Converting Your RRSP to a RRIF: Timing, Age 71, and Using a Younger Spouse’s Age
The retirement pillar is how much you need to retire. The sequence around the accounts is the seven-step plan. Project the balances, with CPP and OAS amounts you type yourself, in the Canadian retirement calculator. This page is the legal deadline and the three doors, not the spending target.
- CRA’s options page, page details 2025-01-03, lists withdraw, RRIF, or annuity in the year you turn 71. Contribution room for the RRSP ends on December 31 of that year.
- The issuer does not withhold on a direct transfer to a RRIF or on an annuity purchase. You are taxed later, when RRIF or annuity payments are paid to you.
- The RRIF minimum starts the year after the RRIF is opened, not in the opening year. The factor can use a spouse’s or common-law partner’s age if you elect it.
- Once a RRIF is established, CRA says no more contributions can be made to it. New savings stay in an RRSP, a TFSA, or a non-registered account.
- An advanced life deferred annuity is a separate contract that can start as late as the year you turn 85, inside a dollar limit and a 25% limit. It is not a way to skip the age-71 choice on the rest of the RRSP.
What has to happen in the year you turn 71?
CRA’s “options for your own RRSPs” page is short on purpose. In the year you turn 71 you choose withdraw, transfer to a RRIF, or buy an annuity. Withdrawing means the issuer withholds tax. The page points at the withdrawals guidance for the rates. Those rates are not copied here, because that page was not the one reviewed for the percentages. Transferring the property directly to a RRIF, or using it to buy an annuity, does not trigger that withholding. The tax shows up when you are paid. RRIF payments go on the return for the year you receive them.
You can convert part of an RRSP and leave the rest until later in that year, as long as every dollar has gone through one of the three doors by the end of the year you turn 71. The page does not describe a grace period into the next January. December 31 is the contribution deadline on the parent page, and the choice of what the plan becomes sits in that same year. If you have more than one RRSP, the choice is available on each plan. A spouse’s RRSP is a different annuitant. The age that matters for that plan is the annuitant’s age, which the spousal page of the same guide is for. Attribution on a spousal plan is the spousal RRSP guide, not a sentence to invent here.
Why convert before 71?
Nothing on the age-71 page requires you to keep the RRSP until then. People convert earlier because they want a payment stream, because a RRIF payment at 65 can be eligible pension income, or because they want the investments in a RRIF the carrier already knows how to pay from. People wait because an RRSP has no annual minimum and a RRIF does, starting the next year. The minimum table is RRIF minimum withdrawals. If you are 64 and you do not need the income, opening a RRIF in December creates a minimum the following year, at age 65, using 1 ÷ (90 − 65), which is 4%. That may be exactly the payment you wanted for the pension credit. It may also be income you did not need. Write the year down before you sign the transfer.
Contributions to the RRSP stop December 31, 2026. A direct transfer to a RRIF that month is not withheld. There is no RRIF minimum in 2026, because the minimum starts the year after the plan is opened. In 2027 the carrier uses the age at the start of 2027. If you elect your own age, you are 72 at the start of that year if your birthday fell in 2026, and the “all other RRIFs” factor at 72 is 0.0540. If you elect your spouse, who is 65 at the start of 2027, the factor is 1/25, or 0.04, instead. On a $300,000 value, those two floors are $16,200 and $12,000. Both products are arithmetic on the factors in the minimum article. Neither is the amount you must spend. You can withdraw more.
Can you use a younger spouse’s age?
Yes. CRA’s receiving-income page says the carrier calculates the minimum from your age at the beginning of each year, and that you can elect to have the payment based on your spouse’s or common-law partner’s age. The election does not move the income onto their return. It only changes the factor. To put income on their return you use pension income splitting, if the payment qualifies, which is a different form and generally wants you to be 65. The two are easy to confuse because both mention a spouse. One shrinks the forced withdrawal. The other allocates up to half of eligible pension income. Do both only if both are actually useful. Details of the allocation are pension income splitting.
