CPF Special Account

I was looking at the Central Provident Fund (CPF) bonus interest scheme that pays an additional 1% interest per annum on the first $60,000 of a member's combined balances.

I enquired that the priority of the accounts that make up the $60,000 is as follows:

1st:      Retirement Account (RA), including balances used to pay for the annuity premium under CPF LIFE
2nd :   Ordinary Account (OA), up to $20,000
3rd :    Special Account (SA)
4th:     Medisave Account (MA)

At present, OA pays 2.5% and SA pays 4%. Assuming one does not have an RA, to fully benefit from the 1% additional interest, one should minimize the amount in OA and plonk as much as possible into SA. One way to do it is to just make an IRREVERSIBLE transfer from OA to SA. In the past, one could probably use the money in OA for investment to empty it out and then cash out on investments when they need the money.

In any case, I still did a transfer from OA to SA, but I left a year's worth of mortgage repayments in my OA in case I need the money in future.