Max Value, Max Spend, or Set Value: Choosing the Retirement Strategy That Fits Your Life

Most Canadians are told there’s a “right” way to retire.

Withdraw this account first. Delay CPP. Spend down your RRSP. Preserve your TFSA. Leave the house to the kids.

But retirement isn’t a formula. It’s personal.

Some people want to maximize what they leave behind. Others want to maximize experiences while they’re healthy enough to enjoy them. And many want a thoughtful balance between the two.

That’s why at Optiml, we don’t start with a rule of thumb. We start with a question: What do you want your money to do?

From there, we optimize everything around that answer.

Max Value: For the Builder

There’s a certain kind of peace that comes from knowing your wealth is being handled efficiently.

Max Value is built for Canadians who want to maintain their lifestyle, but also ensure they’re not quietly losing hundreds of thousands of dollars to unnecessary taxes over time.

Imagine David and Maria, both in their late 50s. They’ve built solid savings across RRSPs, TFSAs, and non-registered accounts. David owns a small corporation. They want to retire in a few years, keep living comfortably, and leave something meaningful to their children.

What they don’t want is a surprise tax bill at death. They don’t want to trigger OAS clawbacks unnecessarily. They don’t want to withdraw from the wrong account at the wrong time and slowly erode their estate.

Max Value keeps their lifestyle steady. It simply optimizes the order and timing of withdrawals, contributions, and government benefits so that over 20 or 30 years, more of their money stays in their hands — or in their family’s hands.

Personally, this is my favourite strategy. Not because it’s conservative, but because it’s efficient. In Canada, taxes are often the single largest expense retirees face. Small inefficiencies, repeated year after year, compound dramatically.

Max Value is about eliminating that drag.

Max Spend: For the Enjoyer

Then there’s Susan.

Susan is 64, recently retired, healthy, and independent. She has no children and no strong desire to leave behind a large estate. What she does have is a list of places she wants to see and experiences she’s waited decades for.

Her fear isn’t running out of money. Her fear is reaching 85 and wishing she had lived more at 65.

Max Spend is designed exactly for that mindset.

Instead of focusing on maximizing what’s left at the end, this strategy looks at a defined window of time — perhaps her 60s and early 70s — and asks: how much more could she safely spend during these years while still ensuring she never runs out of money?

It may mean drawing down certain accounts earlier. It may mean adjusting when CPP is taken. It may mean accepting that the goal isn’t to die with millions untouched.

The result? More travel. More experiences. More intentional enjoyment — without recklessness.

Max Spend isn’t about being irresponsible. It’s about aligning your money with your life while you’re living it.

Set Value: For the Balancer

Now consider Raj and Anita.

They want to travel. They want to help their children. They want to enjoy retirement. But they also have a number in mind — a legacy goal they feel strongly about. Perhaps it’s leaving $750,000 to their family. Perhaps it’s ensuring the cottage stays in the family without creating a tax burden.

They don’t want to guess whether it will happen. They want to know.

Set Value allows them to define that target estate amount first. Then everything else is optimized around it.

They can increase spending in their early retirement years, but always within guardrails that ensure their legacy goal is met. It’s not about maximizing the estate at all costs. And it’s not about spending without structure.

It’s about clarity.

For many Canadians, this is the sweet spot — confidence that both life today and legacy tomorrow are accounted for.

The Real Question Isn’t Which Strategy Is Best — It’s Which One Reflects You

None of these strategies are right or wrong.

The mistake isn’t choosing Max Value, Max Spend, or Set Value.

The mistake is drifting into retirement without choosing at all — defaulting into generic advice, withdrawing accounts in whatever order feels logical, and reacting to taxes year by year instead of planning decades ahead.

Over a 25- or 30-year retirement, those small decisions compound. The order you draw from accounts. When you take CPP. How you manage OAS. How corporate investments or real estate factor in.

The difference between “good enough” and optimized can be substantial.

At Optiml, we don’t tell you what to value.

You decide whether you want to build, enjoy, or balance.

We make sure the path you choose is mathematically optimized across every account you own — so your retirement isn’t built on rules of thumb, but on intention.

Because retirement isn’t just about how much you’ve saved.

It’s about how intelligently you use it.