How do we perform your retirement projection

You provide

• Your birth year, month, and gender
• Your planned retirement age (between the following year and when you turn 65)
• Whether you currently earn an income. If you do: your monthly income, annual bonus, how fast you expect your income to grow (and until what age), and any pay cut you expect
• How you split your take-home pay today between expenses, investing and cash savings
• Your CPF balances (OA, MA, and SA/RA) and any mortgage paid from CPF-OA
• Your cash savings and investment portfolio value
• Your expected investment return. If you don't have an income, you also tell us a fixed amount you'll add to cash and to investments each month
• Your expected monthly spending in retirement, in today's dollars

We assume everything else

CPF interest rates, inflation rates and retirement income drawdown approach.

By default, we assume your income grows 4% a year until age 55, then stays flat until you retire. You can change both.

Why 4%? Based on Ministry of Manpower data, total wages (including employer CPF) grew about 4.3% a year between 2015 and 2025. Why flat after 55? Income from employment in Singapore typically peaks in the 40s, so we take a conservative view for later years.

We also assume you keep working — and keep contributing to CPF — until your chosen retirement age.

Customise your income growth and pay cut

If you expect your pay to grow faster or slower, you can set your own growth rate and the age your income stops growing. You can also simulate a pay cut, for example, to earn 20% less from age 50, to see how it affects your retirement plan.

If you don't currently have an income

We don't project a salary or CPF contributions for you. Instead, you tell us a fixed amount to add to your cash and to your investments each month, which stays the same until you retire.

Interest rates

• Ordinary Account (OA): 2.5% a year
• Special Account (SA), Medisave (MA), Retirement Account (RA): 4% a year
• Plus the extra interest CPF pays on the first $60,000 of your combined balances

These rates are reviewed by CPF Board periodically. If they change in future, actual outcomes may differ from our projection. For full details on how CPF interest works, visit CPF Board's website.

Retirement sums and caps

We follow CPF's past published schedules for the Basic, Full, and Enhanced Retirement Sums. The Basic Retirement Sum (BRS) is assumed to increase at 3.5% annually rounded to the nearest hundred, and the Full Retirement Sum (FRS) is two times of the BRS, and the Enhanced Retirement Sum is two times of the FRS. The Basic Healthcare Sum that caps your Medisave is assumed to grow at 4.5% per year.

What happens at 55

Your Retirement Account is formed from your SA and OA savings, following CPF's actual rules, including the $5,000 that stays in your OA. If you are already 55 or older, your Retirement Account has already been formed, so we start from the RA balance you enter.

Your CPF LIFE payout

From age 65, CPF LIFE pays you a monthly income for life. We project your CPF LIFE payouts using our in-house model that we have stress-tested against official CPF tools. Do note that these are independent estimates and may vary from the official CPF formula.

• We use the Standard Plan by default, which pays a level amount for life (you can switch to the Basic or Escalating Plan on your results page)
• The Basic Plan pays roughly 10% less than the Standard Plan each month
• The Escalating Plan payouts start about 20% lower than the Standard Plan, but grow 2% each year, catching up with Standard Plan payouts around age 77

Your actual payout will be confirmed by CPF Board when you decide to start your payouts – anytime between age 65 and 70, depending on your RA balance, choice of CPF LIFE plan and actual life expectancy or mortality rates.

Deductions we include automatically

To keep the projection realistic, we deduct common insurance premiums most Singaporeans pay through CPF:

• Dependants' Protection Scheme (from Ordinary Account)
• MediShield Life (from MediSave Account)
• A typical Integrated Shield Plan premium, deducted at the maximum Additional Withdrawal Limit of $300, $600 or $900 a year depending on your age (from MediSave Account)
• Your monthly mortgage payment, if you told us you are still paying for one (from Ordinary Account)

Your CPF LIFE bequest

Your CPF LIFE bequest is the part of your CPF LIFE premium that has not yet been paid out, which would go to your CPF nominees. We start with your Retirement Account balance just before age 65, which becomes your premium. Each year, we subtract the CPF LIFE payouts you have received so far, and what remains is your bequest for that age.

Standard and Escalating plans: the bequest is simply your starting balance minus the total payouts received to date. It falls steadily and reaches zero once your payouts have used up the starting balance.

Basic plan: we split your balance into two parts. 10% is set aside and earns no interest. The other 90% earns CPF's 4% interest, plus the extra interest on the first $60,000. Each year's payout is taken from the 90% part first, then from the 10% part. Your bequest is the total left in both parts.

As with the rest of the projection, this is an estimate from our in-house model, which may differ from your actual CPF LIFE bequest. Please refer to CPF Board for more detailed bequest information.

We assume your cash earns 0% interest.

The base interest rate on most local savings accounts is around 0.05% a year — close enough to zero that we don't count it. Each month, whatever is left of your take-home pay after expenses and investing gets added to your cash savings.

