Credit cards, personal loans etc

Yep.

I have a standing appointment with our broker every other year. Totally worth it.

That’s strange. When we set up our loan, we got the loan before the offset account, the offset account was added later.
No fees
No change to the interest rate

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Was about half a percent different for us plus fees (or 0.75% and no fees).
We just went with whatever got us the absolute lowest comparison rate
But obviously different circumstances, size of loan, “product” etc.
(Or you were getting hammered to begin with!!!)

No, was a new loan for a new property. I’ve never heard of getting charged for having an offset account or that the interest is higher by having one.

You have now.

Comm have the “standard variable rate” (the one with an offset and a few other bells and whistles) at 4.87% and the “extra” (the bog standard low-rate option) at 3.79%

https://www.commbank.com.au/latest/lending-experts.html

Unless you’re in it for investing, rather than a roof over your head, an offset account is more or less the same as a fee-free redraw ability (and all of CBA’s current accounts allow either).

(And yet I moved from CBA to uBank a while back.)

Frequent flyers specials credit cards are constantly on. You can get a holiday or two a year and purely paying just the tax of flying. If you earn enough and have the expenses to meet their bonus points which is usually ~3 months period do it and close it and move onto another bank for the next special. I have friends that take on the loophole and open and close 4-5 credit cards every year. However you won’t be eligible for the bonus for ~12 months. The other thing to consider is whether the tax of the flight out weighs the cost.

This is exactly what we do. Can easily get 400-500k worth of points a year doing it and if you redeem business or first class flights the taxes nowhere near outweigh the cost. The points are also great for domestic and International upgrades.
Some FF programs are far better than others too in regards to taxes ( or as they call them “surcharges” ) KrisFlyer is the best FF I find for both availability and lowest taxes as they don’t charge a fuel surcharge.

When I went through the home loan application process I found the CBAs rates and offerings to be completely unreasonable. Currently with the HSBCs standard variable home loan rate I have a redrawfacility with unlimited zero fee redraws at a rate which is 1.2% lower than the CBAs.

IIRC the larger banks still charged for such a facility while the smaller banks did not.

Wasn’t my experience.

We were with CBA, then AMP and now HSBC

From memory CBA were unlimited zero fee redraws, AMP was something like 500 per month. Might’ve been the other way around.

Only ever moved for rates. Both CBA and AMP were fine to deal with.

1.2% different interest is massive. Sure you were comparing apples with apples, not some bells-and-whistles type account?

I had one of the CBA Viridian accounts, and then moved it to NAB. No limitations on either, just monthly fees.

I don’t pay any banking or CC fees at all with NAB. i’m not prepared to mention it to them. I think it’s an oversight. I used to get all fees in the loan account and then cleared the loan. Nothing else changed.

Many accounts are zero fee if you deposit a certain amount per month.