My cousin does the bi-monthly payment thing, where you pay your mortgage every two-weeks. He had an initial cost of about 300 and pays a monthly fee, the cost overall is ok. The point is that he is the type of person that ALWAYS succumbs to the human nature effect, where if he has money lying around he will spend it. He is not discipline enough to manually make the extra payment. This system works perfectly for him.

The thing is when I try to recommend this type of system to people that I know cant control their spending they always say, “Why pay when I can do it myself.” These are the very people that will always say, “I’ll save more next month,” but of course they dont, yet they keep repeating how at anytime if they really wanted to, they can pay the mortgage off quicker.

Systems like these, not only minimize the “YOU” factor, it makes everything more organize and simple, because its automatic.

I’d be wary of this type of money merge account, simply because your monthly payments don’t get put off when you over pay. Sure, you’ll blow through your mortgage in 13 years, but if at any time in those 13 years, you are out of a job, you won’t have a savings account to fall back on since all your money was “saved” in house equity.

You don’t want to be 8 years into prepaying your mortgage, and then lose a job, and have the house foreclosed on, that’s a horrible situation, which could have been solved by not giving complete power over to the mortgage company. Just pay extra by yourself, and you can eliminate this giant threat to your home.

Chris…

Do not worry… with the true money merge account you do not NEED a savings account… you have the equity line of credit if you need a financial cushion. In fact… with this program you will never be late on a bill again… and will have perfect credit (provided you do it right).

That is the whole point of this program. It is easy, and safe. Also… even if you can only qualify for a small equity line at the start… as you pay down your mortgage… you can have the bank raise it. Within a year you should easily have enough of a credit limit on the equity line to cover a 6 month (maybe longer) job loss situation. If that happens you pull money out of the equity line… then put a small amount back to satisfy the interest-only payment option (make sure you get that feature).

Chris,

Another positive point for the money merge account is that although you will save money by putting everything into your mortgage (by paying it off quicker), there is no harm in keeping a comfortable amount behind you in a savings account or CD (a safe investment) in case of such a situation as losing your job. Also, as Benjamin stated, you will have your line of credit to fall back on which can be adjusted as you gain equity in your home. This program tracks your unique earnings and spending habits and helps you keep your line of credit at a level that will minimize the amount of interest charged. That means that just because you have access to a certain amount, doesn’t mean you have to max it out. The MMA actually helps you keep the line of credit at a more manageable level so that your income can offset the balance without leading you into more debt.

Hope this helps.
Shari

Could someone please show the full HELOC spreadsheet of the example the MMA program uses in the video. They show the mortgage on the left hand side and the HELOC on the right hand side with about 10 lines of a spreadsheet. Could this be shown for the full 10.4 years it takes to pay off the 200,000 mortgage @ 6% =$1,199 per month. Just show the variables used in this example over and over again for the full 10.4 years and show the mortgage being paid off and the HELOC being paid off at the same time. If the example never carried this out for 10.4 years but just wanted to show you 10 lines only, could someone who is smart enought to do this on their own spreadsheet please do so and post so we can all see this carried out until the end just like you can see your amortization on your original mortgage carried all the way out to the end. I would post this example myself all the way through if I was smart enough to know how to do it and show it to everyone. Thanks.

Where is the above mentioned video being shown?

Thanks

This is the corporate website that displays the video mentioned by TIM.

http://www.xmission.com/%7Eu1st/mma100.html

This MMA program does more than what most spreadsheets will show, it takes into account all your financial variables that take place in your daily life. It gives you the best scenario for paying off your mortgage and usually other significant debts all in the same time frame. You become mortgage free and free of the debts included in the program at the same time and like mentioned above giving you a safety cushion all the while in case of emergency situations.

If you look at the video very very closely you will see that one of the first steps is to send a $3500 check to the folks who are pushing the program. They really gloss over this, but the bottom line is tht you start right out another $3500 in debt.
Although MMA’s can be a useful tool, you can do it yourself dropping $3500 on a MLM scam.

You writing illustrates a little bit of confusion about the Money Merge Account. E-mail me and I will be more than happy to shed some light for you.

Regards,

JAM

You can say “It costs $3500″, or you can say “What is my return for my $3500 and is it worth the money to ME?”. You can do the same thing with many other products. For example, I can push-mow my 2 acre yard, or I can buy a riding mower. How much is my time worth? That question is different for everyone. Some people enjoy push-mowing their yard. Some people enjoy crunching numbers in their spare time. Some people invest in the gym, some walk or run in their spare time. After all, you can do it yourself. You can hire a contractor to remodel your kitchen, or you can do it yourself. You can join Weight Watchers or diet on your own. But if you don’t actually do it on your own, then there are products out there to help you. It all depends on what works for you. This program is not a one size fits all. We all choose to spend our money on different things, that is our freedom and our right. If it’s not worth the money to you, don’t buy it.
In response to Jay about the first step being to send them a check. Well, isn’t that the first step in most anything you buy? If you buy a car, they want their money before you drive it off the lot. If you buy groceries, you pay before you leave the store. If you buy a house, etc. See where I’m going with this. We are all consumers and we all have choices. Some people buy name brand, some buy generic. Neither choice is wrong. The choices we make are individual and what is good for one may not be good for another.
I realize this is getting long so I’ll finish up. Yes, I have purchased this program. No, I am not selling it (that is my choice). For my situation, this product is a wonderful investment. Do your homework and make your own choice. But be sure you have all the facts and not just opinions. This product does work, but is it right for you?

This article is good, honest, relevant, and fair … a credit to good journalism.

However, it does miss one very important point… with the MMA you would still need to exercise ‘exactly the same amount of financial discipline’ and control that you would need to exercise if you instead simply managed the pre-payment on your own.

If someone needs help managing their finances (psychological, arithmetical, conceptual, or otherwise) then Quicken 07′only costs $30 … and is actually a much more sophisticated financial management and budgeting tool.

When you dig deeper into the MMA cash flows and apply some rigorous graduate level financial analysis… the ROI, IRR, and even NPV on the $3,500 upfront investment cost you pay today… it shows this is not the best available comparative investment of $3,500 for most homeowners.

Most all folks would simply be better off paying that $3,500 toward pre-payment of their mortgage or other debts instead.

The vast majority of the interest saving come ONLY from the homeowner’s pre-payment of the debt/mortgage from their own monthly income. That’s just simple obvious common sense…

Don’t loose sight of the forest by focusing only on one particular knotty tree.

Anyone come up with an Excel spreadsheet yet that ties in your monthly budget with an amortization table? I have to assume we can all do the same thing here and save ourtselves $3500. I don’t think, as claimed by the people hocking the MMA, that there are some fancy algorithms at work here. It’s an overpayment mortgage am table, (available for free on the internet), linked to a budget spreadsheet. No? However, if the MMA could magically reach into my wallet, steal that extra $20 before I blew it on Keno, and scold me for being a moron… now THAT would be worth the $3500.

All one has to do is go to http://WWW.DONNELLMORTGAGE.NET or any other website with financial calculators and they can run the numbers for themselves with as detailed of a breakdown as you want. All this seems to me is a HELOC being sold as a rolls royce. Simply use your head and pay down the 1st or 2nd with any extra income that you have left over at the end of the month. Also, a bi-weekly payment plan is not a bad idea to do on top of adding more money monthly above and beyond the minimums.

As mentioned previously, if you are a financially disciplined individual, a Money Merge Account, or a One Account, makes a lot of sense. And you don’t need to pay any bank or company any money. All it takes is a home equity loan. Some people feel like they must have a savings account for that “Just in case” moment, but as Ben mentioned on March 4th, as you pay off the loan, you are aggressively “saving” money on your line of credit. If you lose your job, simply withdraw money from your line to satisfy your needs.

This is a great idea; just don’t pay anything for it!

I can agree with Ron above, in part. It still does take financial discipline to use the MMA Program, but you still miss a certain point:
The MMA Program actually encourages that discipline, by showing people what happens when they make their decisions. They get to see the effects of their money, and how that affects their mortgage. Thos who claim that the same can be done with an Excel Spreadsheet simply don’t get it: this was designed for those who need the help. For people like me who spend 2 minutes a month balancing their checkbook, and then throw it into a sock drawer.
The actual fact is: you can do it on your own…just not as well as with the MMA Program.
If in doubt, then consider http://www.thejubileeproject.org/on_my_own.html .

Do your research, take your time and know what your getting into. I personally saved over $109K and shaved 22 years off my mortgage, BUT…it was right for me, for my goals, desires and as Ron said above: my discipline level.

I don’t think most people do (or will) give this Program enough credit…especially when they constantly refuse to include the ongoing personal support until the payoff of their mortgage and the written guarantee. Those in itself was enough for me to invest my $3500.

Remember that this MMA is not an automated system; rather it is only a reminder to do something which you still need to do 100% for yourself. Controlling your unnecessary spending and instead paying down your mortgage and your other debts is something that you still have to do yourself. There is no magic or miracle… just self discipline and common sense. Spending $3,500 will not buy that for you, you still have to do it yourself.

(As Noted Above) The same, and actually greater, interest savings can be accomplished by pre-paying principal on your own. For more information or to get a better understanding of the math / calculations and of what’s really going on behind the scenes with many ‘equity accelerators’, like the money merge account, check out the below links for more Free independent information.

http://www.integramortgages.com/FinancialVOODOO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_merge_account

http://forum.brokeroutpost.com/loans/forum/2/95315.htm

United First Financial has said time and time again that if a client is truly disciplined enough to apply towards principal on their primary mortgage a set dollar amount of money each month; regardless of unforeseen financial situations that may and do occur in everyday life, then that client would experience a comparable performance on their own as they would with MMA.

However, what United First Financial has found as a company is that the MMA is a tool not a cure. Money is money, finance is finance. MMA has the ability to look at so many variables at one time which is typically beyond the capacity of the average consumer. As a model example in which the client can consistently apply $600 a month toward their principal, is good in theory but not so much so in practical application. Where the client would be set on $600.00 a month, the MMA software, looking at the big picture, would take very small amounts of money into consideration that are not included by the client in this example to produce large amounts of additional savings. MMA also has the ability to allow the customer to see how these seemingly small amounts of money will produce huge savings. The addition of $10-$50 a month will drastically alter the performance of the product.

The converse is also true. If a client has a particularly poor month financially, in their program they would not be able to send any additional funds that month to the mortgage, but MMA viewing the long run would still prompt the client to send additional funds. It would accomplish this by “automatically” adjusting the funds transfer dollar amount and interval.

The clients that are currently on MMA that have had similar initial responses or sceptisisms to MMA are experiencing performance from the product that they never counted on. Our average client across the board is performing a minimum of 20% better than the initial guaranteed numbers United First Financial supplied them at the onset; one year later. They do not, can and will not say that a client can not do something similar on their own. What they do say is that once a client is on the product; the product under promises and over delivers.

I have friends and clients on this product and NO ONE has EVER been disappointed or felt they were overcharged! In fact it’s quite the opposite. They love the simplicity of this very complex program AND have peace of mind they’ve never felt before with Customer Service just a phone call away.

I know someone will now write desparaging remarks on what I’ve written. Go ahead. I will continue to share the message of hope that so many are finding with the MMA. It’s my ministry to a hurting world.

Why anyone would PAY someone to help them do what they can do themselves is beyond me. Also, the people pushing this program are just MONEY lovers who are no better than snake oil salespeople and will do anything to get you to give them a penny, a dollar, or as much as they can sucker out of you. People WAKE up, learn how to use your money to your advantage and don’t GIVE anyone else a dime. Those of you who have already done so I hope it works well for you. I’ll check back in 5 years.

You know everyone here has Alot of good stuff to say! and it is all their OWN opinions! But America is a country where money is a serious thing! I agree the MMA program is a very good investment for those people that are unable to dish out the xtra $50-600.00 or more money, a month, most people I know live pay check to pay check, and there is not anything left at the end of the month. I really liked what Shari said back on March 23rd, if it is good for you then do it, if not then don’t! I first heard of the MMA program and my first thought was how can I help people do this for themselves! Not how much $ can I make! Not everyone out in the world is out to sucker $ off of someone, There really are people who still care about others!! And if I had to spend 3500$ to SAVE $152,534.49 off my mortgage, (which mind you stays IN my pocket over the last 14yrs of which I would have been paying to the bank) I would do it in a heartbeat! (which I did)that could pay for part of the colleges I will be paying for my 4 kids! SO check it out and see if it is for you if not, then it is not but let the people make their decisions for themsleves. And seriously on the other note there really IS some good Shark oil (never heard of snake oil) out there in the market place. (I’m 39yrs old)& I lived in pain for 16 yrs and no longer suffer from it BECAUSE of this shark oil!
Best of luck to all of you in your OWN decisions!
Take care
SK

Ethical Person,

you said: “Why would anyone PAY someone to help them do what they can do themselves is beyone me”.

Let me ask you some questions… Do you change the oil in your car? Do you cut your own hair? Do you go out to a restaurant where a cook or a chef makes your food? Do you have a bank or an investment advisor invest your $$ for you, say mutual funds, reits, etc..??

I am willing to bet you answer YES to all those questions!! Why, you can do all the above yourself??

