Christopher Liew: Common financial regrets of retirees, and how to avoid them

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Christopher Liew is a CFP®, CFA Charterholder and former financial advisor. He writes personal finance tips for thousands of daily Canadian readers at Blueprint Financial.

I talk to a lot of people who are either retired or close to it, and the same thing comes up again and again: it isn’t the big market crashes they regret. It’s the small, quiet decisions, the ones that felt fine at the time but quietly cost them later. The good news is that most of these regrets are completely avoidable if you see them coming.

Below, I’ll walk through 10 of the most common financial regrets I hear from Canadian retirees, and what you can do now to make sure they don’t become yours.

1. They didn’t save enough during their peak earning years

This is the regret almost everyone shares to some degree. Your 40s and 50s are usually your highest-earning, lowest-cost years, once the mortgage is manageable and the kids are older, and that window closes faster than people expect.

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Too many let lifestyle creep swallow every raise instead of banking it. Nudging your savings rate up even just a few per cent during those peak years can mean a dramatically different retirement on the other side.

2. They relied too much on CPP and OAS

Here’s the thing: these programs were never designed to fully fund your lifestyle. CPP was built to replace only about a quarter of your average working income, growing toward a third under the recent enhancement. That’s it.

If you went into retirement assuming the government cheques would carry you, you’re in for a surprise. The retirees who feel comfortable are the ones who treated CPP and OAS as a floor, not the whole house.

3. They didn’t start investing early enough

Money left sitting in a savings account feels safe, but it barely grows, and the years you skip investing are exactly the ones compounding would have rewarded most.

A dollar invested in your 30s does far more heavy lifting than a dollar invested in your 50s, and you can’t buy that time back. If you’re younger and reading this, start now, even if it’s small.

4. They didn’t plan for a long enough retirement

Statistics Canada figures show a 65-year-old today can expect to live roughly another 20 years on average, and plenty of Canadians sail well past 90.

If your plan only stretches to your early 80s, that could be a problem. I’d rather you plan to age 95 than plan to 82 and come up short.

5. They walked into retirement still carrying debt

A mortgage or a line of credit doesn’t disappear when your paycheque does. I’ve watched retirees burn through savings just to service debt that could have been knocked out a few years earlier.

This one stings a lot because it’s so fixable. If you’re still working, throwing extra at high-interest debt now is one of the best returns you’ll ever get.

6. They had no plan for which accounts to draw down first

The order you pull money from — RRSP, TFSA, or non-registered — can change your lifetime tax bill by tens of thousands of dollars. Most people just wing it.

The wrong sequence can push you into a higher bracket or trigger benefit clawbacks you never saw coming. I broke down the most common money decisions Canadians end up regretting, including this one, in a recent Blueprint Financial video if you want to go deeper.

7. They got blindsided by the OAS clawback

This one catches people every year. Once your net income tops $95,323, the Canada Revenue Agency starts clawing back 15 cents of every extra dollar of OAS.

A big RRIF withdrawal, a property sale, or even strong investment income can quietly push you over. The fix is planning your income years in advance, not in the moment. If you’re turning 65 soon, it’s worth knowing how these credits and benefits change.

8. They bankrolled their adult kids before securing themselves

I get it, you want to help your kids with a down payment or a wedding. But too many retirees gave generously and then found themselves stretched thin a decade later.

You can’t get a loan for retirement the way your kids can get a mortgage. Secure your own plan first, then help where you can. It’s not selfish, it’s the opposite.

9. They left TFSA room on the table

The TFSA is one of the most powerful tools we have in Canada, and it’s wildly underused. Withdrawals are completely tax-free and, crucially, they don’t count toward the OAS clawback.

Retirees who built up their TFSA have a tax-free lever to pull whenever they need cash, without any nasty side effects. If you’ve got unused room, filling it should be near the top of your list.

10. They waited too long to make a plan

The single biggest regret? Not sitting down with a real plan until retirement was already here. By then, a lot of the best moves, delaying CPP, managing your tax brackets, topping up your TFSA, are off the table or far less effective.

If you’re feeling behind, don’t panic, but don’t wait either. There’s almost always something you can still do to improve your position.

Final thoughts

None of these regrets comes from being reckless. They come from being busy, optimistic, or simply not knowing what to look for. The retirees who feel genuinely secure aren’t the ones who earned the most, they’re the ones who planned with intention. If even one of these made you pause, that’s a good thing, because you’ve still got time to act on it.