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3 Questions to consider before refinancing

Who would have ever thought we would see one of the big 4 banks offering an interest rate of 3.59%.  Without a doubt their are opportunities for you to save significant money on your home loan.

Now is the time to refinance…..  Or is it….

Watch on as I discuss 3 questions you should ask yourself before refinancing your home loan.

If you would prefer to read instead of watching the video, scroll down to see a transcript.

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Transcript

Hello, Brendan from Buyers Choice, your home financing specialist.

This week, I want to have a chat about refinancing.

Given the current climate we’re in, the number of offers out there from various lenders, a common discussion I have with various people is, is now a good time to refinance?

If you’re thinking about refinancing, I think there’s three questions that you should ask yourself before committing to refinancing your home loan.

Question 1

The first one is, has your finances changed? Have you received a pay increase? Have your expenses gone up? Your child’s moved from primary school to high school, or they’ve decided to start eating twice as much food. Have you had a new baby come into your life?

There’s various things which could have happened which changes your financial situation. As a result, it may mean it is a good time, or it could mean that it’s a poor time to refinance your home.

Question 2

The second question you should be asking yourself, will refinancing save you money?

Now, I have previously done a video on the costs which you incur when you refinance your home. It isn’t a zero-sum gain. There’s also, and I’ve mentioned this previously, the fact that if you’re over an 80% loan-to-value ratio, LMI will be involved, so Lenders Mortgage Insurance.

So between that and the cost of refinancing, it could cost you from $1000 to a couple of thousand dollars to $10,000, depending on the size of your loan and your circumstances, to refinance.

Now, if you’re, found a great new rate, and you’re saving $50 a month by refinancing your home loan, but it’s gonna cost you $1000 to refinance, is it worth it? Is it worth your time and effort, getting all the information together, putting it all together, submitting the application, going through all that, for something which is gonna take you 20 months to pay off?

No, you’re better off staying where you are. So it’s a consideration that you gotta put into mind.

Question 3

The third question you should ask yourself is, are you planning on selling your home in the near future?

And again, it’s around, if your plan is to sell, move on, upgrade, do whatever, now may not be the best time to refinance. There’s a lot of effort, you’ve gotta get all the paperwork together, you’ve gotta put the application in, you’ve gotta go through the process.

If you’re going to a new lender, you’ve gotta set up all your accounts and everything else. So as a result, if you’re considering selling your home in the near future, or your loan’s starting to get small, there’s only a small amount still to be repaid, it may not be worthwhile refinancing.

We look around and we see these great rates. Save an extra 0.25% here, fix it for three years at this new, never-before-seen and never-be-seen-again interest rate.

But unless there is a benefit to us, it’s not worth doing.

So next time when you’re thinking about refinancing, think about these three questions again.

Has your financial situation changed?

Are you going to save money by refinancing?

And are you looking at selling your place in the near future?

And if those answers don’t add up to you, just put it on hold until the next time you review your home loan.

Anyway, Brendan from Buyers Choice, great talking to you again today.

Please hit like to this video, and if you’ve got any questions, feedback, please leave a comment below.

Look forward to talking to you next time. Have a wonderful day.

Goals and achieving your resolutions

Goals and achieving your resolutions

To start the year off on a positive note first up I look at turning those New Years Resolutions into achievable Goals.  It doesn’t matter what you would like to achieve, paying off the home loan quicker, saving for a holiday or loosing a kilo or two.

Watch on as I discuss setting achievable goals.

If you would prefer to read instead of watching the video, scroll down to see a transcript.

Transcript

Hello, it’s Brendan from Buyer’s Choice, your home financing specialist, and today I wanna have a quick chat about setting goals.

New year, 2018’s here, and we’ve all probably made some resolutions on what we want to achieve throughout this year. It could be paying off the home loan quicker, saving a deposit for an overseas holiday. In my case, losing a kilo or two.

We’ve all done it over the years, we’ve all made resolutions, we’ve said, on the 31st of December, next year I’m going to, fill in the blank. And that’s probably appropriate for most of us. It is fill in the blank.