Let me ask you another question… If people can do this program or concept themselves, then how many of them are curretnly doing so? I dont know anyone personally or professional that is, and i am in the mortgage business (you’d think i’d know maybe one or two)

Is it true that similar results can be accomplished if someone has the time, and abacus and knowledge of spreadsheets (that’s actually 2% of the population). You still won’t beat the software, maybe you could come close though…

To me, time is $$! My business partner and I spent $3500 and apllied this towards an invesment property we have, and so far it’s we are very satisfied. Once that’s paid off I plan on using it for additional properties in the future. I am now offering this as an extra feature to homebuyers and those existing clients that want to purchase or re-fi.

I just googled “amortization schedule” clicked on a link and put my mortgage information into the calculator. Then I put in additional $700 a month and it knocked off 15 years of my loan. I will call my mortgage company tomorrow and add that to my autopay and I will pay off my loan in half the time.

If anyone would like the above instructions mailed to you please send me 3000$.

Ethical ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
do you hire a painter? do you Hire a plumber?
an electrician? an auto mechanic with a little book know how you could do these things too.
like others have said Some have the skills,the TIME and patience to work this out. I have five kids each has their own schedule. each play sports at different times.
I don’t have the extra hours to do this on my own time. MMA takes minutes.

Wish I had an extra $700 a month to add to my mortgage but, like most people, I don’t. Also, once you send that $$ in, it’s gone. With MMA you still have access to it through your heloc. And, as Jack said, it takes minutes. I have kids who are very involved also and when I do get a free moment, I have other things to do, like reading a book with my 6 yr old. Like I said before, there are many things we can do on our own, but we have to choose which ones. I don’t have time to do EVERYTHING on my own so I make an appointment to get my hair cut and I have a riding mower for my grass. That gives me the time to watch my kids play sports, and help them with their homework and clean my house (unfortunately I have to do this one on my own *sigh*). Good luck to all in whatever decisions you make. For me, this is one less worry and well worth MY money. I’m sure there are others that feel the same, just as there are those who don’t. Happy Easter everyone.

Life is good. We live with free will. All of us have learned from our parents and grandparents how to make money and/or loose money. There are very few of us that were taught how to build wealth and/or loose wealth. After being in the mortgage industry. both commercially and residential, helping people get into homes with a great passion. This “system” will guide us in the financial path that that works for us. It gives us the options. If we could hire a “personal” fincial planner over the course of our next 3 home purchases for a measely $3,500 – Sign us up! Yes, I’ve purchased the program, and an agent. My goal is to give us an option. Thanks for having this forum.

Once again could someone show a spreadsheet for the HELOC from the MMA website example where the client has a 200,000 mortgage at 6% so the payment is 1,199 per month. The client has 5,000 a month income with 2,801 per month expenses and has the 1,199 mortgage payment leaving 1,000 in discretionary income per month. The HELOC example on the right side of the spreadsheet shows only 10 lines of the product at work. Could this exact spreadsheet payoff be shown for the entire 10.4 years on the HELOC side (not just 10 lines) with no extra variables included, just the 5,000 income, 2,801 expenses, 1,199 mortgage and the 1,000 discretionary income. If I could do this, I would post the full spreadsheet myself, but I cannot figure it out. Is there a timing mechanism involved in the equation to keep the HELOC as low as possible and how does that work? Also, how much discretionary income was used to pay off the mortgage in the example. Sorry I’m not good at math and cannot figure this out. Was a HELOC not a great and super product before the MMA program came out? Why did we not hear so much about a this great product called the HELOC before the MMA program was produced? I had only heard of a Home Equity Loan prior to all this. Thanks for the help and answers to my questions.

I am so glad I found this blog. Some great information and discussion. We have been approached to buy into a $3500 money merge account program. Probably the same one that is being discussed here. I have to admit that we are not very disiplined with our money management and I am not sure that we would follow the MMA tool’s advice either.

We are more interested in increasing equity over the next 3-5 years, than we are in paying off the mortgage in 14-15, because we hope to upgrade to a better home by then. How can we determine whether the $3500 is better spent on a tool or on paying down the mortgage principle by $3500 now?

Another factor which we have not heard addressed is the effect of reducing our biggest tax deduction. Does the savings in interest payments each year greatly outweigh the tax savings?

What I have not seen discussed here is the alure of the available credit on the credit line. It is no different than a credit card, except that presumably the interest rate is less. While I admire all of you who have the discipline to tap this line exclusively when told to do so by the MMA program, I suggest that most Americans are not nearly so disciplined and will not be able to resist the siren call of available cash. Our economy is run on the general public’s need for immediate gratification. Again I say that I admire those of you who are able to resist such temptation.

At the end of it all, those who buy the MMA program may well wind up oweing their mortgage and the payments on the credit line – including the $3,500 to purchase the MMA program. Taking on more debt is rarely a good way to get out of debt. If you are in a hole, quit digging.

Good luck!

Robert-that is a very good point. One of the coolest things about the MMA program is that the numbers are looking you right in the face so you see how your spending affects your payoff. I am very disciplined when it comes to my finances and we don’t carry balances/have loans so this program kicked in right away and is making a huge difference for us. But I think this will be a great tool for those who need help staying focused to not overspend. Everytime you make an entry into the system, your payoff changes so you can SEE how spending will affect it as well as the affect of earning more, or putting more into it. It has helped my dear friends to cut down on their pocket cash each week because they never thought about how much they wasted, until they saw it in black and white. Also, the program helps you to keep your credit line balance as low as possible so you don’t get yourself in more trouble. That being said, you are absolutely right that if you spend more than you make, nothing will help you. If you are always in the hole, YOU need to change your lifestyle. But that has nothing to do with how this program works. The program simply funnels your money through different avenues to make it work more effectively for you and less effectively for your creditors. As long as you have a positive cash flow, it will work. It’s not a cure-all and it doesn’t perform magic.

There is a lot of good detail here that should help a lot of folks become informed and make a better financial decision for themselves.

There have also been a number of requests for info and spreadsheets to help folks understand what’s really going on, and even how to do this themselve, or to at least understand the baseline results that they can already achieve by simply pre-paying their mortgage with the extra cash they earn every month.

For anyone who wants more info we have been providing FREE customized excel pre-payment spreadsheets to aid you in your analysis… just follow the below link and send an email to request the spreadsheet(s). http://www.integramortgages.com/FinancialVOODOO

If any homeowner, consumer, real estate professional or accountant is interested in more detailed information and truly analyzing these equity accelerator programs ‘particularly the Money Merge Account’ for themselves… below are some links to information that should shed a lot of light on this particular topic.

1) http://www.integramortgages.com/FinancialVOODOO
(FREE Mortgage Pre-payment calculators, FREE alternatives, details and opinions)

2) http://www.mtgprofessor.com/A%20-%20Early%20Payoff/the_good_fairy_of_rapid_mortgage_payoff_is_back.htm
(detailed analysis information & opinions from the respected Jack M. Guttentag, former Jacob Safra Professor of International Banking at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania & Yahoo Finance Contributing Author)

3) http://www.danmelson.com/posts/1171373759.shtml
(detailed sales tactics informatio, analysis, and opinions from an Up-Front California Real Estate & Mortgage Professional)

4) http://forum.brokeroutpost.com/loans/forum/2/95315.htm (a very direct opinion from an attorney specializing in real estate law)

5) http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?catid=52&threadid=709007&start=0 (various impressions, opinions, and info)

6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_merge_account

Wow! Fantastic dialogue. All the sharp people on here who are paying down their mortgage on their own, congrats. But, in reality, I know 90%+ of people just go on blindly making the monthly minimum mortgage payment and think that is fine and dandy. In reality, by using the HELOC and floating that money to pay down your first mortgage, even if it takes 2 years to pay down the HELOC again..if you are using that account as your checking account you will be much farther ahead towards paying off that first than you would be otherwise and save tons in closed end interest charges. In addition, people do need a plan of attack so to speak, and our software application does it for you. Bottom line, we all pay much more than $3500 in closing costs just to get a home loan financed correct. Money down the drain right? Sure we can write off those fees, but beyond that the money is gone. With an investment in the MMA program, that $3500 goes a long way towards really helping the average Joe get ahead and a real reason to stay disciplined.

All the best….

Barbara, How much do you really get back on your tax return at the end of the year as a result of your mortgage tax write off? For me it makes the difference of about $6000. If I didn’t have a mortgage payment (2300/month) I would have $27600 dollars more in my pocket every year. $21000 of those payments would have gone to interest alone. So you see paying a little tax isn’t as bad as all the interest to the banks! And even better you could buy another home or a vacation home. Check out my website at http://www.eliminateinterest.com and you will see the equity you can build in your home in 3-5 years. There is a very informative presentation on the site. I have a link to the corporate site and an email link if you have any questions for me. This is an amazing product. One guaranteed by United First Financial because it is based on mathematics.

I have this program. What I will tell you next will blow you away. To start my monthly net income is $11,166.00. My mortgage is huge at $1,110,206.00 at 6% (monthly payment $6,656.25). I really have a monthly discretionary income of $2,500, but I take that money out each month and disperse some into savings accounts others into mutual funds. So in MMA’s perspective I have a $0 discretionary income (no additional money going towards principal). I have the system for 1 year and according to the analysis they gave me when I bought the system I am exactly on tract. ***I will pay my mortgage off in 22.8 years saving $363,068.54*** Now tell me this system doesn’t work. The truth lies in using the system without using any discretionary income.

Can I do This On My Own?

Whether a question or a statement, it’s something we have addressed in podcasts, letters, online posts, articles and emails until our fingers bled.

Ok, they didn’t actually bleed…but they got seriously sore!

The black and white answer to ‘Can I do this on my own?’ is… yes.

Now, you can walk away and smile to yourself as you whisper ‘I knew it’, or, you can hear the conditions of that answer…

YES, you can do this on your own, IF you have the financial discipline and mathematical skill.

YES, you can do this on your own, IF you have the right kind of HELOC.

YES, you can do this on your own, IF you are willing and able to account for every penny at all times.

YES, you can do this on your own, IF you are willing to tally all those variables and refigure your financial position EACH AND EVERY DAY.

YES, you can do this on your own, IF you can do this day in and day out for the next 10, 12, 15, 20 years.

YES, you can do this on your own, IF you can do this without personal support if something goes wrong or you get confused.

At this point, we’d give you a medal if you could actually do this. Not likely, but we have met some pretty amazing and intelligent people since we started offering this opportunity to the country. So, we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and say you CAN do all this, because you’re SO smart and then add one more…

YES, you can do this on your own, IF you are willing to leave TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS ON THE TABLE AND WALK AWAY.

If you can, we’ll hold onto that medal for being so smart.

Yes, you can do many things if you have the determination and discipline, which will accelerate your payoff, but is it worth it, when you have a tool in front of you that takes care of all the variables, and simply tells you when and what amount to transfer?

What’s the REAL issue? It’s not your pride. You don’t really have anything to prove to anyone. It’s about the $3500 price tag for the Program.

Just say it. We’ll wait.

Consider something: Would you invest $3500 to make $40K? How about $60K, $75K or $100K? Well, know that if you attempt this on your own, the simple fact that you are human, and cannot locate all the variables day to day, that’s the kind of money you could be leaving on the table…and now you have to do all the work, by yourself.

Make the decision that’s right for you. As for us, it was a no brainer.

Here’s what I say when someone asks me “Can I do this on my own?”
I tell them No…and you WON’T. Its that simple. And then I ask them, “have you ever kept a new years resolution for 8-11 years?” Thats what it would take to accomplish a portion of the results that are made while using the Money Merge Account. A complete and total readjustment of your lifestyle and some financial education. Do your research and don’t pass up on this opportunity.
Wes

I am doing this on my own. At the end of the month I put all money after expenses toward paying off mortgage. Don’t need a heloc-Don’t need to account for every penny every day-Don’t need any mathematical skills-Don’t need to refigure every day. I will be saving thousands of dollars. I did not even have to borrow $3500. Anybody can do this. As for me this was a no brainer.

Don,
With the MMA it puts all your discretionary money left over every month to work for you. The benefit of the MMA is that in the event that you need that money for some unexpected reason then you have it available to you because the MMA incorporates a Home Equity Line of credit as your checking account. The MMA allows you to leverage someone elses money (HELOC) to benefit yourself (pay down large portions of high closed end interest with money from low open end interest from your HELOC). Also the $3500 is not a fee. Its an investment. I invested my $3500 into the MMA and I expect a return. My return is $253,000 of interest saved on my mortgage. Let me know if you have any questions.
Have a great day.
Wes

I wish I could do it the way Don is! I recently signed up for the program because I DO NOT want to send ALL my discretionary income to my mortgage each month. Why? Well, last month I had to pay $750 for car repairs. Summer is coming and I have day camps to pay for. If I sent all my discretionary income, I would have ZERO flexibility. Once it is gone, I can’t get it back.

The HELOC gives me a buffer. Now I can send a good portion of my discretionary income and still have money just in case. I have to be careful. I don’t take out money from the HELOC unless it is absolutely necessary. Also, the program really does help keep you on track financially!

I have accumalated savings to pay for the extra expenses.You are smart not to put all your discretionary income into your mortgage every month until you have accumalated some savings.The $3500 you paid for the program would have been a good start to a savings account
D.M.

1) Assume a regular consumer has a 30 year fixed mortgage, obtained some time in the past 5 years, with a 5.375% interest rate.