CRA’s setup page says that once the RRIF is established, there can be no more contributions to the plan, and the plan is not terminated except through death. A transfer in from an RRSP is not a contribution of new money. If you are still working at 71, the deduction for a contribution in that year has a deadline of December 31, not the usual 60 days into the next year. The contribution-limit article is the limits table. The account, before this deadline, is the RRSP playbook.
What about an annuity, or an ALDA, instead of a RRIF?
The annuity door at 71 is a purchase from the RRSP, not a withdrawal, so the issuer does not withhold on the purchase itself. You then have whatever payment the contract pays, for life or for the guarantee the contract actually has. This page does not quote a monthly income per $100,000, because no Canada.ca page reviewed on October 3, 2026 published a national annuity rate. The product comparison is annuities in Canada.
An advanced life deferred annuity is a further contract, not a fourth box on the age-71 page that lets the whole RRSP sit untouched until 85. CRA says an ALDA is a life annuity, payments must start before the end of the year you turn 85, a licensed provider has to issue it, and transfers are limited. The lifetime ALDA dollar limit on the CRA limits table is $180,000 for 2026. A separate 25% limit applies to the plan the money comes from. Excess left in the contract is taxed at 1% a month. Moving some of a RRIF or RRSP into an ALDA does not erase the age-71 choice for the balance that stays behind.
What if a Home Buyers’ Plan or Lifelong Learning Plan is still open?
The age-71 hub links to HBP repayment when the participant reaches 71, and to the LLP if you participated. The repayment mechanics were not on the options page reviewed here, so this article does not state a dollar of income inclusion or a final-year repayment. If either plan is still outstanding in the year you turn 71, open those CRA pages before you convert, because an unpaid balance can become income in a year you are also closing the RRSP. That is a different problem from the RRIF minimum.
Frequently asked questions
Can I convert the RRSP the year before I turn 71?
Yes. The age-71 rule is a deadline, not a start date. Convert earlier if you want RRIF payments, including payments that can qualify as pension income at 65. Wait if you want to avoid a minimum you do not need. The first minimum is the calendar year after the opening year, at the age you have at the start of that year.
Does a transfer to a RRIF use contribution room?
No. It is a transfer of property already inside a registered plan. CRA says the issuer does not withhold on that direct transfer. New contributions are a different event, and they have to land in the RRSP by December 31 of the year you turn 71. You cannot contribute new money to the RRIF after it exists.
If I elect my spouse’s age, is the income theirs?
No. The election changes the minimum factor. The annuitant is still the person who receives the payment and reports it, unless you also split eligible pension income on Form T1032. A younger spouse who is under 65 does not turn your RRIF payment into their pension income by being the age on the factor.
What happens if I do nothing?
The options page does not describe a comfortable default. It says you have to choose withdraw, RRIF, or annuity. A collapsed plan that is simply paid out is the withdrawal door, with withholding and with the whole amount in income. That is the outcome to avoid by signing the transfer, not a strategy.
Can I have a RRIF and an RRSP in the same year?
Yes, before the end of the year you turn 71. After that, the RRSP has to have been withdrawn, transferred, or annuitized. You can hold more than one RRIF. CRA also says you can hold a self-directed RRIF, with the same general investment rules as a self-directed RRSP. The carrier still calculates one minimum per account.
Does the retirement calculator assume I converted?
No. It grows an RRSP balance and withdraws what the spending gap requires. It does not apply the RRIF factor and it does not know your 71st birthday. If you will be past 71, check that the withdrawal the tool needs is at least the minimum on the value you expect. If it is not, the tool is understating taxable income.
Sources
- CRA: RRSP options when you turn 71, page details 2026-01-29
- CRA: options for your own RRSPs, page details 2025-01-03
- CRA: receiving income from a RRIF
- CRA: setting up a RRIF
- CRA: MP, RRSP, ALDA, TFSA limits and the YMPE
The deadline is a date. The tax is the door you pick.
A withdrawal, a RRIF, and an annuity are taxed on different calendars. The 2026 tax guide is the return side of that choice.
Get the 2026 Tax Guide — $49 CAD
