Saturday 12 May 2012

How to Manage Your Home Loan and Save Thousands

The most effective thing you can do when you are managing your own budget is to look at incomings and outgoings. By looking at these numbers you can see where all your money is being spent and where you money is coming from. The same applies when you have a home loan. It is important to be able to see the you are paying the correct amount of interest to the bank, that they are processing your deposits correctly. It's quite common for banks to make mistakes which could cost you thousands of dollars.

It comes to a point where you have to ask yourself, "Is my lender handling my mortgage correctly, are they charging me the right interest amount?" I know just about everyone will receive their mortgage statement in the mail, see a number which shows the interest amount charged for the month, simply assume it is correct and happily go along with their day. We are adding thousands of hard earned money and simply assuming that the bank is calculating everything correctly. I am the type who likes to be in control of my investments as much as possible and being able to track my loan is definitely something I do and encourage others to do the same.

This is why I created my own loan tracking spreadsheet when I bought my first property back in 2009, I was mostly curious to see how the whole mortgage repayment process worked. It was very useful being able to see the money coming in, going out, and being able to forecast for the future. To see when the amount owing would finally reach $0.00, to see how much money I had put into the mortgage myself, and most importantly, to see how much interest the bank was charging me.

By creating my relatively simple loan tracking spreadsheet, I was able to determine what the amount of interest charged should be for the past month, and then when I received my mortgage statement, I was able to see the actual interest I was being charged. If there was a discrepancy with the amounts I would simply call up the bank to see why there was such a discrepancy, and more often than not, I was refunded by the bank error.
Once you have a useable loan tracking spreadsheet,  it should only take a few minutes of your time a week to input the necessary data.


If you would like a free copy of this spreadsheet, please click this link Spreadsheets 


If you have any other questions or comments, feel free to email us at StreamlineInvesting@gmail.com


Disclosure: The article is not to be taken as investment advice and the views expressed are opinions only.  Readers should seek advice from someone who claims to be qualified before considering allocating capital in any investment.

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