2) Assume this same regular consumer can obtain a 5.375% interest bearing FDIC-insured savings account at a bank.

Here are a couple websites with links to savings account carrying rates as much as 5.25%-5.40%…

https://bank.countrywide.com/CWBRates.aspx?tab=sl

http://www.pickafinance.com/new/search.php?keyword=high_interest_accounts

3) Somebody who is a proponent of these Money Merge Accounts, please explain to me how one is any better off applying their money against a mortgage or money merge account, instead of just having it deposited directly into an interest bearing savings account.

My point is that 5.375% earned is the same as 5.375% saved, especially since the tax consequences are the same. Additionally, by keeping the funds out of your mortgage, that money remains completely liquid. Additionally, you don’t have a ‘line of credit’ on your credit report. Additionally, you have options, as you can use the money that has accumulated in your interest bearing savings account to pay down your mortgage, or just continue to let it compound.

Whether your own money is EARNING you 5.375% interest income (compounding), or SAVING you 5.375% interest expense (compounding), the net difference is $0.

The whole setup explained above could be setup ‘automatically’ with a combination of direct deposits and carefully planned online bill payment plan, offered by almost every bank. So, why would somebody want to pay $3500 for this service?

G.O.

G.O. My mortgage is $384,000 at 6% for 30 yrs. Now I would make as much in interest with a savings account as I was paying on my mortgage if I had $384,000 in cash to make my first deposit!! I don’t have that kind of cash. The MMA gives me the ability to pay down LARGE portions of my principle which saves me a lot of interest. If you really want to understand how it works check out the MMA video presentation at my website http://www.eliminateinterest.com

Thanks, Wes

The one thing I have not seen addressed is your other bills. From what I have seen on these MMA’s is the ability to put all your interest bearing debt into this program. How are the credit cards, second mortgages paid off in this program?

Wes Put all your discretionary income in a savings account for 30 yrs.while paying off your mortgage. Then using the mma, after you pay off your mortgage put all discretionary income plus your mortgage payment into a savings account until the end of 30 yrs. using the same rate of intrest which account will have the most money?

One will never convince everyone that any particular product is better or worth in this case $3500.

Looking into this product one thing makes sense… If you currently have both a first mortgage and a HELOC, some of what is being stated would be worthwhile. Most checking accounts do not earn the amount of interest one pays on their HELOC’s. And HELOC’s interest is based upon the monthly average balance. So if one is to put all income sources into the HELOC, and use it as a checking account, and not spend more than earnings, the interest savings will effectively earn more than a standard checking account.

Now, the product does give you a barometer at all times of what is going on with your mortgage, this is a nice tool, most people would not be inclined to calculate this, they would merrily go on and pay their bills as usual.

Is this product worthy of a $3500 investment? The answer will depend on each persons own circumstances. If one intends to follow the plan, probably, it certainly will pay for it self, and once you own the program its yours, not like a loan that is refinanced every 5 to 7 years. The owner can apply it to all realty purchases.

I’m considering, and so far the nay sayers have not convinced me that I’d be better off without.

‘G Money’ hit the proverbial nail on the head! … Financial analysis is about comparisons of available alternatives, in order to make an informed decision about what is the ‘most prudent’ course of action. Which choice is best? This is what every corporation and financial analyst does on a daily basis when deciding how to spend or where to invest their money.

You must compare apples to apples as closely as you can, and then weight the remainder of the differences to determine your best course. Specifically in this case the comparison to the RISK FREE rate of return earned from FDIC insured deposits http://www.fdic.gov/ , in addition to the alternative of simply pre-paying $3,500 toward your existing mortgage debt!

Don,
Just straight cash with no interest earned figured…If I put all my discretionary money($900.00) into an account while I paid off my 30 yr mortgage I would have saved $324,000. With the use of the MMA having paid my mortgage off in 14 yrs and being able to put my whole mortgage payment into the bank for 16 years I would have accumulated $532,000($2300/mon. mort payment). Thats a huge difference.

I am currently on the MMA program and I am very pleased with the results that it is providing for me. I understood and still understand that I can have similar results by doing it myself, however even though I have known this for a while I never did it. The point that needs to be stressed here is not whether you can do it on your own but WILL you do it on your own. Financial planners and mortgage consultants can lay out the best plan in the world for you but if YOU don’t follow it to the T then it won’t work. The problem here isn’t the cost of the product but the YOU….

I think the point that most people here are missing is that most people in this country do not have the ability to make large lump sum payments to their mortgage. The MMA program provies the ability to these people.

$3500 is not a fee, it’ an investment. To those out there who belive the MMA program to be a scam, please explain to me why the company hasn’t been shut down? Just because it’s an MLM opportunity doesn’t mean it’s a scam. Have any of the nay sayers ever heard of Avon? Oh… Avon is MLM so it must be some sort of scam.

To those who feel they can do it on their own, sure you can try but you won’t save as much as you would by utilizing the MMA program.

Bottom line is that scams don’t save people hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest, do not guarantee performance of their product and do not provide lifetime support.

http://www.MortgageSolutionUSA.com

The MMA program seems to be more of a Money Management Tool. If one uses it as prescribed it will yield the results that are guaranteed.

Other Camps would say that paying off the home is not the way to go, and use the moneys from the home to invest. If you are willing to gamble, MMA may not be for you.

Some people are risk adverse, and would prefer having that loan and debt paid off faster.

The Cumulative effect of Small repetitive monthly pre-payments to principal… will be GREATER than the NET effect from a large lump pre-payment that was borrowed from another higher rate source of debt. Shifting debt from A to B, just to say A is lower is a shell game, especially if B costs you more.

The fastest way to pre-pay debt(s) is to earn the income, deposit it, earn interest, and prudently pre-pay the mortgage/ debts in the most advantageous way possible. That includes things like debt consolidation to reduce the overall “blended” interest rate to achieve the Lowest Interest Cost Possible. The further you deviate from that, the worse the return will be. There is no magic way to change those fundamentals; Debt Balance(s), Overall Rate + Costs, and Income.

Can you generate additional income from your cash accounts?… YES, you can at very least put the cash on deposit where you are being paid interest. There are many ‘risk free’ options paying more than 5% right NOW!

Any method of debt pre-payment that you employ will save money, so long as you are reducing your total indebtedness! Lower debt balance = less interest paid. Beyond that it’s a question of which method of debt reduction is the best and most prudent. Which achieves the best results, which saves the most money, which costs the least?

To make an analysis you need to consider not only what you will save on A, but also the costs paid on B, and the upfront costs, and the monthly or yearly costs, as well as the compounded time vale of all those cost components.

Then you need to compare between the various available alternatives. Principally, compare the lowest risk or “risk free” options to the other more risky alternatives.

If the ‘risk free’ return is GREATER than the other alternative Higher Risk choices… then the most prudent and best method is a clear choice!

If something saves you money, but it actually saves less than other Free alternatives… make no mistake, even though you saved something, it really Cost You More.

Don’t let a sales pitch, or emotional and psychological sales tactics divert you from the facts or from analyzing ALL of the available alternatives on your own. Make sure you are doing what you can to first help yourself… and ask someone whom you know, trust, and can rely on to help you. Always get a second opinion!

All things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the most correct!

I just learned about the MMA account and seems very interesting to say the least. My wife and I are terrible with money and we live on a tight budget so this sounds like a minimal investment to get things in order. But I am still somewhat skeptical. Although this thread has been extrememly helpful so far. Thanks for all the links and advice.

Anyway, my one question is what if you already have a maxed out HELOC second mortgage? How does that effect my chances of getting into the program, if at all? Do I need to somehow combine my two mortgages first before I can start? My first is an interst only loan also. Any help is much appreciated!

Thanks.

I want to get started in the MMA program for two reasons: 1. I am a small business owner, and from time to time, will experience cashflow problems, and 2. I want to pay off my house faster taking advantage of my so called ‘larger than average’ descretionary income. Does anyone know about the financing options of this?

Adam and Jared,

Have either of you addressed these questions with the agent who introduced you to the program? That should be your first step. Your recruiting agent should be able to help you or direct you to someone locally who can help you.

Good Luck!

whats great about the mma is that it is much more beneficial than just simply adding extra discretionary income to the principal payment of the mortgage. you are subsizing this with time. when you pay in the most beneficial lump to decrease the amount of interest paid, this will pay off the mortgage much faster than simply adding your leftover income to your principal on your mortgage loan. The $3500 fee is greatly offset with the amount of savings incurred and doesn’t come directly out of pocket. it is basically streched throughout the payoff period and utilized immediatly in the program. A simple $35000 in savings will result in a 1000% return on investment and most customers are seeing at least $100,000 to $150,000 minimum in savings. i cant think of one other investment that is pretty much risk free that i can utilize the banks money to get multiple thousands percent return on investment. i think the MMA can help anyone that has a mortgage and can qualify for a HELOC and will change the entire real estate and lending market in the next few years.

I do not know if this program MMA for $3,500 works or not. The one thing that bothers me is the sales pitch for the program. My brother is in it, and the big goal seems to be to get other “agents” under you to, in-turn sell it, and you then get “residuals” up the chain of agents. Sounds like the MLM (pyramid)days of Shaklee and Amway products. I would love for it work, but am skeptical of the money incentives of the agents. I would pay a reasonable price for a software program, but do not want to take a $3,500 chance.

The big issue with the skeptics seems to be the $3,500 activation fee. Since the average homeowner is scheduled to pay-off their home in a time frame of 8-11 years, the activation fee comes out to under $1 a day. The same people that argue that they could “do it themselves” and save $3,500 probably spend $4 a day for a Starbuck’s coffee and eat at least one fast food meal a day at $5+.

The average effective interest rate for an MMA client is 2%. There is not one nay-sayer that if given the opportunity to refinance their existing mortgage to 2% and pay $3,500 in closing costs wouldn’t do it. FYI, only 1 percent of the population is “doing it themselves.”

The MMA program works with 0 or negative discretionary income for all those that make the extra principal payments directly to the bank.

Also, your local Real Estate and Mortgage Broker has agents that they recruited as well. That doesn’t make them an MLM.

One more thing. What difference does it make how much commission an agent makes? You bought a car and someone got paid to sell it. You bought your home and someone got paid to sell it. You got your mortgage and someone got paid to write it.

Do you realize how many millions (or billions) of dollars in advertising is spent to get you to buy everyday products. Did you realize that you pay for it in the cost of the product?

“Douglas” above is factually incorrect, and is also improperly comparing and analyzing financial figures… what’s he trying to sell?

The proper Return On Investment from this schema is NOT calculated based on the total interest that MAY be saved, but rather, from the net advantage (if any) as compared to the true “zero risk” alternative… especially in this case as the same (or superior) results can be accomplished without spending $3,500.

A true and honest comparison yields DRASTICALLY Different analytical results.

For “Ron”:The interest saved projection is based on the comparison of the existing mortgage under the regular amortization schedule.

In every analysis I do for a prospective client, I start with 0 discretionary income in the performa, but compare their stated discretionary with an amortization calculator that computes extra payments. In most cases, with zero discretionary income, the MMA program is comparable to the extra diresct payments. When using their discretionary income in the performa, the MMA is faster than the same payment sent directly to the bank. When we pay off as much debt as possible up front (car, credit cards, etc.) the MMA accelerates the mortgage by several years over direct extra principal payments.

If you think that you can due the same thing without the MMA software, good luck to you. Statistics show that people already don’t do it.

As far as “zero risk,” there is a money back guarantee that the program will work. Most are 20% ahead of the projections.

Ron,

I wonder what your incentive is to dedicate so much space on your mortgage company website to slander equity acceleration products, not to mention the time blogging all over the web with your misinformation. Could it be that you make so much money off of refinancing your clients every 2-5 years. I also noticed your company is in Florida where there is some of the highest defaults coming out of the option-ARMs and NegAms in the nation. I am curious if you would open up your books to show just how many of those you sold in the last few years.

I agree with Bryan. What difference does it make what commission the agents get? A refinance costs a comparable amount as the MMA program and people do it repeatedly. With MMA you can move it with you and are not required to refi. Not to mention the commission the lenders get, or many other professions who are commission only. Insurance, realtors, car sales, etc.

Ron…your website is totally inaccurate! You are obviously trying to sell mortgages yourself and completely not considering what’s best for the client. I’m willing to bet you get paid a commission for your work. How much do you make per sale? If you opened your mind to this concept, you could enhance your business by helping your clients. That would generate referrals and future business for you. Seems you are shooting yourself in the foot by posting such misinformation. Anyone who does their research will find the truth – and your website doesn’t have it.

It seems both “Bryan” and “Shari” may have something to gain/loose by pushing this MMA idea… Interesting?

We’re providing truthful, factual, financial opinions and analysis… and adding another valuable and legitimate point of view to this discussion (as is the very mission of this entire website http://www.thesimpledollar.com)… Self reliance and saving money! There are no strings attached, and the information is FREE to everyone.

If they don’t like it, perhaps it’s because the truth hurts, or threatens them.

So they resort to personal attacks, character assassination, and making baseless speculation to try to disparage us…. INSTEAD of actually discussing the facts, factual comments, and legitimate financial analysis of this mma schema.

What do they, and others, fear from a legitimate and honest discussion of the facts, financial analysis, and the truthful numbers of this matter? Isn’t that what everyone reading this really wants to know about and understand?

