It has been 17 years since the tax-free savings account (TFSA) was rolled out in 2009, and by all accounts, the program has been a success. The average Canadian has deposited tens of thousands into his/her TFSA over the years and made substantial investment gains in the process.
So, there’s no doubt that TFSAs are popular. The question is whether they are making a real contribution to Canadians’ retirement savings. While the TFSA is widely used, it is still less popular than the RRSP, which often has employer-matching plans and other such institutional supports attached to it. The TFSA isn’t quite there yet. Still, the TFSA is a popular account for making investments, especially short-term trades.
So, it’s a natural thing to wonder how your TFSA compares to that of the average Canadian your age. If you’re 50 years old, then you’ve had some time to grow and compound your account. What’s your scorecard?
While your “position relative to the averages” is not something that determines how much you’ll actually need to retire, it is something you can ask on your way to figuring that out. With that in mind, here’s my best estimate of what the average Canadian has in his/her TFSA at age 50.
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How to gauge what the average Canadian has in TFSAs
The easiest way to estimate what the average Canadian has in TFSAs at age 50 is to go off of Statistics Canada (StatCan) data. StatCan publishes lists of TFSA contributions and balances for the most recent year it has on file. Currently, that year is 2023. While StatCan doesn’t give exact TFSA estimates for every possible age, it does give estimates for age brackets. Using these tables, we can put together a range of estimates for adjacent age groups and come up with an estimate based on that.
What the average 50-year-old Canadian had in a TFSA in 2023
According to the most recent StatCan data, the average Canadian had something like $24,000–$27,000 in his/her TFSA in 2023. Here’s how I arrived at that.
According to StatCan’s 2025 data dump, the average TFSA balance in the 45 to 49 age range was $23,818, while the average for the 50–54 age range was $29,371. While we can’t assume that the annual amounts grow perfectly linearly and just take the exact middle value as the average, we can be reasonably confident that the average TFSA balance at age 50 was between $25,000 and $28,000 in 2023.
Investing in your TFSA
If you’re wondering how to increase your TFSA balance, I have one suggestion for you:
Take a look into index funds.
Take a fund like the Vanguard FTSE Canadian High Dividend Yield Index ETF (TSX: VDY). It’s a Canadian dividend-themed index fund built on high-yield dividend stocks. It tracks an index provided by FTSE, a reputable index publisher. It has 61 stocks, which is a reasonable amount of diversification (“not putting all your eggs in one basket”). Finally, it has a 16.5 P/E ratio and a 2.3 price-to-book ratio, indicating it’s a decent value. Overall, putting your money into a fund like VDY probably makes a lot more sense than chasing individual “hot” stocks in your TFSA.
