Choosing the right product from dozens of different products offered by the lenders can be a daunting task especially when you are not aware of what exactly it might bring on your table. To make your selection process easier, I have come up with a special “Sweet package” that will help you understand the products better. You can apply this sweet package to your home loan and see the variety of sweetness that it can bring to your financial wellbeing.

Home loan setup — “Fixed rate vs Standard variable rate”

Fixed rate by its name, is loan on a fixed term which means your interest rates are locked and you are charged with the same interest rate throughout the fixed loan term. It is just like paying your monthly subscription on Netflix, it is the same every month unless you change or upgrade your subscription. Now, it has both pros and cons depending on your financial situation.

You do not have to worry about the fluctuation in interest rates. You are in the safer zone. You have locked that jewellery! It makes your budgeting easier as you can predict your mortgage expenses because of the fixed interest rates every month.Now that you have locked your interest rate, you would not be able to enjoy the perks of decreased interest rates as you have paid a lock fee to the lender. You have given your commitment!

Variable rate by its name keeps changing. You do not have a fixed interest rate. Some months you might enjoy the perks of lowest interest rates whereas some months you might get caught with the highest. Having said that, it brings a lot of positive factors with it. You might have noticed that I have mentioned “standard variable rate”. Yes, you read it right. There are two types of variable rates- basic and standard. Here I will be focusing on the standard variable rate as that makes up my sweet package and later in the article you will see the significant role of it. Let us see what this standard variable rate has to offer.

Redraw and offset facility available

Damn these are some complicated words but hang on there, I will explain in a while how beautiful these terms are!

Make the most out the decreased interest rates. As you have not made any commitment to the lender, you are not obliged to stay on the fixed rate. You might be a potential victim of the higher interest rates due to instability in the market rates, but with my “sweet package” strategy, you can easily mitigate that.

The Redraw facility allows you to make extra repayments up to a certain limit towards your loan with no extra cost. Let us say that you have been making $100 extra repayment every month towards your loan, at the end of the year, this $1200 will be made available to you to withdraw at a later date. Basically, it is like saving on your home loan. You either use it in future or pay off your loan quicker.

On the other hand, an offset facility is an eligible transaction account linked to your eligible loan account. With this, instead of being charged on your full loan balance you will just be charged on your loan amount minus your balance on the offset account. For example, if you have $150,000 on your loan account and $50,000 on your linked offset account, you will only be charged interest for $100,000.

Now that we know what fixed and variable rates are, what redraw and offset facilities are, let us move on to setting up the right package for you. Here is an example.

Jack and Jill have decided to purchase their first home worth $500,000. They have managed to pay a deposit of $60,000 towards their purchase and they are looking for a loan of $440,000. They are confused whether to go for a fixed or variable rate. Jack thinks that having a fixed rate would be a better idea as they both work for a company and have a fixed income coming in every month. That way it would be easier for them to have certainty of repayments and that they can plan their budget. Whereas Jill thinks that they should have a variable rate so that they can take the benefit of the decreased interest rates and can have offset and redraw facilities available as they are good savers.

Here comes my sweet package and what I set up for them……

I knew that both were right in their place but what if they could take the advantage of fixed and variable both? Sounds amazing, doesn’t it?

I created a package for them. Out of the $440,000 loan amount, I put $350,000 into the fixed rate and $90,000 in the variable rate. Most of the lenders allow loan splitting under their package options. What benefit could they have with this split setup?

They will have a certainty of repayment for the major portion of the loan which is $350k that will make their every month budgeting easier as Jack wanted.

Since Jack and Jill will have fixed income coming into their account every month, they can link that salary account to their variable loan portion and save on interest on whatever they manage to accumulate on their salary account as savings.

If they make some extra repayments in certain months, it will be there for them as a redraw amount which they can call “raincheck”.