Wednesday 9 April 2014

How long should you take to repay your CPF housing loan

I chanced upon an interesting article in one of the blogs I follow, ASSI. The argument is that you should take your time to repay your housing loan.

The example used is a $100,000 HDB loan. Say you have $100,000 in your CPF account, should you pay the full $100,000 loan in one shot or take 10 years to repay it fully?

Take 10 years to pay (amortization)
The monthly repayment will be $947.25. Assuming your monthly CPF OA contribution is this amount for the next 10 years., your CPF will not have any net loan deduction for this 10 year period. The ending CPF balance at the end of 10 years is $126,877.

The total interest paid is $13,670

Empty your CPF account and pay the full loan amount of $100,000
You decided to save on the interest payment of $13,670 and pay the full amount upfront. The blogger argument against this method is that although you save $13,760 in interest payment, you would forgo the $28,008 that you would have accumulated if you pay the loan over 10 years.

Well, I found out the last point is not entirely true. Even after you have emptied your CPF account. You CPF ending balance is $126,638, which is almost the same if you have not paid one lump sum in the beginning. Details of the calculation is shown in this spreadsheet.

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