Hey everyone,

I rated four real portfolios from Singaporeans approaching retirement, from $2.7 million with a serious concentration problem to one that's about as close to optimised as I've seen.

I also break down a CPF LIFE number worth knowing well before you turn 55 and why Singapore's banks are all sitting at record highs.

Let's get into it.

Here's something worth knowing if CPF Life is part of your retirement plan. To get a comfortable retirement income of $5,000 to $8,000 a month, you might need to top up somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000 into your CPF at 55.

That's higher than most people assume and it's worth knowing now rather than discovering the gap when you get to 55.

CPF Life is one of the most overlooked parts of retirement planning in Singapore, largely because the numbers involved don't feel real until you're closer to the age where they matter.

Here's the mechanism. At 55, your CPF Special Account (CPF SA) balance gets swept into a newly-set-up CPF Retirement Account (CPF RA) up to the Full Retirement Sum (FRS), where it continues to earn 4% p.a.

If you've got the capacity, topping up to the Enhanced Retirement Sum (ERS) at 55 is worth serious consideration (the ERS is currently $440,800 for those turning 55 in 2026) since it can push your monthly payout at 65 past $3,000 for the rest of your life.

Guaranteed, for life, at a rate that's nearly impossible to beat elsewhere without taking on real idiosyncratic or market risk.

The trade-off is liquidity. Once it's in CPF RA, it's locked up until the payout age of 65 (although you can actually defer this to age 70 and receive up to 35% more in monthly payouts).

So this only makes sense with money you weren't planning to touch anyway, not your emergency fund or near-term savings.

One more thing worth timing right. If you're doing voluntary CPF SA top-ups for the tax relief, doing it early in the year means you start compounding sooner, rather than scrambling for the funds every December.

I asked you to send me your real portfolios, no names, just the numbers. Four stood out, and I rated each one on the same four things: concentration risk, whether the structure actually matches the goal, tax and cost drag, and whether there's a real plan for the next 10 to 15 years.

One portfolio has $2.7 million and a serious problem: 66% of it sits in a single stock.

Another is quietly using leverage against actively managed funds, which stacks two costs on top of each other in a way that's easy to miss.

One is spread across seven different platforms, which sounds diversified but actually means nobody, including the owner, can see the real asset allocation.

And one, built patiently since age 25, is closer to a finished retirement plan than almost anything I've reviewed.

Scores ranged from 4 to 7 out of 10, and the gap between them had nothing to do with how much money anyone had.

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I built a course for exactly what's in this week's portfolio video. Retirement Made Simple is four live sessions over four weeks.

It’ll cover where you actually stand, the bridge years before CPF LIFE kicks in, how to build a portfolio for your age instead of a 25-year-old's, the CPF and SRS decisions that require real scrutiny after 55, and much more.

It's $799, a one-time payment, and gives you lifetime access to every recording if you can't make a session live.

The first session starts on Wednesday 12 August, 8pm Singapore time. It's also capped to 30 spots, so you get the attention you need and the opportunity to be part of a like-minded community.

If retirement's stopped feeling abstract, you're not behind. This is the course for where you actually are. Enrol here.

If you hold DBS, OCBC, or UOB for the dividends, it’s worth knowing why all three hit record highs and whether that's a reason to buy more or a reason to be careful.

Now, Singapore equities pulled in $611 million in net institutional inflows in June, reversing months of outflows before that. Banks accounted for most of it.

UOB alone attracted $420 million, OCBC pulled in almost $120 million, DBS $102 million. UOB also has a $2 billion share buyback running, which supports the share price simply by shrinking the number of shares in the market.

In a way, Singapore banks function like the “Mag 7” do in the US market. They dominate both the landscape and market here, and a lot of the broader index's performance rides on what they do.

Here's what's actually driving it, and it's not really about interest rates anymore. It's wealth management.

All three banks have spent the last decade-plus building out wealth management arms, and that sweet fee income is recurring remember, so it comes from managing money and not from lending it out.

Net interest income, by contrast, moves with rates, and it's a lot less predictable when rates are flat or falling. DBS and OCBC in particular have benefited, largely because of how strong their wealth franchises and reputations already are.

My take: this is a real, structural reason behind the rally, and not just sentiment. But "record high" and "still worth buying" aren't automatically the same thing. The upcoming earnings season for banks will be telling in terms of whether this narrative is still on track, with DBS the first bank to report when it releases its Q2 2026 and H1 2026 earnings on Thursday 6 August.

If you're holding these for the dividends, understanding that banks’ income is increasingly underpinned by wealth management rather than lending is useful context for how durable that dividend actually is going forward.

If there's a topic you'd like me to break down in a future edition, hit reply and let me know. The best ideas in this newsletter come from your replies.

Until next week,

— Tim

1. Investing Made Simple: A self-paced course that walks you through building a proper investment portfolio from scratch. ETFs, allocation, brokers, and the mindset to stay consistent. Everything you need to start and keep going. Join here.

2. Miles Made Simple: A strategy guide for earning and redeeming KrisFlyer miles the right way. If you're flying out of Singapore and not optimising your credit card spend, you're leaving a lot on the table. Get the guide here.

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