Monthly CPF Life Payout for Mum

The first week of work at my new job role was okay and I hope things continue to be fine. I reckon it would require a few months for me to properly settle in and that’s my plan until the end of the year. When I can take my 2 weeks of paid paternity leave and probably clear 1 week of paid annual leave since I can’t carry forward all of them to the next year.

My wife is doing what she can to ensure her team continues to remain functional when she goes off. The issue is that her head of division has resigned and will be replaced with someone new. There’s likely to be department restructures, pay cuts and job roles changes in the next year. Which is tough because she won’t be there to watch out for this and manage the fallout.

This will be when my wife is at her most vulnerable to retrenchment. Because she will be away from her job role long enough for a new work structure to be put in place that makes her redundant. While she has worked long enough at her bank to build up relationships with her peers and senior managers to reduce the likelihood of this happening, you never know what can happen. We will find out soon enough.

Anyway, my mum has resigned from her part-time retail promoter job. While she liked aspects of it, the pay and working conditions have been deteriorating since the start of this year. This is expected given Singapore’s retail sales have been steadily declining and retailers are cutting hours and pay of their staff.

We are lucky my mum doesn’t need the job for her expenses. She does it as a way to meet more people, learn new skills and pass time. But she empathizes with her colleagues whom actually require the job to pay their bills. It’s a bad time to be working in the retail industry now.

Another fortunate thing that happened is my mum’s monthly CPF Life Payout starting in the same month she decided to stop working. It’s about the same as my dad – roughly S$850 each per month. It’s sufficient to cover their monthly living expenses with some leftover as savings. This is not counting the cash contributions from my siblings & I and the remaining enbloc cash proceeds.

As a side update, my parents have used a significant amount of their enbloc cash proceeds to purchase a 3 bedroom private condo for my siblings and them to stay in. The remaining amount is placed in term deposits (savings), invested in unit trusts (investments) and left as normal deposits (spending).

You could say they have benefited from the enbloc process as it’s nicer staying in the 3 bedroom private condo with gym, pool, function room & BBQ pit facilities and basement carpark. The place is newer and smaller, which works well for my family since they don’t need as much living space as before and it’s easier to manage. Plus they are still left with a decent amount as a windfall gain to take care of any expenses for the foreseeable future.

I’m happy for my family and I feel they deserve it. I don’t say it often enough but they are good people who try to be better. I’m glad this helps them financially since the sufficiency of my family finances is one of my biggest worries. This has allowed me to take a breather for now while I re-focus on the current and upcoming major changes to my life.