Their ‘in the gutter’ comments (and their motivations) only lend more credence to this web blog and to the honest analysis and opinions both myself and many others have regarding these ‘equity accelerator’ schemas, like the mma.

We’re not making this stuff up…

If any homeowner, consumer, real estate professional or accountant is interested in more detailed information and truly analyzing these equity accelerator programs ‘particularly the Money Merge Account’ for themselves… below are some links to information that should shed a lot of light on this particular topic.

1) http://www.integramortgages.com/FinancialVOODOO
(FREE Mortgage Pre-payment calculators, FREE alternatives, details and opinions)

2) http://www.mtgprofessor.com/A%20-%20Early%20Payoff/the_good_fairy_of_rapid_mortgage_payoff_is_back.htm
(detailed information & opinions from the respected Jack M. Guttentag, former Jacob Safra Professor of International Banking at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania & Yahoo Finance Contributing Author)

3) http://activerain.com/blogsview/48018/Money-Merge-Accounts-Are (other honest opinions from a south Florida mortgage planner, even someone selling it agrees it’s NOT the best solution for most 85% of folks.)

4) http://www.danmelson.com/posts/1171373759.shtml
(sales tactics information, analysis, and opinions from an Up-Front California Real Estate & Mortgage Professional)

5) http://forum.brokeroutpost.com/loans/forum/2/95315.htm (a very direct opinion from an attorney specializing in real estate law)

We hope this information educates you, helps you achieve your financial goals, and that it helps YOU save money!

Best wishes to everyone,

Ron,

In case you didn’t notice, I did make factual comments… and you still didn’tanswer the question of what you stand to gain and you didn’t answer the challenge of how many loan products you sold and made money on that weren’t in the best interest of the homeowner.

I also am not promoting my individual business (or any other) or website in this blog as you have. Nor have I made any assertations that the MMA is going to benefit 100% of the population.

Of the 15,000 UFirst agents, over half of them are Mortgage and Real Estate Professionals and Financial Planners.

1/3 of Australian homeowners are on similar programs. 1/4 of British homeowners are as well.
In the U.S., these programs have already saved thousands of homeowners millions of dollars of mortgage interest and have also facilitated better money management skills.

It is interesting all of these people you have links for offering “free” advice. A number one sales lead-in is something for free to offer an “added-value” in order to get a client. All of your “free” helpful advice is nothing more than a sales tactic of your own.

Almost all of the negative comments revolve around agents makingmoney selling the program. What about the statistic that over 2/3 of all Mortgage lenders got into their industry in the last 5 years… I’m sure it’s because they do loans for free!!!

Ron,

First, I am a client, not an agent. I am simply a homeowner who signed up for the program and am excited about what it has done for me!

Second, of the links you have provided above, the only one I would consider worth the time to research is http://activerain.com/blogsview/48018/Money-Merge-Accounts-Are

Third, your website claims the information is free, but one must provide their email address in order to obtain it. So what’s your ulterior motive? Not to mention that you are telling people that these accellerator programs work by sending in all of your discretionary income and that’s simply not true. Nor is it true that by using a heloc as a checking account is only robbing Peter to pay Paul as you also claim. If you have a positive cash flow then you are only funneling your cash a different way. And when you do transfer a lump sum onto your primary mortgage, you still have access to it through your heloc whereas if you send in all of your discretionary income to your primary mortgage, you have lost that cash.

These are the facts and the reasons why I say the information you present on your website are inaccurate. I am not selling anything as I have stated and I don’t see that Bryan is giving links to his website. It seems that you are the one bashing those who are FOR the program and you are also the only one posting links for your personal gain. How much did you say your commission is for the loans you sell? And how often do you advise people to refi?

Another great place to look when researching the MMA and United First Financial is at http://www.bbb.org

This is the Better Business Bureau website and I can assure you that if this product were a scam, it would have been reported as such by now.

I’m not saying this product will work for everyone-I’ve made this statement before. But it’s not a scam and it DOES help many homeowners. I have a problem with people who post the wrong information and call this a scam or a scheme. This product is legitimate and can make a huge difference.

Another place people can look is Dun & Bradstreet and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. UFF’s Parent Company Accelerated Equity & Development has the lowest risk ratings available and have a squeeky clean record.

Question, why would two guys, whose parents both lost their homes to foreclosure when they were kids start a mortgage company and get into the equity acceleration business… funded entirely out of their own personal wealth?

Their companies (and themselves personally) are entirely debt-free and with several million dollars in assets entirely paid for. How many other companies can claim anything close. It seems to me that they took the biggest risk of all.

For those of you who seem so against this MMA program and say you can do this on your own for the next 10-20 yrs, how many of you can look back at all of those New years resolutions that you made and can HONESTLY say you stuck with it until you got the results you were looking for? you seriously think you can stick with this on your own for that many years? And what happens if you lose your job and are out of work for 2-3 mths and have to rely on your unemployment benefits to pay allll of your bills. You think you can continue to do that on your own still? With the MMA program you can have the ability to stay WAY above the water should some unforseen thing happen to you! It is not only a tool for helping you it could also be a life preserver!
Take care all!
Stephanie

If I am not displined enough to pay off mortgage on my own how will I be disiplined enough to follow mma?

I am financial advisor for the last 15 years,also I am licenced real estate and mortgage broker for the last 5 years.I became UFF agent in January after careful evaluation and analysis of MMA concept.I really believe that MMA is a great financial tool for majority of american homeowners.All these arguments that “I can do it myself” does not hold any water.Most of the american homeowners do not have any idea how to manage their money because they have absolutly no education to do that.American system promotes consumption like no other country in the world and this creates a lot of financial problems for people.Next 10 years will be very challenging for
the most of our homeowners because of the huge demographic change is upon us.I refer to future effect of retiring baby boomers on economic,political and social trends.It could not be a better timing for MMA than now when our national saving rate is below zero and our consumer debt at the record level.Majority of the babyboomers would not able to retire because they did not save enough and the fact that they are going to live longer would not make them happier.
I assume that all the bashers in this forum do not represent majority of homeowners and very well off and this is probably because they are financially educated and have a lot of TIME to spare and strong fiscal discipline.I praze them.
But please do not give other people a wrong idea.
Let them do their own due diligence and find the facts about MMA.

How is this better than a short mortgage? If you want to pay it off in ten years, why not get a ten year mortgage in the first place? MMA can only succeed in shortening your mortgage by making larger payments, which is exactly what you would do if you got a shorter mortgage from the bank.

I have been hearing a lot of ads on the radio about paying of your mortgage faster.

Pyramid, MLM, IMHO, it’s all the same.

My only request is that people conduct research before trying these things on their home!

I have a 30 year mortgage. I will refinance to a 20 year mortgage soon and plan to pay it off in 10-15 years without the “help” of a MMA.

Making additional payments will reduce the lifetime of your mortgage and doing it in a structured fashion would help anybody who could use help with selfdiscipline. But don’t we miss the point that our home is an investment? Why should I worry about paying off a mortgage that costs me less than 6% interest with additional payments when I could invest those extra dollars in ways that have a much greater return (mutual funds, stocks etc)? I can average 8-10% versus 6% (ignoring taxes since it’s a wash) – shouldn’t that matter more. Has somebody done this side by side comparison?

here is an example of how well it does…

$200,000 mortgage – 30 years
6% interest on primary
Heloc at 10% interest
$600 in weekly income
$700 in semi monthly income
$3800 total monthly income
Payoff in 21 years
Save $79,973.41 in interest
Effective interest rate for primary AND heloc… 4.191%

This is with $0 in discretionary income. Yes… ZERO.

This is with the homeowner spending every dime they make… Every month… on something else.

Can you do this yourself?

Im am curious, how much is my2pennies going to pay in closing costs to refinance the 30yr mortgage to a 20year mortgage? Typically closing costs to refinance run 2-3%.

Ralf,

First of all, God bless you if you consistently get 8-10% with ZERO risk. Second, interest RATE (whether we’re talking dividends or finance charge) only matters when multiplied by a principal amount. A side by side comparison would only be valid if your 8-10% were on a principal balance equal to the size of your mortgage.

Most people get a NET RETURN of 1% on all of their investments when you take into consideration the finance charges on all of their DEBTS.

Something else, there are a lot of things having extra equity in your home does for you that cannot be detailed in a blog.

Lastly, try sending your extra discretionary income to an investment… let alone pay your regular mortgage payment and all other bills…when your primary income source stops (i.e. illness/injury, lay-off, work stoppage, etc.) With the MMA, it is possible to not skip a beat for a significant length of time until your income returns, all without altering the forcasted payoff date.

Macinac,

Your comments show that you do not understand how the program works. A 15yr. mortgage would obviously have larger payments than a 30. If someone could afford the payments they probably would’ve gotten the 15 in the first place! A lot of new loan products came out in the last few designed to get the banks business without thinking in the best interest of the homeowner (e.g. option ARMS, Neg-ams, interest-only, etc.) The reason homeowners took these is because they wanted the benefit of living better while not truly being able to afford it. ALL DEBT PRESUMES THE FUTURE.

The MMA program allows homeowners to keep paying their existing monthly payment while still attacking principal… without incurring refinance charges.

By the way, I just got a client who was 4 years into a 15 and we’re going to have them paid off in 4 years… that’s 7 years early! Oh, and that’s with zero discretionary income!

Well – here is an Television report from NBC Channel 3 Las Vegas Nevada – see what they have to say about the MMA program:

http://e-qualjustice.net/MMA/RussMcGinn/News3_LasVegas/News3_LV_wmv.html

I am participating in this discussion because I am, as most people, interested in saving money when I can. I did submit my information to a representative for an analysis. When I got back the results it looked like I could shave 2 years off the remaining lifetime of my mortgage and would save $170 a month. Not earthshattering, but since the cost of the program was figured in, it would have saved me money. But when I looked closer I noticed that my home equity line of credit, which is fixed right now, was changed to where I would only pay interest, thus saving me the $170, but also leaving me with the entire 120k balance when the first mortgage is paid off.By the time the HELOC is paid off there is neither a savings in time nor money. Where did my “rep” go wrong? I’d be glad to forward any rep his analysis to see for yourself.
To Bryan:
you don’t need the same principal amount to compare the return of 2 different investments. If I have a loan at 6% and would make additional payments to save interest, my interest savings for the duration of the loan would be less than the money I could accumulate by investing these extra payments at a higher return than 6%. I appreciate your comment about risk though, because that could really be an issue with somebody getting close to retiring.
To the experts:
I would appreciate if somebody would at least say that paying off any 30 year mortgage making the same payments will at best pay the loan off in 14years.At 6% a 100k mortgage requires $600 for 30 years. Since the bank will get under even the most creative scenario 100k back from you, the bank will get $600 a month from you for the next 167 months (14years).Since I haven’t found a bank yet that gives interest free money, I have to assume that the claims of paying off your 30yr mortgage in 1/3 to 1/2 the time is accomplished with additional payments.
Without additional payments a 6% 30 yr mortgage can’t even be paid off in less than 18 years, that is if the bank would give you credit for the entire year’s payments on the first day of the year and base their interest calculation on the remaining balance. This makes me question the statements I have seen on this blog.I think that’s what has turned off some people – statements that are only true under certain conditions. You probably tell me I don’t understand the program, but then tell me where you can do better than my best case scenarios. If somebody decides to respond, could you avoid the expression discretionary income in your reply.I am only interested in paying the same amout I am paying right now.
At last, please show me where my “rep” went wrong; I really would like to save some money.

Ralf – If you take out a variable rate heloc, pay all of your normal expenses out of it, deposit all of your normal income into it, the bank can only charge you interest on the average daily balance. So the more frequently you get paid, the less interest you will pay to the bank. If you have a fixed rate heloc, the bank will amortize it and only accept your payment at the end of the month. With a variable rate heloc, the bank will apply the money as soon as it receives it, thus “cancelling out” interest. The reason everyone talks about discretionary income is because the program works using your discretionary income. As you pay your bills and deposit your income, your discretionary (the positive difference between your expenses and your income) becomes excess pmts to the heloc which pays down the balance of the heloc. When the balance of the heloc reaches a certain point, the MMA will prompt you to transfer a chunk of money from your heloc to your primary mortgage as a principle only pmt thus reducing the principle balance of the primary mortgage and reducing the interest charges that will accrue in the future of the primary mortgage. You continue to pay your normal expenses and deposit your normal income to the heloc until it pays down to a certain point again and then transfer a chunk to the primary as a principle pmt again. You repeat that process until both the primary and the heloc is paid off. The program monitors your income and expenses to keep the balance of the heloc at a more manageable amt so you are not overpaying the interest on the heloc or charging it to high. As income and expenses change (which they do for everyone), the program adjusts to it so it will save you the most amount of money possible. So you don’t send in all of your extra money, you “borrow” it from your heloc and pay it down without changing any of your normal spending habits and without getting a 2nd job. Of course, the less you spend and the more you make will increase your savings. So a lot of people who get on the program will adjust their habits to the better because they see immediate results. The program will adjust with each transaction to show you how it effects the payoff of your mortgage. And it allows you to send extra pmts to the primary mortgage without losing access to that money because you can still get to it through your heloc. Many people can’t come up with chunks of money to apply extra to the principle of their first mortgage. I hope that helps.

