$2.00 Burger King's Fish N Crisp Burger: A Failure.

When Burger King announced their $2.00 Fish N Crisp Burger, McDonald's responded by lowering the price of their Fillet O Fish Burger to $2.00.

I have always been a fan of the Fillet O Fish and would order the $5.00 Extra Value Meal whenever I visited McDonald's in the past. When they dropped the price of Fillet O Fish to $2.00, I was overjoyed.

Then, I would order two Fillet O Fish for $4.00 instead of spending $5.00 on the Extra Value Meal. I am not crazy about the fries and soft drink. Just that when the Fillet O Fish was priced at $3.95 each, it was kind of silly not to take the fries and soft drink for only another $1.05.

Anyway, Burger King's claim that their Fish N Crisp Burger offers better value for money with one slice of cheese, not half, and 40% more fish got me curious enough to give it a try. Yes, AK is a sucker for value for money deals.

Poster outside the restaurant. Looks good, right?

So, I tried.

Hmmmm... Doesn't look quite the same.

Opened it up to add some ketchup. The bun felt stale.
The piece of fish looks to be the same size as the Fillet O Fish's.

Alamak!
AK is not a practitioner of Shaolin Temple's Da Li Jing Gang Zi!
The bread is definitely stale. This was from lifting the top earlier.

The fish is sooo salty! Why so salty?

Very disappointing.

Staying with McDonald's Fillet O Fish.

Burger King's Fish N Crisp Burger gets a resounding "C.M.I." from AK.

Related posts:
1. $3.30 Fillet O Fish meal.
2. 1 for 1 Fillet O Fish.

Should I do a CPF-OA to SA transfer before buying a flat?

I received an email from a reader in my age group regarding the purchase of a resale HDB flat. He asked if it would make sense to use up his savings in his CPF-OA to fund the purchase.

As I am not familiar with the rules in the purchase of a resale HDB flat, I would like to share our email exchange here and see if others have any ideas to share:

 

Hi AK,

I know you have blogged a lot about CPF, in particular to build one's retirement fund.


I'm 45 years old. I am buying a re-sale flat, say, $400K. I have $200K in OA and $200K in cash. But I do not want to spend all my cash and hence plan to take a bank loan between $100K to 200K.
 
Would like to know your opinion. Should I use up the money in the OA + cash or cash plus bank loan to fund the purchase?

Leaving the money in CPF (and perhaps transfer OA to SA) seems logical for beefing up my retirement fund. But it will mean I need to pay interest for bank loan, whose trend is increasing.

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Hi ,

If you think you are able to take a $100K loan and repay it in full in 8 years, the POSB HDB loan will save you some money still as the interest rate will be capped at 2.5% for the first 8 years. After that, given the rising SIBOR now, it will probably be higher than the 2.6% rate from the HDB Concessionary Loan.

Also, you might want to consider buying BTO, if you are eligible, against buying a resale flat. A BTO 2 room flat costs about $100K which is a small fraction of the $400K you are thinking about for a resale (3 room?) flat. Just being kaypoh. ;p

Best wishes,
AK

Hi AK

Appreciate ur reply.
Unfortunately, I'm not eligible for any new HDB flat :(

Btw, I still have friends advising me to "use up" CPF for housing. They say, govt may increase the min sum and increase the withdrawal age. Hence, our money will be stuck in CPF. 

 Hence better keep cash and invest it for (hopefully) highly return than CPF.

I see merits in their points and yours. Confusing ?

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Hi ,

Well, if you are able to use your CPF-OA money to generate higher returns consistently than the risk free 4% offered by the CPF-SA (which you would get if you were to do an OA to SA transfer), then, you should invest the money. When we are doing the comparison, the ideas to bear in mind are "risk free" and "consistently", not "hope". ;p
 
I will say this to your friends:

1. The minimum sum will increase at a rate of 3% per annum.

2. Withdrawal age is at 55 years. You may withdraw anything that is above the minimum sum based on your cohort.

3. Our CPF money is our money. It is not "stuck". It is going to fund our retirement through CPF Life, an annuity.

Please feel free to share my blog posts on how we can make the CPF work for us with your friends. I think you will be doing them a favour. ;p
 
Best wishes,
AK

In this case, I feel that it makes sense to do an OA to SA transfer (maxing out the SA, if possible) before using the balance in the CPF-OA to help fund the purchase of the resale flat.

Of course, before doing this, the reader should consider whether he would be able to repay the loan (i.e. POSB HDB loan*) in 8 years when the interest rate is capped at 2.5%. 

This way, he would be saving on the interest payment for the home loan (in a rising interest rate environment) and also benefit from the higher interest payment on his CPF savings. Sounds good?

*It is 5 years now. Blog post on POSB HDB loan updated.

Related posts:
1. How did AK amass so much in his CPF-OA?
2. A lot of the money in my CPF-SA is from...
3. How to upsize $100K to $225K in 20 years?