I'll teach you to pay off your home loan in sixteen years.

The whole trick is one number

Your lender approved you at about 3% above the rate you got. Say 6.20% real, 9.20% assessed.

You passed that test. That's what approval means.

So repay at the rate they tested you at.

A 30-year loan is gone in 16.2 years.

$1.425m in Sydney. $475k in regional SA. Same answer. It's a ratio — the loan size cancels itself out.

The buffer isn't a tax. It's a test you've already passed.

Or just do twelve months of it

Sixteen years of discipline doesn't appeal? Fine. Do one year.

Assessed-rate repayment for twelve months, then back to the minimum forever.

23 months off the back end. About $108,000 in interest.

Defer the Bunnings trips, the furniture, the landscaping. One year, not a lifestyle. It works because it ends.

When rates fall, don't

Your lender will quietly drop your repayment for you. Let them, and you're back on thirty years.

Don't, and:

Hold through 0.50% → 26.3 years

Hold through 1.00% → 23.8 years

Hold through 2.00% → 20.2 years

Costs nothing. You were already paying it.

Best case on this alone is about nineteen years, so anyone selling it as the path to fifteen is selling.

Money sitting still is still working

Offset money cuts the balance your interest is calculated on, every day, without you spending it.

$10,000 → $3,623 saved over five years

$30,000 → 2.2 years off the loan

$50,000 → 3.4 years off

And you haven't locked it away. Spend it tomorrow if you need to.

Bank the pay rise before you feel it

Your expenses are set at your old salary. That's the whole opportunity.

+2% a year on the repayment → 20.6 years

+3% → 18.4 years

+5% → 15.5 years

Fifteen and a half years without finding a dollar of new money.

You never felt it arrive. You won't miss it leaving.

The strategy is fine. The assets usually aren't.

Build something outside the mortgage, sell it, point the proceeds at the loan. That part works.

But off-the-plan apartments with a kickback in the price behave like a new car. You can be behind the day you settle.

If the plan needs you to sell in ten years, the thing has to be worth something in ten years.

Think about the asset, not the strategy.