Managing your debt
Borrowing for most people is a fact of life – whether it's credit cards, store cards,
personal loans, home loans, hire purchase or other lending.
But, did you know that if you have loans from many sources you could be paying more
interest than you need to? It's also hard to manage your finances if you have payments
heading out of your account in different directions on different days.
If this sounds like you, you may want to consider consolidating your debt.
Potential benefits of debt consolidation are:
- Instead of making multiple payments on different dates you can make one regular
payment
- You can have one interest rate and a set date your debt will be paid off by
- It could reduce the amount of interest and administration fees you pay and help
you become debt free sooner.
If you are looking at consolidating your debt there are various options. For example,
if you have a home loan you might be able to extend it and consolidate all your
other debt into your home loan (which is usually a much lower interest rate than
other forms of borrowing). Talk to your bank about the option best suited to you.
If you choose to consolidate it's important that it's not seen as the fix for all
your financial problems – you will still need to change your spending habits to
avoid getting into debt further.
Most importantly, never ignore a debt that you can no longer repay. Talk to your
bank sooner rather than later – there should be a range of options they can look
at to help you.
Our lending criteria, terms, conditions and fees apply.