Managing and reducing your mortgage
Once you’ve secured a mortgage, it’s important not to just ‘set and forget’. You need to spend some time managing it to make sure it continues to work for you.
Good mortgage management can help you save both time and money on your home loan, and also avoid or manage mortgage stress when things don’t go quite as planned.
Here are our top strategies for managing your mortgage and paying off your loan faster.
Pay off your home loan sooner
Paying out your home loan earlier than the standard loan term is easier than you think. There are a number of methods you can employ that may help you save thousands of dollars and years off your home loan. Here are 17 great tips for paying off your loan faster, including how to increase your repayments and make them more often.
Beating mortgage stress
Mortgage stress can affect borrowers from all walks of life, regardless of the value of your property, size of your home loan, or your job. More often than not the real cause lies with an unexpected life event; unemployment, illness, injury and relationship breakdown are some of the most common causes of mortgage stress. Here are some strategies to prevent and deal with mortgage stress.
Hardship variations and mortgage repayment holidays
If you are experiencing temporary difficulties meeting your mortgage repayments, you may qualify for a hardship variation with your lender. Read more about hardship variations here.
Consolidate debt
Debt consolidation combines several loans into a single loan, usually your home loan. Typically, this will include combining unsecured debts such as personal and car loans, credit card balances and store card balances into your home loan which is debt that’s secured by your property. Find out the pros and cons of debt consolidation.
Refinancing
Refinancing has become very popular in recent times due to the number of interest rate rises. Refinancing can be very beneficial in helping you to save money if used in the right circumstances, but it can be a costly exercise, so you need to do your sums carefully before making a decision to determine whether or not the costs outweigh the benefits. Find out more about your refinancing options and how much it is likely to cost to change from one home loan to another at refinancing.