Before Adam and I moved to Melbourne from Sydney, we were looking at buying on the central coast. After moving, it took us a while to really get our bearings in this new city. While other friends and peers were using their early twenties to travel overseas, we were the first couple to buy a place of our own. Moving from the inner suburbs to the outer ones, to some, is an unfathomable zone-adjustment (truly, in some circles, zone 2 is spoken about like it’s the delta quadrant), but to us it was nice and the commute was easy.
So we worked really hard, saved even harder, and got ourselves a home loan so we could buy this little place we’ve called home for twelve years.
That’s me, one year after moving in and three weeks before our wedding. My hair was still its natural blonde, before I turned to dye to get it to stay the same shade. There’s the weeping cherry – now a magnificent tree, back then not much more than a sapling. This is a reason why I’ve loved being here as long as we have, to see how the place has matured, bettered. Changed. Just like we have.
While buying a house curtailed a lot of our world-wide travel plans, we still did – and do – go back to see family in NSW whenever we can, and now the kids are getting old enough we’ve started setting our sights on bigger trips. Hong Kong was just the beginning. With that trip, and others, I earned Qantas frequent flyers points, and so when I was invited to travel up to Sydney by Macquarie Bank, I was very interested. If you’ve ever wished you could earn points for doing something you’d already be doing – like making repayments, or shopping at Woolworths or Big W while using your Everyday Rewards card – then keep reading. Especially those of you who might be looking for your first ever home loan.
Yes, Qantas Frequent Flyer and Macquarie Bank have joined forces for the Macquarie Bank Flyer Home Loan. In a nutshell, it offers the mortgage holder 10,000 Qantas Points for every $100,000 drawn down at settlement as an introductory gift (calculated to the nearest point). So if you were to get a loan of $350,000 (a lot of money for a house in some places, not much in others), you would get 35,000 points at settlement. That’s a bit to play with!
And for as long as the outstanding loan balance is at least $150,000, the mortgage holder also will receive 1,000 Qantas Points each month for the life of the loan, plus 25,000 bonus Qantas Points on the third and fifth anniversaries of the loan. This is also applicable to loans that have an offset features and/or redraw facilities, so long as the total of the loan stays at or over the $150,000 mark.
I did some sums in my head – we could have racked up some tidy points if this had available back when we were first looking to buy! It’s interesting to note that a Macquarie study conducted earlier this year that first and subsequent home buyer alike were more likely to keep on travelling with a loan as opposed to the general population. There’s no doubt that the ease and speed of flying, not to mention the responsibilities and work and family, do point towards a particular lifestyle that many would want to upkeep. Now, with this loan, that might be more possible to accommodate. Naturally, if preferred or more practical, as these will be your points to spend, they may be redeemed like any other via the Qantas Store for goods or Qantas epiQure for wine.
For anyone who would like to know more about how to best make frequent flyer points work for them – tips, info, etc – there is also a site called The Australian Frequent Flyer which is definitely worth checking out.
Image credit: digallagher
This post was sponsored by Macquarie Bank.