Ralf,

There is no way of knowing if your agent made a mistake somewhere without rerunning your analysis.

In regards to the interest/dividends comparison, I did not make a mistake.

Your assertion is this (correct me if I am wrong):

You have $1,000 discretionary income. You put that into an investment at 8%. That investment will make you more than the same $1,000 being applied to your mortgage and saving you, let’s say 6%.

1. The err in that thinking is that you are comparing apples to oranges. You are paying 6% on a balance of ??? I’m in San Diego, so let’s call it $500k. Are you earning dividends at 8% on a $500k portfolio?

Let’s look at a recent customer of mine: They have a 40 year mortgage on a 7 year Option-Arm. With ZERO discretionary income and JUST the INTEREST ONLY payment, the MMA will pay-off their home in 16 years. Less than 1/2 the time! That includes paying off four credit cards at the onset. The interest savings is over $1,000,000. If they, after 14 years (which is because they will actually make their full P&I payment) invest their mortgage payment amount plus the amount of monthly payments that they were paying on credit cards, their portfolio will be worth $3.8 million at 6% or $5.4 million at 8% after the 24 years they would have left on their mortgage. If you took $1k and added it to an account at 6% every month for 40 years, compounded monthly, your return at the end of the same 40 years is just over $2 mil.

By the way, that example does not include discretionary income being sent to the first mortgage. So, the example of an investment portfolio is a greater return than even if they had the extra income to put into an investment instead.

If you want to really look at this and not just banter, I will work out a way for you to contact me.

I am in San Diego as well.

Ralf,

Have you tried contacting the agent about your analysis? Was he a UFirst agent? or was this another equity acceleration loan/product?

Macinac (above) is correct.

The intentional pre-payment of a 30 year mortgage is the core of what is being discussed here! And, it is virtually the same thing as taking a ‘shorter’ term mortgage to begin with, BUT the shorter term loan will save you even more Interest!

IF someone chooses to pre-pay a 30 year mortgage loan, in say 12 years, then they would be better off starting with a shorter 15 or even 12 year mortgage.

The shorter the term, the less interest paid because you are re-paying principal at a FASTER Pace. PLUS, as an additional benefit, shorter term mortgage loans have LOWER interest rates. It’s a double whammy of savings!… and a way to pay a mortgage off even faster!

Would you rather pay 6.0% interest OR 5.625%, over the same period of time? That’s a savings of 0.375% interest per year, on the outstanding loan balance, every year, over and over! For a $200,000 loan, over 15 years, that’s an average savings of $780.37 every year = $11,705.40.

Why would you voluntarily pay a HIGHER interest rate for a 30 year mortgage, when you intend and plan to pay the money back in only 20, 15, or 10 years? Financial Flexibility is an answer for most, tradition for others… that’s why most folks get a 30 year loan, and those are good legitimate reasons.

BUT, if someone says well it’s because “I can’t afford a 15 year mortgage payment; it’s too big for me”… then WHY on earth would they choose to make the equivalent or even greater monthly payment via any equity accelerator, when they can’t afford it in the first place? Pre-paying by choice (after the fact) is the same thing as choosing to re-pay the loan back faster from the beginning. You would end up in the same financial situation, with a big mortgage payment, and no cash left for other expenses!

Someone can always (wisely) have a ‘dry’ heloc just for unexpected problems or expenses, but using a heloc, or credit cards, to supplement income is a recipe for debt and disaster! Make no mistake, and don’t be mislead, choosing to pre-pay a mortgage, is virtually the same thing as choosing to take a shorter term mortgage loan to begin with. Except, that the shorter term loan would save you more money, because the interest rate is lower!

The savings of mortgage interest comes from YOUR pre-payment/ re-payment of the principal you borrowed, with the income you earn. There’s no magic to it, just paying back the debt in the most prudent way possible. The lower your interest rate, the less interest you are charged, and the faster you can afford to pay back what you borrowed.

It’s simple common sense… lower interest rates and paying back debts faster = SAVE YOURSELF MONEY.

http://www.integramortgages.com/FinancialVOODOO

I did and he told me that he ran the analysis using the information I provided. I am not too optimistic about a different outcome, but I will look for another agent using the long list available online.

Ron,

There you go again. It has been said time and again that this program will work for many with ZERO extra out-of-pocket payments or discretionary income. You are choosing to ignore that fact on purpose so that you can continually promote your fallacies.

Yes, homeowners could get shorter term loans. Woulda coulds shoulda. The fact is people have longer mortgages and are now starting to look at their financial conditions and want to pay off their mortgages sooner and get debt free.

How about the best of both worlds: I have a client in NJ that has a 15 yr mortgage. They are 4 years into it with 11 left. The only extra money they have is $300 which is presently budgeted to an outside fund. IF they were to send that to their mortgage directly, they would save an extra 2 years.— With the MMA and ZERO DISCRETIONARY income, they will payoff in 4 years. THAT IS 7 YEARS AHEAD OF NORMAL on a shorter loan to begin with and with no extra payments.

You should be featured on “Myth Busters.” YOUR MYTH DEBUNKED!

After a 2 wk, sabatical from this blog, you still haven’t answered the challenge of whether or not you will disclose the number of exotic loans yo uput people on in the past few years that now have them upside down. I will assume that you haven’t answered that because you would rather divert attentino to the lies that you are trying to promote about others.

Here is my problem. I went to bank A for a 100k mortgage and they told me it would be $830.41 a month for principal and interest at a 6% rate for a 15 year mortgage. With that offer at hand I went to bank B who liked my charm and said I could get the 100k at no (zero; 0%)interest. I went to my calculator and divided the 100k from bank B by the $830.41, that I would have to pay for a mortgage from the bank A and that I was able to budget. I came up with 120 months or 10 years. Now, can somebody tell me how any program can pay off the principal faster than that (Bryan, you said your clients will do it in 8) without paying anything extra each month? There have to be some other variables you are not telling me about,because my calculation is a no-brainer.
Can somebody please tell me. How does this work for the guy with one mortgage, no other loans, an average interest rate and no room for greater than his scheduled payments at the tune of cutting his pay-off time into half. I am saying: NOT POSSIBLE and I would love to be proven wrong.

Addendum to my last post: The smiling face is a 8 years, in case you didn’t want to look through Bryan’s post.

For the Agents or people who already using the program:
My understanding about the software is that the equity will be wiped out in a couple of years to pay the 1st mtg (quicker if there is no left over from the income/expense). Yes, there may be some interest cxl but one will start paying back the debt in the HELOC…plus the mtg payment. Or is it only the interest payment that the lender requires? … If so, for how long? I think one need to wait for two or three years until we start paying off the debt in the HElOC account to see the result of the program. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Daniel

Bryan,

If you actually want to have a legitimate discussion on the merits about various equity accelerators and to get some free education, feel free to contact us anytime. We stand behind our opinions and analysis 100%, as is evident from both our words and actions. There is more than enough information here for you to do that if you really want, though I believe that’s not what your true intentions are.

The crux of the heloc equity accelerator voodoo you are promoting is truly about nothing more than pre-paying mortgage principal, and generating small amounts of ‘interest income’ from a cash account. But, the method you are selling/endorsing is intentionally hiding that fact behind the cloak of the heloc schema. In reality, the net cash flow (spending of discretionary income) is the same for someone who follows an equity accelerator program, as for someone who simply decides to pre-pay their mortgage on their own. To suggest or mislead otherwise is simply dishonest, or at best ignorant.

As has been pointed out here and elsewhere, both of the same goals of pre-payment & earning interest income (saving interest expense) can be easily accomplished by someone on their own. That self help (doing those 2 things on their own) can save folks more money and pay their mortgage off faster, if that is truly the home owner’s financial goal once they have been properly informed.

No one needs software to do it! …Just a little common sense, a piece of paper, and a 99 cent calculator. While it’s true that many people do not understand financial analysis, amortizations, cash flow analysis, hedging, banking, or accounting, they can still accomplish the same results on their own with a little bit of information and education. This is exactly why we are providing that educational information for FREE to anyone who is interested… so that the folks who want to can understand how to do it themselves, and save themselves money! The spreadsheet even calculates the number of months to payoff for those that feel the number or months is psychologically important.

http://www.integramortgages.com/FinancialVOODOO

But ‘don’t just take my word for it’…instead how about:

Jack M. Guttentag, former Jacob Safra Professor of International Banking at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (one of the Worlds Best Graduate Finance programs ) & Yahoo Finance Contributing Author : http://www.mtgprofessor.com/A%20-%20Early%20Payoff/the_good_fairy_of_rapid_mortgage_payoff_is_back.htm

Robert D. Ashby, CMPS, CITRMS, an accomplished Real Estate and Mortgage blogger: http://activerain.com/blogsview/98202/Is-Paying-Off-Your http://activerain.com/blogsview/99158/With-Foreclosures-on-the http://activerain.com/blogsview/100036/Money-Merge-Accounts-Vs http://activerain.com/blogsview/48018/Money-Merge-Accounts-Are

Steve Sushner, a Real Estate, Estate Planning, and Housing Attorney, from: http://forum.brokeroutpost.com/loans/forum/2/95315.htm

Dan Melson, an upfront long time Southern California Real Estate, Mortgage, and Financial planning expert: http://www.danmelson.com/posts/1171373759.shtml

Greg McBride, senior financial analyst for Bankrate.com, in the Miami Herald “McBride added that homeowners could better put their money to use in a Roth IRA or education funds, instead of funneling money into a mortgage accelerator.” Reff (Miami Herald 5/21/2007 Quick-pay mortgage system isn’t for all): http://www.miamiherald.com/breaking_business/story/113980.html

Don Taylor, Ph.D., CFA, CFP, holds a Doctorate Degree in Finance and is an associate professor of finance at The American College, and writes the “Ask Dr. Don” column for Bankrate. He says the following, about even automatic type mortgage accelerators: They are “Not for the financially indisciplined… Of course, all borrowers already have that money available with a conventional mortgage, too — and without the cost of refinancing. A borrower would simply need the financial discipline to use all that money as an additional principal payment. …Interest savings are still available the old-fashioned way by making additional principal payments on a conventional fixed-rate mortgage.” http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/mortgages/20061102_equity_accelerator_mortgage_a1.asp

http://www.integramortgages.com/FinancialVOODOO

I own a marketing business 6 years June, my third business. I was approached with the idea of becoming an UFF agent last month by one of my clients. It was a “too good to be true” pitch coming from someone I knew so it sparked my interest. Being my age (51) and of sound mind, I don’t jump into anything without extensive research. I’ve been reading everything I can find regarding UFF and it’s product. My findings:
UFF is a religious oriented company. The 2 founders are Mormon with real estate and brokerage history. UFFs product “Money Merge Account” apparently is derived from the “Speed Equity System” software. I cannot say which is better due to the fact Harj Gill, originator of the idea 10 years ago in Australia, has placed a “Cease and Desist” against Mortgage Free USA, distributor of the software and his product cannot be found at this time. This is the same product Mr. Gill vowed to give away to 1,000,000 mortgaged homeowners last June. That did not happen. He has promised, as late as the 22nd of this month, to place the software online as shareware by mid June. We’ll see. The same Harj Gill, which had problems with the Canadian government as CEO of AMS Homecare, Inc.
I have compared the numbers using the Money Merge Account, Mortgage Accelerator Plus and Mortgage Eliminator. The time frame for early payoff is close to the same, within a couple of years with UFF the lowest. However, that means a couple of years of payments. The product cost is a big difference up front. UFF asks a one time $3500 for their product and the others are into a set-up and monthly fee, which varies. Over the course of the mortgage term there is no way to determine overall cost. If you refinance or purchase another home you will have to redo and spend again whereas UFF is for life and can be used with multiple homes.
We Americans, for the most part, are monetarily undisciplined. We see it, we like it, we want it and we buy it. The repercussions of payment are in the future. Most of us are not ignorant people but ignorant in certain areas. From what I have read, along with asked and been told, mortgages fall into that category. I speak for myself there. I am a pay on time and keep the roof over your head kind of guy. This will change soon.
I read a lot of agents defending the product and themselves. I can’t say that I blame them. I feel sure some are honest and insulted by being herded with the not so honest. Some do come off as a little hyper and even abusive. My business experience tells me that cannot go far towards gaining clientele or furthering the product. I read tons of skepticism from those, which appear to be above average intellectually regarding this matter. I don’t know them so I have to assume they are clever people. They can do this quick payoff themselves through various investments and financial planning. Most of us cannot or choose not to. Again, we are not ignorant, simply uninformed and or lazy.
I have yet to read anything from a disgruntled client either about the cost or the service provided. If I were unhappy I would at least complain anonymously to forewarn others. The guarantee UFF offers doesn’t hurt their efforts, as it’s the only money back deal I’ve seen.
What is a MLM? Better yet, what isn’t? Practically, everything you purchase did not originate from or produced by the person or store where you bought it. They had to buy it to sell to you. And so on up the ladder. We, the consumer are the bottom rung. I see no difference. Actually, I call it free enterprise. You know the cost up front and have a choice to purchase. It’s not like it’s cable or land- line phones where the choice is “have it or not” and at the suppliers ever increasing cost. Oh, the monopolies. Better than a MLM?
In closing; with what I’ve learned in the past few weeks, if there was a product named “Mortgage Reduction for the Common Idiot” and it saved me loads of money, years off the end and personal time I have to think it may be for me and millions of others. Do your own research and figure what’s best for you. I’ve just about convinced myself.

bravcon: Very well said. One exception, just because the founders of UFF are Mormon doesn’t make the company “religious.” The company isn’t ran by the mormon church. I am an agent and am not mormon.

