Author Archives: Ginny Lim

Up to $200,000 investment into Singapore Savings Bond

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From 1 Feb­ru­ary 2019, Singa­por­eans can invest up to $200,000 of their funds into Singa­pore Sav­ings Bond (SSB), up from the cur­rent lim­it of $100,000. Also, the Sup­ple­ment­ary Retire­ment Scheme (SRS) funds can also buy into the SSB from the same effect­ive date, great news to those (33% of SRS funds) who have been leav­ing their money in the sav­ings account, earn­ing the mea­gre sav­ings interest rate of around 0.1% p.a.

Recall that Singa­pore Sav­ings Bond is a 10-years sav­ings bond offered by the Gov­ern­ment. What makes this SSB stands out from the oth­er bonds is that you can ter­min­ate the bond any­time without pen­alty, and you earn the interest for the peri­od that you hold on to the bond. But do note that the trend is high­er interest rate is being offered for the first few years. If you hold on to the SSB for the full 10 years, the over­all interest rate is not as attract­ive com­pared to oth­er fin­an­cial products that locked you for 10 years.

Use PayNow for CPF withdrawal

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Since March 2018, PayNow has been avail­able to CPF mem­bers as a form of with­draw­al of the money from the CPF accounts for mem­bers who are aged 55 and above. This PayNow account must be NRIC-linked, mean­ing you have to link your NRIC to your bank account from any of the PayNow par­ti­cip­at­ing banks.

The turn­around time using PayNow for with­draw­al is 1 day but 5 work­ing days if you choose to with­draw via Inter­b­ank GIRO.

 

 

2018 GST Vouchers and Medisave Top-ups

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From 1 August 2018, Singa­por­eans resid­ing in Singa­pore who are aged 21 and above in 2018, whose assess­able income for Year of Assess­ment 2017 is not more than $28,000, will receive up to $300 in cash, to be depos­ited in the des­ig­nated bank account or receive the money by cheque. How­ever, you must not own more than one prop­erty and the annu­al value of your home as at 31 Decem­ber 2017 must not exceed $21,000. You will get either $300 if the annu­al value of your home is up to $13,000, or $150 if the annu­al value of your home is from $13,001 to $21,000.

Also, if you are Singa­por­eans resid­ing in Singa­pore who are aged 65 and above in 2018, do not own more than one prop­erty and the annu­al value of your home as at 31 Decem­ber 2017 does not exceed $21,000, you will also receive Medis­ave top-up of between $150 to $450 on 1 August 2018. The details are as fol­lows :-

Age in 2018 Annu­al Value of Home as at 1 Decem­ber 2017
Up to $13,000 $13,001 to $21,000
65–74 $250 $150
75–84 $350 $250
85 and above $450 $350

 

You can view your eli­gib­il­ity on both GST vouch­ers and Medis­ave top-up amount and update your pre­ferred bank account via https://www.gstvoucher.gov.sg using your Sing­pass.

 

Reduction in Home Protection Scheme Premium from 1 July 2018

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Home Pro­tec­tion Scheme (HPS) is an term-redu­cing mort­gage insur­ance man­aged by CPFB that will help HPS mem­bers to pay off the hous­ing loan in the event of death, ter­min­al ill­ness or total per­man­ent dis­ab­il­ity. It insures mem­ber up to 65 years old or until the loan is paid up, whichever is earli­er.

510,000 CPF mem­bers will pay less for their Home Pro­tec­tion Scheme (HPS) premi­um from 1st July 2018 onwards, when their insur­ance is due for renew­al. This will bene­fit 95% of the HPS mem­bers, with three quar­ters of them get­ting reduc­tion of at least 10% from their exist­ing premi­ums. The last reduc­tion in HPS premi­um was done in 2012.

Just to recap, CPF mem­bers have to be insured under HPS if they are using CPF sav­ings to pay for the hous­ing loan for their HDB flats. How­ever, they can choose to buy mort­gage insur­ance from private insurer as long as they can ful­fill the cri­ter­ia man­dated by CPFB. Vis­it HPS web­site to find out more.

