Money in and out: income, expenses, assets and CPF

How do these screens work together?

The second sidebar group works like Profile’s four screens, plus one extra: a live preview chart lower on each form, drawn from your latest projection.

Income, Expenses, Current assets, and CPF each carry a chart that redraws from your latest projection as you edit. You can’t edit it directly; it only mirrors the fields above.

They affect each other too: income’s CPF switch decides whether CPF applies, expenses’ lifestyle jump lines up with income’s own promotion years, and how much gets invested draws on the live income projection. Fill Income first if working through the group in order.

What do I enter under Income?

Your main pay and how it grows, plus any side hustles: gross income (before CPF and tax), a yearly growth rate, promotion frequency and its pay bump, an income ceiling, optional gap years, and whether it pays into CPF. Take-home pay is worked out for you.

The fields include “Monthly gross income”, “Annual income growth rate (%)”, “Income ceiling”, a “Contribute income to CPF” toggle and “Gap years (ages)”. The ceiling caps where growth stops, not what you can earn today.

The mini-chart: take-home pay and side-hustle income stacked as what you keep, with gross pay as a dashed line above. The gap is CPF plus tax.

• Gross income starts blank and pauses the projection until entered, since only you know what you earn.
• The income ceiling can’t sit below your gross income, checked as you type; growth stops there. Leave it blank and income is effectively uncapped.
• Gap years are ages you add for a sabbatical, study break, or career pause, each at your current age or later. Income drops to zero for that age.
• “Contribute income to CPF” starts on for Singaporeans and PRs, off for others, but you can flip it yourself.
• Self-employed people see a note: CPF goes to MediSave only, and take-home pay is worked out differently.
• Side hustles are a list you can add to, each with its own name, ages, income, growth rate, and ceiling.
• Ad hoc income is a list of one-off sums, like an inheritance or a policy payout. Each has a name, an amount and an expected date, lands in the year of that date, and is not taxed. It shows as a marker on your pathway chart, and on a phone the Plan tab lists it under “Money you expect”. Income that comes in every month for a few months goes in Side hustles instead.

How take-home pay and tax are worked out is covered in Income & tax.

What do I enter under Expenses?

Monthly living expenses today, an optional spending ceiling, and two growth rates: a normal yearly rise, and a bigger “lifestyle” rise for promotion or job-switch years.

Below them sits a Temporary expenses list, one list per person.

The fields include “General expenses”, “Monthly expenses limit”, “Annual increment (%)” and “Lifestyle increment (%)”. The normal annual increment applies most years, and the bigger one-off bump applies on promotion years.

The mini-chart: living expenses growing with inflation, with “now” and “age 65” markers so you can see the creep at a glance.

• The lifestyle rise replaces the yearly rise in a promotion or job-switch year, rather than adding to it. Both sit on top of inflation.
• General expenses starts blank too, pausing the projection until entered.
• The monthly expenses limit is a ceiling in today’s dollars, rising with inflation each year. Leave it blank and spending is effectively uncapped.
• General expenses are costs you’ll have for life. Food, transport, utilities and phone bills go here. Loan repayments and mortgage payments belong in Commitments instead, or they’re double-counted.
• Costs that stop one day go in Temporary expenses. Rent until your new flat is ready, childcare, or a subscription you plan to cancel each get a name, an amount (monthly, yearly or one-off), an end date, and optionally a start date and a yearly increase (up to 20% a year). On a couple’s plan, enter each person’s own share on their own tab (“In today’s dollars, your own share only.”). Leave the start date blank and it starts now; “Clear date” clears it. An end date or expected date can’t be before your plan date. When you replan past an end date, the expense drops off. A one-off buy, like new furniture, is too small to be a goal but worth planning for: choose One-off and pick the month you expect to pay. It has no start date. Unlike a goal, it gets no savings plan or chart marker. It is just counted in your spending that year. Leave the increase blank and the cost follows inflation. Housing only models owning or buying, so this is where rent lives.

A tracked-spending nudge that sends you here shows a banner naming what you’ve actually been averaging, so the real number is already in front of you. For example: “Reviewing Living spending. The household has averaged $1,400/mo recently. If that’s the new normal, update the monthly figures below and the plan will follow.” See Tracking for where these nudges come from.

What do I enter under Current assets?

The cash and investments you hold today, your expected returns before and after retirement, and how much of each year’s income gets invested. You set both return rates; the app doesn’t guess a market return for you.

The fields include “Cash in bank”, “Investment value”, “Average annual return (%)” and “Return after retirement (%)”. The second rate is a separate, usually lower, post-retirement rate.

The mini-chart: projected investments as a filled area, with what you’ve put in as a dashed line. The gap is growth from returns.

• Two ways to invest: a fixed amount each month, or a percentage of income. Switching keeps whatever you typed in the other.
• The two return fields are easy to mix up, so they’re labelled clearly: “Average annual return (%)” against “Return after retirement (%)”.
• You can only invest what’s left over, capped each year by the cash left after your emergency-fund floor. What you set is a target, not a promise, if cash runs short.

How money in, money out, and the emergency fund work together is in The cash & asset waterfall.

What do I enter under CPF?

Your Ordinary Account (OA), Special Account (SA), and MediSave Account (MA) balances today, copied from your CPF statement. If you are 55 or older today, the SA field is labelled Retirement Account (RA): since 55, your SA savings are in your RA, so enter your RA balance from the CPF app. Every field starts empty: a made-up starting balance would quietly throw off the projection. None of the three is prefilled.

The mini-chart: your balances stacked and projected to age 100. Before 55 it shows OA, a joined “SA / RA” band, and MA. From 55 it shows OA, RA, and MA. At 55 your SA closes into your RA, up to your retirement sum. Anything above that stays in your OA, which stays open and covers any cash shortfall first. That’s the plan’s model, not a CPF rule.

“At 55 and after”: the panel below picks up from there, showing your OA and SA at 55, which retirement sum (Basic, Full, or Enhanced) you reach, what stays in your OA at 55, and what CPF LIFE pays monthly from 65. If your RA falls short of the Basic sum, it says “Below the Basic sum”. Open “What each retirement sum would pay” to compare all three. All figures are in the year’s own dollars, not today’s, and the panel says so rather than showing zero before your plan is calculated.

• Citizenship decides whether this applies, set in General info. Others see a note that they make no CPF contributions and hold no balance or payout, with a button to change citizenship if that’s wrong.
• On a couple’s plan, each person is treated on their own, so differing citizenships can mean one full form and one not-applicable note.
• The sidebar only dims CPF when everyone’s citizenship is “Others”. A dimmed row still opens the note, and says why it’s dimmed.

CPF contribution rates, what happens from 55, and CPF LIFE payouts are explained in full in CPF.