By deciding for yourself how long you want to make repayments for, you remain in control. Don’t let your loan control you, control it from the start by determining for yourself how long you are willing to repay it for.

In Chapter Four I mentioned there were two more important questions to ask yourselves. Once you know how long you want to take a loan out for (e.g., five years), you need to ask yourself:

• How much can I repay regularly (per week, fortnight, or month)? And;
• How much can I borrow in order to pay it off in that amount of time?

When you make the commitment to borrow only what you can repay in the amount of time you want to pay it in (e.g., five years), then YOU remain in control.

You decide how much you want to borrow. You decide how much you want to repay. You decide how long you want to have the loan for. And you decide how much interest you want to pay.

You decide.

Then you can start working towards creating your strategy (to create a plan) for how you can achieve this.

Now, you might be wondering, ‘ok, but how do I work out the answer to those two important questions?’ Before we get into that, there are a couple of other areas to keep in mind.