MEDISAVE

When you actually get out to read up on how CPF works, and more or less understand the gist of the concept CPF, you will not be bothered whether the money is yours or the govt. I'm not commenting on whether I agree with the system, I do not believe my agreement in this matter is going to change anything.

I want to talk about for a moment on the ownership of the money in CPF or Medisave in particular.

I'm sure many of you have heard from your friends and relatives that if you go for surgery and/or being hospitalized, you can CLAIM from medisave.

Many do not realise that this is fundamentally wrong and it's this wrong mindset that leads to people thinking that CPF is not our money.

I recently had to go for a wisdom tooth extraction, for my lower wisdom tooth, it is impacted which means the tooth had to be surgically removed. But my upper wisdom tooth can be extracted normally. The fearful procedure didn't hurt, I was under local anesthesia so the upper tooth extraction is painless.

I didn't admit to anyone but I felt quite good throughout the whole process. Adrenaline kicked in, making me more excited, but I was quickly reduced to puking and vomiting once it wore off.

But I digress...

Many people are lamenting that CPF money is not their own, but by telling people they can claim whatever payment from CPF, that in itself, is already you subconsciously telling yourself and others that it is not your money, hence the need to 'claim' instead of 'use'.

Simple analogy: when you go ATM to withdraw money, do you tell people that you are claiming money from the bank?

Simpler analogy: when you take out your wallet to make a payment, do you 'claim' money from your wallet?

Remember people, I get that many of us are just complaining that CPF is my money, not the govt's money. I'm not here to say whether is it ours or govt's money. I just feel that we should understand the schemes whether or not we like it. Because, by not understanding it, there is no difference as not owning it.

Personally, I feel that the CPF is not great but its not harmful either, if I use the underside of my mattress as my CPF savings account, in 20-30 years, it will be worth half the value due to inflation. I'm not a savvy investor who knows how to generate enough income with all that money to beat annual inflation (assuming 2% annually) let's not talk about earning more money from it. Risk free 2.5-3.5% on OA and 4-5% on SA is honestly good returns (considering no tax as well on this gain).

Bottom line: take time to go read up and understand how CPF works, how it gives out interest to you, use Google to solve big words like accrued interest (click me! click me!!!). Maybe financial savvy people can build a workaround to put things into your favour.