19 Jun 2026
SOURCE: CPF Board
Financial planning goes beyond growing your savings. What matters is building spending and saving habits you can actually stick to over time. After all, financial planning is rarely straightforward, and your goals will also change over time. Along the way, good habits help you pace yourself properly and to be consistent so that you can keep up without additional stress.
Let’s take a look at some good financial planning habits to develop, and see if you can fit them into your routine:
1) Keeping track of how your savings grow
A good habit to cultivate as you start working is to look ahead, and project how your savings will look like in the future. Even after you start a family and buy your first home, this habit should be actively maintained as your financial situation changes.
Lifestyle inflation can creep up even amongst the most disciplined of us. A way to make sure your goals are still valid even five years from now is to make sure you are consistent in reviewing your saving goals regularly, as you might not even be aware of how your spending habits have changed over time.
While you might already have a financial advisor you meet regularly to review your goals with you, using financial tools and planners on your own also help you have a more informed discussion and keep your goals in check. These tools help you review your spends and projections at your own time and pace without relying on a ‘gut feel’. This knowledge allows you to adjust your plans in the present to ensure you’re on track for retirement, and can help you prepare for your next talk with your advisor.
But using these tools isn’t a one-and-done type of deal. One thing you can’t accurately predict is inflation, or the rate at which prices will rise over time. To ensure your financial plans remain future-ready, it’s best to review and adjust them regularly.
2) Saving with intention
Everyone approaches life and planning in different ways, so there’s no one-size-fits-all plan that works for everyone. While it never hurts to hear from others to get different perspectives, your plans are ultimately based on what you want in life, and not someone else’s goals. That’s where PLAN with CPF comes in.
Plan Life Ahead, Now! (PLAN) with CPF is your one-stop, personalised financial guidance platform that helps you make informed financial decisions as you navigate through life. It not only curates resources to help you brush up on your financial planning knowledge but also provides the tools to plan your savings journey in the form of planners, to track your progress in retirement, housing, and health insurance.
What PLAN with CPF offers is a way to customise your planning at your own convenience - one that tracks your progress across various aspects of financial planning. You can also consider the impact of the use of your CPF savings when you project ahead and make changes to your projections should your intentions change, like when planning for housing, emergencies, having a child and so on.
When you plan your finances, it’s natural to have multiple scenarios you want to account for. With the variety of planners offered by PLAN with CPF, you can project and calculate any number of scenarios, including scenarios that may be unique to you. An example is purchasing health insurance.
When buying additional, optional coverage in the form of Integrated Shield Plans (IPs), it’s important to compare costs and coverage between different plans to ensure you find the best fit for your needs. This includes accounting for the impact on your expenses and thus savings plans. Which is why PLAN with CPF helps you in this aspect, by providing you with the tool and knowledge to tackle your insurance needs.
It’s difficult to account for all these various scenarios without experience, but PLAN with CPF can help you project them so you can prepare for them. The whole process is also quick and easy, so you can jump in without a user manual!
To top it all off, PLAN with CPF also comes with a short questionnaire to strengthen your financial fitness beyond CPF, allowing it to give personalised feedback and advice based on your input. By equipping you with the right knowledge and tools, PLAN with CPF makes financial planning easier for you. This makes it the ideal first step in your financial planning journey, so why not make using it a part of your financial planning habits?
3) Automating growing savings
Having habits is all about doing things regularly, but not everything needs to be done manually. Where possible, automating certain tasks can help you save time and help grow your savings without you having to worry.
Topping up your CPF savings is one such task. By topping up regularly, you help your retirement savings grow at a faster rate, while making the most of CPF’s stable interest rates. The earlier you top up, the more time your savings will have to grow, allowing you to reach your retirement savings goals sooner.
And it doesn’t stop there. You can also make top-ups to your loved ones’ CPF accounts, to help them grow their retirement savings faster and secure their future as well. If your loved ones have retired or are near retirement, the extra top-ups can go a long way in boosting their monthly retirement payouts.
If you’ve already decided to make these cash top-ups regularly, they can be automated via GIRO via these steps:
- Set up a GIRO arrangement.
- Submit a request to make recurring cash top-ups for retirement.
Note that both steps must be completed for this to be successful, and that GIRO arrangements are only possible at these participating banks.
Financial planning habits may not come naturally, but it helps to put in the effort to build them! When you’re cultivating all the proper habits to grow your savings while managing your spending, you’ll be able to make steady progress towards meeting your retirement goals, with less trouble and more peace of mind.
Information in this article is accurate as at the date of publication.
