Six Retirement Decisions People Often Regret Not Addressing Before 70
The first years of retirement often feel more flexible than expected. Work stops, the calendar opens up, and attention naturally shifts toward travel, family, home projects, and settling into a different rhythm of life. In that transition, retirement income planning can slip into the background, especially when nothing appears to be going wrong.
That is often where later regret begins. For many Canadians, the issue is not one dramatic mistake. It is the quiet loss of flexibility that happens when the years before 70 are treated as a waiting period rather than a planning window. CPP timing, RRSP withdrawals, spouse coordination, OAS exposure, and estate details all become harder to shape once more income sources start arriving on their own schedule.
The years before mandatory RRIF conversion can be some of the most useful years in a retirement plan. If you are in that window now, the important question is not whether anything is broken. It is whether the flexibility you still have is being used deliberately.
The pre-70 planning window
Retirement often unfolds in two distinct phases. The first is the period after employment income ends but before age 70 or 71, when CPP may still be deferred, OAS may not have started, and RRSP withdrawals are still largely optional. The second is the period when more income begins arriving automatically through pensions, government benefits, investment income, and required RRIF withdrawals.
That first phase can feel quiet. Taxable income may be temporarily low. Required withdrawals have not started. If spending can be covered from cash, a non-registered account, or other available assets, there may seem to be no reason to create taxable income on purpose.
That instinct is understandable. Someone who spent decades treating the RRSP as long-term money will naturally hesitate to draw from it early. But retirement changes the planning problem. The question is no longer only how to preserve the account. It is how to manage the income that account will eventually produce.
Take a hypothetical couple such as Dean and Angela. Dean is 63, Angela is 61, Dean has just retired, Angela still works part-time, and together they hold roughly $1.2 million in RRSPs, with TFSAs that are mostly full and pensions not yet fully active. Their plan may look perfectly fine today. That is exactly why the pre-70 window is easy to overlook. If they do nothing for several years, the later income stack begins to build on its own.
The useful planning question is not, Is anything wrong right now? It is whether today’s lower-income years are creating room that will not exist later.
CPP is not a standalone decision
CPP timing is often treated as an isolated choice. Some people start it when they retire because that feels natural. Others delay to 70 because the larger payment is attractive and the deferral math is well known. Both instincts can be reasonable.
Starting CPP earlier can reduce pressure on the portfolio in the first years of retirement. Delaying it can create a larger inflation-linked benefit later, which may be valuable for someone in good health with a long expected retirement. But the choice does not live on its own. CPP is also an income sequencing decision.
A larger CPP payment later is still taxable income. If it arrives at the same time as pension income, OAS, investment income, and rising RRIF withdrawals, the result may be less attractive than the standalone CPP calculation suggested.
In Dean and Angela’s case, Dean may prefer to delay CPP to 70. That could be entirely appropriate. But if they also avoid RRSP withdrawals through their sixties, his higher CPP could begin just as pension income is active, OAS is in the picture, and RRIF minimums are approaching. The issue would not be that CPP deferral was wrong. It would be that the decision was made without considering what would fill the gap before 70 and what total taxable income would look like afterward.
For some households, delaying CPP while drawing more from registered assets earlier works well. For others, starting CPP sooner may fit better because of health, cash flow, spouse differences, or portfolio pressure. The key point is that CPP timing should be tested against the rest of the household plan, not solved in isolation.
Leaving the RRSP untouched too long
This is one of the most common areas of regret because the default behaviour feels so disciplined. If you do not need the RRSP money, leaving it alone can feel conservative and sensible. During the accumulation years, that instinct often served people well.
In retirement, the same instinct can create a different problem. By December 31 of the year you turn 71, the RRSP must be converted to a RRIF, used to purchase an annuity, or withdrawn. Once the RRIF is in place, minimum withdrawals begin whether you need the income or not.
The minimum percentages do not look especially large at first, but they matter because they apply to the account balance. At age 71, the prescribed RRIF minimum rate is 5.28%. At 75, it is 5.82%. At 80, it is 6.82%.
If Dean and Angela still had roughly $1.2 million in registered assets when RRIF minimums began, a withdrawal rate just above five percent would produce more than $63,000 of taxable income in a year before adding CPP, OAS, pensions, or taxable investment income. That is the part many people do not fully appreciate while the account still feels optional.
The planning implication is not that everyone should aggressively drain their RRSP in their early sixties. Replacing one rule of thumb with another is not good planning. The question is whether measured withdrawals during lower-income years could smooth taxable income over time and reduce pressure later.
That may mean drawing enough to use a lower tax bracket. It may mean funding spending from the RRSP instead of relying entirely on cash or non-registered assets first. It may mean accepting tax today because it reduces a larger and less flexible tax issue later.
An early RRSP withdrawal is not automatically a sign that the plan is under stress. In the right context, it is a planning lever. The more useful principle is do not assume untouched means optimized.
Early spending can set the wrong baseline
Another common regret is not overspending exactly, but letting a spending pattern become permanent before the retirement income structure has been tested properly.