Ron: you keep using words like voodoo and schema. Not the kinds of words from an intellectual that has facts to share, but one that has an agenda. I’ve read your garbage. I am not parroting corporate lines. I have spent countless hours proving this works. I have used mortgage calculators and investment calculators and have done multiple analyses for clients comparing the alternatives.

You list a bunch of sources that try to debunk the mortgage acceleration products including a comment from a writer from Bankrate.com in a Miami Herold article, yet there was a very positive article last year on bankrate.com from another writer.

In any debate, you can always find people to agree with your point of view. It doesn’t mean you are right!

Bryan,

UFF is a religious oriented company.

When making this statement I was speaking of the founders not the entire company. My apologies if I didn’t convey properly.

COULD SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT % OF INTEREST SAVINGS COMES FROM THE PROGRAM AND WHAT % OF INTEREST SAVINGS COMES FROM EXTRA INCOME APPLIED TO MORTGAGE?

Donl,

You can answer the question yourself, for your particular situation… Refer to our FREE online mortgage pre-payment calculators (or any other free mortgage calculator resources). They allow you to calculate the baseline savings you can already achieve with any interest bearing checking/savings account and simple common sense mortgage pre-payment with the income you earn….

Take a look at all of the facts and make the comparisons for yourself. Make sure to include all the upfront and monthly costs from any equity accelerator system, any upfront ‘lump sum’ principal reductions made from your current cash reserves, and then compare the results starting on the Same Dates. You will find the realities of the numbers are straight forward.

http://www.integramortgages.com/FinancialVOODOO

Donl:
That is not a question that can be answered generically. Many of my clients are saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and 15 or more years off their loans without any extra out-of-pocket money being applied to the 1st mortgage. The Money Merge Account uses a 2nd position HELOC. Even 1st position HELOC mortgage accelerator programs fundamentally use the same principle, which is if the homeowner has any discretionary money left over at the end of the month that would otherwise be sitting in a checking account earning no interest or a savings account at a dismal 1%, that money could be working for them cancelling mortgage interest. This is often only $300 one month and $100 the next.

While I am an agent and could refer you to videos on my website, I prefer not to do that, because I am not on this blog site to sell the program… only to present facts and dispel myths perpetuated by those with alterior motives.

If you were use a search engine, you could find numerous agent sites with videos and you can call them to ask questions and get a free analysis that will tell you specifically the pay off date of your existing loan. That pay off is guaranteed by UFirst, by the way.

Ron,

How do you pay off a mortgage early if you don’t have any extra money to pay to the mortgage?

All of my 1.99 calculators show that 0 paid to my mortgage doesn’t bring the balance down. My excel spreadsheets give me the same results.

I’d love to get you in a televised debate… you would be looking for another line of work by the end of the night.

Daniel,

If you are carrying a large balance on the HELOC, the program will pay down the HELOC before attacking the 1st mortgage principal because the HELOC is at a higher interest rate and because the program is designed to get you out of debt and a high balance on the HELOC goes against that fundamental principle.

If you need a better explanation, there are plenty of agent websites with videos and you can always call an agent to discuss your individual situation.

When I mention an agent, I am specifically speaking about a United First Financial agent for the Money Merge Account. There are other viable equity accelerator programs that work in slightly different ways.

Don Taylor, Ph.D., CFA, CFP, holds a Doctorate Degree in Finance and is a Professor of Finance at The American College, and writes the “Ask Dr. Don” column for Bankrate.

Dr. Don Taylor explains what ALL ‘equity accelerator payments’ really are and how they actually accomplish the accelerated pre-payment:
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/DrDon/20061005a1.asp?prodtype=pfin and related articles.

Holden Lewis of Bankrate.com, agreeing with Dr. Don, also warns “Don’t pay ANY Money to a third party to help you set up a [equity accelerator] mortgage payment,” in Paying for biweekly mortgage program makes no sense:
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/mortgages/20030206a1.asp

Don Taylor also says the following, about even automatic type HELOC mortgage accelerators: They are “Not for the financially indisciplined… Of course, all borrowers already have that money available with a conventional mortgage, too — and without the cost of refinancing. A borrower would simply need the financial discipline to use all that money as an additional principal payment. …Interest savings are still available the old-fashioned way by making additional principal payments on a conventional fixed-rate mortgage.”
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/mortgages/20061102_equity_accelerator_mortgage_a1.asp

Greg McBride, senior financial analyst for Bankrate.com, in the Miami Herald “McBride added that homeowners could better put their money to use in a Roth IRA or education funds, instead of funneling money into a mortgage accelerator.” Reff (Miami Herald 5/21/2007 Quick-pay mortgage system isn’t for all):
http://www.miamiherald.com/breaking_business/story/113980.html

Jack M. Guttentag, Professor of Finance Emeritus and former Jacob Safra Professor of International Banking at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (one of the Worlds Best Graduate Finance programs ) Earlier he was Chief of the Domestic Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, on the senior staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Jack is also a Yahoo Finance Contributing Author.

Professor Guttentag states, “Based on everything I know, I have considerable confidence in my main conclusion, which is that the bulk of the reduction in interest payments comes from the borrower’s savings rather than from the program mechanism. … Neither the MMA nor any of its siblings provide the means for separating the contribution of the program to interest saving from the contribution made by the income the borrower allocates to principal reduction. The reason they don’t is that they want to pretend that it is the program that generates the benefit.
” http://www.mtgprofessor.com/A%20-%20Early%20Payoff/the_good_fairy_of_rapid_mortgage_payoff_is_back.htm

Mr. Guttentag also provides a number of FREE spreadsheet and calculators to homeowners: http://www.mtgprofessor.com/spreadsheets.htm
http://www.mtgprofessor.com/calculators.htm

http://www.integramortgages.com/FinancialVOODOO

How do you pay off a mortgage early if you don’t have any extra money to pay to the mortgage?

Don’t believe this has been answered yet so here goes. This only works if you get paid weekly or bi-weekly. There are 5 months out of the year where you get paid 3/5 paychecks. The MMA program treats the extra paychecks as discretionary income. This doesn’t work if you get paid monthly or semi-monthly.

So in a sense you are making extra payments just not in a monthly way.

–==For those that are looking into using MMA==–
Years to pay off: 4 Years
Total Interest Saved: $94,000
Effective Interest Rate: 0.74%

I also want to comment that I am using the MMA program to payoff my mortgage. Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand how the MMA programs works I had to watch the client DVD 5 times before I understood. Spending $3,500 to save $94,000. Ummm.. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that is an awesome deal.

I personally don’t care about how much I’m saving in interest. I will pay off my mortgage before I’m 30 and piece of mind that the bank isn’t going to take my home if something happens to me and I can’t make the payments. If that doesn’t convince you than I don’t know what will.

For any agent that needs a web site. I am developed a turnkey web site for anyone that’s interested. Just check out simplemma.com.

this money merge account sounds too good at first, only if you want to expedite the increase in your equity for every two years, take out the equity and leverage it. AT first, well, I can put my paycheck into my line of credit, pay off all of my bills from there, then, I can have a tax write-off. On the other hand, that means, by paying my utility bills, I have to pay interest because it came out of my equity line of credit. How much do you think will end up getting?

Why put your money on something that you cannot earn interest on? It’s great to have a line of credit, but everytime you use it, you have to pay interest. Why not put your money where you can earn interest, pull it out anytime tax free whether for emergency purposes or not. Paying off your mortgage is such a huge deception to a lot of people! There are a thousand and one ways to leverage your money. Your $3000 payment will go a long way if you invest it wisely.

Be wise. Be diligent. Be careful…..

I had an analysis done by a UFF agent. I still have 12 yrs. on a 15 yr. loan. I would pay off loan in 6.2 yrs. After that if I invested the $624.40 monthly note and the $512.50 monthly discretionary income at the end of 12 yrs. I would have $95,006 invested at 6%. If I invested the $512.50 my self at 6% after 12 yrs. I would have $111,006 invested. This is quite a differance. Maybe the UFF program don’t work with a 15 yr. loan at 4.25%.

Donl / Big Don,
I tried to present an unbiased opinion based on the extensive research I’ve done in the past weeks. This product like any other, in any field, can’t be right for everyone. Can you imagine 1 cure-all for each profession? 1 pill, 1 make of car, 1 style of house, etc…
When you were approached by an agent and crunched the numbers afterward, and used the word “if”, I have to ask why? Is it because you are simply like millions of us doing nothing at this time?
I must say the way you attack the program I see an ulterior motive. Since you didn’t mention any other company or program, which do you work for?

Guys and Gals,

The most common thing I hear from people is all the other things they can do that’s better than the MMA program. It just seams like they are trying to come up with excuses not to pay off their mortgage.

All these replies aren’t about if the MMA program will benefit them. It’s about doing something that is outside the norm. You are supposed to have a mortgage. Your parents have a mortgage. So do your neighbors, friends, relatives, etc.

I bet you that none of you have done more research on a mortgage loan then you have on the MMA program.

You pay 1 or 2 points for the mortgage loan just so you can be in more debt. But you won’t pay $3,500 for a program that will help you pay off your mortgage. Don’t you think there is something wrong with that?

If you can do something else besides the MMA program then more power to you. Ultimately you have to look deep inside yourself and determine if you will stick with it.

As for me I know that wouldn’t stick to any other methods. Just like the gym membership I only go to every 3 months or all of my new year’s resolutions.

bravcon

I also researched the program for several weeks and have decided its best for me to save my $3500. sounds like you have decided to spend yours. Invest your money wisely and you don’t have to work.
good luck

I have to jump in here one more time.

First… as to whether MMA outperforms other alternatives… there is an EASY way to know. Just have an Analysis run for your situation and see if you can beat it yourself. Simple.

I have run the numbers with MMA against every other acceleration program I can find. MMA has beaten all of them… including using every penny of discretionary income.

For instance…

One client has a $270,000 mortgage and just $200 in discretionary income each month.

If they took EVERY PENNY of that discretionary income and applied it to their mortgage… they would pay it off in 22.75 years.

However the MMA program beat that by 6 years (6 more years of NO mortgage pyament) and another $48,000 in interest savings. They were due to pay off in 16.4 years.

And… those are GUARANTEED results. Do other programs give you a written – money back guarantee?

By the way… United First Financial has sold over 8000 of these programs now… and they have ZERO complaints in the Better Business Bureau.

http://www.saltlakecity.bbb.org/commonreport.html?bid=22021100

Now, could the sophisticated investor eek out an extra 1-2% by investing elsewhere and not paying off a mortgage? In a perfect world… the math there works. However the world is not perfect and that strategy is not without risk… so it is a personal decision people make based on their tolerance for risk. Many people enjoy investing in the stock market, educating themselves on investment strategies, etc. For those people there is an entertainment value there as well… so risk/reward/entertainment are all factors to be considered.

However, when you invest in your home you invest in something you can touch, see, feel and live in. It is simple and does not require a lot of ongoing education and research. And, when the home is free and clear… you can take that mortgage payment you are NOT paying anymore and invest it any way you want, knowing that the roof over your head is secure.

Or… you could even leverage the equity you are building in your current home along the way.

For instance… If you run the numbers you will find that using this program you could easily have your primary residence and 4-5 rental properties free and clear at the end of 30 years… without using any new money of your own. This is with your current budget and a little positive cash flow created by the rentals.

So if you want to build financial security in a way that is easy, and with a lot less risk… this is the best way to do it.

Bottom line though on the software… if you think you can do it yourself…

But ask yourself 2 simple questions…

1) How skilled at math are you?

2) How much do you value your time?

Most people would have to be sure they could get within a 1-5% margin of error… compared to what the software can do (and that is a calculation based on using it for only 1 home – when it is actually transferrable at no extra cost to up to 5 homes).

And… you have to decide to yourself what is most valuable to you. You can use this program and spend 10-20 minutes a month… or you can spend hours and hours of your time doing math… instead of spending it with those you love.

Personal decision… but you can guess what I did. I have better things to do with my time than play around with numbers.

So do more than 8000 other people I guess.

You can get an Analysis here by the way… then you can have fun seeing if you can do as good a job on your own.

http://www.u1stFinancial4u.com

Donl / Bigdon,

You didn’t answer either of the questions I asked. Are you doing anything now towards early payoff? Which UFF competitor do you work for?
You certainly have the choice of saving the purchase price and any discretionary monies you have. Hopefully that money is earning 4-5% because your paying 120% over the full mortgage term. Any time less full term that % rate goes up.
And your last sentence had a ring of arrogance. If, you have made the right investments and don’t have to work it sounds as if you’re independently wealthy. Most of us are not in that situation. Maybe you could offer a few hints to your choice of wise investments for those of us in the dark. Thanking you in advance for all of us.

bravcon

If you go back and read read my last 2 posts all your questions have been answered.