 

CareShield Life to replace ElderShield in 2020

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From 2020, all Singa­por­eans who are aged 30 to 40 will be auto­mat­ic­ally enrolled into the new Care­Shield Life, regard­less of his health con­di­tion. It is a uni­ver­sal cov­er­age, and so if he is dis­abled when he joins scheme, he will make a one-time premi­um pay­ment, and will start col­lect­ing the pay­outs imme­di­ately. Those who are on the cur­rent Eld­erShield can opt to join the new Care­Shield Life, more inform­a­tion will be released by the gov­ern­ment later.

To recap, these two schemes start pay­out once a per­son is severely dis­abled, that is, can­not per­form 3 out of 6 daily activ­it­ies of bathing, feed­ing, dress­ing, trans­fer­ring, mobil­ity and toi­let­ing.

 

The key dif­fer­ences between Care­Shield Life and Eld­ershield at a glance are as fol­lows:-

 

Care­Shield LIfe Eld­erShield 400
$600 monthly pay­out for life, from year 2020 $400 monthly pay­out for 6 years
Monthly pay­out increases from year 2020, as long as you are still pay­ing premi­um $400 monthly pay­out is fixed
Premi­um pay­ment from age 40 to 67 Premi­um pay­ment from age 40 to 65
Premi­um increases over the   years till age 67 Premi­um is fixed at the entry age

 

Though the premi­um will increase over the years, medis­ave can be used fully to pay the premi­um for Care­Shield Life.

The Care­Shield Life is def­in­itely a great improve­ment in term of pay­out amount and the cov­er­age years. It also factors in infla­tion cost over the years. For the first 5 years, the gov­ern­ment has decided to increase the pay­out at the rate of 2% per annum. The monthly pay­out will increase as you pay your high­er premi­um each year, until you make a claim and stop pay­ing premi­um or when you fin­ish pay­ing your premi­um at age 67.

 

More inform­a­tion can be found at https://www.moh.gov.sg/content/dam/moh_web/careshieldlife/index.html

U-Save rebate for April 2018

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The Util­it­ies-Save (U-Save) rebate, which Singa­por­ean house­holds will receive as GST vouch­ers in April 2018, will help to off­set their util­it­ies bills. These vouch­ers will be dis­bursed every 3 months.

House­holds in one-and two-room Hous­ing Board flats will receive $95, those in three-room flats will get $85, those in four-room flats will receive $75, those in five-room flats, $65, and those in exec­ut­ive or multi-gen­er­a­tion flats, $55.  How­ever, if any one of the mem­bers own more than one prop­erty, then the house­hold will not be eli­gible for this rebate.

When the car­bon tax t is imple­men­ted from 2019, eli­gible house­holds will receive addi­tion­al $20 a year for three years, from 2019 to 2021. The addi­tion­al rebate amount will help to cov­er the expec­ted increase in elec­tri­city and gas expenses for house­holds.

 

Total annu­al amount of rebate from 2018 to 2021

HDB Flat Type Annu­al Rebate for 2018 Annu­al Rebate for 2019–2021
1-room & 2-room $380 $400
3-room $340 $360
4-room $300 $320
5-room $260 $280
Exec­ut­ive/Multi-Gen­er­a­tion $220 $240

 

 

CPF savings transfer to parents and grandparents

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Cur­rently, CPF mem­bers can only trans­fer sav­ings from their CPF accounts to their par­ents or grand­par­ents after set­ting aside the full retire­ment sum. How­ever, mem­bers can soon do the trans­fer after set­ting aside the basic retire­ment sum if they have prop­erty pledges or charges to meet the full retire­ment sum, after the CPF Amend­ment Bill is passed in par­lia­ment soon.

Note that for those turn­ing 55 in 2017, the full retire­ment sum is S$166,000, so the basic retire­ment sum is half at S$83,000.

GST Vouchers, Medisave top-ups, U-Save and S&CC rebate in 2017

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1.57 mil­lion eli­gible Singa­por­eans will receive the GST Vouch­ers and Medis­ave Top-up start­ing from July 2017. They can login to www.gstvoucher.gov.sg to view the actu­al cash and medis­ave amount and also to update the pay­ment mode with their Sing­pass.

For GST vouch­ers, about 1.37 mil­lion will receive up to $500 cash, up to $300 in August and up to $200 in Novem­ber 2017.

