Excelsior Financial Blog

More than 220,000 people topped up their CPF or their family's accounts by over $4 billion in 2021! (Source: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/community/4b-in-top-ups-to-cpf-accounts-so-far-this-year-numbers-of-those-topping-up-for ) The CPF scheme is the Singapore government’s way of safeguarding the financial stability of Singaporeans. CPF monies can be used for retirement planning, to purchase homes, and also to pay for various insurances (term life, hospitalization, mortgage, long-term care, et al). However, some people still have an issue with CPF because the money that goes in, can’t come out until they are much older (55 years old specifically). Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/1fzyz-bmKBw   So why are more Singaporeans topping up their CPF? We explore a few reasons below:     1 - Better Low-risk Interest Rates One of the key reasons that Singaporeans may consider topping up their CPF is the rate of return that it gets - Ordinary Account 2.5%, S...

  Top 5 CPF Hacks For You The Central Provident Fund (CPF) is a government scheme initiated to help members prepare for their retirement. Over the years, many initiatives have been introduced to enable people greater flexibility in deciding how funds in their CPF accounts are used. There are 3 accounts in the CPF, namely the Ordinary, Special and Medisave accounts. In this article, I put together the top 5 hacks you can do to ensure your CPF is well utilised. Photo by  Rowan Heuvel  on  Unsplash 1. TOPPING UP THE SPECIAL ACCOUNT Starting with the Special account, the Special account currently earns you interests of 4% per annum. This is a decent return for something relatively lower risk. You can do a voluntary cash top-up of your Special account up to $14,000 per annum (maximum $7,000 for self and $7,000 for family members). Not only does this ensure you have more funds in your CPF during retirement, the cash top up qualifies you for tax reliefs when you do a volunt...