Donl / Bigdon,

I read your post when written and have re-read. Nowhere do you mention any other program or company. A comparison would make research. What you have written is a biased opinion, which prompted my asking, “Who do you work for?”
As for the question, “are you presently doing anything towards early payoff?” You used words like “would” and “if” and you say “crunched the numbers after the UFF analysis” so I’m left to assume with no direct response the answer is NO. Why so evasive?
You offer us no hints to wise investments. Again, you leave us to assume 1 of 2 things; 1- you’re writing a book and want to sell the ideas or 2- you have no real ideas of financial independence.

bravcon

I do not work for anyone.It is cheaper for me not to payoff early. the wisest investment advice I know is give the LORD 10% and save 10% and he will make you financily independant.

Donl,
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that if you tithe and save 10% that God will make anyone financially independent. There are many scripture dealing with stewardship. NOWHERE does God encourage nor condone debt!

Your comparison about how much you’ll have invested after 12 years doesn’t make sense. Math is math. 1st, take into consideration the interest saved. 2nd, in addition to what you’re not paying the bank, if you invested that same money over the remaining time you would have had a mortgage payment, MATHEMATICALLY IT MUST come out to more than you investing the money on your own for the next 12 years.

Like most people interested in the MMA program, I am researching whether it would be a good option for me. The central debate is whether it works and whether it is worth $3500 to purchase.

Ron (earlier posts above) states you can accomplish early payoff without the $3500 program and without putting yourself in additional debt. Now I respect the sources he provides to make his point (Jack Guttenberg, Bankrate, etc…) I beleive those sources are objective and attempt to clarify the pros and cons of mortgage accelerator programs for the public.

However Bryan and others have made strong points too. I would like to believe MMA can do what it claims, yet at the same time, I do not understand how you can possibly pay off your 1st mortgage in half the time without using any discretionary income. Who is ultimately right here?

Like most people, I live paycheck to paycheck. After paying the monthly bills and the mortgage, there is practically nothing left. Maybe this isn’t such a good program for someone like me afterall.

Bryan

I did not say this was in the bible. I was talking about what I have done over the years and have prospered finanically. I give the LORD all the credit. MATHEMATICALLY IT DOES COME OUT.
12 yrs left on a 15 yr. mortgage at 4.25%
$624.00 monthly note + 512.00 discretionary income per month. multiply $1136.00 times the 5.8 yrs I save equal $96,834.
$512.00 per month times 12 yrs. equal $109,867

Many opponents of the MMA program fail to realize is the United First Financial does not argue that similar results cannot be achieved without use of the money merge account.

Secondly, if I may be a bit undisciplined about my finances and I pay $3500 for a program I would make a safe wager that not only would I utilize the program but follow it religiously.

For those of you who are in a financial position to apply all of your discretionary income to your mortgage without fear then more power to you. Unfortunately, most homeowners in this country live on a check to check basis. The MMA program is meant for these homeowners.

To those who say just apply the $3500 cost of the program to your 1st mortgage and you’re ahead of the game, what if the person doesn’t have the $3500 to apply to their first mortgage to begin with?

Harj Gill is the creator of the mortgage acceleration (such as that used by the MMA) in Australia and Europe. He first introduced the concept in Australia in 1995 and wrote his first book in 1997 on how to impliment his mortgage reduction concepts. At first, many financial gurus and banks laughed at his ideas. Now, after seeing how his mortgage accelerator software is saving individuals thousands of dollars, his concepts are now the most widely practiced in Australia, with several banks (including the 3rd largest bank in the world) backing his concept. After such great success in Australia and Europe, he introduced the product in the U.S. in the early 2000′s and wrote another book in 2003, titled “How to Pay Off Yoour Home Sooner” He also rolled out his “Speed Equity” software, which compliments his book. Until recently, Harj Gill has been affiliated with a company called American Mortgage Educators Inc. They are currently selling two copies of his book and two subscriptions to his online mortgage accelerator software, Speed Equity, for $59. This at one time cost over $1,000. I watched a news broadcast in Vegas a couple weeks ago that featured Mr. Gill’s concepts. This news cast also featured the MMA program. With this, I wanted to compare the two programs to see if there was any difference (other than price – $3,500 for MMA and $59 for 1 year of Speed Equity followed by $199 yearly renawal). I contacted two differnt MMA agents to have my numbers ran. They both had the same payoff of 8.8 years. This included my mortgage and all other debt. If I did not pay off my other debt w/ the HELOC, the MMA payoff was 10.2 years. I bought the $59 Speed Equity system and compared its results to MMA. With Speed Equity, my payoff was 7.5 years with all debt paid off and 7 years with just my mortgage paid off. I’m not sure why the opposite happened when I had the other debt paid off with the HELOC. With MMA, by including my other debt, I paid off everything 1.4 years earlier. With Speed Equity, the debt added 5 months to my payoff. Since I have not yet purchased MMA, I can not give any other feedback other than what my analysis showed. With Speed Equity, I find the software to be very user friendly. Basically, in my situation, after I run my HELOC balance to zero, the Speed Equity software will prompt me to inject $7,500 to my primary mortgage, this happens everytime the HELOC reaches zero.

Todd,
I find it hard to believe you bought “Speed Equity” after the news segment on KVBC unless you know Mr Gill personally. Mr Gill has had a “Cease and Desist” against Mortgagefreeusa, the distributor of his software, since 5/23/2007 the same day as the airing you mention. The America Mortgage Educators site has not been funtional since the same date. Not even Ron Borg, Mr Gill’s liason, can sell this product. He did know what was coming as he was selling not only “Speed Equity” but also the book for a combined $49.99. So tell us, how and where did you get it?
Also, if you were so interested in Mr Gill why didn’t you wait to get the program free as he spoke of and promised repeatedly in the interview? That would be the same promise he made June 2006 to give it away to 1,000,000 mortgaged homeowners by the end of that month.

After I saw the news segment, I tried to find info on Harj Gill. His website is MortgageFreeusa, but he was also affiliated with American Mortgage Educators Inc., at one time. Go to their website http://www.americanmortgageeducatorsinc.com. Trust me, after I saw the Cease and Desist headline on Mr. Gill’s website, I questioned the sales person about the desist order. I was infomred they are still selling Mr. Gills product and have greatly reduced the price (i’m assuming to get rid of inventory, but I don’t know that for sure). They will continue to sell the book and software system for $59 until June 11 (two copies). Check it out yourself! I did not want to wait because who knows how long it will take Mr. Gill to resolve his situation, especially when courts are involved.

After what I told the two UFF agents, (whom did my analysis and whom I know personally) about the outcomes between MMA and Speed Equity we sat down together and ran the numers again. They were able to see the Speed Equity input screens and I was able to see the MMA analysis inputs. To be fair to the MMA software, when you input bi-weekly income, 26 pay periods/year, it only considers it to be as if you are paid semi-monthly, or 24 pay periods. I was told this is done intentionally as UFF over-delivers and under promises their results. Also, with the Speed Equity software, I am able to manipulate my expenses by having them all paid in my credit card, so the money stays in the HELOC as long as possible. I was told the MMA analysis does not do this, but the live software figures out those variables. So with that, I manipulated my income for the MMA analysis so that it represents my true monthly income and to be the same as Speed Equity. Then, I had all of my expenses seperated individually on the Speed Equity system, instead of inputting just one expense (credit card). THE RESULTS (including all other debt paid off w/ the HELOC): MMA = 7.9 years; Speed Equity 7.9 years – THE EXACT SAME. The amount of interest saved with MMA was $261,214.36. The amount of interest saved with Speed Equity was $259,973. The results changed however, when I did not include other debts to be paid off with the HELOC (just the mortgage): MMA = 8.6 years years; Speed Equity 7.4 years. We were not able to figure out why, when other debts are paid off with the HELOC, the outcomes are different. Does anybody know?

So you get your house paid off. 7 years, 8 years, 13, either way. now you’ve paid a higher interest rate with the heloc, or a lower rate and done it yourself or whatever, but taken every single dollar and put it into your house. your entire income went to that. Do we let college funds come from the heloc? now we get to repay that again, how about financing a new car….heloc….how about emergency….oh right, all of that future dollar plan we really worked into our budget BEFORE we bought the house to make sure on our MMA program we’d have extra money for our principle. sorry, if we’d done that, we wouldn’t need the MMA.

okay, heres the big one. retirement. congrats on paying off your home. you put every dollar into one asset. Ask any financial planner if ONE PRODUCT is a good portfolio…I dare you. we call that putting all of your eggs in one basket.

now your neighbor who hasn’t finished paying off his traditional loan loses his job, can’t make his payment, or someone gets sick or ANYTHING happens and he needs to move, quick. He gets foreclosed upon, or firesells. Im sorry, but did the value of your house just go from 500K to 400K because he had to sell for 350? you just lost 100K that you worked hard to pay into your house, but was money you never had control of…

now what. and retirement? the money we put into our house. so were gonna live on Social security? um….sell our house that we worked so hard to pay off and move somewhere else smaller. and what, keep the 200K difference to live in a smaller house to pay for half the lifestyle we were used to with no tax write-off making it worse. how long is that going to last?

really now. you can’t consider your mortgage in a vacuum. it affects every aspect of your current and future finance.

wake up.

“To those who say just apply the $3500 cost of the program to your 1st mortgage and you’re ahead of the game, what if the person doesn’t have the $3500 to apply to their first mortgage to begin with?”

Um. Then they can’t afford to buy the MMA software can they.

who are you guys listening to…..oh. my. goodness.

“However, when you invest in your home you invest in something you can touch, see, feel and live in. It is simple and does not require a lot of ongoing education and research. And, when the home is free and clear… you can take that mortgage payment you are NOT paying anymore and invest it any way you want, knowing that the roof over your head is secure.”

you own the home no matter how much you owe on it. as long as you make your payment, you don’t have to ask the bank to hang up pictures or move a wall. paying principle is not investing into anything, you are reducing debt.

“Or… you could even leverage the equity you are building in your current home along the way.”

how can leveraging the equity and at the same time, paying every dollar to that equity make any sense.

pay interest on that money, to borrow it back once you have and pay interest again?

“G.O. My mortgage is $384,000 at 6% for 30 yrs. Now I would make as much in interest with a savings account as I was paying on my mortgage if I had $384,000 in cash to make my first deposit!! I don’t have that kind of cash. The MMA gives me the ability to pay down LARGE portions of my principle which saves me a lot of interest. If you really want to understand how it works check out the MMA video presentation at my website.”

He is saying, instead of listening to the MMA software and paying 1000 extra to the HELOC, put that 1000 in an account at the same rate of interest. it will do the exact same thing, without having to open a heloc (which you could still do independently if you need a reserve, although i don’t recommend that), without having to pay the 3500.

“”check out the MMA video presentation at my website”"

that says it all to me right there.

“okay, heres the big one. retirement. congrats on paying off your home. you put every dollar into one asset. Ask any financial planner if ONE PRODUCT is a good portfolio…I dare you. we call that putting all of your eggs in one basket.”

The MMA works on your discretionary income. Discretinary income is not money that you use for investments. It’s money that would sit in your checking account.

I use the MMA program and I still invest in my 401k and Roth IRA and stock.

You are still in control of your money. The goal of the MMA program is to pay off your mortgage with the amount of discretionary income you have.

If you decide to dedicate some of your discretionary income to other investments then you just tell the MMA program that your monthly expenses increased by that amount and it will still calculate your new pay off date.

“”"“G.O. My mortgage is $384,000 at 6% for 30 yrs. Now I would make as much in interest with a savings account as I was paying on my mortgage if I had $384,000 in cash to make my first deposit!! I don’t have that kind of cash. The MMA gives me the ability to pay down LARGE portions of my principle which saves me a lot of interest. If you really want to understand how it works check out the MMA video presentation at my website.”

He is saying, instead of listening to the MMA software and paying 1000 extra to the HELOC, put that 1000 in an account at the same rate of interest. it will do the exact same thing, without having to open a heloc (which you could still do independently if you need a reserve, although i don’t recommend that), without having to pay the 3500.”"”

This is the stupidest idea I heard. Why would you do this? If you really really don’t want to pay off your mortgage and that’s fine but invest that money in the stock or mutual funds where you can earn 9 to 12 percent instead of savings account.

Here is the math to prove this is a stupid idea. To make this simple we’ll say your mortgage payment and your discretionary income are the same.

If your money is going out of your pocket at a rate of 6% (Your Mortgage) and you put your discretionary income in savings that earns 6%, the money the savings just sits there doing nothing. If you invested in the stock market and earn 9% then you actually earning 3%.

Lets take this scenario.

Lets just say that you paid off your mortgage or for whatever reason your money is not going out of your pocket anymore. Now since it’s going into you pocket you are actually making 6% by just not having to pay it. Now combine that with the stock market where you can get 9%.

“I find it hard to believe you bought “Speed Equity” after the news segment on KVBC unless you know Mr Gill personally. Mr Gill has had a “Cease and Desist” against Mortgagefreeusa, the distributor of his software, since 5/23/2007 the same day as the airing you mention. The America Mortgage Educators site has not been funtional since the same date. Not even Ron Borg, Mr Gill’s liason, can sell this product. He did know what was coming as he was selling not only “Speed Equity” but also the book for a combined $49.99. So tell us, how and where did you get it?”

Bravcon, just curious if you had the chance to check out americanmortgageeducatorsinc.com web site yet? I just assumed you have since you have not replied.

