How WeMoney helped Anand consolidate $34,000 in credit card debt

Anand's story at a glance

• Member: Anand, 38 (NSW), an IT data analytics manager who works from home in Marsden Park, married with two young kids
• Before WeMoney: several credit cards carrying close to $34,000 between them, costing about $1,200 to $1,300 a month, on top of a mortgage repayment that had climbed to $6,100 a month and $2,200 a month in childcare
• What he consolidated: the $34,000 in credit card debt into one loan, matched through the app to OurMoneyMarket
• How WeMoney helped: showed him a matched lender he could weigh up before applying, then matched a car loan for his wife through the same lender a few months later
• His experience: found the app through his own research rather than an ad, and had both loans approved inside two to three days
• After: one card left with a $2,500 limit that he now pays off in full, and fortnightly repayments down to about $325 to $350
• Next: staying on the one card and giving himself time to compare before signing up to anything new

Before WeMoney

Anand is an IT data analytics manager for a community housing provider, working from home in Marsden Park, New South Wales, with his wife and their two children, an eight year old boy and a three year old girl. His wife also works in IT, in test automation and product development. By his own account their household income is comfortable, but the costs around it were not. Their mortgage on a $1.1 million house was meant to run at around $4,000 a month, and within six months of taking it out, rate rises had pushed it to $6,100. Add $2,200 a month in childcare for two working parents, and regular trips home to see family near Hyderabad, India, where flights alone can run to $10,000, and the pressure was constant.

"Debt scares me... It scares me, it haunts me."

Underneath that sat several credit cards carrying close to $34,000 between them. About $17,000 was already there, and another $17,000 was added after an unexpected family situation meant extra spending following a trip overseas, money he had no way to cover except the card. He was paying around $1,200 to $1,300 a month in repayments and interest across the cards, describing the debt as something that sat in the back of his mind through the day, and one of the reasons he felt too financially exposed to take a risk on his own career.

How he found us

Anand is the kind of person who builds his own systems. Before WeMoney he tried Frollo and other budgeting apps, then went further, exporting his own transaction data to Excel, writing rules to clean and categorise it, and building a personal dashboard, because the off the shelf apps didn't go deep enough for what he wanted. Keeping it running consistently was the hard part, not the analysis. Two working parents with young kids don't get a lot of spare weekend hours.

He found WeMoney the same way he found the other apps, by going looking. He downloaded it, connected his accounts out of curiosity, and the in-app recommendation engine flagged potential savings on his cards. No ad brought him there.

"It's my own research."

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How WeMoney helped

Anand didn't set out to actually take a loan. He applied to see what the numbers looked like, and the approval came back fast enough that he decided to go ahead.

"Within two days we actually got both the approvals."

OurMoneyMarket, the lender WeMoney matched him with, remained responsible for the credit decision, the loan contract and the funds. The money was paid into Anand's own bank account, and he made the payments to close out each card himself. WeMoney's part was to show him the matched lender and let him compare it before he continued.

A few months later he came back to the app for a second loan, this time for his wife's car, since she needed one for work. They put down a 30 percent deposit from savings and financed the rest, again matched to OurMoneyMarket, and again approved quickly. He also understood there to be no fee for paying the loan off early, which mattered to him: the option to clear it ahead of schedule once he had the savings to do it, rather than being locked into fixed terms for years. Break costs and early repayment terms vary by lender and loan, so this is worth confirming directly against the loan contract rather than assumed.

He was candid about one thing that nearly put him off. He wasn't sure at first whether WeMoney was actually an Australian company. Some of his early contact with customer service sounded, to him, like it might be based overseas, and it took some of his own research into the company before he was confident it wasn't. His feedback was that WeMoney could do more to make its Australian base, and its lending partners, visible up front, so new members don't have to go digging the way he did.

After WeMoney

The credit card debt, somewhere between $34,000 and $37,000 depending on which point in the call he was estimating from, is gone. One card remains open with a $2,500 limit, which he now pays off in full each cycle rather than carrying a balance.

"I don't even feel the pinch to be honest. And that's amazing."

Repayments dropped from around $1,200 to $1,300 a month to about $325 to $350 a fortnight, which he estimates has saved him $500 to $600 a month. He says the debt itself has stopped weighing on him day to day.

"It didn't even cross my mind for the last three months."

He checks his credit score regularly, describes it as consistently in the excellent band, and by his account it has moved in a positive direction since he consolidated. He's also more deliberate now about new credit, taking a day to compare an offer against what else is out there rather than signing up to it on the spot, which is how he approached the car loan. His one piece of ongoing feedback for the app itself is that it could go further than categorising spending, toward the kind of pattern based recommendations and stronger home screen presence he'd be willing to pay a bit more for.

See what consolidating your own cards would show

If you're carrying balances across a few cards and the total never seems to move, connecting your accounts in WeMoney can show your debts together in one place. You can then review consolidation options you may be eligible for and compare the rate, term, fees and total amount repayable against what you're paying now. [[calculator-sm]]

Anand's figures, timing and experience are his individual experience. Eligibility and outcomes vary by member and lender, and his story is not a promise that another person will receive the same result.

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