Kieran’s Story

Basically, we’ve met with Joel, and we’ve said, Yes, we’re going to proceed, and then COVID hit Australia.

And then we kind of went into this spin of, hang on a second. Are we like, what’s going to happen? And so it was talking to him along with the information that was being put up on The Property Couch to sort of settle the nerves and check out of some of the headline scaremongering. Enough to go, okay, let’s stay the course and be in a position to move when the time is right.

I’d started to build my own middle cash for cashflow forecast, which probably threw in the bean immediately, as soon as all the complexity,  your team is built there.

What it models and what it enables to do—run different scenarios really quickly and just adjust tweak…  is just incredible.

And we threw everything at Joel. In the process of talking to him and planning, we had a change in career plans, a surprise baby, a change in the way that we wanted to structure loan change and the timing of the purchase…

He just kind of took it all and kept talking to us and kept working with us – I think is a massive part of what was able to give us the confidence to move on a property at a time of real uncertainty when we probably would have otherwise been running for the hills.

So I think it really enabled us to have a bit of—like, settle the swell a little bit in a sort of navigate a course through some fairly bumpy waters.

The changes that we had throughout the property probably elongated the processes a little bit longer than it might be for some people.

We were just, I guess, blown away with how tolerant of that, Joel was. He was just kind of like, “No, this is what it is like.

We signed up, and it is – as long as it takes – and we’ll go until you’ve got the answer that you’re comfortable with. So, we never felt pressure that we’re running out of time, so that was really comforting in and of itself.

The payoff and the fee are not even that expensive, considering the value that you get from them. When I look at what I paid for my annual tax returns to get them done each year and the value I get from that, we’ve gotten far more value out of this process.

There is just so much more that goes into it that you wouldn’t expect to understand from the outset, and yes, we worked with a broker as well, and they will look in terms of the actual loan, and they can help you through some of that work, but it’s not looking at the longer-term picture with a cashflow analysis of your situation. Particularly if you’ve got a baby coming at some point or other large financial commitments coming up in the future that you want to ensure that you’re not going to put yourself in stress for, then that’s where it really is. I felt it was really invaluable.

We felt really comfortable with Empower Wealth because we knew that the expertise was there, and we knew that they were independent and are really looking after our best interests. They weren’t trying to sell a product. There wasn’t anything to gain – from the advisors – they had nothing to gain.

 

Note

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