Holistic approach to a secure financial future.

I am always happiest reading happy stories. 

I mean who wouldn't be? 

OK, if you need a reason, well, they are easier for me to reply to compared to sad stories.

It is true that happy stories are easier to reply to and that makes me happy but I am happiest with happy stories because they are an affirmation of the work I am doing here in my blog.

I am sharing here not one but two readers' stories and I hope they pump you up to do more in 2017:





READER #1: Because of your sharing AK, I made the following changes to my life in 2016.

In 2016, I paid off the remaining of my home loan in Jan 2016. Was using CPF to service loan. With that, for the whole year (2016), my CPF started growing faster and generating risk free interest at the same time.

With a portion of the remaining cash, I also started investing in the stocks Dec 2015. Very happy with Saizen, AIMS, First Reit, Ireit Global, ARA, etc.

Rest of cash in fixed D as war chest + emergency funds waiting to invest more when opportunity presents.

Yes, all along got insurance coverage for self and family.

I also made it a point to simplify life style. Conscious with spending. Eat less, exercise more, cycling a lot makes me happy. Don’t need much.

I banished my 3 children (wealth destroyer)…kidding. Some money still have to spend being responsible to children & parents. Looking forward to 2017 to optimize CPF, invest more when opportunity presents, save more, simplify further. Although much to work on and a bit late, I am very pleased with making the changes last year.

So please continue with the great work in “talking to yourself”.





READER #2: Hello AK, happy new year! As I read about how others feel you should continue blogging, I also wanna share how your blog has benefited me.

CPF continues to be 1 area my friends and I share different views on. I transferred my 3-4 years worth of OA to SA after discovering your blog, and feel excited logging into CPF today to see the interest collected.

The other area is in stock investment; I used to try to time the market and it gave me unneeded stress. Your blog brought me to believe in consistent dividends, and taught me about position sizing. I find the sharings on your purchases particularly helpful and insightful.

Not forgetting your thoughts in matters of insurance, savings etc.

Please keep blogging! With general increased interest in such matters (I think), I believe someway or another people will chance upon your blog and hopefully review their financial well-being. BIG THANKS!





What has changed for the readers? 

Although individually important, it is not just about saving money, investing in stocks for income or being adequately insured, for examples. 

It is much more than these.

Remember, all the things I do and blog about come in a package. 

Yes, it is a package deal.

Paying attention to only one area while ignoring other areas does not strike me as a good idea.







It is like some guy in a Chinese kung fu period drama stumbling upon a kung fu manual 亚西(ASSI)神功 which had 10 chapters and he decided to skip to chapter 10, ignoring the foundation chapters and everything else. 

Pouring all his energy into that one chapter alone, he 走火入魔 (a Chinese term traditionally used to indicate that something has gone wrong in spiritual or martial arts training... Source: Wikipedia).

I am glad it did not happen to the readers here. 

What the readers did was a major rethink of what they were doing or not doing. 

What followed was a major revamp as they took action to make changes.

If we want a more secure financial future, we would do well to take a holistic approach.

My philosophy in wealth building might be boring and it probably isn't suitable for everybody. 

Some are happy adopting it and it is only normal that some will brush it off.





I will say that it has worked for me and I am glad to know that it is helping these readers towards greater financial well being too.

To anyone who is walking the same path, I agree that it could be a long walk but, to succeed, we have to believe that patience will be rewarded!


(Decide how much income you will get from an asset and pay a fair price for that.)



Related posts:
1. Power to be financially stronger!
2. Make $1 million investing for income?
3. CPF a cornerstone in retirement funding.

Tea with LS: Withdraw CPF MSTU and interest at 55?

Very well researched and put together. Hats off to LS who originally placed this in the comments section.
Hi AK,

I guess this withdrawal regarding top-up money and its interest is causing a lot of confusion. This is due to the frequent changes in CPF policies/withdrawal rules. What is making it worse is that some of our CPF officers are also not as well-versed and providing wrong information (anecdotes from my friends and some comments in forums. Please disregard this if its offensive to you) and also the CPF website is poorly designed with incomplete information all over the place. 

I had trawled through the website for more than 1 hour in order to post the information below. (Maybe I am just lousy at searching for information at the CPF website, lol)

Firstly, what is causing the confusion? It is because of this particular rule...

"After setting aside your Full Retirement Sum or Basic Retirement Sum with sufficient property charge/pledge, you can choose to withdraw the remaining CPF balances (excluding top-up monies, government grants, and interest earned in your Retirement Account)"

https://www.cpf.gov.sg/Members//Faq/schemes/retirement/retirement-sum-scheme#faq17406

But in the same webpage, this is we can also see this;

"​Your Ordinary and Special Account savings after setting aside the applicable Full Retirement Sum (FRS) or Basic Retirement Sum (BRS) with sufficient property charge/pledge."

Does this means you can withdraw all remaining funds in OA/SA after you set aside the amount for FRS/BRS? Or will the first statement take priority and takes effect (resulting in unable to withdraw the top-up money and its interest) even after we set aside enough for FRS/BRS? This is what is causing the confusion.


After searching the CPF website for over an hour, I finally found this;

"If you had received top-ups before age 55, the top-ups and accrued interest in your Special Account (SA) will be transferred to your Retirement Account (RA) when you turn 55. Any excess, above the Full Retirement Sum applicable to you, can be withdrawn when you apply for withdrawal at age 55."

https://www.cpf.gov.sg/Members//Faq/schemes/retirement/retirement-sum-scheme#faq17406

What is interesting and yet confusing is this (also in the same webpage);

"In addition, top-up monies cannot be used to form part of the Basic Retirement Sum (BRS) in computing how much RA savings above their BRS that can be withdrawn through sufficient CPF property charge or pledge"

Which actually means that even if your BRS is $83,000, and you have $123,000 in your RA ($100,000 is from top-up and its interest), you will not be able to withdraw anything. That is due to after deducting your top-up money ($100,000) from your RA ($123,000), you got only $23,000 left which is less than the BRS ($83,000). You can read in detail of the example provide at the webpage.

So let us summarize :

1) If it is about FRS, you can withdraw all the remaining funds that exceeds the FRS amount,

2) if it is about BRS, the rule applies and you cannot withdraw the top-up money and its interest. You can only withdraw remaining funds if your RA still exceed BRS after deducting the top-up and its interest.

Sorry for the exceedingly long post but I hope it clears up the doubts.

P.S. actually I may be wasting my time here trying to clear things up since the withdrawal might change again 1-2 years down the road. I still have almost 2 decades before I hit the withdrawal age...
P.P.S hopefully this is useful for people who is near to the withdrawal age (55 years old)...

Related post:
Did CPF Top Ups but denied lump sum withdrawal?