The first years of retirement can feel unusually comfortable. There may be cash available. Non-registered assets may be easy to access. CPP and OAS may not have started. RRIF minimums are not yet forcing taxable income. After a long career, it is natural to travel more, take on home projects, help adult children, replace a vehicle, or spend more time at the cottage.
None of that is inherently a problem. Retirement is meant to be lived. The issue is that early spending can establish a lifestyle baseline before the long-term tax picture is visible.
If spending is being supported by cash, TFSA withdrawals, or non-registered principal, taxable income may appear modest even while actual spending is relatively high. Later, when more of that cash flow must come from RRIF withdrawals, pensions, CPP, or realized capital gains, the same lifestyle may require more gross income than expected to support it after tax.
That is when people can feel unexpectedly constrained. The spending level seemed manageable in the early years, but later tax pressure, healthcare costs, housing changes, or the loss of one spouse make the same pattern harder to sustain.
The better approach is to treat early retirement spending as a draft rather than a permanent setting. If the next several years include larger travel budgets, gifts to children, or renovations, those choices should be tested against the plan after 71 and under a survivor scenario. The practical question is not just whether this year’s spending works. It is whether the pattern still works once income becomes less flexible.
Couples need a household plan
Many retirement decisions are made one spouse at a time even though the consequences show up at the household level. That is understandable. RRSPs are individually owned, pensions differ, retirement dates rarely line up neatly, and each spouse has their own CPP decision.
The problem is that individually reasonable decisions can still produce a lopsided household outcome. One spouse may hold the larger RRSP. The other may have the stronger pension. One may retire earlier while the other continues part-time work. If each decision is made separately, the plan can drift toward uneven taxable income and reduced flexibility.
In a couple like Dean and Angela, much of the retirement income planning may seem to revolve around Dean because he has the larger pension and has already retired. Angela’s part-time income and smaller pension can make it easy to focus on his CPP, his RRSP, and his pension start date. But that can miss what the combined household income will look like across both tax returns.
The issue often becomes sharper later. Uneven RRSP ownership, pension timing, and benefit choices can push too much taxable income toward one spouse. After the first spouse dies, income that was once spread across two returns may compress onto one, often at a time when flexibility is already lower.
Pension splitting can help in some cases, but it is not a complete retirement income strategy. Couples approaching 70 should look at the household as the planning unit: whose registered assets are larger, who should draw first, whether CPP timing should differ, how pensions will start, and what the survivor’s income may look like.
A plan that works neatly for two people does not always work well for one. That is why survivor modelling matters before the optional years are gone.
Taxes, OAS, and estate details do not sort themselves out
The final category of regret is leaving taxes, OAS exposure, and estate housekeeping for later because each item seems manageable on its own. In the early sixties, that can feel reasonable. OAS may not have started. RRIF minimums may still be years away. The will exists. Beneficiary designations were completed at some point. Nothing appears urgent.
But these issues are often being shaped before 70, not after.
Start with OAS. OAS clawback is based on net world income and works with a one-year lag. For 2026 income, the recovery threshold is $95,323. Above that amount, the recovery tax is 15% of each dollar over the threshold. The threshold is indexed, so the number changes over time, but the mechanism remains the same.
The one-year lag matters because a high-income year can reduce OAS later, after the planning opportunity has passed. A larger RRIF withdrawal, pension income, CPP, taxable investment income, rental income, or a realized capital gain may not feel dramatic in isolation, but several of them landing in the same year can create recovery tax after the fact.
That is why OAS clawback is usually not an OAS problem by itself. It is an income-stacking problem.
The same period is often the right time to review estate details. Wills, powers of attorney, beneficiary designations, and account ownership are easier to revisit while health, capacity, and family intentions are clear. This is not just legal housekeeping. These documents affect how assets pass, how a surviving spouse is protected, and whether older paperwork still reflects the household as it exists today.
Consider a hypothetical retiree such as Helen, age 67, widowed, with rental income, a sizeable RRIF, and beneficiary designations that have not been updated since her spouse died. Her issue is not one isolated document. Income planning, survivor reality, and estate instructions are now connected. A beneficiary form completed years ago does not remain appropriate simply because it is still on file.
The practical step is to review these issues before pressure arrives. Look at what future income may stack together before OAS recovery appears, and then review estate documents and account designations against the current family and account structure, not the one that existed a decade earlier.
Use the flexible years deliberately
The point is not that every retiree should make aggressive changes before 70. In many households, the default path feels sensible because it keeps tax low and complexity manageable in the short term. The risk is that passive timing can quietly reduce future options.
Before CPP, OAS, pensions, and RRIF minimums fully stack together, you may still have meaningful control over which income appears, when it appears, and on whose tax return it lands. That window is often where better planning happens.
If you are in this stage now, the question is not which single move is best in the abstract. It is whether your RRSP drawdown, CPP and OAS timing, pension coordination, spending pattern, spouse strategy, and estate details have actually been tested together for your household.
If that is the decision in front of you, we can help model how these pieces interact using your actual numbers, tax position, and household structure. For households approaching or in early retirement, that kind of coordinated planning often matters more than any one product or account decision on its own.