Eva
Equitus took 8 years off my loan without increasing my payments.
Where I was...
being able to minimise the impact of my mortgage gives me a real sense of financial well-being
I came out of school really interested in the visual arts. I really wanted to make something happen for myself but knew that artists didn't make much money.
I went to Uni anyway but started working in a photographic studio in the holidays. It was mainly taking pictures of kids but it paid the bills. I was still doing a lot of arty assignments but I came to realize that stuff wasn’t putting money in my bank accounts.
So I kept on photographing kids. Then I got an assignment with a local newspaper and gradually moved into full time work with them. A few months later a girlfriend and I set up a website. It was good fun and a bit of a laugh but after a while I found the site was starting to be a source of business for me.
For a while there I got really busy and could see living in a flat was no longer working for me. I needed my own space and lots of it. Mum said she'd stump up a deposit for me if I could service a home loan on my income. We did the sums and it worked out, just. I felt a bit mean borrowing all that money from Mum. We both knew it would be ages before I could pay her back.
How Equitus helped me...
Since using the Equitus programme I've got really smart around money
A week later I found an old house in St Albans. It was ideal for what I wanted. It was on a corner and still had its original shop front. Mum thought I was completely mad but I convinced her that having a shop like this would be ideal for my photographic business.
Three years into my mortgage, I happened to go to a Home Show and met an Equitus consultant there. I thought she was a bit pushy at first but what she said was a bit different and I pride myself on being different myself.
I invited her to do an analysis for me and she brought me back some graphs which showed I could take eight years off my mortgage without paying the bank any more than what I was currently paying. It seemed a bit fantastic to me but I kept asking questions until I understood what she was talking about.
I spoke to Mum because I didn't think I could make a decision on my own. After all, she owned as much of my house as I did. The consultant agreed to come back and explain the principle to Mum. I have to say Mum was pretty hard to convince, but after the consultant showed her how we could use the acceleration process to pay her back in full in under five years she was pretty excited! I guess retirement is coming up for her and she'll need the money back by then.
Where I am now...
Well, all of that was three years ago and what the Equitus consultant said was quite true. I'll be paying Mum back in eighteen months and that's a really nice feeling. But that's not all. Since using the Equitus programme I've got really smart around money. I never a pay a bill too soon, and keep the money I'm saving to pay the tax in my account so it can offset interest while it sits there. My Equitus financial advisor helps me set annual objectives and best of all, being able to minimise the impact of my mortgage gives me a real sense of financial well-being.
To protect sensitive financial data, the names and images of the case study participants have been changed.