If you’re new to this money business, access bonds will confuse you. Not only do we use the word “bond” to mean “lending money to the government” and “borrowing money from the bank to buy a house”. The access we’re talking about has changed over the years. As Simon Brown explains in this week’s episode, in the bad old days before the 2008 crash, banks used to give you a little additional spending money when you took out a home loan. Those days are long gone, but the idea prevails. These days you can’t access the interest or principal repayments you’ve already made. You can only access additional repayments you’ve made to reduce your interest payments over time. For this reason, many people store their emergency fund in their access bond. It simultaneously reduces the interest you pay by reducing your principal amount outstanding and protects your cash from tax on interest. In this episode we discuss the possibility of using your access bond to become your own credit prov...