How to Read Your CPF Statement in 10 Minutes (2026)

You have checked your bank balance a thousand times. Be honest: when did you last open your CPF? For most people the answer is “never,” or “once, years ago, it looked like a foreign language, and I closed the tab.”

I understand why. CPF feels like money that belongs to the government, or to a version of you so far off you cannot picture them. But here is what that closed tab is hiding: for most working Singaporeans, CPF is the single largest pot of money they own, long before any investment account. And right now you cannot see it.

The short version: while you are working, your CPF statement has three accounts, Ordinary (OA), Special (SA), and MediSave (MA). Log in at cpf.gov.sg with Singpass and write down four numbers: your three account balances plus your year-to-date contributions. That is the whole task today. Ten minutes, and you will finally know what your biggest asset is actually doing.

This is day one of getting your CPF working for you instead of just sitting there. It starts the way every good money decision starts: not by buying anything, but by looking at what you already own. You cannot optimise a number you have never seen.

Log in and find the three accounts

Open cpf.gov.sg, log in with Singpass, and you will see three accounts, each with a different job.

• Ordinary Account (OA) is mainly for housing, and it can also go toward education and investments. It earns 2.5% a year.
• Special Account (SA) is for retirement. It earns more: a 4% floor, which the government has extended to 31 December 2026.
• MediSave Account (MA) is for healthcare and approved insurance. It also earns the 4% floor.

A fourth account, the Retirement Account (RA), only appears at age 55, so most readers will not see it yet. We get there later in the series.

Write down all three balances and your year-to-date contributions. That is your starting picture, and the foundation for the next thirteen days. (CPF interest rates, cpf.gov.sg)

What your first statement actually looks like

If you are early in your career, the total is usually bigger than you brace yourself for.

When the page loads, the first thing you see is a single line near the top: you have some total amount in your CPF accounts as at 31 December. Below it, a small ring splits that one total into three coloured slices, your OA, SA and MA, so you can see at a glance which account holds what. Lower down, a contributions summary shows how much you, your employer, and the government (whose share is the interest it pays you) added over the year. You do not need to read every line. Those three balances and the year-to-date figure are the whole picture for today.

CPF · My Statement Illustrative

Your CPF savings, as at 31 Dec 1

S$14,000

Ordinary Account (OA) 2

S$8,700

Special Account (SA) 3

S$2,250

MediSave Account (MA) 4

S$3,050

Contributions, year to date 5

S$13,400

1. 1 Your CPF savings, as at 31 Dec. The headline total at the top of the page. It is simply the three accounts below added together, nothing hidden.
2. 2 Ordinary Account (OA). For housing, and it can also go toward education and investments. Earns 2.5% a year.
3. 3 Special Account (SA). Locked away for retirement. Earns a 4% floor, more than almost any savings account in Singapore.
4. 4 MediSave Account (MA). For healthcare bills and approved insurance premiums. Also earns the 4% floor.
5. 5 Contributions, year to date. What you, your employer, and the government (as interest) added over the year. That is the fourth number to jot down.

Layout based on a real CPF Yearly Statement of Account (YSOA); figures illustrative (a fresh graduate, about 62% OA / 16% SA / 22% MA per contribution). Your real balances are in your Singpass CPF login. Rates: OA 2.5%, SA and MA a 4% floor (extended to 31 Dec 2026).

Sit with that for a second. If you are 27 and feel like you have “no savings,” that statement may quietly tell you that you already have around S$14,000 working for you, a good chunk of it earning 4%, which beats almost any savings account in Singapore. It never felt like saving because it happened automatically, before the money ever reached your hands. That is the entire point of CPF, and it is also why ignoring it is a mistake: your biggest asset is on autopilot with nobody checking the controls.

Why the split changes as you age

The three slices are not equal, and they shift over your life.

While you are 35 or below, the largest share of each contribution lands in your OA, because in your 20s and 30s the system assumes housing is the priority. Roughly 62% goes to OA, 16% to SA, and 22% to MA for that age band. As you get older, more is steered toward retirement and healthcare (SA and MA) and less toward OA.

You do not need to memorise the percentages. You only need to know that the mix is deliberate, it changes with age, and it is visible on the same statement you just opened. We break the allocation down properly in tomorrow’s post on CPF allocation rates by age.

This is money you already own

Here is the shift I want you to make today. Stop thinking of CPF as “deductions,” money taken away from you. Start seeing it as the largest savings account you have, one you have been funding every payday for years without lifting a finger.

The 20% that leaves your pay each month is not gone. It is sitting in these three accounts, much of it earning a government-backed 4%, compounding while you sleep. The only real problem is that you have not been looking, and money you never look at is money you cannot make decisions about. The rest of this series is decisions, thirteen of them. Today is simply opening your eyes.

What it looked like for one fresh grad

Take Priya, 27, a year into her first job. (She is a composite of the fresh graduates I see, not one specific client.) She told me, flatly, that she had “basically no savings.”

Then we opened her CPF together. There it was: about S$14,000 across her three accounts, built entirely from contributions she had never noticed leaving her pay. She actually laughed, somewhere between relief and disbelief. She was not starting from zero. She had a five-figure head start nobody had ever told her about, growing at rates her bank account could not match. The only thing missing had been the ten minutes it took to look.

Where this goes next

That feeling, the quiet relief of “oh, I have more than I thought, and it has been working the whole time,” is what these two weeks are built to give you, one small step at a time.

CPF is not a black box, and it is not the government’s money. It is yours, it is large, and almost every setting on it can be understood and, over this series, improved: the interest tiers most people miss, the year-end top-up that cuts your tax bill, what really happens at 55. None of that is possible until you have seen the thing itself. Everything starts with the login you have been putting off.

Do this today

Log in to cpf.gov.sg with Singpass and write down four numbers: your OA, SA, and MA balances, and your year-to-date contributions. That is the whole task. Quick self-audit: while you are in there, find the interest line and notice how much of your money is earning the 4% floor versus 2.5%. That single observation is what Day 4 builds on.

Tomorrow we follow the money one level deeper: exactly how each month’s contribution splits across your three accounts, and why less of it lands in your OA as the years go by.

If your statement throws up something you do not understand, an old policy, a transfer, an accrued-interest line, that is exactly what a Free Financial Health Check is for. We read it together, in plain English, no pitch. Message me, and I reply.

And if you are still not sure where that 20% even comes from, start with your take-home pay and the CPF that leaves before you see it.