How to Track Your CPF and Property in StocksCafe?

Many of us in Singapore have an active CPF account and also maybe a property. Hence we would often get a question on how one can track their CPF and property “properly” in StocksCafe.

First of all, StocksCafe is designed to track stocks hence it is not “perfect” for tracking non-stocks assets but we believe it can do a pretty decent job since it is after all simply about assets and liabilities.

Please note that what we are suggesting is not the only way to track your CPF or Property in StocksCafe, but it is how we are tracking them.

For the examples below, we have done it up in the demo account (portfolio, custom assets). You will need to use an incognito/private window to view them if you are logged into your own account.

CPF

Let’s start with how to track CPF. Basically, it will be similar to tracking Bonds in StocksCafe. That is, we will set the price to SGD 1 and we also treat the interest paid by CPF as “dividends”. The slight twist is that it will always be “scrip dividend” since we will not be able to withdraw it.

1. [Optional] We recommend creating a new portfolio if you have not, to track all your custom assets. We personally created a portfolio named “Custom Assets”.
   
2. Go to the Custom Assets page and create a new Custom Asset and name it “CPF SA”. We personally only track CPF SA/RA as in our opinion, OA and MA are not really investments but more like spending accounts for different things.
   
3. Create a buy transaction of CPF SA with price = SGD 1 and shares = amount you have in CPF SA.
   
   e.g. If you have SGD 30,000 in your CPF SA, then:
   – price = SGD 1
   – shares = 30,000
   
4. Next, at the end of the year, when interest are credited on 31 Dec to your CPF account, you should create a dividend override of the interest that you collected. e.g. If I have SGD 30,000 in my CPF SA and I got a SGD 1,200 (i.e. 4%) interest on 31 Dec, then I would create a dividend override of SGD 0.04 on 30,000 shares which will gives me a total of SGD 1,200.
   
5. Then, change the dividend into a scrip dividend using the create link (available on desktop only for now) below the scrip column.
   
6. Finally, you should always create buy transactions whenever money is credited into your CPF accounts (step 3). Personally, we only do it once a year (on 31 Dec) instead of doing it monthly simply because we are lazy. Note that if you are like us, you will want to create the buy transaction to be on 30 Dec and the dividend override with exDate 31 Dec.
   

Property

To track your property in StocksCafe, we personally recommend creating two custom assets, one for the house and one for the loan.

Basically, you will create a buy transaction to record the fact that you bought the house and also create a sell transaction to record the loan you took for the house. Of course, if you paid full cash, then you do not need to input the loan portion.

1. Go to the Custom Assets page and create a new Custom Asset and name it “House”.
   
2. Create a buy transaction of “House” with shares/units = 1 and price = how much the house costs. e.g. If the seller is asking for SGD 500k, then simply put price to be SGD 500k.
   
3. If it is a house that you bought to rent out, you can then create a dividend override monthly to account for the rent that you are earning from it.
   
4. Also, you can go to the “House” page (can be linked from Custom Assets page) to add new pricing data if the “House” price went up (or down).
   
5. Next, if you did take out a loan to buy the “House”, you should also create another Custom Asset and name it “House Loan”.
   
6. Then you should create a sell transaction of “House Loan” with shares/units = how much you borrowed and price = SGD 1.
   
   e.g. If you borrowed SGD 400k, then:
   – shares/units = 400k
   – price = SGD 1
   
   Yes, this way we are short-selling since there are no buy transactions before this. This is fine because we are borrowing money.
   
7. Typically, we would be paying the mortgage which includes principle and interest on a monthly basis. To account for that, we need to create a buy transaction. For us, we do that on a yearly basis (again, instead of monthly because we are lazy).
   
   To do that, you need to know how much you paid in the last 12 months and how much of the loan you are left with.
   
   e.g. if you started with SGD 400k loan and after paying SGD 2k monthly for 12 months, you are still left with SGD 380k, then you should create a buy transaction with:
   – shares = 20k (because 400k – 380k)
   – price = (2k x 12) / 20k = 1.2
   
   What this means is that for every SGD 1.2 that you paid, SGD 1 was used to pay down the principle, and SGD 0.2 was interest.

As we are writing this article, we realized that it seems more wordy and complicated than it needs to be. Please feel free to ask questions if you have any.

Perhaps a live demo would make it easier to understand? We plan to have another Zoom event in September or October. If this is something you would like to see us demo, please feedback by commenting or clicking the thumbs up button.

Happy tracking!

p.s.: Webull started a new promotion (valid till 28 Sep 2023) where you need to just fund SGD 1 and you will get between USD 24 to 800 worth of shares FREE! On top of that, you will also get 1 years of StocksCafe subscription worth SGD 45 if you sign up with our referral link. Click here to learn more.