With the cost of living rising, it’s more important than ever to make sure you’re making the most of your money.
Your home loan is a significant debt but there are ways that you could reduce the associated costs.
Here are five ways you could save on your home loan.
Pay extra when you can
Paying more than the minimum repayment amount is an obvious way to pay off your home loan faster.
If you’re not able to add a bit extra to your regular repayments, there may still be times when you could boost the amount you're paying off.
If you receive an annual bonus from your work or a refund at tax time, putting part of it on your home loan will reduce the amount of interest you pay.
You could also consider setting a reminder to add any money remaining at the end of your pay cycle to your home loan. Remember, every little bit counts.
Refinance
Take advantage of lower interest rates by refinancing your home loan. You should review your home loan every year, especially if your circumstances change, to make sure it's still helping you to meet your financial goals.
Refinancing isn’t as difficult as it may seem, and even a small interest rate reduction could save you thousands of dollars over the life of your loan.
BCU Bank's home lending experts can help answer all your refinancing questions.
Use an offset account
An offset account could be a helpful way to reduce the amount of interest you pay on your loan.
Your offset account essentially works like a savings account attached to your home loan. The balance of the offset account is deducted from the amount owed on your home loan, so interest is charged on a lower amount.
For example, if you had a balance of $500,000 on your home loan and $20,000 in your offset account, you’d only pay interest on $480,000.
Reduce your fees
Between establishment fees, annual fees and other account keeping fees, the charges associated with a home loan can quickly add up.
A $400 annual fee on a 25-year loan could mean you pay an extra $10,000 over the life of your loan.
Finding a home loan that doesn’t charge fees is a great way to reduce the amount you pay on your home loan.
You could even use the money you’ve saved to help pay off your home loan sooner.
Pay fortnightly or weekly
If you usually make your home loan repayments monthly, you could squeeze in a couple of extra repayments each year by paying half of the repayment fortnightly or a quarter each week instead.
Because there are 12 months in a year, but 26 fortnights or 52 weeks, swapping to fortnightly or weekly repayments means you could make 13 months’ worth of repayments in a 12-month period.
This means you’ll not only pay off your home loan faster, but will be saving on interest in the long run.
Use the BCU home loan repayment calculator to see the difference making more frequent repayments could make.