Buying first home - need advice

[Houdini]

And finally - try to get an offset account!
These work like this - say you have a mortgage of $200,000 and $20,000 in your offset account. You only pay interest on $180,000. It;s saved me a heap of cash, and the offset is accessible at any time - you just have to maintain the discipline to use it sparingly.

Good advice (we also have an offset account. We add to it from each pay and ONLY use it for the mortgage repayments)