Every money decision answers one of two worries: what if I go too soon, and what if I live a long time? Answer eight questions about your own situation, quietly, and see where the work is.
Before anything is insured or invested, there is money that has to be reachable this week without selling something or asking anyone. Its size follows what your life costs to run, not what you earn.
About two minutes. Your answers stay in this browser.
Your income stops before your obligations do. These four ask what would actually happen to the people you love, and who would carry it.
Before anything is insured or invested, there is money that has to be reachable this week without selling something or asking anyone. Its size follows what your life costs to run, not what you earn.
You can name the figure, it is sized on essential monthly spending rather than income, and you could draw on it this week.
The first risk is that your income stops before your obligations do: through death, disability, or an illness serious enough to end your working life. The question is not whether you have policies. It is what they would actually pay, and for how long.
If you stopped earning tomorrow, you can say to what age your dependants' essential spending and your liabilities are covered, without selling the home.
A hospital bill is the one large expense that arrives without warning and without a payment plan. Most people are covered by something. Fewer can say what tier that something buys, or what share of a bill stays theirs.
You can name your ward tier and your worst-case out-of-pocket in a single claim year. If you cannot name the tier, you did not choose it: it was chosen for you.
The least interesting step, and the one that most often undoes the other three. Money moves according to documents, not intentions, and CPF does not pass under a will.
CPF nomination made, will current and matching what you actually want, LPA done.
Your money stops before you do. These four build income in levels, ordered by how much you can rely on each one, so the money you cannot afford to lose carries the least risk.
The second risk is outliving your money. Level 1 is the income that arrives every month for as long as you live, whatever markets do: CPF LIFE, for most Singaporeans, already owned and already running.
You know your projected lifelong payout and the start age you have chosen, plus any annuity income, and whether the total covers essential monthly spending.
Endowments and annuities sit above Level 1: contractual income, paid for a set period rather than for life. They also cover the years between the day work stops and the day CPF LIFE starts, which is when a bad market does the most damage.
For the years before CPF LIFE begins, you can say where the money comes from, and the answer is not Level 3.
Dividends and capital growth. One job nothing else can do: stay ahead of inflation across a retirement that may run thirty years. This is the level that is not guaranteed, and so the level that flexes in a bad year.
You can state your equity and bond split and why that number, and you have not changed it because of something the market did.
A plan fails at the moment it meets a frightening year, which is why the response is decided in a calm one. Write down in advance what would make you change course, and treat everything not on that list as noise.
There is a date in the calendar, and a written list of what would make you change the plan, written before you needed it.
Cash first means premiums never lapse and a small shock stays small. Insurance first means the catastrophic risk is covered while cover is cheapest, which matters most for a young family with nothing saved yet. I start with cash. Someone sensible would start with cover.
In Singapore the mortgage usually is the liability, and step two's test already catches it. If your borrowing is unsecured or expensive, it belongs ahead of almost everything here.
They are optimisation, and optimising before the structure exists produces a tax-efficient plan that still fails. They come after step seven, not before step one.
It tells you where you stand and what to look at next. It cannot tell you how much cover, which split, or what a specific product would do in your hands. That needs your actual numbers and your actual circumstances.
Education only, and general in nature. Nothing on this page accounts for your objectives, financial situation or particular needs, and it is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any product. Thomas Chai Kian Teck, Certified Financial Planner, MAS Rep. No. CKT300001354. The views here are his own. Seek advice tailored to your own circumstances before acting.