A recap on the earlier episodes of this entry:
Part 1 - The harsh reality
Part 2 - The headache
Part 3 - Finding solutions
---
Now we move on to executing the solution:
Without wasting anymore time (since time wasn't on our side - what's with the counting down to my EDD & the key collection happening roughly around the same time), we went down to A-X-A Customer Service counter on the 15th of Sept to terminate/surrender our policy. To our pleasure, we found out that we have earned quite a fair bit with our investment (Alhamdulillah) during the investment period of May-Sept this year. Jadilah eh..... even though investment kita tak berpanjangan lol. Yelah, sebenarnya hasrat kita untuk masukkan CPF dalam our CPFIS is so that HDB doesn't wipe out everything from our CPF-OA to zero, and stash it somewhere else. Tapi ternyata, we still needed that sum to finance our HDB. :p Issokeh, we learn...we learn.
Actually, if you ask me, it is possible to do an investment with CPFIS, but that is if memang kita nya gaji maha besar/I am still working, and the balance in our CPF-OA is enough to finance the balance payment. Because in order to invest into CPFIS with our CPF-OA, the balance in our CPF-OA must at least be 20K. We cannot suka-suka invest everything and leave the CPF-OA empty. That's the limitation that we learned when we did ours.
Taking up loans from banks/relatives were also suggested to us, but Mr. J and I memang bertekad that we wouldn't want to take up additional loans. Say no-no to berhutang if we have other safer avenues to tap into. Like what R.udy M.arican advised in one of his R.udyR.illa episode, "Biar makan nasi, telur & kicap, asal tak berhutang". Yep.
Okay, let's go back to surrendering our policy:
We were told that the process would take around 7-10 working days for the funds to be credited back to our CPFIS account, that was parked in OCBC bank. We will then receive a notification letter by A-X-A to inform us that surrender is successful and thereafter, we will need to follow up with OCBC personally to credit it back to our CPF-OA account. A bit leceh ah but no choice since this is our only resource so far kan.
So anyways, we later received the letter from A-X-A on the 22nd of Sep, after surrendering on 15th Sep. Not too long a wait huh :) Alhamdulillah.
To cut the long story short, we then headed down to OCBC the next day to request for a transfer back to our CPF-OA account by signing a manual transfer form & was told that it would also take around 7-10 working days.
Fast forward to the 27th of Sept, we received a text message from CPF Board that the amount was successfully credited (or refunded) back to our CPF-OA. Alhamdulillah syukurrrrr!
So in summary, the whole process of surrendering our policy and crediting the funds back to our CPF-OA did take up about 2 weeks. Good to plan ahead and give another week extra as a buffer time.
For now... we shall wait for the mid of Oct - which is EXACTLY next week! :)
P.s: Let's just pray I don't give birth before that lah eh... Be a very very obedient baby and make your appearance only after we have received the keys from HDB k little one. Thank you!
Part 1 - The harsh reality
Part 2 - The headache
Part 3 - Finding solutions
---
Now we move on to executing the solution:
Without wasting anymore time (since time wasn't on our side - what's with the counting down to my EDD & the key collection happening roughly around the same time), we went down to A-X-A Customer Service counter on the 15th of Sept to terminate/surrender our policy. To our pleasure, we found out that we have earned quite a fair bit with our investment (Alhamdulillah) during the investment period of May-Sept this year. Jadilah eh..... even though investment kita tak berpanjangan lol. Yelah, sebenarnya hasrat kita untuk masukkan CPF dalam our CPFIS is so that HDB doesn't wipe out everything from our CPF-OA to zero, and stash it somewhere else. Tapi ternyata, we still needed that sum to finance our HDB. :p Issokeh, we learn...we learn.
Actually, if you ask me, it is possible to do an investment with CPFIS, but that is if memang kita nya gaji maha besar/I am still working, and the balance in our CPF-OA is enough to finance the balance payment. Because in order to invest into CPFIS with our CPF-OA, the balance in our CPF-OA must at least be 20K. We cannot suka-suka invest everything and leave the CPF-OA empty. That's the limitation that we learned when we did ours.
Taking up loans from banks/relatives were also suggested to us, but Mr. J and I memang bertekad that we wouldn't want to take up additional loans. Say no-no to berhutang if we have other safer avenues to tap into. Like what R.udy M.arican advised in one of his R.udyR.illa episode, "Biar makan nasi, telur & kicap, asal tak berhutang". Yep.
Okay, let's go back to surrendering our policy:
We were told that the process would take around 7-10 working days for the funds to be credited back to our CPFIS account, that was parked in OCBC bank. We will then receive a notification letter by A-X-A to inform us that surrender is successful and thereafter, we will need to follow up with OCBC personally to credit it back to our CPF-OA account. A bit leceh ah but no choice since this is our only resource so far kan.
So anyways, we later received the letter from A-X-A on the 22nd of Sep, after surrendering on 15th Sep. Not too long a wait huh :) Alhamdulillah.
To cut the long story short, we then headed down to OCBC the next day to request for a transfer back to our CPF-OA account by signing a manual transfer form & was told that it would also take around 7-10 working days.
Fast forward to the 27th of Sept, we received a text message from CPF Board that the amount was successfully credited (or refunded) back to our CPF-OA. Alhamdulillah syukurrrrr!
So in summary, the whole process of surrendering our policy and crediting the funds back to our CPF-OA did take up about 2 weeks. Good to plan ahead and give another week extra as a buffer time.
For now... we shall wait for the mid of Oct - which is EXACTLY next week! :)
P.s: Let's just pray I don't give birth before that lah eh... Be a very very obedient baby and make your appearance only after we have received the keys from HDB k little one. Thank you!
yay, glad that your surrendering went smoothly. anyhoos, it was recently announced that CPF IS is being reviewed coz it's not performing as well as it should, or something like that? personally I prefer to leave my CPF contributions for mortgage alone, and to set some % of my take home pay for investments :D
ReplyDeleteAhh yes! Saw the news recently. I think it was a good timing on our end as well to quickly withdraw the money out from CPFIS. Ada hikmahNya. We never can anticipate what the "capital-G" always have in store with regards to CPF.
Delete