The financial battle of the sexes – who will win?

If you're a single woman and the prospect of finding a mortgage leaves you overwhelmed don't feel alone – most women feel just like you. There are some positive steps you can take to become more confident about choosing a home loan.

No time like the present
If you find yourself quietly admitting that the prospect of finding and applying for a home loan leaves you overwhelmed and scared there are many positive steps you can take to build your confidence and make savvy long-term financial decisions.

There is a strong connection between not owning your own home and living in poverty in old age and this is particularly true for single women so the sooner you get started on achieving the goal of home ownership the better.

Save, save, save
The first step is to knuckle down and save for a deposit. This will mean getting on top of your household expenditure, getting rid of expensive bills, taming any wildly out of control credit cards and being able to prove to a lender that you are capable of saving a deposit and paying off a loan.

Research, research, research
The other critically important thing you can do is shop around, compare available deals and read the fine print to ensure you end up with the best possible loan for your situation.

Rather than limiting your home loan search to your local bank branch, use the internet to shop around for a home loan with a competitive rate and winning features.

You could end up being years in front of even the most money confident male!

For example, some of the cheapest standard variable home loans available offer rates well below the average of the big four banks – the benchmark standard variable – at around 7.30 percent! For instance, State Custodian's Standard Variable Offset has an advertised rate of just 6.22 percent, and UBank's UHomeLoan for refinancing is just 6.14 percent.

Your monthly repayments on the State Custodian loan would be $1645 on a $250,000 home loan over 25 years. By comparison, your repayment on the benchmark rate would be $1815 a month – that's a saving of $170 per month or over $2000 per year, just by shopping around.

Over the life of the two loans, the saving translates into a total financial cost of $493,350 for the cheaper loan, compared with $544,512 for the higher-rate loan. You could potentially cut your bill by more than $51,000 over the 25 years. To work out how much you could be saving, try using a home loans calculator today.

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