How your savings keep pace with your income

We turn the split you tell us into shares of your take-home pay. For example, if you take home $3,200 and spend $1,000, invest $1,000 and keep $1,200 as cash, that's about 31% / 31% / 38%. We retain this proportion as your income changes, so when your pay goes up, your spending, investing and cash savings all rise together (and all fall together if you simulate a pay cut).

If you don't currently have an income

We simply add the fixed monthly cash amount you tell us, at 0% interest.

Before retirement: your portfolio grows at the return rate you choose (between 0% and 10% a year; the default being 2%), plus your monthly contributions. If you earn an income, your contribution is a fixed share of your take-home pay, so it grows with your income. If you don't, it is the fixed monthly amount you tell us.

During retirement: we apply the widely used 4% rule. In your first year of retirement, you withdraw 4% of your portfolio. Each year after, the withdrawal grows 2% to keep pace with inflation.

This rule comes from research by financial planner William Bengen, who tested every 30-year retirement period since 1926 and found a balanced portfolio could sustain this withdrawal rate for 30 years.

But history doesn't cover every possible future. So we also stress-test your plan with a Monte Carlo simulation - we run 2,000 different versions of your retirement, each with a different random sequence of good and bad market years, and check how often your money lasts. The coverage age we show you reflects a 90% confidence level: in at least 9 out of 10 simulated futures, your money lasted that long.

We assume your expenses grow 2% a year with inflation.

Singapore's inflation has averaged between 1.7% and 2.1% over the past 10 to 20 years, so 2% is a reasonable long-term planning figure.

Your retirement spending — three starting points, in today's dollars

• Basic — $1,500/month. Based on the Household Expenditure Survey 2023, where the average retiree household spent about $1,384/month, adjusted for inflation.
• Comfortable — $2,900/month. Roughly half of Singapore's median monthly income from work ($5,775 in 2025).
• Custom. Any amount that fits the lifestyle you have in mind.

Whichever you choose, we inflate it by 2% a year from your current age, all the way to the start of your retirement, until age 100.

We project your finances to age 100.

That's deliberately long — running out of money late in life is the risk most people want to avoid. For context, based on the Singapore Life Tables (2025), a resident aged 65:

• Can expect to live to age 86.6
• Males aged 65 can expect to live to age 84.9 on average
• Females aged 65 can expect to live to age 88.1 on average

"Covered till age X" — the headline number in your results — is the last age at which your income and savings fully cover that year's expenses. Beyond that age, there would be a shortfall.

In retirement, your expenses are covered by four sources, in this order:

1. CPF LIFE — your guaranteed monthly income, for life, from age 65
2. Investments — withdrawn using the 4% rule
3. Cash savings — fill any remaining gap each year
4. CPF-OA — the last resort, and only from age 55; it keeps earning 2.5% interest even while being drawn down

We chose a conservative approach

The order above is a "first cut" to test whether your retirement income is sufficient. It is not a rule or a recommendation. We draw on investments before cash because it keeps the projection conservative. Delaying investment withdrawals gives your investments more time to grow and thus may increase income, albeit with risk, so drawing down from investments from the start shows a lower income, in line with being conservative. This order also keeps your cash, which can serve as an emergency fund, untouched for longer. We take this cautious view because forecasting is uncertain.

Your own situation may call for a different order. For example, if you hold a lot of cash and your income streams already exceed your expenses (the red line on your chart), you may prefer to draw on cash first.

Your results include three star ratings under our Safety, Flexibility, Sufficiency framework.

Sufficiency — is the income enough, will it last long enough, and with inflation?

The age at which your first shortfall occurs, measured against Singapore life expectancy.

Safety — how stable is your income?

The share of your retirement income that comes from safe, stable, predictable sources (CPF LIFE, cash, and CPF-OA) rather than investments with credit or market risks.

Flexibility — can you handle a surprise?

The share of your assets at retirement that you could access as a lump sum if you needed to. Cash and CPF-OA count in full; investments are discounted by 30% to reflect that markets may be down when you need the money; your CPF-RA doesn't count, since it's committed to CPF LIFE.

A short AI summary

Alongside your ratings, a short AI-written summary explains your results in plain language — whether retiring at your chosen age looks doable, and what you could consider next. The AI only describes figures our calculator has already worked out; it does not change the numbers or your ratings.

On your results page, you can change the following and see your projection update straight away:

• Retirement age — anywhere from the following year to age 65
• Retirement spending — Basic, Comfortable or your own amount
• CPF LIFE plan — Standard, Basic or Escalating

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To keep things simple and useful for most Singaporeans, a few situations aren't covered in the tool today:

• Age range: does not support users aged younger than 19 nor older than 64
• One income: models a single person's employment income — no spouse, rental, or business income
• No property events: selling or downsizing your home isn't modelled
• Fixed assumptions: inflation rate, CPF interest rates, and the market simulation settings can't be changed by users