Recently, there were a couple of financial events that occurred in my life that were very delightful. In fact, I was so happy with the result of some of these events, it provided a great boost to my self-confidence (and of course, it inflated my ego a little, to be honest). After years of being disciplined with my finances, I am finally seeing the results and am being rewarded for my hard work.
 

If you’re a new reader to my personal finance blog, the financial success that I am referring to is the accumulation of $1.3M in personal net worth over the last twelve years and a credit score of approximately 800. With these two items, I often get preferential treatments whenever I visit any financial institution to inquire about their financial products. Financial institutions are willing to either provide me with more perks or exceptional offers to onboard me as a new client.

Getting A Great Mortgage Rate And Fees Waived

I did not realize how useful my financial assets and credit score were until I started trying to negotiate better deals for myself and people around me. It first started about half a year ago when I was able to use my financial strength to be a guarantor and help a family member refinance her mortgage at a great interest rate. I was also able to request for the appraisal fee to be waived too.
 

The reason that I was able to ask for a better mortgage rate and appraisal fee to be waived was due to the products and services that I had at that financial institution. I have three mortgages, a line of credit, a credit card and a checking account there. With all these products, there are more opportunities for the mortgage specialist to try to upsell more products to me. Hence, they were willing to accommodate my requests even if I was not the primary customer for that transaction.

Getting Lower Interest Rates When I Borrow To Invest

For those that have been reading the investment section of my quarterly net worth review, they’ll know that I am a fairly aggressive investor. I use three main methods to borrow money to invest – personal loans, the and a margin account. Hence, every dollar that I saved in interest expense, it goes straight to my investment profit.
 

Using my $1.1M equity investment portfolio as leverage, I was able to negotiate an additional 0.25% reduction in my preferred margin interest rate with my new brokerage. It may not seem like much, but I borrow more than $150K in USD to invest, which is about $375 USD in savings per year. In addition, the discount was only available for clients borrowing more than $100K. I was able to get my new brokerage to remove the $100K minimum borrowing requirement too.
 

I used to be a bit timid and reluctant to ask for more stuff in most negotiations. With my recent success, I started to build more confident in asking for more perks or better deals. The more that I asked, the more comfortable I get at asking. More often than not, I was able to get most of the things that I requested. The key to asking and successfully getting what you requested is to present material facts and be courteous.

Getting Financial Incentives To Transfer My Assets

As an investor, minimizing your investment cost over the long run will definitely improve your overall investment returns. Since I already manage my own investments, I saved at least 1% in management fees every year. This 1% in management fee equates to about $11,000/year (=1,100,000 * 0.01) with my current investment portfolio. To further minimize my investment cost, I was able to save 30% on my trading fees when I move to my new investment brokerage.
 

The saving did not end there. I noticed that another brokerage is offering financial incentives when a new account holder opens a new account and transfer assets there. I just asked my new brokerage what incentives do they provide (I don’t see any promotions on their site). I smoothly integrated this question in along with the list of questions that I have composed so it doesn’t seem too obvious. I didn’t expect to get anything, but since I asked, I was offered an $800 transfer incentive. Free money. Sweet.

Getting A referral Fee On Top

To continue with my list of questions, I also asked my new investment brokerage what if I refer a close friend of mine, will I get any referral fee? I explained that my friend has very similar financial assets and needs comparing to mine. I was offered an additional $500 in referral fee if my friend opens a new account and transfer assets over to my new brokerage. It feels awesome to earn an extra $500 for asking the right question.
 

To ensure that I am not the only one who’s getting all the benefits, I asked another important question, “will my friend get the same low rates, financial incentives and trading deals as myself?” The answer was definitely “yes!” He will be receiving all the perks that I am receiving. This is a win-win-win for all of us.

Trying To Ask For Even More

After discussing the offer with my friend, we were both quite satisfied with the offer. However, we were interested to see if they would offer us $1,000 each in incentives when we open an account and transfer our assets. The new brokerage did not reject us but politely informed us that they already offered us the maximum incentive that they can and will cover all of our transfer costs.
 

We can try to push harder to get the extra $200 in transfer incentive, but sometimes, we have to know when not to push too hard. Right now, all parties are very satisfied with the outcome of this negotiation. If we leave it at this, we’ll end at a high point for all. This will provide us with a good working relationship and more opportunities to get better benefits in the future.

My Two Cents

It takes years to build wealth and to achieve financial success. Once you have the results, being able to leverage your financial success to negotiate better deals for yourself and people around you is just icing on the cake. To me, true financial success is not how much money you have or the benefits that you can gain from it. It’s what you can do to help others to achieve their financial success.
 

So readers, have you achieved any financial success or milestone of your own? Do you leverage your financial success to negotiate better deals for yourself and people that needed your help?