I see..............thanks...........so if I don't have a Retirement Account yet, I won't get the extra 1% right ?
what about Special Account................I thought they say 7% interest ?
Hahahaha, this is complicated, right? Typical PAP bullshit, throw a lot of smoke in, stir with some crap and try to hide the actual numbers. This process should be very simple. But what they do is they say you can get this rate, only if this happens, and then the rate goes here and there. SImplification is not in the PAP vocabulary.
My understanding is as follows, and of course any staff of CPF here is free to correct me.
You can get a 1% bonus on your accounts with CPF.
This is restricted to only $60,000 on all your combined accounts, therefore, the max you can get is $600 per year. That's right, yippee kaiyer motherfucker. Before you faint from the PAP's generousity, there is more conditions.
The 1% bonus has a priority distribution. The RA gets the first prority. If your RA has $60K in it already, then all of the 1% bonus interest will be deposited there.
If you only have say $20K in your RA, then $200 of the $600 bonus interest is deposited there. The second priority becomes the OA. So, the balance of the $400 interest should be deposited there.
But wait, there is yet another condition. The max. bonus interest that can go into the OA is $200 because they restricted it to the first $20K of the OA. So, under this scenario, you have $200 into RA, $200 into OA, and a balance of $200.
The third priority is the Special account. This is where the remaining $200 will be deposited. So even if you only have $5K in your special account, the $200 will be deposited there because you have overall $60K. Remember, All this is predicated on the assumption that you have at least $60K in your combined accounts. If you have only $50K, then tough shit, your 1% works out to $500 only.
But wait, there is yet another twist. If you are over 55 and have money in CPF Life, then the 1% can also be distributed into there. That is because when you turn 55, some of your OA and SA money have been hijacked into a newly created RA account for you and the money there used to open a CPF Life account (whether you want to or not). Therefore, if all the accounts you have outside of CPF Life does not add up to $60K, they will allow the money in your CPF life to be counted as part of the $60K, and any balance of the 1% interest will be deposited in you CPF Life account.
U need a fucking MBA to figure all this shit out. The secondary and pre-U schools in singapore are better off teaching their students how to calculate all of this instead of giving them etiquette lessons.