4 TOP TIPS TO PAYING YOUR HOME LOAN OFF FASTER (without increasing your payments)
Pay your home loan off faster without increasing your payments? That doesn’t sound right!
Well of course paying more off your loan will reduce it but short of asking for a raise or getting a second job, most of us are working off what we receive each payday. These paying off your home loan faster tips are all about working smarter, not harder.
Stick with me and I’ll give you 4 top tips on easy and fast ways to pay off your home loan quicker.
You may have heard that the secret to success is to find those little hacks, those incremental improvements that snowball to achieve tremendous results. Well, this is all about finding what’s available to you and taking full advantage to benefit you financially. It’s not as hard as you’d think.
1. CHOOSE YOUR REPAYMENT FREQUENCY
If you don’t specify how often you want to make loan repayments, your bank or lender is likely to make it monthly. If you’re getting paid weekly or fortnightly, change payments to that.
KEY INFO: This is really important and simple information … your loan interest is being calculated on the daily balance of your loan, so the less your loan balance is … the less interest you’ll attract and you’ll eventually pay off your loan quicker.
This tip and the rest below are all incremental ways that takes into consideration that Key Info and helps you reduce the length of time of your home loan and therefore pay your debt off quicker.
2. MORTGAGE OFFSET ACCOUNT
Ask your lender for a mortgage offset account. This account is key to successfully paying off your home loan quicker.
What’s a mortgage offset account you may be asking?
Basically, a mortgage offset account is a savings account that earns no interest, the balance however offsets your loan balance.
Put simply … if you had $500,000 left to pay off your home loan and you had $30,000 in your mortgage offset account, you would only pay interest on $470,000 rather than $500,000! How good is that?
As an example, if you had a 6.00%p.a. home loan, that would be a saving of $1,500 in interest over a year, compared to if those funds were in a savings account earning 1%p.a. The less interest you attract means you pay your loan off quicker!
You haven’t increased payments AND you still have access to your savings in the mortgage offset account should you need it.
Ideally, any spare cash you have would be deposited and kept in the offset account.
This leads me to tip #3 and how you can live day to day while keeping as much cash as possible in your mortgage offset account.
[Learn more about Horizon Bank’s Mortgage Offset Account here.]
3. GET A CREDIT CARD
Are the warning bells going off? I know this sounds counterintuitive but the idea here is to find a low rate no annual fee card that you can use daily. What this does is delay payment of your everyday expenses.
Remember, your home loan interest is normally calculated daily and charged monthly. It stands to reason that you should keep has much money as possible in your mortgage offset account to offset your daily loan balance. You can achieve this by delaying the payment of your everyday expenses as long as possible.
The other REALLY important part of this tip is to pay the required balance of your credit card to avoid any credit card interest.
Generally, cards with reward points attract a high annual fee and interest rate. If you are wanting to minimise the cost, a no or low annual fee credit card is your go to.
If your bank or lender is doing right by you, you can arrange to have the balance of your credit card paid out of your mortgage offset account automatically each month to avoid any interest.
[Learn more about Horizon Bank’s no annual fee, low rate Visa credit card here.]
4. HOLD OFF PAYING BILLS
You may be alarmed once again at the idea of delaying payment of bills but once again, this is your opportunity to keep as much in your mortgage offset account for as long as possible. Remember, your loan interest is being calculated on its daily balance. The longer you can keep your money offsetting the loan the quicker you can pay off your home loan.
Your online banking should allow you to set up automatic payment of your bills from your mortgage offset account on the last day payment is required. Set and forget.
[Learn more about Horizon Bank’s banking access facilities here.]
SIT BACK AND RELAX
If you take a little time to put all these tips into place, you can sit back and relax knowing you’re working the system to benefit you financially. You’ll achieve the ultimate goal of paying off your home loan faster.
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This blog has been brought to you by Horizon Bank.
Horizon Bank has a branch network spanning the NSW South Coast & Illawarra, Branch locations: Albion Park, Bega, Bermagui, Berry, Merimbula, Moruya, Nowra, Thirroul & Ulladulla & Wollongong.
Horizonbank.com.au
