Households are continuing to pay their home loans back rapidly, in part by keeping repayments steady as interest rates fall. Households' mortgage buffers are equivalent to around 20 months of scheduled repayments (principal plus interest) at current interest rates, the Reserve Bank of Australia said in its latest Financial Stability Review.The RBA estimated that mortgage buffers - that is, balances in mortgage offset and redraw facilities - were equivalent to around 14 per cent of the outstanding stock of housing loans.This is up from the more than 10 per cent of outstanding stock of housing loans the RBA estimated in September 2012.The RBA noted that "households have also been paying off credit card debt [with] net repayments on personal credit and charge cards [being] above average in recent years [while] balances on personal credit cards have also slightly declined since mid 2012."