We have all these good intentions, but that’s all they are, good intentions. How do we take what are good intentions, and what we’re planning on doing for the best of reasons, and make them happen?

In my case, 2018 is gonna be the year I get my weight under control. I want to focus on my health, I want to improve things.

For me, it’s a major goal, of a fitness level where I can enjoy spending time with my son for the next couple of decades? He’s four, there’s a lot of time that we can enjoy, playing together, but we can’t do that if I’m not fit and healthy.

How are we gonna do this?

Quite often we set ourselves a goal. We’ll use me as an example, I’m gonna lose 20 kilos. Great, but that’s where it ends.

We’ve set ourselves a goal. We might go as far as saying, I’m gonna exercise a couple of times a week, but we don’t make it something which is achievable.

We don’t make it something which we can measure.

We don’t put a deadline on it, something which is timely.

This year I’m gonna approach things differently, and if you’ve got goals, resolutions that you want to achieve, I recommend you follow a similar process.

The first thing, we have our overarching theme, our focus, what we want to focus on. In my case, it’s my health. 2018, a major focus for me will be my health, and in a large extent, losing weight.

We step down to the next level, and our major goal itself under there. For this, we wanna make that goal something which we’re gonna achieve in the next 90 days. While I’ve got the bigger picture of my health, and where I wanna end up being, we want something which is achievable in the short term.

My 90 day goal is to lose 10 kilos. It’s about half a kilo, three quarters a kilo a week, which is achievable. I’ve got my 90 day goal, but even then, how am I gonna achieve it? What are the steps I’m gonna take?

This is the key to the process that I use with goal setting, which takes it from that high in the sky, I’m gonna do this, to the tire hitting the pavement, really getting action on what you wanna do. Under that 90 day goal, losing 10 kilos in the next 90 days, I’ve then put together three process goals.

Three goals which I’m gonna do on a week in, week out basis. These aren’t looking at long term results or all the rest. It is three things that I’m gonna do which are gonna get me to that higher level, 90 day goal.

In my case, again, one’s gonna be going to the gym at least four times a week. Combination of cardio work, weight work. I’ve got a plan, I’ve got a program I’m gonna follow. My goal is to be at the gym four days a week.

The second goal I’m gonna have is sticking to my diet. I’ve worked with a dietician, she’s given me a diet that I’ve gotta follow. Goal number two that I’m gonna do week in, week out, is follow that diet that she’s given me.

Goal number three, I’ve been reading a few things about health and what’s good for you, and they say drinking water, particularly in place of drinking soft drinks, alcohol, and a lot of other things, is extremely good for you, so, as a result, my third goal is gonna be drink at least three liters of water per day.

There I’ve got three actionable goals that I can follow each week. Simple things to follow. Have I gone to the gym four days and done my program? Yes, no?

If it’s no, I can look back at the end of the week and say, righty-o, why didn’t I? What’s gotta change? What do I need to do to achieve my goal?

In summary, I’ll just go over them again.

We’ve got our major area of focus, what we wanna achieve over the course of the year. It could be something multi-year, doesn’t matter.

Underneath that, we break it into a 90 day goal. What do we want to achieve in the next 90 days? Something which we can achieve, it’s got to be obtainable in the next 90 days.

Finally, underneath that, three process goals, goals where we take action, where we make things occur.

If we break up our goals that way, turn our new year resolutions into 90 day goals, and put some process things, steps that we’re gonna do week in, week out underneath it, you’ll be surprised how quickly your goal is achieved.

I’m looking forward to seeing how I perform on my goals, and if you continue to watch my videos on a regular basis, you’ll know how I’m going on achieving my goals, because the proof will be in what you see. If I can do what I’m say I’m going to do, I’ll see that improvement week in, week out.

Brendan from Buyer’s Choice. If you like the video, please hit the like button down below.

Got any comments, any requests for future videos? Please, leave a comment below, and I’ll get to it in the future.

Thanks a lot, have a wonderful day.