You will read your own CPF statement and choose one action for the year.
CPF sends you a yearly statement, and most people glance at the total and close it. That total hides the details worth knowing: whether every contribution actually arrived, how much interest you earned, and whether anyone would receive your savings smoothly if something happened to you.
This exercise takes about twenty minutes. You read your own CPF records properly once, write a one-page summary, and pick one thing to do about them this year. You need your Singpass, and your payslips for the last twelve months if you can find them.
Log in to cpf.gov.sg with Singpass and open your transaction history. Filter it to the last twelve months, or the last calendar year.
Look for a contribution credited for every month you were employed. Each one should show your employer's name and the amount, split across your accounts. Contributions for one month's wages are usually paid in the following month, so January's pay normally shows up in February. Do not mark a month missing just because it lands a month later than you expected.
If you have your payslips, compare a few months. The total CPF on the payslip, your share plus your employer's, should match what arrived. A gap, a month with nothing, or an amount that does not match is worth raising. Ask your HR or payroll team first, because the cause is often a simple delay or a payroll error. If it is not resolved, you can report it to the CPF Board, which follows up with employers that do not pay.
Pay particular attention to the months around a job change. That is where missing contributions most often hide.
Write down the current balance of each account: Ordinary, Special and MediSave. Then find the interest credited last year. CPF works out interest monthly but credits it once a year, around the turn of the year, so you will find one interest entry per account in your history and on your yearly statement.
Note the interest separately from contributions. Contributions show what you and your employer put in. Interest shows what the money earned on its own, and over a working life it can become a large share of the total.
On your CPF dashboard, find your nomination status. It shows whether you have made a CPF nomination, which decides who receives your CPF savings if you die. CPF savings do not pass under a will, so without a nomination they take a slower route.
Just note what you find for now: nomination made, with the date, or no nomination. Module 8 covers what a nomination does and how to make or update one.
From what you found, choose one action. Only one, so it gets done. Good candidates:
Confirm a missing or doubtful contribution with your employer. Make a CPF nomination, or update one made before a marriage, divorce or child. Review how much of your Ordinary Account you have used for housing, and what you would refund with accrued interest on a sale, as lesson 5.2 explained. Use the retirement planner, as in lesson 5.3, if you have never done so.
Give it a month by which it will be done.
Here is Wei Ling's summary, with figures made up for the example.
She opens her transaction history for last year and matches each credit to the month of wages it covers. Eleven months are there. The missing one is March, her first month at a new job: nothing arrived in April, and the new employer's first credit, in May, is for April's wages. Her March payslip shows CPF deducted, so the money left her pay and never reached her account, which makes it the item to chase.
Her balances are S$32,000 in her Ordinary Account, S$11,000 in her Special Account and S$14,000 in MediSave, a total of S$57,000. Her interest last year was S$760 on her Ordinary Account, S$440 on her Special Account and S$560 on MediSave. S$760 plus S$440 plus S$560 is S$1,760, and she writes that figure at the top.
Her nomination status says no nomination.
She has two candidates for her action: the missing March contribution and the nomination. She chooses the March contribution, because a payroll mistake is easier to sort out while the month is recent, and she puts the nomination at the top of her list for module 8. Her action reads: email the new employer's HR about March CPF this week, and report to the CPF Board if it is not credited by the end of next month.
Her summary fits on half a page: the date, three balances and their total, last year's interest by account and in total, her nomination status, and one action with a deadline.
Your own version is finished when you have checked twelve months of contributions, written down each balance and last year's interest, noted your nomination status, and chosen one dated action. Keep the summary with your net worth sheet from lesson 1.3, because next year's review starts from it.
Write a short CPF summary with your balances, last year's interest, nomination status and the one action you will take this year.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).