You will build a dated timeline of every step and payment for your planned purchase.
By now Farah and Hakim knew every step of their purchase and every fee. What they didn't have was all of it on one page, in date order, with a running total of their cash. That page is what stops a purchase from failing on a Tuesday because a payment fell due before the savings arrived. This exercise builds it. Allow about 30 minutes, with your loan details, the fee quotes from lesson 6.4 and your savings balance to hand.
All amounts and dates below are examples. Your dates come from HDB, your contract and your lawyer.
Make a sheet with these columns: date, step, payment, amount, source (cash or CPF), who you pay, and running cash balance. Add a second balance column for CPF if you are using it for several payments.
Above the table, put your starting figures: cash saved today, cash you add each month, and your combined Ordinary Account balance. Farah and Hakim's, as an example: S$80,000 in cash, S$2,000 a month added, and S$150,000 in their Ordinary Accounts. Their emergency fund sat in a separate account and was not part of the S$80,000. Keep yours out of the timeline too.
List every step from lesson 6.1, The resale purchase, from option to keys, or lesson 6.3, BTO and new launches: progressive payments, for your type of purchase. Add every fee from lesson 6.4, Lawyers, insurance and the paperwork at completion, and the costs of moving in.
Farah and Hakim's resale timeline, counting months from when they applied for their HFE letter:
Month 2: option fee S$1,000 and exercise fee S$2,000, cash, to the seller Month 3: Buyer's Stamp Duty S$11,600, using the invented rates from lesson 3.1, paid in cash to IRAS, to be reimbursed from CPF after completion Month 4, completion: the cash part of the downpayment, S$68,000, being the minimum cash share plus cash over valuation less the fees already paid; the CPF part, S$122,000; legal fees of about S$3,000 from CPF; fire insurance and the first Home Protection Scheme premium Month 5: stamp duty reimbursed to them from CPF; first stage of renovation, S$20,000, cash Month 9: second stage of renovation S$10,000 and furniture and moving S$6,000, cash
Some dates are fixed once you sign: the option period, the deadline for stamp duty, the completion date HDB gives you. Others are estimates: how long the HFE letter takes, when the renovation contractor will want each payment. Mark every estimated date clearly, so you know which ones to firm up first.
For a BTO flat or a new launch, the gap between payments is years, and HDB's or the developer's estimated completion date carries most of the uncertainty. Lesson 1.1 suggested writing that date down before you apply, and this timeline is where it belongs, marked as an estimate.
Now total the cash. Start from today's savings, add each month's saving, and subtract each cash payment when it falls due. Do the same for CPF if several payments come from it, adding your monthly contributions.
Farah and Hakim's cash ran like this. After the fees in month 2, they had S$81,000. Stamp duty in month 3 took them to S$71,400. Completion in month 4 took S$68,000, leaving S$5,400. In month 5, the stamp duty came back from CPF, but the S$20,000 renovation stage took them to minus S$1,000. And in month 9, the second renovation stage and furniture would leave them S$9,000 short.
Two red cells. The purchase itself worked. The move-in didn't.
There are only a few ways to fix a shortfall: move a payment later, make it smaller, add cash before it, or move part of it to CPF where the rules allow. Big goals: wedding, home, car and kids, lesson 4.4, Build your downpayment plan, covers the savings side of these choices in more depth.
Farah and Hakim did two things. They cut the first renovation stage to S$15,000, leaving the kitchen for later, which left S$4,000 in month 5. And they moved the second stage and the furniture to month 12, by when their monthly saving had built the balance back to S$18,000. After paying S$16,000, they would have S$2,000 left. Tight, but no red cells, and their emergency fund untouched.
They also checked the CPF side. With S$150,000 in their Ordinary Accounts and S$125,000 going out at completion for the downpayment and legal fees, plus the stamp duty reimbursement after, their CPF covered every CPF payment, and contributions would rebuild it month by month for the instalments.
A finished timeline lists every step and payment in date order, with the amount, the source and the payee on each line, fixed dates marked separately from estimates, and a running cash balance that never drops below zero. Where it would have, a note says what you changed. In the activity below, build the timeline for your planned purchase and mark any date where your cash would run short.
Build the timeline for your planned purchase and mark any date where your cash would run short.
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