How long has it been since you had a home loan health check? Did you secure the loan and then stop thinking about it altogether? If you did, you’re not alone, but you could be missing out on big benefits by not checking up to see if there are other loan products that better suit your needs.
Too often we see clients lock in a home loan or investment property loan and forget about it. But as the world is unpredictable at the moment, more funding is being made available and new loan products are hitting the market every week. It’s crucial to give your home loan or investment property loan(s) a health check every 12 months to make sure you’re saving as much money as possible.
By considering the following items and checking them every 12 months, you may be able to save thousands of dollars. That’s money that should be in your pocket!
Start by Reassessing Your Household Budget & Cutting Excess Expenses
By putting additional money into your home loan you can drastically reduce the amount of interest you pay in the long run, and you can reduce the time it takes you to pay it off substantially.
Take a look at your daily, weekly, monthly and annual expenses and see what can be cut out immediately. Think of the example of buying a coffee every day before work.
Example
Let’s say a coffee costs $3.50 and you buy one every working day. Let’s see how much this adds up to. You may be surprised by how much you’re spending on your caffeine fix:
$3.50 multiplied by 5 working days, multiplied by 52 weeks for the year minus your 20 days of annual leave = $3.50 multiplied by 240 working days, or a total of $840 after tax per year spent on that morning coffee (or around $70 per month).
Using our Extra Repayments Calculator you can see the difference. If you just took out a standard variable rate home loan at 7.36% p.a. for $350,000 over 30 years, investing that $70 per month into your mortgage would help you save a whopping 2 years and 9 months off the 30-year loan, and as you would be further reducing the loan amount that the interest is calculated on, you’d save $57,728.51 overall in interest repayments – and that’s just your morning coffee! At that amount, maybe you could buy a cheap coffee machine and a travel mug and actively throw another $70 per month into the mortgage.
If you need any assistance with budgeting, try our Budget Planning Calculator. Or you may want to consult with a debt management expert.
Get a Home Loan Health Check from an Expert Mortgage Specialist
By chatting to a mortgage specialist, financial advisor or accountant you may be able to pay off your loans/debts even faster. This is especially important when they are high-interest debts like credit card debt, store cards and personal loans. Part of a home loan health check is to make sure your home loan is working for you. Refinancing a home loan can allow you to consolidate high-interest debt into a home loan, which could save you thousands of dollars in the long run, not to mention time (paying one loan instead of several.
Implement the Results of Your Home Loan Health Check
With so many changes to Australia’s home loan market each year it’s your responsibility to keep up with the changes. There are plenty of new home loan products entering the market each year and many that may be more suitable for your budget, potentially saving you a huge amount of cash.
However, doing the research and reading all the fine print can be a time-consuming and cumbersome exercise. There are professionals out there like us, NSW Mortgage Corp, who will happily do the leg work for you.
NSW Mortgage Corp offers a Free Home Loan Health that will present you with the best new options available to you to save money. We’ll then help you implement your strategy right away.
