Videos on reaching 55 and what is CPF Life?

Actually, the CPF Board have some very good videos but very few people actually watched them.

Two videos available since 3 weeks ago, one titled "Reaching 55" and another titled "CPF Life", have been viewed online barely 1,500 times and a bit more than 1,000 times, respectively.





Although I have blogged on these topics a few times before, I think videos will be more appealing to some of us. 

So, if you have 6 minutes to spare, here they are:


.....




.....


Not bad but I had to resort to reading the subtitles at times. 

We Singaporeans have a bad habit of "eating up our words" as we speak too fast sometimes.






Share the videos with friends and family who have doubts about the system. 

All of us should embrace retirement planning and CPF Life can be a very strong cornerstone for many of us in retirement funding if we help the system to help ourselves.




Related posts:
1. National Day Rally: Retirement Adequacy.
2. How to upsize $100K to $225K in 20 years?

Buying term life insurance: Sharing some lessons.

I received this email in response to a guest blog (see related post at the end of this blog):

Hi AK,

On your latest blog on term insurance, you write that $50 a month can get  fresh grads $500K coverage. I am not sure if you meant to have CI coverage  included, if yes, the premium rate looks unrealistic in current market. To  share my recent term insurance purchasing experience -

It costs a male going 30, non smoking, for $1300 a year for death coverage of $1M, $200k for TPD and CI. This is after 30% discount from Aviva, the discount applies to the whole policy period, till 65. For a female going 25, it is $880 for the same coverage.

I got all quotes from major insurers and found this to be the lowest,  particularly with the 30% discount. If I were to opt for $200k death, TPD and CI coverage, the lowest annual premium is around $900. I feel  additional $400 premium to cover for $800 k death coverage is a bargain from Aviva, and $200k coverage is not sufficient, hence, I opted for this. Note that Aviva gave the discount to policy with coverage of $1m and above.

 
Lessons from this experience:

1. One has to get quotes from as many insurers as possible to know the market rates and to get the best rate.
 
2. Buy term insurance early. In this scenario, for the same coverage, the female got 5 more year coverage and pays less every year, and even less total sum, partly because she buys this term insurance earlier than the male! （I say partly here, female premium tends to have lower premium than male in same age etc.）
 
3. Another reason to buy early is that premium goes up every year due to cost and inflations.
 
4. Insurance industry is very competitive, take advantage if there is a massive discount!

What insurer did you get from? $100 a month is really cheap for that kind of coverage and I am quite sure it is hard to such rates now.

Regards, IIIW

I had clarified that the earlier blog post in question was a guest blog. It wasn't written by me.

We decided to share this email here as it could help many people out there who are looking to get term life insurance. Also, we could possibly get many more people to come forward to share their experience or perspectives.

Related post:
Term life insurance: Why buy term? How big a sum should I buy? How long a term should it be? How much does it cost?