For Medis­ave top-up, about 450,000 Singa­por­eans aged 65 years and above will receive up to $450 in August 2017.

In addi­tion, about 520,000 Singa­por­eans who are born on or before 31 Decem­ber 1959 (58 years and above in 2017) and do not receive Pion­eer Gen­er­a­tion bene­fits will receive a Medis­ave top-up of up to $200 in August 2017 and 2018. Pion­eers, mean­while, will receive addi­tion­al MediS­ave top-up of $200-$800 in July 2017.

Do note that those in the 21 to 55 age group with mobile num­bers updated with Sing­Pass will only receive SMS noti­fic­a­tions (without hard­copy let­ters). Those aged 56 and above with mobile num­bers updated with Sing­Pass will receive both SMSes and noti­fic­a­tion let­ters. You can opt for SMS noti­fic­a­tions in future, by updat­ing their mobile num­bers with Sing­Pass at www.singpass.gov.sg.

 

House­hold Bene­fits

U-Save is giv­en every 3 months to help off­set util­it­ies bills dir­ectly. From July 2017, a per­man­ent increase of $40-$120 will be giv­en to about 880,000 eli­gible Singa­por­ean HDB house­holds. These house­holds will also be giv­en one-off 1.5 to 3.5 months of Ser­vice and Con­servancy rebate in 2017, depend­ing on their HDB flat type.

 

Source : http://www.mof.gov.sg/news-reader/articleid/1834/parentid/59/year/2017?category=Press%20Release

1.54m Singaporeans to get GST Vouchers and other Budget Benefits

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About 1.54 mil­lion Singa­por­eans will receive let­ters from Min­istry of Fin­ance inform­ing them of their eli­gib­il­ity for GST vouch­ers and oth­er budget bene­fits by 1 July 2016.

For indi­vidu­al Singa­por­ean aged 21 and above whose assess­able income for Year of Assess­ment 2015 is less than $26,000 and who does not own more than one prop­erty, you will get $500 on 1 August 2016 if the annu­al value if home is $13,000 and below; or $250 if the annu­al value of home is from $13,001 to $21,000.

For Pion­eer Singa­por­ean, they will also get up to $800 top-up per year to their medis­ave based on the cri­ter­ia below.

Pion­eer Gen­er­a­tion Medis­ave Top-up
Born in Age in 2016 Amount of Medis­ave top-up per year
1945 — 1949 67 — 71 $200
1940 — 1944 72 — 76 $400
1935 – 1939 77 — 81 $600
1934 or earli­er >= 82 $800

 

For Non-Pion­eers, they will also get up to $200 top-up per year to their medis­ave till 2018 based on the cri­ter­ia below.

5-Year Medis­ave Top-up (2014 – 2018)
Annu­al Value of Home as at 21 Dec 2015 Up to $13,000 Above $13,000 or owns more than prop­erty
Singa­pore Cit­izens born in 1959 and earli­er who are not Pion­eers $200/year $100/year
One-off addi­tion­al medis­ave top-up for those age 65 and above in 2016 and who does not own more than one prop­erty. For those age 65 to 74, to get addi­tion­al $250.

 

For those age 75 to 84, to get addi­tion­al $350.

 

For those age 85 and above, to get addi­tion­al $450.

 

 For those age 65 to 74, to get addi­tion­al $150.

 

For those age 75 to 84, to get addi­tion­al $250.

 

For those age 85 and above, to get addi­tion­al $350.

 

 

For house­holds stay­ing in HDB flats, gov­ern­ment will give up to $260 deduc­tion in util­it­ies bills in equal instal­ments over 4 months in July 2016, Octo­ber 2016, Janu­ary 2017 and April 2017. Each house­hold will also get up to 3 months of S&CC rebate.

 

House­hold bene­fits for 2016
Flat Type 1 And 2-Room 3-Room 4-Room 5-Room Exec­ut­ive/Mulit-Gen­er­a­tion
GSTV – U-Save $260 $240 $220 $200 $180
S&CC rebate (months) 3 2 2 1.5 1

Ref­er­ence : https://www.gstvoucher.gov.sg