By age 45, the Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) room alone can reach $109,000 for Canadians who have been eligible since the account launched.
That is a powerful number. It can also feel intimidating if your own TFSA and Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) balances do not look anywhere close to that. The good news is that contribution room is not the same thing as a retirement scorecard. It is an opportunity.
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Building growth
The Canada Revenue Agency says the TFSA dollar limit for 2026 is $7,000, and annual TFSA limits since 2009 now add up to $109,000 for someone who has been eligible the whole time. TFSA withdrawals are also added back to contribution room the following year, which makes the account flexible for long-term investors.
The RRSP works differently. Instead of one fixed lifetime amount, your RRSP room is tied mainly to earned income. The CRA lists the 2026 RRSP dollar limit at $33,810, though your personal limit can be lower if your income or pension adjustment reduces the room.
So what does a typical 45-year-old actually have saved? The cleanest public benchmark is not perfect, but it is useful. CRA data shows that TFSA holders aged 45 to 49 had an average TFSA fair market value of $24,150 in the 2023 contribution year. For ages 50 to 54, that average rose to $30,190. RRSP data points to a larger number. Fidelity, using Statistics Canada data, lists median RRSP-related savings of $72,600 for Canadians aged 45 to 54. For ages 35 to 44, the median was $33,000.
That means a reasonable age-45 benchmark may be roughly $25,000 in TFSA assets and something moving toward $70,000 in RRSP-related savings. Contribution data tells the same story from another angle. In 2023, Canadians aged 45 to 54 who contributed to an RRSP made a median contribution of $4,330. TFSA contributors in the same age group made a median contribution of $5,200.
The lesson is not that every 45-year-old should already be wealthy, but that the next 20 years still matter. That is where stock selection matters.
BN
If your goal is to build long-term TFSA and RRSP wealth, you do not need a stock that pays the biggest dividend today. You need a company that can compound capital across market cycles.
Brookfield (TSX: BN) is one TSX stock that fits that job.
BN is a global capital allocator with businesses across asset management, infrastructure, renewable power, real estate, credit, insurance, and private equity. That gives investors exposure to the kind of real assets and financial platforms that can benefit from inflation, infrastructure spending, private credit growth, energy transition, and long-term institutional capital flows.
In the first quarter of 2026, BN reported distributable earnings of $1.6 billion. Fee-bearing capital reached $614 billion, and the company ended the quarter with $188 billion of deployable capital. BN also said it repurchased $470 million of BN Class A shares year to date at an average price of $41, which management said was about a 40% discount to its own view of intrinsic value at quarter end.
Looking ahead
BN stock is not a high-income stock at a 0.65% yield. So the appeal is long-term capital growth rather than passive income today. The risk is complexity. BN owns many different businesses, and parts of its portfolio can be sensitive to interest rates, real estate values, financing markets, and private asset valuations. Results can also be lumpy when asset sales slow.
Still, that complexity is also part of the opportunity. BN has spent decades building a platform designed to buy, manage, finance, and sell assets across cycles. For a 45-year-old looking at TFSA and RRSP benchmarks, the takeaway is not to panic over the gap. It is to use the remaining years wisely.
Bottom line
Contribution room is only useful if the money gets invested well. BN stock gives long-term investors a way to aim for compounding across real assets, private markets, infrastructure, and global capital flows while retirement is still far enough away for patience to pay off.
