CPP, OAS, a workplace pension, a spouse's income, and the benefits that shrink as income rises.

For many middle-income Alberta households the gap between ages is modest. It grows in three situations: when the RRIF is large enough that the required minimums push income into the OAS clawback, when one spouse is likely to live alone for many years and file a single return with the whole RRIF, and when income sits near the lines for income-tested benefits.

How the tool keeps score

Best means the most total family value: everything the household spends after tax over the plan, plus the estate left at the end after tax, all in today's dollars. A dollar spent and a dollar saved count the same, so only tax, clawback and lost credits move the total. That makes the comparison about one thing: what the timing costs or saves.

The lowest lifetime tax is marked as well, because it is not the same thing. The smallest tax bill while you are living can leave the family less, when a large RRIF then lands whole on the final return. When the two disagree, the tool says so.

For each household the tool plays 21 plans: seven opening ages, each drawn three ways (the minimum only, enough to fill the first tax bracket, or enough to reach the OAS clawback line). Before the RRIF opens, any cash the household needs beyond its other income comes from non-registered savings, then the TFSA, then RRSP withdrawals.

Facts people get wrong

• 71 is a deadline, not a start date. An RRSP has to become a RRIF, or buy an annuity, by December 31 of the year you turn 71. The first required payment comes the following year, because there is no minimum in the year a RRIF opens.
• The minimum follows your age on January 1. At 65 it is 4.00% of the balance that day; at 71 it is 5.28%, and it keeps climbing. You can always take more than the minimum. With a younger spouse you can choose, when the RRIF is set up, to base the minimums on their age instead; that only lowers the required amount.
• RRIF income earns the pension income credit from 65. An RRSP withdrawal never does. The credit applies to the first $2,000 of eligible pension income each year ($1,753 for Alberta in 2026), and RRIF income from 65 can also be split with a spouse. CPP and OAS do not count for either. For someone with no workplace pension, that credit is the classic reason to open a RRIF at 65.
• Widowed before 65? The credit can start sooner. If your spouse or common-law partner died and their RRIF now pays you (the bank may call you the successor annuitant; a LIF counts too), those payments earn the pension income credit at any age, federal and Alberta both: up to about $420 a year off the tax you owe for 2026 ($280 federal, $140 Alberta). Claim it on line 31400 of the federal return, or tell whoever does your taxes that the payments came to you because your spouse died. If a past year's return missed it, you can ask the CRA to change that return (online in My Account, or on form T1-ADJ), as far back as ten years, and get back the tax it would have saved.
• The OAS clawback works off each year's income. For 2026 it starts at $95,323 of net income and takes back 15 cents of OAS for every dollar above the line. Next year's cheques, July to June, are set from this year's return, so one large withdrawal can cut them.
• Waiting for CPP and OAS pays. OAS grows 0.6% for each month you wait past 65, 36% more at 70. CPP grows 0.7% a month, 42% more at 70. Deferring OAS also puts off the Guaranteed Income Supplement and, in Alberta, the Seniors Benefit.
• Withholding tax is not the tax. The amount held back on a withdrawal is a deposit toward your return. The real cost is worked out on the return, with everything else you received that year.
• Plan on today's minimums. No reduction to the RRIF minimum factors is in the law, so the tool uses the current ones.
• Alberta has no health premium to plan around. The income-tested items that do react to RRIF income are the Guaranteed Income Supplement, the Alberta Seniors Benefit and the income tiers of the federal dental plan.

What the tool leaves out

• It is Alberta only, on 2026 federal and Alberta rules, with every figure in today's dollars.
• It treats the household as retired from this year, with no employment income. If you are still working, the years before you stop will look different, and that is worth a conversation.
• It does not count the Guaranteed Income Supplement or the Alberta Seniors Benefit. Near their income lines those rules can reverse the answer, so the tool shows a caution there instead of a number.
• For a couple, the survivor keeps the same spending target, and no CPP survivor's pension or workplace survivor pension is counted. Read the survivor years as a sketch, and ask us to run your own.
• The tool does not show the credit on an inherited RRIF. If your late spouse's RRIF pays you, those payments earn the pension income credit at any age, before 65 included (see Facts people get wrong), but the tool leaves that credit out before the opening age you choose. It treats an inherited RRIF as RRSP money until then, so it shows no credit on it, and it counts anything drawn from it before then as an RRSP withdrawal, which never earns the credit. That is a shortcut in the tool, not advice. It applies in a couple's survivor years, and to you if you are already widowed and include its balance in your RRSP and RRIF total, even if it is already paying you. Ask us to run your own.
• The whole RRSP converts at the opening age. Converting only part of it, just enough to use the pension income credit, is a real strategy the tool does not play.
• Not included: annuities, a company or trust in the household, tax withheld at source during the year, the CPP post-retirement benefit and CPP sharing.

Keep going

• Talk it through with us: bring your statements and we will run your own numbers, benefits and survivor income included.
• Planning strategies: where RRIF timing sits beside CPP and OAS timing, income splitting and the rest.
• Understanding pensions: how a workplace pension fits beside your own savings.
• DC pension projector: what a defined contribution account could pay.