[senecaso]

you would retire on RRSP + CPP (very small) + whatever you currently have in your 401k + whatever you have in retirement savings from any other country(ies) you have lived in.

That said, depending on your age, with a max RRSP contribution of 27k, if you can contribute the max for 20yrs, you should have enough to retire on RRSP alone, assuming reasonable retirement living.

Assuming you contribute $27230/yr for 20yrs, and manage to get 5% growth on that account each year, you would end up with about $1m in the RRSP. It all depends on how much time you have to grow the account I guess.

[theluketaylor]

One thing to keep in mind is RRSP is a tax shelter at time of contribution. You avoid paying income tax now, but you still need to pay income tax on withdrawals during retirement. For pretty much everyone their "salary" will be lower in retirement since things like houses are paid off and expenses are just lower, so you'll pay a lower marginal rate overall (plus you get the income tax back so you have more capital to build from)

Another thread pointed out it's a max contribution of 18% of last year's income (which is then limited to 27k), so you need to make around $150k CDN to make the max contribution.

TFSA works the other way. It's a tax shelter for growth. You've already paid income tax on the capital, but don't pay any tax on gains you manage to make when you withdraw. If you withdraw below the contribution limit you can top it back off as well, so a TFSA is a good place to save things like house and car down payments (though it's even better if you have enough money to just leave it alone).