Net worth by age in Canada

Two answers, deliberately. The median Canadian family unit — the household in the exact middle — had a net worth of $519,700 in 2023; the average was $995,900, nearly double, because a small number of very wealthy families drag the mean upward (and StatCan notes its survey still under-counts the very top). When you compare yourself, use the median — the average describes almost nobody.

“Good” is doing better than the plan you need, not the neighbours you have — but for calibration, the 2023 medians for all family units: $159k under 35, $409k at 35–44, $676k at 45–54, $873k at 55–64, $739k at 65+. The honest footnotes: those figures include home equity and employer pensions (most people forget both when self-assessing), and household type swamps age — the median couple at 55–64 holds $1.26M while the median unattached person the same age holds $395k.

Everything sellable minus everything owed: StatCan defines it as what families “would have if they sold all of their assets and paid off all of their debts.” It includes your principal residence and employer pension plans (valued on a termination basis) — but excludes CPP, QPP and OAS entitlements, which are income rights, not assets. To compare like with like, run our net worth calculator including your home and any pension commuted value.

It’s the most dramatic split StatCan publishes: at 55–64, the median family that owns a home and has an employer pension holds ~$1.4 million; the median renter without a pension holds $11,900 — a hundred-fold gap. Causation runs both ways (wealthier people buy homes; forced mortgage paydown also builds wealth), and the FIRE-relevant warning is the reverse one: a homeowner's headline number can be mostly equity that can't fund retirement without selling. Renters who invest the difference aggressively can be in far better drawdown shape than the medians suggest.

The SFS runs every 3–4 years; 2023 (released October 29, 2024) is the newest cycle as of June 11, 2026. StatCan does publish a fresher quarterly series — the Distributions of Household Economic Accounts (Q4 2025, released April 13, 2026) — but it's a modelled product that reports averages only, so we show it separately and never mix the two. By the DHEA's reckoning the average household held $1,078,642 in Q4 2025.

As trivia with one useful edge: locating yourself on the distribution tells you how unusual your plan needs to be. A 40-year-old aiming to retire at 50 isn't competing with the $409k median — they need an investable portfolio near their FIRE number, which is a different axis entirely (the medians here lean heavily on home equity). Track your own number with the calculator, mind the investable split, and let the FIRE guide set the target that actually matters.