Housing
Buy the biggest flat you qualify for — 'asset progression' will reward you.
Every extra $100k of flat is about $450 a month for 25 years, plus the CPF interest you owe yourself. Right-sizing the home is a retirement decision in disguise.
Insurance
You need whole life or a 'savings plan' to be properly protected.
For pure protection, term does the same job for 20–40× less. Insure cheaply, invest the difference separately.
The same cover costs the same wherever you buy it.
Identical term cover can vary by around 70% depending only on the sales channel. The gap is commission, not protection.
CPF & tax
Make your CPF 'work harder' by investing it through CPFIS.
Over 2013–2022, 45% of CPF investors lost money and only ~25% beat the 2.5% floor they already had. Often, leaving it alone wins.
SRS is pointless — it's locked away and taxed anyway.
You save tax at your marginal rate going in, and only 50% is taxable coming out, spread over up to 10 years. The maths usually favours the patient.
Investing & behaviour
Track every coffee and you'll get rich on the small stuff.
The lever is your savings rate, not your latte. Guarding the share of income you keep moves the outcome far more.
The STI ETF gives you broad diversification.
It's about 30 Singapore companies, heavily weighted to a few banks — a concentrated bet. A global index spreads the same dollar far wider.
Good returns come from cleverness and timing.
The average fund investor earned ~7.0% while the funds they held returned ~8.2%. The gap vanished into buying high and panic-selling low.
Weddings & couples
A wedding is once in a lifetime, so the spend is always justified.
At a mid-range dinner the banquet roughly pays for itself through ang bao. It's the production you wrap around it that costs.
How a couple holds their accounts is just admin.
A 2023 experiment found couples told to merge into a joint account held their relationship quality where separate-account couples declined.
Retirement
Start your CPF LIFE payouts at 65 — take the money as soon as you can.
Each year you defer lifts your payout by up to 7%, to as much as +35% at 70 — locked in for the rest of your life.
None of this means everyone's out to get you — most people in the industry are decent, working inside a structure that quietly rewards selling. It just means the incentives are worth knowing. Clarity is the whole point of this site. What I believe →
Sources & notes
Each claim is drawn from the fuller page linked in its section, where the figures and sources are set out. General information as of July 2026, not financial advice. Several studies referenced are US-based; the direction is broadly consistent across markets. Jonathan Wong is a licensed financial adviser representative in Singapore, currently between firms — during that period he is not able to provide financial advice. You can check his registration yourself on the MAS Financial Institution Representatives Register at eservices.mas.gov.sg/rr.