Compare Your CPF Special Account Balance

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If you have been working for some years, you should have a rather significant amount of money in your CPF Special Account.

The savings in your CPF SA currently still earn a 4% interest rate, totally risk free. There’s also an additional 1% interest paid to the first $60k of OA+SA.

The interest is high enough to make it unattractive to some people to use the SA money for investments. Fund houses and unit trust marketers may think otherwise, but it’s not hard to see why they are biased.

Another reason, though less compelling, is that your CPF SA serves as an approximate proxy for the total income you have earned so far.

By looking at your CPF SA balance, you can roughly* have an idea of the total income you have made in your working life thus far. You can use it as yet another way to compare your earnings. (This is of course assuming that you did not use your SA for investments under CPFIS-SA.)

On the other hand, comparing the Ordinary Account is harder because most people use part or all of the OA money for their HDB or private property loan payments.

Without further ado, login to CPF and find out how much you have in your CPF Special Account (apply for Singpass if you don’t yet have one – where have you been?!). And compare with others:

*Factors affecting your CPF SA balance include: the number of years you have worked, the bonuses you have received, and whether your wages exceed the contribution limits.

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10 Comments

  1. Given the cap is very low these days, I think it is a better gauge (at least for readers of this forum) for the number of years they have worked.

    Even bonus is capped too.

  2. Wow, I didn’t know employers only need to contribute to employee’s CPF up to 76,500 only???!!

    “IMITS ON CPF CONTRIBUTIONS

    Ordinary Wage (OW) Ceiling

    The maximum amount of CPF contributions payable is based on a monthly salary ceiling of $4,500 for Ordinary Wages.

    Additional Wage (AW) Ceiling

    The Additional Wage (AW) Ceiling sets the maximum amount of Additional Wages on which CPF contributions are payable per year. An employee’s AW Ceiling is computed on a per employer basis. The formula to calculate the AW Ceiling is as follows:

    From 2006 onwards
    $76,5001 minus Total Ordinary Wages subject to CPF contributions in the year2

    1Equivalent to 17 months multiplied by the monthly CPF salary ceiling of $4,500.
    2The sum of the monthly Ordinary Wages subject to CPF, up to the maximum of $54,000 (i.e. $4,500 x 12).

    You may use the AW Ceiling Calculator to help you calculate the AW Ceiling, OW and AW subject to CPF, as well as the CPF contributions payable.”

  3. yeah, the maximum bonus that is subject to cpf is thus $22,500 (76500-54000). i didn’t know about this until i was affected, which was both a happy thing and sad thing. happy because my bonus was a lot. sad because i expected my cpf to be a lot too but it was not the case. 🙂

  4. Well it makes sense. If you’re earning that much you won’t need that much in the future, and also helps companies save on costs.

  5. if you earn more than $4,500 pm your special account will get $7,824.60 pa.

    if you are given a lot of bonuses such that your annual wages exceed $76,500 pa your special account will get $11,084.85 pa.

    if you’re older than 35, you’ll get more.

    reference: CPF contribution rates

  6. I have more than SGD40K in my SA. As long as you stayed employed, or get good bonuses, you should have accumulate quite abit after working for at least 10yrs.

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