CPF as a life long saving scheme started well and meant well. Setting aside as high as 40% of a person's monthly income for retirement is a bit too much, but no one is complaining of having too much of a good thing. The intent is good but the execution is turning unreasonable, abusive and abrasive and unreasonble and unacceptable to the people in many ways.
The first annoyance and offensive change was the shifting of the goal post, from being able to withdraw at 55 to 60, and now 65 and hinting of moving it to 70. The people did not accept this lightly and were furious, but unable to do much against the govt that think it can do anything without the consent of the people, by changing the rules as and when it suka. It is leegal! What can the people do?
The following are the things that are unreasonable, unacceptable to the point of unthinkable.
1. How can a saving scheme for retirement has no consideration on when the people should stop saving after a certain age? The ridiculous nature of this saving scheme is that one is expected to continue to save and contribute new money into the system past the age of 60 to infinity. There is not cut off age and no regards to how much one has in the savings and how much one needs.
2. With no consideration to set a cut off date when a person no longer needs to save, some have more than enough to live a comfortable life after retirement, the scheme gradually turns to look like a trap, to tangkap the people's money at all cost. A good example is the interest on CPF money withdrawn for housing loans. The interest keeps running, interest on the borrower's own money, and this running even after the age when one is entitled to withdraw all his savings! This is made worse when one now cannot withdraw all the savings on withdrawal age. So the running interest could be even more than the loan.
Why should a 60, 70 or 80 year old person be owing interest to a housing loan he took, the money for the loan is his/hers, when he/she is many years past the age that he/she can withdraw all the savings when he/she could die any moment? What kind of logic or premises is behind the thinking of the people in govt?
What this means is that a person that sold his property at 70 or 80 or 90, must put back the interest accrued from his housing loan, into the CPF and still cannot withdraw all from the CPF. Is this reasonable, meaningful or simply unreasonable and unthinkable?
Any reasonable saving policy must have a cut off point when there is no longer a need or requirement to want to save anymore, and many would even have more than they need to live on.
Should the millionaires in the govt be reminded of the purpose of a saving scheme for retirement and why, after a certain age, it is meaningless to save and save anymore, that it would be better to enjoy the life long savings that to be stressed up to be forced to save when one can die the next very next day?
Please be reasonable, please stop bullying the people by having an iron grip on their life savings, their money, to spend while they are still able to enjoy and conscious of being alive. Please stop being so mean when it is the people's life savings, not public money.
3. Compulsory medical insurance. Regardless of whether you need it or not, whether you have private insurance, or if overseas, already contributing to insurance of country of residents, still must pay up. still got to pay for children's insurance, by law man, leegal man. Not paying up is a crime man.
4. No money to eat but got money in CPF. Many people are jobless, retired, no income, no savings, no money to eat, but have a lot of money in the CPF. But CPF money cannot touch. The logic, can die first from hunger and sickness, CPF money is for the future to live on, and in case, in case only, when one got sick in the future, got money to pay medical bills. Brilliant thinking and very compassionate and caring. This is how good the thinking behind the CPF scheme.
With such a scheme, everyone that died, through sickness or hunger, will still have a lot of money in the CPF. Only millionaire policy makers can come up with such a fantastic and caring scheme for the people, to die rich.
PS. Comments from a 76 year old
However, the cunning Minister of Health has compel me to pay for compulsory medical insurance which I do not need.
Not
only that. He also compel me to pay for my son's and daughter's medical
insurance, which do not need because they are also covered in my
pension agreement with the government. Everything is done by force,
against my free will.
Even though I have been paying the medical
insurance, I still have to keep a minimum sum in my compulsory Medisave
account to "cover my medical expenses".
This double whammy upon
my financial situation, when I have no more income and unable to find a
decent job at my age, is a crooked, cruel and sadistic action
deliberately inflicted upin a hapless old man. It is unthinkable,
horrendous and inhuman.
With such an experience with the CPF, I will never put in even one single cent into the CPF.
CPF to me stands for Compel People by Force.