You will be able to build a plan for the cash and CPF portions of your home's upfront cost.
Mei and Daniel are buying a new flat together, using the made-up figures from Lessons 4.1 and 4.2. They know what each upfront cost is and whether cash or CPF pays it, but they still need to check that the money will be there on the day each payment falls due.
You make that check by putting every upfront cost on one dated timeline. It brings together three things you already have: the list of upfront costs from Lesson 4.1, the cash and CPF split from Lesson 4.2, Which parts must be cash and which CPF can pay, and your view from Lesson 4.3 on how much CPF to use. Allow about thirty minutes, and have your CPF statement and your HFE letter or bank loan approval to hand, if you have them.
Start from a realistic price range for the home you expect to buy. Recent HDB sales launches, resale transactions published on the HDB website, or private property listings will give you one. Plan on the upper end of the range, so the plan still works if you end up paying that much.
Write down the loan type you expect, HDB or bank, and the loan amount. If you have an HFE letter or a bank in-principle approval, use its loan figure. If you don't, use the current limits on the HDB and MAS websites and mark the figure as an estimate. The loan type matters because, as Lesson 4.2 showed, it decides the cash rules.
Set up a sheet with these columns: month, stage, item, total, cash, CPF, and projected CPF balance after payment. Number the months from today. Give each payment its own row, put its amount in the cash column, the CPF column, or split it across both, and group the rows by stage in this order:
booking or option stage signing stage completion or key collection renovation and moving in
Use the dates that apply to your case, and mark any date you have guessed. For a new flat, the gap between booking and key collection can be several years, and HDB publishes an estimated completion date for each project. For a resale flat or private home, the stages are usually a few months apart.
From your CPF statement, find today's Ordinary Account balance and the monthly amount going into it. If you are buying with a partner, add both partners' balances and contributions together.
Your projected CPF balance at a payment date is today's balance, plus your monthly contributions multiplied by the number of months, minus any CPF payments already made, with CPF interest left out so the projection stays cautious.
If the projected balance at any payment is lower than the CPF amount due, move the shortfall into the cash column for that row. When every row is filled in, add up the cash column across all the payments, and that total is your cash goal.
Mei and Daniel have a combined Ordinary Account balance of S$40,000 today, with about S$1,100 a month going in. They book their flat in month 3 and pay the S$2,000 option fee in cash. They sign the Agreement for Lease in month 9. For a new flat, HDB normally requires the downpayment when the Agreement for Lease is signed, with the balance paid when you collect your keys. Mei and Daniel are on HDB's Staggered Downpayment Scheme, which lets buyers pay the downpayment in 2 instalments, so at signing they pay the first S$19,000 of the downpayment and S$7,000 in stamp duty and fees, both from CPF. Check the HDB website to see whether the scheme applies to you. Their projected CPF balance in month 9 is S$49,900 (S$40,000 + 9 x S$1,100), falling to S$23,900 after the S$26,000 goes out.
They expect to collect keys in month 57, when the second downpayment instalment of S$59,000 is due from CPF. Their projected balance before that payment is S$76,700 (S$40,000 + 57 x S$1,100 - S$26,000), and S$17,700 after it. Renovation costs S$25,000 in cash in month 58, and furniture and moving cost S$5,000 in cash in month 60.
CPF covers S$85,000 in total (S$19,000 + S$7,000 + S$59,000) and the projected balance never falls short, so nothing moves into the cash column. Their cash goal is S$32,000 (S$2,000 + S$25,000 + S$5,000).
The cash goal tells you how much you need in total, and you also need to check that the cash is there on each due date. Do this the same way as the wedding check in Lesson 3.4, Build your wedding budget and savings plan: start from your current savings, add your monthly saving, and subtract each cash payment in the month it falls due, checking that the running balance never goes below zero at any point.
Mei and Daniel have S$2,000 saved, which pays the option fee, and they save S$500 a month for this goal, the figure on their Lesson 1.4 goals sheet. Their cash balance is S$1,500 after the option fee in month 3 and S$28,500 by month 57. After the renovation in month 58 it is S$4,000, and after furniture and moving in month 60 it is exactly zero.
Their plan works, but it has no margin, and a plan with zero margin is fragile: a higher renovation quote, or keys arriving a few months early, would leave them short. They decide to keep saving S$500 a month for now, to recheck the renovation quote and HDB's completion estimate every six months as Lesson 1.2 recommended, and to adjust the monthly figure if either one moves.
Do the same with your own plan. Recheck the key inputs every six months, and if one of them moves, your monthly saving figure moves with it.
Open your goals sheet from Lesson 1.4, Build your goals sheet, and add or update the home row. Enter the cash goal as the target, the date of the last cash payment as the goal date, the amount you have already saved, and your monthly figure. If your cash payments are spread across years, you can use one row per stage instead, each with its own date.
Write your CPF projection beside the goal as a note, so that at each review you can compare it with the balance on your actual CPF statement.
A finished plan shows every upfront cost by date, split into cash and CPF, with a projected CPF balance that covers each CPF payment and a cash running balance that never drops below zero. The cash portion sits in your goals sheet as a dated goal. Yours is what the activity asks for.
Fill in the downpayment plan with cash and CPF columns by date, then add the cash amount to your goals sheet as a goal.
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