FHSA Calculator (2026)

What an FHSA is, and who it suits

The First Home Savings Account is a registered account introduced in Canada's 2022 federal budget and available since April 1, 2023 (see our methodology). It pairs RRSP-style tax deductions on contributions with TFSA-style tax-free growth, and your withdrawals are tax-free when you use the money to buy your first qualifying home (CRA: First Home Savings Account overview).

You can open one if you are a Canadian resident, at least 18 (19 in some provinces), no older than 71 at year-end, and a first-time home buyer as the CRA defines it: you have not owned a home you lived in as your principal residence in the current year or any of the four preceding years. The calculator assumes you are eligible; it does not check eligibility for you.

The three numbers most people get wrong

Three limits decide what your FHSA can do. The contribution cap is $8,000 per calendar year. The absolute ceiling is $40,000 over your lifetime, across every FHSA you ever hold; opening a second account does not double it. And the 15-year participation window sets when any remaining balance must move to an RRSP or RRIF (with no effect on that room) or be withdrawn and taxed. The calculator reads all three from this page's versioned data, so a CRA limit change lands here first and the projection updates with it.

How the projection treats contribution timing

The projected balance assumes each contribution is made at the end of its contribution year, so it compounds from that point forward. Contributing at the start of the year instead would produce a higher projected balance, because each contribution then has a full extra year to grow. We use the end-of-year convention because it is the more conservative of the two, and we state it plainly rather than quietly choosing the larger number. The projection is an illustration based on the return you enter, not a guaranteed account value.

The FHSA and the Home Buyers' Plan stack

The Home Buyers' Plan is a separate program with its own rules. It lets you withdraw up to $60,000 from your RRSP as an interest-free loan you repay over 15 years. Nothing counts one program against the other: there is no combined cap. A first-time buyer who qualifies for both can use them on the same purchase, stacking up to $100,000 of tax-advantaged capital. Conflating the two is one of the most common mistakes in Canadian financial-planning content, so the calculator keeps them distinct.

What this calculator does not model

A few things are out of scope for now, and the calculator will not pretend otherwise. It handles federal mechanics only, so it does not cover Quebec's parallel provincial FHSA treatment through Revenu Québec. It does not model RRSP-to-FHSA transfers, which follow their own room rules. It treats each calendar year as a single contribution opportunity rather than prorating within a year. And it treats your contributions as one stream against the $40,000 lifetime cap, rather than reconciling several FHSA accounts across institutions. Each of these will arrive in a later release with its own reference cases.

The projection's default 5% annual return matches the rate the CRA uses in its own FHSA estimator. It is illustrative home-purchase planning, not a forecast, not investment advice, and not a guaranteed account value: it simply compounds the contributions and return you enter. Your real return depends on whether the account holds cash, GICs, bonds, or equities. A savings-account FHSA at a typical 2026 promotional rate earns far less; an equity-heavy one can earn more, or lose value in a given year. Use the slider to model a range. The projection also clamps your contributions at the lifetime ceiling, so the headline figure stays honest.

We include this estimate on the FHSA, but not on our TFSA or RRSP calculators, on purpose. An FHSA exists for one timed goal: buying a first home, with a participation window that ends. Sketching a rough balance by a target year is useful for that decision. Our TFSA and RRSP tools are contribution-room and deduction-limit tools, where a balance estimate would invite people to read a multi-decade retirement number as a promise, so we leave general investment forecasting to a dedicated tool.