Friday, February 10, 2012

Another Trick to LOCK UP our money by MIW

Remember HDB reverse mortgage scheme? It is now replaced by lease buyback scheme. Reverse mortgage stinks as we have to pay interest rate! Talk about sucking the elderly dry while in the pretext of 'helping' them monetized their flat to supplement their retirement income. So after their dirty trick is revealed they come with lease buyback which they claim is a govt subsidize scheme.

My take on this is - as there are so many folks who cannot meet the CPF minimum sum which amount used to buy CPF compulsory annuity scheme - they now want us to sell our flat lease to HDB so that we have money to buy annuity. The money goes back into CPF to be lock up forever!

I am disgusted with their dirty tricks which they sell to the citizens as helping the needy. Subsidize scheme? Really? There is very little information on HDB website on this scheme. When I called up, the staff told me because it is new. She is very evasive on details. When I asked when was it implement, she told me a few years ago but cannot put a year to it. If it is a few years ago, why so sketchy on details and expect the elderly to take up the scheme ? Perhaps it is to prevent those knowledgeable social bloggers (like Mr Leong Sze Hian) from analyzing it to unveil the short comings.

When I asked about what happened to the reverse mortgage scheme, at first she said it is discontinued, but when I asked when was it scraped, she changed her mind and said she is not sure if NTUC is still providing it. (She told me NTUC is running the mortgage scheme for HDB). If HDB is concurrently running 2 schemes, should not they tabulate the details of the 2 schemes for easy comparison ?

Is there a need for all these so call 'monetization options' for the elderly if CPF scheme is well conceived and implemented in the first place ? All these schemes come about because many of our elderly do not have enough for their retirement after working and saving for a LIFE TIME. What ever they have, they have no control over their own money in CPF, which is locked up and to be dished out to the owner of the money in amount determine by CPF Board !

It is only in Singapore that we have unique laws to ensure owner of the money has no say as to what he/she can do with his/her money ! It is a third party who has full control over our money ! Is this not abuse of the legal system ? Just pass a law to legalize any policy MIW wants to implement. Common sense has it that many of our current legalized policies are WRONG.

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