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Calculator AU8 ยท Rate Rise. The Australian Mortgage Handbook

The minimum repayment trap

When rates fall, your minimum repayment falls with them. See what it costs to take the lower repayment, and what you keep by paying the same as before.

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Cover of Rate Rise. The Australian Mortgage Handbook

This calculator goes with Rate Rise. The Australian Mortgage Handbook by JP O'Connor. The book explains what the numbers mean and what to do next.

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Rates will fall again one day

Right now the story is rises. But rates move in cycles, and when they come down, most variable loans recalculate your minimum repayment lower. Some lenders do it automatically, some only if you ask, and some leave your repayment where it was unless you tell them to lower it.

A lower minimum feels like a pay rise. In practice it's the loan quietly stretching back out. The balance comes down more slowly, you pay interest for longer, and a household that coped with the higher repayment ends up no further ahead for having done it.

The easiest money in this book

If you've managed the higher repayment, you've already proved you can live without that money. Keeping your repayment the same when rates fall is the one debt strategy that asks nothing new of you. You don't find new money, you don't sell anything, you don't change your spending. You just don't take the cut.

How to lock it in

When your lender writes to say the rate has dropped, ring them or check the app. Ask whether your repayment will change automatically. If it will, ask to keep it at the current amount, or set up an extra repayment for the difference. Then check the next statement.

Check this one. Lenders handle this differently and change their policies. Ask yours directly: "When the rate falls, does my repayment go down automatically, and can I keep it the same?" Get the answer in writing or in the app.

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