Circuit breaker spurs 29-year-old to put more into his CPF accounts
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Mr Cuthbert Yeo voluntarily refunded the amount he had used from his Ordinary Account for his share of the down payment on his HDB flat, and transferred money from his Ordinary Account to his Special Account, which has a base interest rate of 4 per cent per year.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF CUTHBERT YEO
Joanna Seow , Joanna Seow
The circuit breaker period last year gave Mr Cuthbert Yeo, 29, more time to look into his finances, and the engineer decided to better utilise his Central Provident Fund (CPF) accounts.
He voluntarily refunded the amount he had used from his Ordinary Account for his share of the down payment on his Housing Board flat, and transferred money from his Ordinary Account, which has a base interest rate of 2.5 per cent per year, to his Special Account, which has a base interest rate of 4 per cent per year.
He had started moving cash to his Special Account from 2018, after reading a CPF Board annual report where a chart showed that many people in his age group had more in CPF savings than he did.
At the time, Mr Yeo was two years into his first job, also in the engineering field.
He then started topping up his CPF Special Account whenever he received a bonus from his employer.
Since then, he has put in about $40,000 in both cash and transfers from his Ordinary Account.
"We should really build up a base of retirement savings while we're still young, especially now that the job market is not as stable with innovative disruption and it's not guaranteed that we can get a job we might want when we're older," he said.
