In my previous post, I gave a broad overview of how CPF works without detailing the specific accounts within CPF. I will take a deeper dive into each account and explain why it was created and how we could make better use of it. Here are the various CPF accounts: Ordinary Account (OA) Special Account (SA) Medisave Account (MA) Retirement Account (RA) Ordinary Account: The Firstborn Child Have you ever had the experience of someone who always refers to or addresses you as the brother or sister of your eldest sibling? Other people usually only remember the name of your older sibling. The CPF O ..read more

Have you ever heard a phrase like this:  “I don’t reed bonds in my portfolio because I have CPF, which is like a bond. Therefore I invest in a 100% equity portfolio.”? Is CPF a bond or behaves like a bond? In short, the Central Provident Fund or CPF is a government-managed system designed to help Singaporean and permanent residents plan and set aside money for their future, namely, retirement. It has, however, evolved into a very complicated scheme. Hence, I would like to explain CPF in simple terms and propose that CPF is more of an insurance product than a bond. We will start by looking ..read more

We know that institutional investors, hedge fund managers, mutual fund managers are the ‘smart money’. Together, these professionals and sophisticated investors have more capital, resources, expertise and experience (and influence) in investing. We, retail investors, are ‘dumb money’ — gullible, slow and irrational investors who will likely lose in the investing game. However, something happened that caught the attention of the media recently. A Surging Stock By surging stock, I don’t mean Tesla. It was Game Stop (GME). Game Stop is a chain of retail stores that sell video games, gaming mercha ..read more

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them – J.R.R. Tolkien. About a month ago, I started noticing different banks prompting me to consolidate financial data from other banks using a new “thing” called the SGFinDex. Singapore Financial Data Exchange, or SGFinDex, is an initiative by Singapore’s government to build a standardized infrastructure to allow individuals to retrieve our personal financial information from participating banks and relevant government agencies. Solving the Right Problem Before the streaming wars, the ..read more

Early last year, I shared about a few variations of the The Boglehead three-fund portfolio for Singaporeans. The philosophy behind the three portfolio fund is simplicity and ease of implementation, lost cost and minimal maintenance. If you stick to the buy-and-hold approach, you may reap great returns. The template is pretty simple – you should have three funds: Domestic Index Fund International Index Fund Bond Fund The typical Singapore Three Fund looks like this: SPDR STI ETF (E3S.SI) – Domestic Vanguard FTSE All World UCITS ETF (VWRD.L) – International ABF Singapore Bond Index ETF (A35.S ..read more

When you invest with a Roboadvisor, they usually display your investment returns in your dashboard or in your performance summary page.  You may have come across the term ‘simple returns’. Here are some examples: Screenshot of simple return of a moneyowl portfolioScreenshot of the returns from an example Endowus portfolio Simple returns basically shows how much profit you made with your investment. Formula: Net gains / Total invested amount X 100% So, if you had invested $1,000 in January and your portfolio at the end of Dec is valued at $1,200. You have made $200. Your simple return woul ..read more

In Singapore, some of us personal finance geeks, financial bloggers or salaried workers accumulating for retirement look forward to one thing in January every year – the CPF yearly statement. This statement summarises the transactions and contributions of our CPF accounts – a scheme initially implemented for retirement but now has expanded to cover housing, education and medical needs. Nothing gets us more excited than looking at the interest we had accumulated. However, my historical CPF OA always had around $20,000 even though I have already been working for many years. That was because I al ..read more

Psst. I am going to let you in a once-in-a-lifetime deal.  Black Friday is around the corner, and I have a super sale going on. I am selling the latest iPhone 12 Pro Max for just $299. No contracts, no catch, 100% authentic. Why am I able to sell so cheap? Because I know someone directly from China who owns the iPhone manufacturing plant and he and I go way back. I was able to broker a once in a lifetime deal to secure 100% original iPhones for cost price to help the needy people get them. I have already made my success as an iPhone distributor and don’t need the money. I just wanted to g ..read more

It was a busy month.  While juggling between working from home with a full-time job, taking care of kids, and an ongoing renovation, I had little time to spare for my blog.  I even stopped reading the news and forgot to follow the market recently. It was fortunate that I didn’t see my tech-heavy portfolio plunge in early September. Well, I was aware, but I was too busy to care. As a long term buy-and-hold investor, I shouldn’t care about market volatility anyway. My aim is long term capital appreciation, so it doesn’t matter if the shares plunge as long as the companies sur ..read more

One article showed up in my feed one fine afternoon: Why you should not pay for your HDB with CPF Naturally, I clicked because I am a believer in paying for your HDB with CPF. Maybe I might get converted to the pay-with-cash camp. The Summary of The Article “Why you should not pay for your HDB with CPF.” The main argument for paying with cash instead of CPF is that the money in CPF generates interest. By choosing to pay with CPF, you are forgoing 2.5% per year in interest. To prove his point, the author used an example of a couple with a median salary of $4,437 who bought a BTO for $520,000 an ..read more