Last week we asked for a loan from the bank against our bond/mortgage which is more about keeping my stash overseas in British pounds. The loan is a small amount and is literally around $12K which is to cover the repairs on the Durban house which is going on the market as soon as possible.
The bank will do the paperwork and grant the loan within 3-5 working days and Monday being a public holiday did not help. A phone call yesterday from the bank blew me away as we have around $5K in overpayments on the bond in credit. Don't even ask how is this even possible as we use stop orders on our accounts and the bank takes what the outstanding monthly payment is required to cover the bond payments. You would like to think they would get their accounting right.
How this happened I have no idea as the bank takes the bond payment from the account each month and no one had picked up on this until now. I can assure you if we were in arrears we would have known immediately, but being over they just keep quiet. The statements we receive every month from the bank for the bond do not highlight this either so you wonder what is the point if this is going unnoticed. The amount represents 5 months of bond payments so it is sizeable and not an amount you could easily overlook. This tells you all you need to know as no one is hands on anymore and this would have been highlighted 20 years ago.
I still cannot complain too much though as we can walk into a bank in South Africa and sit down with a staff member who will help you out. This is the opposite of the UK where you have to make a booking these days and are informed you could do this online instead which is what they are pushing for. The loan application took us 20 minutes from when we walked into the bank to the time we walked out which is still personal service you would expect to see.
That $5K would have done very nicely as I would have fitted the much needed solar geyser and possibly one extra battery for the solar system with those funds. The madness is if we take that extra find out the bond right now then it will delay the loan application so I decided to leave it as it is and will most likely just use that to help pay the bond off reducing our monthly payments.
Tomorrow we should receive the loan so we can get moving on mobilizing the Johannesburg based team to get cracking on the Durban house. The loan is more than we actually require but this is more like for unforeseen things that need to be replaced or fixed. Whatever spare change that is left over will then go towards the solar on our Johannesburg property.
This is the route I should have done 2 years ago when I started putting solar on our Johannesburg house and lessons have been learned by keeping the money out the country. This was an idiotic rookie mistake and should have known far better with the positive upside this will not be repeated again. The money I used up from the overseas account will be replaced so no damage is done.
