ME Bank reveals 51% of married couples have the same wedding regret

ME’s recent Love and Money Survey found that a whopping 51% of married couples regret how much they spent on their wedding, with the top three regretted expenses being, the reception (17%), photography/videography (13%) and wedding favours for guests (13%).

According to ME money expert Matthew Read, “decisions are commonly made with the heart rather than the head when it comes to weddings. Couples can easily get caught up in the moment, failing to consider the financial impact of their decisions.”

Considering that just 55% of couples set a wedding budget, and of those who did, 32% exceeded it, we can see that when it comes to weddings, it clearly pays more to follow your head, not your heart.

ME’s survey also revealed that the average cost of a wedding is $21,159! So, it’s really no surprise that 19% of couples surveyed admitted to borrowing money to fund their big day.

Kiss wedding debt goodbye

If you took out a personal loan to pay for your wedding like loads of other Aussies, and you’re now stuck in a jam trying to keep up with expensive loan or credit card repayments, a great way to cut down personal loan repayments and pay debt off faster is to refinance to a debt consolidation loan.

By combining all debt into the one debt consolidation loan, it’ll be much easier to manage repayments as all your debt will be in the one place. On top of this, you’ll end up saving a tonne in interest as you’ll have only one interest rate for the lot, rather than one for each debt.

Scenario:

Let’s say you have the following debt:

• $20,000 personal loan with a 12% interest rate used to pay for your wedding
• $5,000 credit card balance with a 20% interest rate

This would work out to be $850 in monthly repayments over 3 years, totalling $5,603 interest. However, if you combined the two debts into one debt consolidation loan with an 8% interest rate, your monthly loan repayments would drop to $783 and you’d only pay $3,203 in interest over 3 years, saving $2,400 in interest.

Planning a wedding? Well, be sure to stop by the weddings hub for more juicy wedding tips, like the 5 money-saving secrets wedding planners don’t want you to know! And don’t forget to check out our debt consolidation comparison tool to find a competitive refinance loan deal.