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Mortgage WatchDog is a software program that allows you to analyse the fees and charges associated with your home or investment loan and discover any errors that may have occurred. But is Mortgage WatchDog worth purchasing?
Do Bank Errors Really Occur?
Does your computer ever make a mistake or freeze or does it work perfectly every single time?
The fact is that neither humans nor computers are 100% accurate 100% of the time, meaning that occasionally errors will occur.
These errors could occur both in your favour or against you favour. But more likely than not errors will occur where you are charge more than you should have been.
Should I Even Bother with Mortgage Watchdog
Mortgage Watchdog is a program that allows you to track your home loan balances and find out if any bank errors have been made.
However, it won’t simply log into your bank account and do it for you.
You will need access to your home loan statements and records and will need to enter a variety of figures so that the program can do the analysis for you.
Let’s say you have a home loan for 20 years at 7% interest and the bank accidentally charges your $10 in the first month of that loan. Well that $10 will actually accumulate into approximately $40 over the course of your loan.
Now imagine you are charged an extra $10 per month for the lifetime of the loan. Without interest that is just $2,400 but when you take into account a 7% interest rate it actually costs you an extra $5,250 (approximately).
I don’t know about you but $5,250 could go a long way towards paying down some debt or paying for a nice family vacation.
Tracking Fees and Loan Repayments
The easiest loans to track are fixed loans where the interest rate stays the same and the repayments are made at the same time every single month for the same amount. These are easy to work out if you have been overcharged for anything.
But when interest rates fluctuate, payments are made and different times and offset accounts are used to move money around and offset part of your loan things start to get really tricky. Without the help of software this would be near impossible to track (unless you are an excel spreadsheet fiend!)
Although Mortgage Watchdog doesn’t do every thing for you it is worth it because otherwise it would be impossible to do the task yourself.
What Is Your Time Worth?
If you pay the $197 Mortgage Watchdog costs and you find nothing they give you a full refund PLUS $250. So if you find nothing you will still make $250.
Let’s say you buy it for $197 and you find $2,000 worth of bank errors. Using their automatic bank letter generator you get your $2,000 back from the bank. Effectively you made $1,803 ($2,000 – $197).
Let’s say it takes you 5 hours to complete the data entry required to make Mortgage Watchdog work.
In the instance where you find nothing you make $50/hour. Not too shabby if you ask me.
In the instance where you find the $2,000 of errors you effectively made yourself $360.60/hour
Now obviously if it takes you longer or shorter these figures change, but it is a calculation worth doing.
As Seen on A Current Affair
Mortgage WatchDog was featured on A Current Affair. I have embedded the video below for your convenience.
As stated in the video over 6,000 people have purchased and used this product and at the time of the record they had only 2 people contact them for the refund.
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So Is Mortgage WatchDog Worth Purchasing?
I believe the answer is yes, if you have the time to complete it.
If you find nothing you make money (refund plus $250) and if you find something you make money.
What Are The Catches?
There a very few catches with this product but from my observation the catches are as follows
- You need to spend a bit of your own time using the tool
- You require the banks to honour the errors in order to receive your refund (most banks will do this)
- You must pay for the product first before you can get any money back…so you need to have a spare $200
But if I told you I would give you $450 if you gave me $200 you would do it any day of the week.
In my opinion it is worth trying.