Just recently a family member had their mortgage interest rate knocked down by over 0.60% saving them over $1,500 a year in interest without doing anything! Imagine getting a $1,500 raise at work for no reason, most people would be pretty thrilled about that no?
While Mutilating The Mortgage is mostly focused on arranging your life so that you can throw huge chunks of your after tax income at the mortgage consistently and automatically, today we’re going to walk you through a very simple and quick thing you can do to hopefully give your ongoing efforts a nice boost: checking your mortgage interest rate is as good as it can be.
This ideally should be done roughly once a year, say when you change your clock for daylight savings which is coming up soon!
Bug The Bank
As someone who’s always been interested in finances and poking their nose into other peoples business I’m shocked when occasionally I hear about people having their mortgages with super high interest rates.
Most of the time it’s simply a matter of not knowing any better so today I’ve done a bit of digging and prep for you so that it makes things as simple as possible. Today we’re going to contact your bank and make sure you’re on their best rate quickly and easily. Perhaps you’re truly on the best rate your bank can give already… perhaps you’re not. Either way checking never hurts!
Step 1: Call or Email your bank. Some people hate using the phone, some people don’t have the time to wait on hold, for this task it’s honestly easiest to just email them and wait for their reply but not all banks allow this option. Below are most of the top banks and their corresponding best way to contact them.
Obviously these links/numbers may change over time so if one of them doesn’t work you can always just Google “<bank name> contact us”.
- Commonwealth Bank: Click here for existing home loans
- Westpac: Best using their Westpac App, otherwise 132 558 for existing home loans
- ANZ: Click here for existing home loans or 13 13 14
- NAB: Seem to only allow calling: 13 22 65
- CUA: Seem to only allow calling: 133 282
- Bank Of Queensland: Click here and check Home Loan as the subject
- Bankwest: Click here and check “Review your loan”
- ING: Best to use their My Message service once logged in or in their App or 133 464
- St. George: Seem to only allow Calling: 13 33 30
You Catch More Bees With Honey
Step 2: Politely ask for a better rate. The second and final step is simply to just ask for a better rate. The vast majority of times people who are treated politely and kindly often love helping. This especially applies to customer service as getting a straight forward and easy request from a polite customer is unfortunately rare in most businesses.
As you might be calling or emailing your bank I’ve given an example for each below of what to say/write. I said this would be simple and quick, so all you have to do is copy/paste the message into your banks contact us page or pick up the phone, dial the number above and say what’s written below. From there the ball is in your banks court.
Email Forms:
Hi,
We currently have our home loan with you and have been looking around just to make sure we’re getting the best deal that’s currently out there. We don’t want to change banks as we’re otherwise very happy with your service, but we do want to make sure we’re on the lowest rate possible for our home loan.
Is there anything you can do to help us with this?
Thanks,
<your name here>
Phone Conversation:
Hi, my names <your name here>
<go through identity verification mumbo jumbo>
We currently have our home loan with you and have been looking around just to make sure we’re getting the best deal that’s currently out there. We don’t want to change banks as we’re otherwise very happy with your service, but we do want to make sure we’re on the lowest rate possible for our home loan.
Is there anything you can do to help us with this?
<stop talking and let the person do their job!!!>
Simple But Effective
While some of you may have already done this (great work!) I’m quite sure many haven’t. It’s also excellent for people or couples that are new to mortgages to understand that doing this every year or so is a very, very good idea.
Interest rates change all the time as do banks policies and products. Maybe there was a computer glitch problem with your account and you haven’t been getting the interest rate reductions automatically applied. Maybe you’ve now got a much better loan to value ratio on your house and so qualify for a lower rate (or they give you a lower rate now that you can go elsewhere).
Perhaps they’ve introduced a really awesome new product that gives you all the same benefits of your current higher interest plan but at a lower rate. Or perhaps you simply just didn’t negotiate very well in the beginning (or at all!) and now’s your chance to do it right.
A 5 minute phone call or an even easier email is all it takes to do this and there’s a very high chance that you’ll save hundreds of dollars. Maybe you’ll even save thousands.
If you’ve done this in the past or have just done it now and saved let us know how much in the comments below. I love hearing about people quickly and easily saving thousands because of information I’ve helped educate them about, so shout it loud!
The benefits include: 1) How to pay off your mortgage faster than 99% of people with one hour a month of work 2) How to get rid of your debt and have the freedom to spend money on the things you love, guilt free 3) Clear outline of how to setup your expenses, mortgage and general finance 4) How offset accounts work and how to get the same result without being gouged by the big banks 5) How to cut through the crap and focus on the things that truly matter when taking down a mortgage 6) How to adjust the strategy so it works for you, even if you have kids, even if you only have one income 7) How to do all of these things and maintain a normal social life (and never be cheap).
