The Employee provident fund (EPF) is a vital retirement planning tool. The tax-free compounded interest provides healthy growth of your savings. If the savings are made for an extended period, EPF can provide a reliable option for meeting your retirement plans. As one is planning for retirement, some circumstances might require instant cash. When you have explored all possibilities of getting money, and nothing is forthcoming, EPF funds can be quite helpful. That said, here are some special situations where EPF funds become handy.
Meeting financial responsibilities
As a human being, they are some financial responsibilities that come along.
Things like marriage and education might need a considerable amount of cash. At this point, EPF can be a good source for additional money. EPF allows you to withdraw up to 50% of your contribution. However, one should meet certain set requirement defined by the EPF management.
Property related expenditure
The EPF management allows one to withdraw or make payments for construction, repair, or housing loan repayment. However, one is expected to meet certain conditions before getting the amount. For instance, employees with ten years of services are allowed to use 36 months wages to repay a house loan. Those planning for repairs can only get a maximum of 12-months wages. The good thing with EPF is that you can use it for a house with the name of a spouse or in joint ownership.
Medical emergency
EPF funds treat medical emergency claims different from other applications. Medical cases like TB, paralysis, leprosy, mental derangement, heart disease, and cancer among others are enough reason to make an urgent requisition from your PF account. Medical reasons allow you to request up to 6 times your current salary or your entire contribution depending on which of those is less. These funds can be utilized for self or family treatment.
EPF also allows one to use these funds to buy movement aids when one is physically handicapped or when dealing with a natural calamity and any other emergency. EPF also allows you to nominate a family member to receive funds just after your demise.
With UAN, managing and accessing EPF savings is now easy. If you have an active EPF account, you automatically qualify to have an UAN. You only need to login to the uan portal and look at your account. However, it is advisable to treat EPF as a retirement plan. This implies that you should only withdraw funds from your account when dealing with an emergency.