If housing is an investment, then you should unwind your investment (CPF) in order to spend during your retirement years. If you want to bequeath your investment (CPF), it means there is someone to take care of you. Then you should not ask for handouts in the name that CPF is not enough. Moreover, your children are not allowed to keep 2 flats. It is definitely a bequeath of financial asset and not a home of sentimental value, unless your children are staying in the flat.
If housing is a consumption like some bloggers preach that our flats are not freehold and we are in fact paying 99-year advanced rents. Then you should terminate the portion of the long lease that is expected to outlive you. You can't bring unconsumed rents to heaven/hell nor can you assign them to relatives.
Please do not claim CPF money is not enough if for some strange reason you insist on keeping a rental-agreement that is longer than your remaining life. It is even stranger to reject short-lease alternatives like studio apartments, retirement villages and lease buy back that allow you unwind from long rental-agreement all in the name of sentimental value.
Short-lease alternatives are not popular now because the finance stinks. It is like kena robbed by the nanny. Changes will have to be made. Also, the full course of 10-year CPF withdrawal deferrment was completed just last year. Some aunties/uncles will start howling at the CPF Board when they realised they can't get back their money. Monetisation of HDB flats is a necessity.
If income is either consumed, saved or taxed, then our problem is we are saving too much. It includes the government as excess taxes = government savings. That's how reserves have been building up. We should give funny look to those people who tell us to invest (S=I as textbooks tell us) more or longer in higher risk products that promise higher returns.
The same people are also against Minimum Wage whilst claiming $1,200 annuity payout is inadequate:
- Imagine you are a toilet cleaner earning $700 (gross). How many months of work are required before you can see a payout of $1,200 (tax/expense free)?
- Imagine you have no income. Even a $600 payout is a luxury. Your smile would be all teeth and no eyes.
- Imagine you are on social welfare. With $1,200, your smile would be bigger than a banana. You need not have all 3 meals at the hawker centre. Vivian will say you can afford to go to a restaurant once in a while.
It is not mathematically possible for CPF to pay out more than our monthly salary unless our working period is very much longer than our retirement period. No wonder, we have to work till we drop dead. No wonder some people resort to selling promises of higher returns from riskier assets. No wonder GIC bought toxic assets hoping to make a few folds return.
What has changed so much that our CPF exploded from $52 billion in 1993 to $260 billion in 2014 and still deem not enough? Are inflation and longevity the reasons? Do the excuses make sense at all?
Let's do some reverse thinking. So what happened in 1993 when CPF was just $52 billion? Did Singaporeans drop dead at 55 due to shorter life-span? Did they have to sell their flats and live on the streets? Did retirees die of hunger?
If housing is a consumption like some bloggers preach that our flats are not freehold and we are in fact paying 99-year advanced rents. Then you should terminate the portion of the long lease that is expected to outlive you. You can't bring unconsumed rents to heaven/hell nor can you assign them to relatives.
Please do not claim CPF money is not enough if for some strange reason you insist on keeping a rental-agreement that is longer than your remaining life. It is even stranger to reject short-lease alternatives like studio apartments, retirement villages and lease buy back that allow you unwind from long rental-agreement all in the name of sentimental value.
Short-lease alternatives are not popular now because the finance stinks. It is like kena robbed by the nanny. Changes will have to be made. Also, the full course of 10-year CPF withdrawal deferrment was completed just last year. Some aunties/uncles will start howling at the CPF Board when they realised they can't get back their money. Monetisation of HDB flats is a necessity.
If income is either consumed, saved or taxed, then our problem is we are saving too much. It includes the government as excess taxes = government savings. That's how reserves have been building up. We should give funny look to those people who tell us to invest (S=I as textbooks tell us) more or longer in higher risk products that promise higher returns.
The same people are also against Minimum Wage whilst claiming $1,200 annuity payout is inadequate:
- Imagine you are a toilet cleaner earning $700 (gross). How many months of work are required before you can see a payout of $1,200 (tax/expense free)?
- Imagine you have no income. Even a $600 payout is a luxury. Your smile would be all teeth and no eyes.
- Imagine you are on social welfare. With $1,200, your smile would be bigger than a banana. You need not have all 3 meals at the hawker centre. Vivian will say you can afford to go to a restaurant once in a while.
It is not mathematically possible for CPF to pay out more than our monthly salary unless our working period is very much longer than our retirement period. No wonder, we have to work till we drop dead. No wonder some people resort to selling promises of higher returns from riskier assets. No wonder GIC bought toxic assets hoping to make a few folds return.
What has changed so much that our CPF exploded from $52 billion in 1993 to $260 billion in 2014 and still deem not enough? Are inflation and longevity the reasons? Do the excuses make sense at all?
Let's do some reverse thinking. So what happened in 1993 when CPF was just $52 billion? Did Singaporeans drop dead at 55 due to shorter life-span? Did they have to sell their flats and live on the streets? Did retirees die of hunger?
