You will be able to list your accounts by when and how you can draw from them.
Add up everything you own and the total can look reassuring: a few hundred thousand in investments, something in SRS, a good CPF balance, a flat that has gone up in value. Then ask a different question. If you stopped work next year, which of those could pay the electricity bill in the first month? For many people, the honest answer covers a much smaller share than the total suggested.
Module 3 showed that CPF cannot carry the bridge years. This module goes further and lays out every account by when it opens up. That is the first step in deciding which one to spend from first.
Money in your own name is the most flexible you have. Savings accounts, fixed deposits, Singapore Savings Bonds, Treasury bills, shares and funds held in a brokerage or custodian account can all be sold or withdrawn at any age, for any purpose.
They are not all equally quick. A savings account is available the same day. A fixed deposit broken early may lose some interest. Shares and funds take a few days to settle, and their price on the day you sell may be poor. But none of them is locked by age.
That makes this group the bridge-years money. Whatever your stopping age, the years until your other accounts open must be paid from here. The investment courses in this track, such as Bonds, T-bills, SSBs and fixed deposits, cover how each of these works in detail.
The Supplementary Retirement Scheme lets you put money into an SRS account and claim tax relief on the contributions, within a yearly cap. You can invest what is in the account. The catch is in how and when you take it out.
The tax treatment of withdrawals depends on timing. From the statutory retirement age that applies to your account, only part of each withdrawal is counted as taxable income, and the withdrawals can be spread over a number of years. Take money out before that age, without one of the exceptions the rules allow, and the whole withdrawal is taxable and a penalty is added on top. The age, the taxable share, the spreading period and the penalty are all set out on the IRAS website. Check them for your own account, because the age that applies depends on when you first contributed.
So SRS money is technically accessible at any time, but it is expensive to use early. For planning, treat it as opening up at your statutory retirement age.
CPF opens in stages, and each stage has its own rules, as module 3 described. Before 55, almost nothing can be withdrawn for living costs. At 55 your Retirement Account is formed, and some savings above the sum you set aside may become withdrawable, along with a small sum the CPF Board allows everyone to take out. From your payout eligibility age, CPF LIFE pays a monthly income for life.
MediSave is separate. It stays for approved healthcare costs and insurance premiums, which module 7 covers, rather than for general spending. Check all the current ages and withdrawal rules on cpf.gov.sg.
For most Singaporeans the home is the largest asset of all, and the slowest to turn into spending money. It helps the plan in two ways.
First, it lowers costs. A paid-off home means no rent and no loan repayments, which lesson 1.3 showed can shrink the spending base a great deal.
Second, it can release money later. Some people sell and move to a smaller flat, and part of the value is freed to spend. HDB also publishes schemes that let older owners turn part of their flat's value into income while continuing to live in it, such as the Lease Buyback Scheme, each with its own eligibility rules. Check the details on the HDB website.
Neither route is quick. Selling takes months, moving has costs, and eligibility for HDB schemes usually starts at an older age. For a plan, treat the home as a source of lower costs and a possible reserve late in life, not as money you can spend in the bridge years.
Priya, from the earlier modules, wrote her list with made-up figures at age 50.
Her cash buffer of S$88,000 and her investments in her own name, about S$1.32 million, are available at any time. Her SRS account, about S$60,000, opens without penalty at her statutory retirement age, which is 63 in this example. Her CPF Retirement Account forms at 55, and CPF LIFE pays from 65, again in this example. MediSave is for healthcare only. Her flat lowers her costs once the loan ends at 59, and is a reserve for much later.
Laid out like that, she can see that the money she can count on between 50 and 63 sits in the first two lines. Any CPF she can withdraw at 55 would be a bonus. Gather your own statements, including SRS, CPF and any policy with a cash value, before you start the activity.
List every account you hold with the earliest age you can draw from it and any tax or penalty that applies.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).