Scoring Quick Wins in Reducing Expenses

I shared my monthly expense here, and one of the reason for looking at expenses is to see if there are any quick ways to minimize them.

The best way is minimize recurring cost.

One of the items that my partner and I were looking at is mortgage. And seems like now is a good time to look at mortgages since interest rates are rock bottom, and I've just received an email from the bank about repricing. As a side note, 2 years back when I was doing a refinance, I thought interest rate was rock bottom at about 1.8%. Today, interest rate has fallen even more, and we are getting a new interest rate at a low 1+% interest rate. It's a no- brainer to do a repricing or refinancing.

We only checked with 1 other bank, and the rates are about the same, so I would really prefer a repricing rather than a refinance. The bank also waived the repricing fees (subjected to some terms of course). You can read more about the differences between refinancing vs repricing of housing loan here. We needed a clause to waive penalties if we sell within the lock-in period, as we might move one day (not bound by minimum occupation period any more LOL), which the bank include in the agreement.

Repricing was really hassle-free. No visit to the conveyancing lawyer, unlike the previous time when we did a refinancing. No need someone to come to my place and do a valuation. After agreeing on the terms, and reading the agreement, we only need to login and click to accept the repricing and we are DONE.

When the new rates kick in, we would start saving a low few hundreds off our mortgage, without cutting back on life.

Nice.

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