CPF Now Pays More Than T-Bills: What That Actually Means
Headline inflation is at 2.2%. T-bills and Savings Bonds are paying under 2%. CPF's guaranteed floor rates are currently ahead of both, without CPF actually changing anything. Here's what that gap means for your cash, and where it doesn't apply.
Last updated September 2026 · 7 min read · Rates as at early September 2026, and they move — see the note below
Since 2022, plenty of us have gotten into the habit of queuing up in the DBS/OCBC/UOB apps every few weeks for the next T-bill auction, chasing whatever the cut-off yield happened to be that round. It became a genuine hobby for a while. Some people set calendar reminders. That habit made sense when T-bills were paying north of 3.5%, comfortably ahead of your bank account and, for a while, ahead of CPF too.
That's not the world we're in anymore. T-bill and SSB yields have been sliding through 2026, auction after auction, while CPF's rates haven't moved at all. Nobody announced it and nothing changed on the CPF side, but at some point in the last few months, the balance already sitting in your CPF account started earning more than the instrument you'd have to queue up for.
T-Bills / SSB
Fully liquid, under 2%
CPF OA
Semi-liquid, 2.5%
CPF SA / RA
Locked till 55+, 4%
The gap, in one table
Here's where things actually stood in the first days of September 2026. These are floors and recent auction results, not promises, and the market-pegged ones move every few weeks, so treat the exact numbers as a snapshot rather than something fixed:
CPF's Special, MediSave and Retirement Accounts sit at their legislated 4% floor, extended through 31 December 2026. CPF Ordinary Account sits at its 2.5% floor. T-bills, SSBs and fixed deposits are all market-pegged and have been drifting down through 2026, now sitting below headline inflation.
Notice what's above the inflation line and what isn't. Only CPF's Special, MediSave and Retirement Accounts clear 2.2% outright. Everything else on this list, T-bills, this month's Savings Bond, fixed deposits, is currently paying a nominal return below headline inflation, which means the real, inflation-adjusted return on parking fresh cash in any of them is slightly negative right now.
Why CPF is winning right now
This isn't CPF suddenly getting more generous. It's the other instruments getting less generous while CPF stood still. CPF's rates are legislated floors: the Ordinary Account can't pay below 2.5%, and the Special, MediSave and Retirement Accounts can't pay below 4% through the end of 2026, regardless of what's happening in the broader market. T-bills, SSBs and fixed deposits have no such floor. They're priced off actual market demand and where the US Federal Reserve is expected to take rates, and all three have been sliding through 2026.
The 6-month T-bill cut-off yield has fallen in successive auctions this year. September's Savings Bond tranche pays just 1.52% in year one. Fixed deposit rates from the local banks have followed the same direction. None of that touched CPF's floors at all, so the gap that opened up isn't CPF getting better. It's everything else getting worse while CPF simply didn't move.
Curious what this actually means for your own numbers, CPF balances included? Our CPF calculator and the net worth dashboard track your CPF, cash and T-bill holdings side by side, not as three separate spreadsheets.
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A higher rate only matters if you can actually use the money it's attached to, and this is where the comparison stops being simple. T-bills, SSBs and fixed deposits are all things you chose to put cash into, and mostly things you can get back out, sometimes with a penalty, sometimes by waiting out a maturity date, but always eventually as cash in a bank account you control.
CPF doesn't work that way. Your Ordinary Account is semi-liquid: you can use it for an HDB or private property purchase, approved insurance premiums, education, or CPF-approved investments, but you generally can't just withdraw it as cash before 55. Your Special Account is locked further still, essentially untouchable until it closes into your Retirement Account at 55, and from there it mostly exists to fund your CPF LIFE payouts, not to be pulled out as a lump sum.
Yield and liquidity move in opposite directions here. The rate advantage CPF has right now comes with a real, structural trade-off, not just fine print.
None of that makes CPF a bad place for money that's already sitting there. It just means the comparison in the table above isn't apples to apples. A T-bill is something you can plan around. You know exactly when it matures and that the cash comes back. Money that goes into your Special Account isn't coming back out as spendable cash for a very long time, possibly decades, depending on your age.
Should you top up CPF for this?
This is really two separate questions, not one. The first: should you leave money that's already in CPF where it is, rather than trying to somehow move it elsewhere? Obviously yes, there's no version of this where pulling CPF money out to chase a lower T-bill rate makes sense, and for most balances you can't do that anyway.
The second, harder question is whether you should voluntarily top up CPF with fresh cash to capture the 4% Special Account rate, using the Retirement Sum Topping-Up Scheme. Cash top-ups here can qualify for tax relief, up to $8,000 a year for topping up your own account, which is a real, immediate benefit on top of the rate itself. But the money you send in this way is subject to the same lock-up as everything else already inside your Special or Retirement Account. There's no changing your mind in eighteen months because a better opportunity showed up.
That trade-off makes sense for cash you were never going to touch anyway, money genuinely earmarked for retirement, sitting in a savings account earning close to nothing, where the tax relief and the 4% floor are both pure upside with no real cost. It makes much less sense for your emergency fund, a house deposit you're saving toward, or any cash you can picture yourself needing inside the next five to ten years.
A simple framework
Before moving any fresh cash toward CPF specifically to chase this gap, three questions are worth answering honestly, roughly in the order they matter:
Do you already have 3 to 6 months of expenses in something genuinely liquid? If not, that comes first, in a savings account or short T-bill, before any of this. An emergency fund that's earning 4% but takes weeks or years to access isn't an emergency fund anymore.
Is this money you're confident you won't need before 55, or before your CPF LIFE payouts start? Not "probably won't". Confident. A large purchase, a career change, or a business idea can change the calculus completely, and CPF won't give you the money back just because your plans changed.
Have you already used your tax relief headroom elsewhere, or does the CPF top-up relief genuinely add to what you're getting? The relief is real money, but only if it's incremental to your situation, not something you'd have gotten another way.
The mistake worth avoiding
The mistake isn't recognising that CPF is currently paying more. That part is just true. The mistake is treating "CPF pays more right now" as a reason to move your entire emergency fund or short-term savings into it, and only noticing the liquidity problem the first time you actually need the cash and can't get it. Rate gaps like this one open and close over a matter of quarters. The lock-in on money you send into your Special or Retirement Account doesn't close for years, often decades. Match the money to the timeline it's actually for, not to whichever instrument is winning this particular month.
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This article is for general information only, not financial advice. Rates referenced here, T-bill and SSB yields especially, change with every auction and can be materially different by the time you're reading this; verify current figures with MAS, CPF Board, or your bank directly, and consider speaking with a licensed financial adviser for guidance specific to your situation.
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