I currently do most of my banking with CBA as I have my PPOR and an IP loan with them and am on the wealth package. Not looking to move in the near future.
I'm trying to work out if there is a better way to do my day to day banking.
Currently all income (salary and rental) gets paid into a "savings" account (which is currently with another bank) and then all my loan repayments get taken out of here, as well as a variety of other direct debited bills. After all the payments have come out for the month, the left over is transferred over to the offset account attached to my PPOR loan.
To ensure that there is always enough money in the account to pay the bills there is a bit of a buffer left in the account to smooth out the expenses throughout the year. I currently get a token amount of interest on this account, despite there being a balance ranging between $2k-$11k in the account throughout the month.
In an ideal world CBA would have a transactional offset account and I would use this instead of having to maintain this alternate account.
I am currently considering whether or not I would be better off getting a CBA Viridian Line of Credit and using this instead of my "savings" account. Does anyone use one, and if so are they able to answer my questions below?
1. Can you pay your other monthly loan repayments from the LOC account?
2. Will the interest/expenses on the LOC be capitalized? (even though you then have to make monthly repayments to at least cover the interest/expenses).
3. Can you setup direct debits to pay bills directly from the LOC?
Note I am not planning on claiming interest from the LOC as a tax deduction as I am not capitalizing any investment expenses and a lot of the expenses paid from the LOC will be private in nature.
Any alternate options people use? I have had a quick look at the Bankwest Zero account which seems to pay a higher interest rate for the first $5k - so I will probably get more interest that way, but will probably be better off if the LOC can do what I need.
I will ring up CBA and ask these questions - but I tend to find they don't always know exactly how their accounts work anyway.
Regards,
Jason
I'm trying to work out if there is a better way to do my day to day banking.
Currently all income (salary and rental) gets paid into a "savings" account (which is currently with another bank) and then all my loan repayments get taken out of here, as well as a variety of other direct debited bills. After all the payments have come out for the month, the left over is transferred over to the offset account attached to my PPOR loan.
To ensure that there is always enough money in the account to pay the bills there is a bit of a buffer left in the account to smooth out the expenses throughout the year. I currently get a token amount of interest on this account, despite there being a balance ranging between $2k-$11k in the account throughout the month.
In an ideal world CBA would have a transactional offset account and I would use this instead of having to maintain this alternate account.
I am currently considering whether or not I would be better off getting a CBA Viridian Line of Credit and using this instead of my "savings" account. Does anyone use one, and if so are they able to answer my questions below?
1. Can you pay your other monthly loan repayments from the LOC account?
2. Will the interest/expenses on the LOC be capitalized? (even though you then have to make monthly repayments to at least cover the interest/expenses).
3. Can you setup direct debits to pay bills directly from the LOC?
Note I am not planning on claiming interest from the LOC as a tax deduction as I am not capitalizing any investment expenses and a lot of the expenses paid from the LOC will be private in nature.
Any alternate options people use? I have had a quick look at the Bankwest Zero account which seems to pay a higher interest rate for the first $5k - so I will probably get more interest that way, but will probably be better off if the LOC can do what I need.
I will ring up CBA and ask these questions - but I tend to find they don't always know exactly how their accounts work anyway.
Regards,
Jason
