Have you ever heard of Are You Ready? website by CPF Board? https://www.areyouready.sg
This website have information which provides people from adulthood on how to prepare their retirement funds and also how they can prepare themselves from different stage of their life (Starting Work, Your Health, Marriage and Golden Years). These information are very useful and provide some guideline for us to have a proper understanding on what awaits us. These information can help us plan our financials better and more aware on what CPF can provide.
Argument on CPF concept
Some people have the impression that CPF is something that we can see but we cannot touch (due to the extension of retirement age). I can understand from their point of view however, we must look at the bigger picture whereby government implement such measures is because of the economy changes and the life expectancy increase over the years (based on the graph below)
Based on the blue line, we can see that the life expectancy of Singaporean is increasing over the years, the minimum sum have to be increase in order to tackle the inflation and the increase in our life expectancy.
With the increase in minimum sum, people complain that the elderly are unable to get their money out to enjoy their retirement. The reason is because government in putting plans to ensure that the elderly will have money to spend per month without worries. Having your CPF money in the retirement account, it can also help the elderly to earn substantial interest rate which is quite a good options in my opinion especially for elderly with no financial knowledge in investment tools.
Some of the working adults who have different views will mention that they have more capabilities of managing their own money to earn better interest rates that what CPF can provide. Well, that I cannot deny the capabilities, because sometimes people might have opportunities in business or very good in spotting the correct shares to earn 10 times or even 50 times than what CPF can provide. However, it is the bigger picture again, if government allow such leeway and give only certain people the rights to withdraw the money, you will see chaos and people queuing up to complain about the equality. So, I believe what the government did is the right thing to have such plan for the people in Singapore to ensure that they have money every month to spend in their golden years.
New Changes to CPF Statement and CPF website!
Recently (one or two months ago) CPF has change their looks in both CPF statement and CPF website, this really gives a brand new look and brand new way for people to view their statement. Below is the video on the new CPF Statement format.
There are indeed lots of information that we can use from this website. So do check it out and see if there is any information that may help you in your financial planning!
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