Retirement Command Deck — Maple Groove Financial

Scenario setup · typed or slid, your call

MG·DECK·01

The wealth arc account balances by age · today's dollars Show in future dollars Colour-blind friendly

Where each year's income comes from stacked by source · today's dollars

Net-worth milestones scrub the wealth arc to read any age balance sheet at eight ages · today's dollars

The DB pension never appears in these bars: it is income, not spendable capital, so it rides the income chart instead. The property band is display-only bookkeeping at its own growth dial; the car loan hangs below zero at its scheduled balance.

Every projected year, every column, for your own spreadsheet.

What this model assumes, and what it leaves out

Everything is in today's dollars. Returns are converted to real returns using the inflation dial, so a balance of $500,000 at age 65 means $500,000 of today's purchasing power. CPP and OAS are treated as inflation-indexed, which keeps them flat in real terms.
The workplace pension follows its statement formula: 1.4% of best-average earnings up to the average YMPE plus 2.0% above it, times credited service, reduced 3% for each year the pension starts before the earlier of age 65 and the Rule of 85 date. Service freezes on leaving but age keeps counting toward the factor, so leaving just short of the Rule of 85 costs a few percent at most, not a jump to the age-65 anchor. In pay the pension is indexed at 60% of CPI, so its real value drifts down slowly; deferred pensions are treated as flat in nominal terms until they start, which erodes them in real terms. The bridge is the statement's flat figure (50% of the maximum CPP payable at 60, about $5,800 a year) and pays only when the pension starts immediately and before age 60; the plan recalculates it at actual retirement.
The job-change scenario models leaving the utility for a new employer partway to retirement. The DB pension freezes at the service earned by the change year: it defers on the rules above (flat in nominal terms until it starts, no bridge, and age keeps counting toward the Rule of 85 while service does not). The pay cheque switches to the new salary from the change year, in today's dollars, growing on the same salary-growth dial, and the monthly RRSP, TFSA and savings contributions scale in proportion to the pay change so the savings rate holds. The freed car payment and the loan lump sums are fixed dollar habits and do not scale. By default the new job brings no pension of its own (the conservative floor); the similar-plan toggle instead accrues a second pension from the change year on the same formula shape as the statement's (the tiers, the 3% a year early rule with its own Rule-of-85 clock, the flat bridge on an immediate start before 60), with the full new salary treated as pensionable, since no statement exists for a hypothetical plan. The two pensions are independent: commuting the frozen one never touches the new one. The frozen pension then has two doors, both from the plan's own statement: stay deferred (the default, on the rules above), or commute to a LIRA when the exit lands before age 55. The model prices the transfer at the statement's two-times-contributions floor, the binding rule at these ages (contributions projected at the derived 5.6% of pensionable pay, interest credited at the inflation dial); it shelters what the federal transfer cap allows (nine times the unreduced accrued pension under age 50, per the Income Tax Regulations) into the locked sleeve, pays any remainder out as cash taxed at an assumed 30%, and grows the LIRA at the portfolio dial. At retirement the LIRA becomes a LIF: minimums follow the RRIF table, the Alberta annual withdrawal maximum is not modelled, and the optional one-time Alberta unlock moves half into the RRSP at age 50 or later (a pension partner would need to waive). From 55 the lump-sum door closes (the plan applies Alberta's ten-year rule) and the model falls back to the deferral, saying so on its readout card. The plan's termination statement, issued within 60 days of an actual exit, governs the real commuted value and the real tax split, and the election window after it is 90 days. One asymmetry worth carrying into any comparison: deferred-pension cheques are income a couple can split from any starting age, while LIF income cannot be split before 65.
The match-the-pension panel prices a competing offer against staying, judged by the same engine on the same dials with only the job change differing: matched means the same estate at the plan’s end with every year funded. The salary answer assumes every dollar of the raise over the utility-path pay is saved; the DC answer is the combined employee-plus-employer contribution at the same pay, modelled as registered savings. Because the deck’s monthly dials are flat from today while a raise or a DC plan only contributes from the change year, the panel converts those later streams into the smaller flat-from-today amount with the same value at retirement before writing anything onto the dials, so the year-by-year path can differ slightly even though the destination matches. Answers snap to the dials’ steps and ranges; where a dial caps out the note says so and the ghost shows the honest shortfall. All of it is pre-tax, like the rest of the deck.
Contributions hold their real value (they are assumed to rise with inflation). The car loan is modelled in nominal dollars (a short loan, so the real-dollar drift is small): balance, rate, payment and the extra-payments dial set the payoff date, and the freed contract payment redirects from there if the toggle says so; the lump-sum dollars simply return to being spare savings. The loan's facts are confirmed as of 2026-07-17: $25,000 remaining at 4.29%, $274 every two weeks, plus about $2,000 in extra payments every few months. The lump-sum habit is what brings the October 2028 payoff goal within reach; on the contract payment alone the loan runs to about 2030.
Withdrawal order in retirement: forced RRIF minimums from age 71 first (any excess above the year's need is reinvested in the non-registered sleeve), then RRSP or RRIF, then non-registered and cash, then TFSA last. Income tax on withdrawals is not modelled; the income target should be read as a gross target. A full tax-by-tax projection is what the advisory engagement itself produces.
Why the TFSA band can sit above the RRSP band: both sleeves grow at the same portfolio return, and neither is shown net of tax, so the gap is pure cash flow. The $33,000 redeploy lands in the TFSA on day one, and in retirement the drawdown spends the RRIF first and touches the TFSA last, so the TFSA keeps compounding while the RRIF empties.
The international property purchase is funded from TFSA first, then non-registered, then cash. The pension cannot help before age 55, which is exactly why the property fund lives in the liquid sleeves.
The FHSA lane (the redirect's third destination) banks the freed car payment up to the account's caps of $8,000 a year and $40,000 lifetime; any overflow spills into the TFSA. An FHSA pays out tax-free only toward a qualifying Canadian first home, and the property goal on this file is international, so the lane is played for its other ending: contributions are deductible like RRSP contributions, and the balance rolls tax-free into the RRSP at the 15-year participation limit or at retirement, whichever comes first, using no RRSP room. Whether the client can open an FHSA at all is now the live question: the client lives in a home the partner owns, and the first-time-home-buyer test counts a home owned by a spouse or common-law partner. Being on the mortgage without being on title does not disqualify on its own (the test is ownership, not debt), so the answer turns on the couple's common-law status when the account would be opened. Until that is settled the redirect defaults to the RRSP.
CPP uses the client's own projected figure (59.2% of the enhanced-CPP maximum at 65) and adjusts 0.6% per month for early starts and 0.7% per month for late starts; OAS adjusts 0.6% per month for deferral. Each year with no pay cheque between retirement and CPP start is a zero-contribution year that erodes the entitlement by 0.56%, because the CPP dropout provisions only absorb so much: retiring at 57 and starting CPP at 65 turns 59.2% of maximum into 56.5%, which matches professional planning software to the dollar. Years past 65 never erode. RRSP and TFSA contribution room is assumed available, per the file's CRA checks.
The milestone bars are a balance sheet, not the engine: the property band is display-only, growing at its own dial (default 0% real) and never funding the drawdown; the car loan hangs below zero at its nominal schedule balance; the DB pension is excluded because it is income, not spendable capital. The future-dollars switch is display-only too: every engine number stays in today's dollars and the display multiplies by inflation, so a $70,000 target reads about $121,000 at 58 and $142,000 at 65 on the default dials.
Estimates for education, not advice. Insurance, tax and investment outcomes depend on your own facts. Maple Groove Financial · Calgary, Alberta.