How much to save, how much to spend?
The 20% rule doesn't apply for everyone. Let's start from what you actually save and spend.
If you're curious about how we calculate this, click here
Your money in
Essentials are what you must spend to live. Salary starts at the median of Singapore's workforce, because averages get dragged up by high earners.
The top number on your payslip, before CPF and tax come out. Not what lands in your bank account.
Rent, food, transport, bills, insurance. Everything left over is discretionary.
Based on SingStat's 2023 Household Expenditure Survey, per person. SingStat publishes averages, not medians, for spending.
7 in 10 Singaporeans keep 3-6 months of expenses saved (MoneySense 2023).
About you
Age and legal status drive your CPF and tax. This moves the number more than anything else here.
Tax resident if you were in Singapore 183 days last year. Most work-pass holders are.
Your safety net
How much cover, and how fast to build it.
When the fund is full
Keep the habit going. Your retirement calculator sizes the investing amount.
Size it with the retirement calculatorHow this is worked out
The whole plan is six lines of arithmetic. The sophistication is in what feeds them: your take-home pay is computed from your exact age, residency, and tax status against the real CPF and IRAS tables. No rough percentages, no guessing.
take-home = gross − your CPF − monthly income tax discretionary = take-home − essentials fund target = essentials × cover − cash already saved monthly save = min(target ÷ timeline, 80% × discretionary) guilt-free = discretionary − monthly save savings rate = monthly save ÷ take-home
- Your CPF, to the year. Most calculators bucket you into wide age bands. This one runs your exact age against the CPF Board's 1 January 2026 rate table, including the S$8,000 monthly salary ceiling and the over-55 taper. Work-pass holders correctly get zero.
- Your tax, both branches. Tax residents get the full YA2024-onwards progressive bands with exact-age earned income relief. Non-residents get the actual rule: the higher of 15% flat on gross or the resident bands. One shared engine powers this page and the income tax calculator, so the number matches everywhere.
- The 80% cap is a judgment, stated openly. A savings plan with zero fun money for months is a plan nobody follows, so monthly saving is capped at 80% of what's left. That is a product decision, not a financial law, and the page tells you whenever it binds.
- Cash and CPF never mix. The headline rate is cash saving ÷ take-home. CPF is forced saving on a separate line, never folded in to flatter the number.
- The starting points are the middle of Singapore. Salary starts at S$4,700: the MOM 2024 median of S$5,500 for full-time employed residents, adjusted to payslip basis by removing employer CPF (÷ 1.17). Spending starts at S$1,986 a month: SingStat's 2023 Household Expenditure Survey per person. SingStat publishes averages, not medians, for spending, and medians can't be split by category, so the spending benchmark is the typical Singaporean rather than a true median. Cash starts at S$0: no credible median for cash savings is published, so we don't invent one. For context, 7 in 10 Singaporeans keep 3-6 months of expenses saved (MoneySense 2023).
- Known limits, disclosed. Not modeled: CPF graduated rates at or below S$750 monthly wages, and PR first-two-year CPF graduation.
Common questions
Why not just save 20%?
A flat percentage ignores that essentials don't scale with income. A S$3,000 earner with S$1,800 of essentials has about S$587 of discretionary income, but 20% of gross asks for S$600, more than exists. Start from your real essentials instead.
Does CPF count as savings?
For Singapore citizens and permanent residents aged 55 and below earning above S$750 a month, 20% comes from you and 17% from your employer. It is illiquid but yours and growing. This page plans cash savings on top, and keeps the two numbers separate on purpose.
How big should my emergency fund be?
Three to six months of essential spending, in cash you can touch tomorrow. Not investments, and not CPF.
What happens when my emergency fund is full?
The habit continues, but the amount gets re-sized. Your emergency build rate was never an investing rate, so size the investing amount with the retirement calculator.
Does this handle my income tax?
Yes. It runs the same YA2024-onwards tax bands and exact-age CPF and earned income relief as the income tax calculator, then works from your take-home pay.