Optiml strategy

Maximize Retirement Spending

Name: Optiml
Availability: OnlineOnly
Rating: 4.9 (30 reviews)
Author: Optiml

Live your best retirement. Spend more, worry less, never run out.

Maximize My Income

Try Optiml Lite free

Optiml

Income over time

Optiml vs. no strategy

With Optiml

Without

What is this strategy?

The Maximize Spending strategy is for people who have saved their whole lives and now want to enjoy it. Instead of the default approach, which often leaves tens of thousands on the table, Optiml calculates the maximum sustainable income you can draw every year, from every account, in the right order. You get more money to spend every year.

What Maximize Spending actually means

Spend it all. Without running out.

This strategy is built around one idea: drawing your investments down to zero by the end of your plan. Not recklessly, but optimally. The goal is to enjoy every dollar you saved, in the most tax-efficient way possible, without spending too much too early or too little too late.

Optiml starts with your base after-tax income needs and then calculates your Surplus Spending on top of that. Say you need $80,000 a year after tax. If your plan can support $110,000, that is a $30,000 surplus every single year that is yours to spend.

You also control when that surplus applies. You may want to spend more in your active early retirement years but expect less need after age 80. Set your Surplus Spending window and Optiml builds your entire withdrawal strategy around it.

This is not about spending recklessly.

It is about building an optimal withdrawal strategy that triggers the least amount of tax, so that every dollar you saved gets to be enjoyed by you.

Base Expenses + Surplus Spending

Age 62

Base Expenses

$78,000

Surplus Spending

+$32,100

Your actual surplus spending depends on your accounts, income needs, age, and goals. Never a template.

The optimizer

Optiml does not follow an order. It tests everything.

There is no preset withdrawal order. Every possible combination of deposits and withdrawals is evaluated against your specific financial plan.

Candidate plan

optimizer

Under the hood

The question is not how much you have. It is how much you can actually spend.

Every retirement plan has a maximum sustainable spending level: the highest after-tax income you can draw without running short before the end of your plan. Finding that number is not straightforward. It depends on your account mix, tax situation, CPP and OAS timing, investment growth, and the specific window of years you want to spend in.

The Optiml optimizer solves for that number directly. Rather than picking a spending amount and checking if it works, the optimizer searches for the highest sustainable surplus, in the most tax-efficient withdrawal sequence possible, across your chosen window.

optimizer · maximize retirement spending

Balance at 90

The objective

The optimizer maximizes your surplus spending within the window you choose, with each year weighted by Optiml's proprietary timing weight:

Maximize: ∑ₜ [ Surplus_t · w_t ]

= year index within the surplus window

Surplus_t

= above-base spending in year t

w_t

= Optiml's proprietary timing weight

proprietary

Optiml has a unique, proprietary way to make sure you spend the most when it matters most to you. It is built into every plan and calibrated to your own accounts and the window you choose.

Left alone, an optimizer would push your spending to the end of your plan. Optiml's proprietary timing keeps your surplus in the years you chose to enjoy it.

age 80 $1,259,400·ages 62–79 $0

Every path must satisfy one principal constraint

Your income from all sources, minus all taxes, living expenses, goals, and deposits, must net to exactly zero each year. No path is accepted that leaves you short of what you need to live.

Income − Taxes − Expenses − Goals − Deposits = 0

Outside your surplus window this constraint holds exactly as written. Inside the window, surplus spending becomes part of the equation. The constraint instead ensures that all remaining funds after taxes, base expenses, goals, and deposits make up surplus spending, and that surplus must be positive:

Income − Taxes − Base Expenses − Goals − Deposits = Surplus ≥ 0

Income

$137,800

Income

$137,800

− Taxes

$23,200

− Base Expenses

$81,200

− Goals

− Deposits

= Surplus

$33,400

balancing…

The Optiml layer

proprietary

The formulas above are the clean version of the problem. Solving them for a real Canadian household, year by year, is where Optiml's proprietary work happens.

calibration

Calibrated to your household

Optiml's proprietary timing weight is calibrated to your own plan, so your spending lands when it matters most to you, never a textbook constant.

tax engine

Every candidate plan, fully taxed

Each plan the optimizer considers runs through Optiml's complete Canadian tax engine: federal and provincial brackets, credits, OAS recovery, and RRIF and LIF rules, every year.

optimizer

Built in-house

The Optiml optimizer is engineered in-house to solve problems with hundreds of interacting decisions reliably, settling on the plan that best meets your goal.

Worth knowing before you choose this strategy

This strategy aims to draw your liquid investments to zero by the end of your plan, but a few situations can leave a residual balance:

Short surplus window. If your spending window ends before the analysis period, and your base income still covers expenses in the remaining years, the excess cash has to go somewhere. Because the constraint above must hold every year, Optiml will deposit that surplus into your accounts rather than let it disappear, which can leave a residual balance at end of plan.

Locked-in accounts. LIF accounts carry maximum annual withdrawal limits set by regulation. If a significant portion of your portfolio is locked in a LIF, Optiml may not be able to fully drain your liquid assets to zero by the final year, regardless of the strategy chosen.

If leaving a meaningful amount for your beneficiaries matters to you, the Set Your Estate Target strategy targets a specific estate balance while still delivering strong spending power throughout retirement.

The result is a precise, year-by-year withdrawal plan: the maximum surplus amount your plan can support, across the exact window you chose, with full account-level detail on every dollar drawn.