In our monthly Ratehacker round-up, Jeremy Cabral from finance comparison site finder.com.au highlights recent credit card offer changes, plus the best savings accounts and home loans.
Money picture from Shutterstock
With the first RBA rate cut in over 16 months, it’s really important to pay attention to the interest rates on your financial products. You can expect home loan and savings interest rates to move so pay attention to how your banks (and other banks) respond.
Credit Cards
Feature: 0 percent balance transfer & purchases
NAB Low Rate: 0% per annum for 12 months on purchases and balance transfers. This card is one of those rare offers that has 0% on both purchases and balance transfers, for the same period of time — and in this case, for 12 months. This card also has a low annual fee of $59.
Feature: 0 percent balance transfer and no annual fee
Coles No Annual Fee MasterCard: 0% per annum for 18 months on balance transfers. This card has one of the longest 0% balance transfer offers in market and you won’t have to pay an annual fee. For every $2 you spend you will also earn 1 flybuys point.
Feature: No annual fee and low purchase rate
ME Bank Low Rate Credit Card: 9.99% purchase rate and 0 annual fee. Besides offering a remarkably low rate on purchases, this card also offers the same 9.99% per annum rate on cash advances.
Feature: Bonus points after first purchase
ANZ Frequent Flyer: 50,000 bonus Qantas points. If you make a purchase by 31st March 2015 you will receive 50,000 bonus Qantas Points. The annual fee for this card is $95.
Home Loans
Feature: Variable Rate Home Loan
loans.com.au Dream Home Loan Offset Variable: 4.29% comparison rate. This loan features no application fee, and you can borrow up to 90% of the property value at this rate. It also features a 100% offset redraw facility.
Feature: Discounted application fees
Bankwest Online Home Loan: 4.89% comparison rate. This an online-only offer for loans from $100,000 to $1 million. This rate applies for new borrowing only for up to 80% of the property value.
Feature: Fixed rate home loan
UBank UHomeLoan — Fixed Rate: 4.77% comparison rate. This rate is available if you choose to fix your home loan rate for 3 years. It’s possible to complete your application online and get a response within 30 minutes.
Savings Accounts
Feature: High maximum variable interest rate
ME Bank Online Savings Account: 4.10% per annum. When you link this product with the ME Bank Everyday Transaction Account you will be entitled to the bonus rate of 4.10% per annum for the first four months which works out to be an extra 1.35% per annum above the standard variable rate.
Feature: Incentive saver
ING DIRECT Savings Maximiser: 4.00% per annum. If you have an Orange Everyday Bank Account and deposit $1000+ each month from an external account each month you will be entitled to the variable rate of 4% per annum which is 1.25% per annum above the standard variable rate.
Feature: High base interest rate
RaboDirect Notice Saver 90: 3.75% per annum. If you don’t want the savings commitment and want just a solid base variable rate, that’s what the RaboDirect Notice Saver product has been designed for. You need to give 90 days notice prior to being able to withdraw your funds.
Transaction Accounts
Feature: Cashback on PayWave purchases
Citibank Plus Transaction Account: 5% cashback on PayWave purchases under $100. The Citibank Plus Transaction Account is now offering 5% cashback (capped at $500 per month) for Visa PayWave purchases under $100. The account is still fee free and offers the benefit of no foreign transaction fees.
Feature: No monthly account-keeping fee
ING DIRECT Orange Everyday Account: No account keeping fees. This account offers no ATM fees at every ATM in Australia when you deposit your salary of $1,000 or more each month, 2% cashback on Visa PayWave purchases under $100 in Australia and no monthly account keeping fees.
Feature: Rewards Transaction Account
Bankwest Qantas Transaction Account: 5 Qantas Points per eligible purchase. Besides points on purchases you can earn 12 Qantas Points per $100 balance in your account and 5 Qantas Points for every cash withdrawal overseas.
Personal Loans
Feature: Debt Consolidation Loan
CUA Personal Loan: 13.84% per annum comparison rate. Benefit from no monthly fees, no penalties for paying out your loan early and unlimited extra repayments. All loans will have an establishment fee of $120.
Feature: Fixed Rate New Car Loan
loans.com.au Car Loan: 7.02% comparison rate. The repayments on this loan are fixed. There are no ongoing monthly fees and you can use this loan for a new or used vehicle for a minimum loan amount of $10,000 over 3, 4, 5 or 7 years.
Feature: Low Interest Rate Personal Loan
Gateway CU Personal Loan — Variable Rate: 11.53% comparison rate. Borrow a minimum of $3,000 for up to 7 years. You also have the benefit of making additional loan repayments without penalty.
Travel Insurance
Feature: Policy Discount
InsureandGo Travel Insurance: 10% discount on your policy plus free kids cover. Exclusive finder.com.au offer to get a 10% discount on your travel insurance policy with InsureandGo. Features unlimited medical cover on all overseas policies.
Life Insurance
Feature: Discounted Premium
NobleOak Life Limited: 25% discount on your premiums and first month free. Exclusive offer for Life Insurance Finder customers — receive savings on your premium (up to 25%) and you will get one month of cover at no charge.
Jeremy Cabral is the Publisher at finder.com.au which includes popular comparison sites CreditCardFinder.com.au and SavingsAccountFinder.com.au, helping over 4.8 million Australians compare financial products every year. Connect with Jeremy on Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Comments
5 responses to “Ratehacker: February’s Best Credit Card, Bank And Home Loan Deals”
So that ANZ Frequent Flyer card will cost you a minimum of $95 in exchange for 50k Qantas Points.
That’s actually not a bad deal – the items you can buy in the Qantas store for 50k points all have an RRP around $300 (assuming that the points actually have an equal value to Qantas frequent flyer points, which is always where the loyalty programs get you).
Thanks for adding that in – super helpful!
Considering the Citibank Rewards Card is offering 24 months 0% balance transfer… i wonder how reliable any of these recommendations are.
Thanks for the comment.
It’s really important to take into account the annual fee. The annual fee on the Citibank Rewards Credit Card – Platinum Card is $195. On smaller balances, this is going to make a big impact on the cost of the balance transfer.
If you were to take a typical credit card balance of $3000 and do a balance transfer, here’s how the interest savings look like over the balance transfer period if your current card had an 18% interest rate.
0% for 14 months balance transfer with $0 annual fee: $570.48
0% for 16 months balance transfer with $30 annual fee: $582.29
0% for 24 months with $199 annual fee: $311.19 (this is what the Citibank card is offering)
It can get really tricky trying to choose a balance transfer card. We try to make it easier by pre-calculating these savings on our balance transfer page on our site, if you have any feedback on how we could improve that for us, that’d be awesome.
Thanks again for your feedback
Cheers,
Jeremy
Westpac platinum visa 0% for 12 months, no annual fee if you spend $10k/yr.
No brainer if you have a home loan at > 0%.