A reader emailed us last week asking why we built a Canadian retirement planner when so many US tools already exist. The short answer: those tools assume US tax law. The longer answer is that the gap is not the user interface, it is that every line of the planner assumes the wrong country.
The leading US retirement-planning tools are good products. The category sets the upper bar on UX, and that is the bar we have to meet. But here are six places where the math diverges for a Canadian household.
1. Tax tables
US tools run the federal brackets plus a fifty-state overlay. Roth IRA versus Traditional IRA. Standard versus itemized deduction. The Canadian version has a federal table and thirteen provincial or territorial overlays, every one of which behaves differently around pension-income splitting and the age credit. RRSP, TFSA, FHSA, LIRA, and RRIF do not have one-to-one US equivalents.
2. Retirement benefits
US tools model Social Security at age 62 / FRA / 70 with the US multipliers. Medicare premiums. IRMAA. We model CPP at any age between 60 and 70, with the Canadian multipliers (a 0.6% reduction per month before 65, a 0.7% increase per month after). OAS deferral to 70 adds 0.6% per month. The OAS Recovery Tax bites at $90,997 in 2026. None of that has a US equivalent.
3. Account wrappers
A 401(k) is not an RRSP. The contribution limits, the matching mechanics, the withdrawal rules, the tax treatment on death — all different. A Roth IRA is not a TFSA, an HSA is not an FHSA, a 529 is not a RESP. You cannot use the US wrapper math and quietly relabel the columns.
4. Withdrawal mandates
The US has the RMD: required minimum distribution starting at age 73 under recent legislation. Canada has the RRIF minimum schedule on CRA's Schedule 7. The factors are different, the start age is different (71 in Canada), and the spousal-age election is something US tools do not need to model.
5. Estate transfer
US federal estate tax exemption is around $13.6 million in 2025. Most US households never hit it. The Canadian death-tax mechanics are completely different: deemed disposition at death on non-registered + RRSP / RRIF balances, spousal rollover available, principal-residence exemption, probate fees by province (Ontario 1.5% over $50k, BC 1.4%, Alberta flat-fee, Quebec notarial wills bypass probate). The estate clerk on our Bureau handles all of that. US tools have no reason to.
6. Currency framing
US tools are USD-native. Even when one shows a CAD number, you are mentally translating. We are CAD-native. Numbers in tabular Plex Mono, never converted. The dollar sign is the same character; the assumption underneath it is not.
So why not just localise an existing US tool?
Because the assumptions are baked in at the math layer, not the presentation layer. You cannot bolt CRA tables onto a planner whose internal model is the Internal Revenue Code. We are not saying US tools should localise; their business is the US market and they are good at it. We are saying a Canadian household deserves a planner built from the right tables, by people who actually do their own taxes in Canadian dollars.
What we built instead
A dashboard whose internal model is the CRA. A small newsroom of nine AI agents who answer in plain Canadian. Forty-plus calculators sized for FHSA, RESP + CESG match, mortgage stress test, RRIF minimum, three-bucket drawdown. All of it lives here.