Todd,
Yes I did and admit to misrepresenting fact. It seems June 11 is the last day to purchase. It certainly appears to be a liquidation sale. Which brings to mind multiple questions. Why the 11th? Legal issues I would guess. With that in mind, since Speed Equity is web based are you sure you’re going to be able to use it? Who will be your support team? Since you bought a 12 month subscription and not lifetime, how do you know you will get another year much less the 10-12 years it would take to payoff your home?

OK, I have avoided reading this post or the comments for this time as I am the South FLorida Mortgage Planner that has talked about the fact that these programs may be costing people more than they think.

The bottom line is that while these programs are good for some, everyone needs to look at ALL strategies and be educated on ALL concepts, then determine what is best for them. My post at ActiveRain (link is already in comments and #2 in Google) was to highlight the importance of that fact.

People should read this website I have at http://www.flmortgageplanner.com to leanr some of the truths and misconseptions surrounding mortgages and home equity. You will learn that Home Equity is a crappy investment and you can read this post at AR to see how it is actually better to bury your money in your backyard.(Which is the Safer Investment – Home Equity or Burying Your Money in the Backyard?)

Robert,

How would your system work for middle America, where majority of the home appreciations are around 2% or less? I guess I don’t understand how interest only or neg am mortgages would work for us folks in the middle of the country? I bought my home 5 years ago for $190,000. I did not have 20% to put down, so I financed my home at 95%, with a second mortgage taking care of the other 15%. So, today, my home is probably worth $205,000 (2% growth/year). I owe approximately $175,000, resulting in $30,000 equity. With your way, am I suppose to refinance to a 30 year IO loan (and in my situation, pay PMI), cash out to the max value of my home ($25,000 (-$5,000 closing costs) and invest that $25,000 and the difference between the interest only payment and P&I payment? Do I keep doing this every 5 years or so, so as long as I have some equity in my home? Lastly, in my situaiton, is the way you suggest better than if I: did an MMA type mortgage accelerator; paid off my home and all other debt in less than 8 years; and take that money that was going toward my mortgage and other debts and invest for the remaining of what would have been my mortgage (25 years)? When I had an MMA analysis done, in my situation, if I did that, at a 6% return, I would have banked 1.37 million during those 25 years. Can I get better results by doing it the way you suggest? If so, how? Thanks.

Todd

bravcon,

You have good points regarding the stability of the Speed Equity system currently being sold (at least for one more day) by american mortgage educators. Take a look at Harj Gill’s current posting on his web site, things seem to be heating up. For me, I split the cost w/ a co-worker, so I only invested $30, the cost of the book w/ shipping, so I’m really not out anything. I’m still undecided whether or not I’m going to take this process any further and obtain a HELOC. For the past week, I’ve played around with different scenarios with Speed Equity and I’m simply amazed how fast I could be debt free. I’m also interested to see what Robert Ashby has to say about my posting above. I have not ruled out MMA either, just because I know it takes a lot of the guess work out, and the two agents whom I know personally, and whom ran my analysis, have good heads on their shoulders and I can trust their judgment (one is a bankruptcy attorney and the other is a high school principle). I just don’t know if the MMA program outperforms Speed Equity by $3,340 (especially when my numbers were ran, but I know MMA is said to be about 20% more conservative w/ their analysis).

Todd,

I would ask that you send me an email to this address to explain your situation…askme@floridaloanadvocate.com.

The only reason I asked this is that I have had so many people inquire with me to help them, I have decided to dedicate some time each week specifically to address people’s situation’s and help them choose what is truly in their best interests. This website (http://www.floridaloanadvocate.com) is being developed for that purpose and to highlight some myths and misconceptions among other mortgage topics.

I only do loans in Florida, but to ensure the answers remain unbiased, anyone submitting a question via the email will not be permitted to be a client of mine for at least 30 days (maybe longer…I have not decided). I can, of course, direct you to someone else that can handle your loan needs.

I cannot guarantee I can help everyone that submits their situation to me, but I will be posting (no personal info) various situations that may benefit yours anyways. I would like to assist everyone, but I am but one person and I do not have the time, unfortunately.

“If your money is going out of your pocket at a rate of 6% (Your Mortgage) and you put your discretionary income in savings that earns 6%, the money the savings just sits there doing nothing. If you invested in the stock market and earn 9% then you actually earning 3%.”

thats not what we are talking about here.

you can either pay that discretionary income to you mortgage, effectively earning 6% by reducing 6% interest on that amount, or just go earn that 6% directly.

you will have the exact same number of dollars on your family balance sheet in that case, but now your money isn’t tied up in the home. it is 100% liquid. would i suggest you stop there? no. I would suggest you invest that money. into the stock market directly? no.

9% doesn’t mean anything in the stock market. The investment is taxable, so that reduces the returns. The investment or adviser may have fees, reducing your return.

lets do a simple exercise here. you have 100K. you earn 50% the first year. 150K now. now you lose 50% the second year. guess what, you have 75K. average rate of return…zero. does it feel like zero?

is the market a bad place to invest? not necessarily, but would i put my discretionary income or home equity there before putting it somewhere that protects me? no.

“”Lets just say that you paid off your mortgage or for whatever reason your money is not going out of your pocket anymore. “”

on the exact day that you would pay off your mortgage in you system, you would have the same dollar amount in your side account as you owed in mine, and could pay it off. but you have liquid access at no cost to you the entire time.

[[[[“okay, heres the big one. retirement. congrats on paying off your home. you put every dollar into one asset. Ask any financial planner if ONE PRODUCT is a good portfolio…I dare you. we call that putting all of your eggs in one basket.”

The MMA works on your discretionary income. Discretinary income is not money that you use for investments. It’s money that would sit in your checking account.

I use the MMA program and I still invest in my 401k and Roth IRA and stock.

You are still in control of your money. The goal of the MMA program is to pay off your mortgage with the amount of discretionary income you have.

If you decide to dedicate some of your discretionary income to other investments then you just tell the MMA program that your monthly expenses increased by that amount and it will still calculate your new pay off date.]]]]

that works for those of us that are putting, after our investments, and after our mortgage costs, food, clothes, gifts etc, still have bunch of income in our checking account. thats not a lot of people. the average american has 9K in credit card debt. paying that off is WAY better than putting it towards the mortgage.

and if your putting money into a retirement account, it must be because its doing better than paying it to your mortgage, because otherwise you would put it there. so why not put the discretionary income to that instead?

[[[I use the MMA program and I still invest in my 401k and Roth IRA and stock.]]]

i wish your mind was open enough to realize that that in itself doesn’t make sense. i guess no planner has ever taken the time to educate you on just exactly why.

Generating more interest income from cash accounts, and then employing it to do something, is definitely a good idea… and there are many low risk FREE options for accomplishing that already available to every average homeowner.

Such as FDIC insured interest bearing now/checking or savings account, a money market account, a brokerage investment accounts, a high yield online savings account, etc… http://www.bankrate.com/brm/rate/chk_sav_home.asp …these are the exact same things most folks already use.

Most All of these options are FREE to open and free to use, with some currently yielding 6% apy or more! The incremental interest income from any of these FREE alternatives can be used to pre-pay a mortgage or any other debt (highest APR first), or it can be re-invested as the individual may see fit. All of these actions will result in a compounding of the incremental interest income and provide benefits over time.

In stark contrast, paying $3,500 of software, then opening a HELOC to ‘attempt’ to replace a interest bearing cash demand account, which may also carry origination expenses, and re-occurring yearly fees, as well as possible transaction fees, imposes an almost insurmountable inefficiency that costs you money.

The very first obstacle that must be overcome is the $3,500 upfront cost, and the lost interest income from the $3500. But, that is only part of the opportunity cost. Additionally, the origination and re-occurring yearly fees generate negative compounding cash flows, which add to the opportunity cost of this costly approach.

To just break even, you would need to earn/save the $3,500 in interest, as well as cover all of the compounded losses on the $3,500 expense, and cover all of the compounded losses generated by the origination, yearly or transaction fees. PLUS, on top of all that also achieve a return that is equal to what you could have instead simply earned by depositing money into an interest bearing cash account.

Don’t forget or overlook that the baseline you could already get for free, and with very little risk, is also part of the lost opportunity cost of this voodoo approach. Taking extra risk to earn the same return is not generally a wise investment strategy.

When you actually sit down and do the math and financial analysis, you will see that in all likelihood the average person will never even break even by purchasing and following this quite costly approach, as compared to what can be accomplished for free.

Don’t confuse prudent debt management and consolidation which reduces your overall interest expense, with the ‘incremental’ income/savings that may be generated from investing your monthly cash flows. When the ‘incremental’ benefit is comparatively small… upfront costs and fees have a negative dramatic impact!

http://www.integramortgages.com/financialvoodoo

“”that works for those of us that are putting, after our investments, and after our mortgage costs, food, clothes, gifts etc, still have bunch of income in our checking account. thats not a lot of people. the average american has 9K in credit card debt. paying that off is WAY better than putting it towards the mortgage.””

You are right about the average American being in debt. But it’s not because they don’t make enough money to cover their needs. It’s because they spend more then they make on unnecessary things. They don’t need to go to Starbucks 5 days a week or buy 300 channel satellite TV, or drive a brand new Lexus. Sure there are people that are poor but we aren’t talking about them.

For those that say “I don’t have any discretionary income”, instead of saying that, ask yourself “How can I get discretionary income?”. The answer is pretty simple you can either increase your income or reduce your expenses. For most, reducing their expenses is the easiest.

To me that is not a good reason not to pay off your mortgage. It’s an excuse so you can keep going to Starbucks everyday. It’s definitely a lot easier (and convenient) to have debt instead of being debt free.

“”and if your putting money into a retirement account, it must be because its doing better than paying it to your mortgage, because otherwise you would put it there. so why not put the discretionary income to that instead?””

I am really surprised with your statement. Your argument was that by paying off your mortgage you are putting all your money into one asset. My response was that’s not true, for me I am stilling paying off my mortgage and still diversifying my investments. That’s why.

[[[I use the MMA program and I still invest in my 401k and Roth IRA and stock.]]]
i wish your mind was open enough to realize that that in itself doesn’t make sense. i guess no planner has ever taken the time to educate you on just exactly why.

My mind is perfectly open. I have talked to my financial adviser, my cpa, several loan officers who I trust and they all said it doesn’t get any better than paying off my mortgage. But you know what? I don’t need them to tell me, that is my short term goal.

Your goal is to make as much money as possible. My goal is to get rid of all my debt and retire comfortably. That is where the MMA program comes in. I am scheduled to pay off my home in 4 years instead of 30 and that’s worth every penny of $3,500 I paid. And did I mention I will be 30 when I pay off my home. How about them apples?

Honestly both our goals will get us to the same spot, not having to work at Walmart to make ends meet at age 65. I have been using the MMA program for 2 months now. I just have one question for you. Are you investing your discretionary income? If not, maybe you should sit down with a financial adviser. To help you with your goal I would recommend you looking to dividend paying stocks. Also read into no-load stocks so you don’t have to pay brokerages fees that eat into your profit.

I really would like to hear what your goals are.

“”that works for those of us that are putting, after our investments, and after our mortgage costs, food, clothes, gifts etc, still have bunch of income in our checking account. thats not a lot of people. the average american has 9K in credit card debt. paying that off is WAY better than putting it towards the mortgage.””

You are right about the average American being in debt. But it’s not because they don’t make enough money to cover their needs. It’s because they spend more then they make on unnecessary things. They don’t need to go to Starbucks 5 days a week or buy 300 channel satellite TV, or drive a brand new Lexus. Sure there are people that are poor but we aren’t talking about them.

For those that say “I don’t have any discretionary income”, instead of saying that, ask yourself “How can I get discretionary income?”. The answer is pretty simple you can either increase your income or reduce your expenses. For most, reducing their expenses is the easiest.

To me that is not a good reason not to pay off your mortgage. It’s an excuse so you can keep going to Starbucks everyday. It’s definitely a lot easier (and convenient) to have debt instead of being debt free.

I hope people who read Taner posts realize that if he talks about paying off his mortgage in 4 years that on a $100,000 mortgage he is making payments of over $28000 a year versus the $7200 payment for the 30 year mortgage. Investing follows personal preferences.Personally I am happy with my 15% averages I got over the past years versus worrying about using these funds to pay off a mortgage at 5.5%. Paying off debt fast is not always the best investment strategy. Government and free enterprise uses other people’s money if the cost to them is less than the return.

i really would like to understand why if you can pay off your house in 4 years (because you have THAT MUCH discretionary income, which as a 26 year old, especially if not married with no kids, im sure you do) you need a software program to show you how?

with the example of a 100K mortgage, just the principle is 25K per year. most people don’t have that kind of cash to throw around and if they do, don’t need software to tell them how.

i don’t mean to be confrontational about any of this, but as someone who sees people such as this on a daily basis, so many people are 100% sure of FACTS that are just not true.

If what you knew to be true turned out not to be…when would you want to know?

i agree with you 100% that the people who are 9K in credit card debt etc. are in that position not because of income, but because of spending.

lets just look at some things that are amazing to most people today, who have no idea financially.

a little fact work:

lets say MR. American earns 100K per year and saves 6K per year. Seeing as the average person doesn’t save anything and is in debt, maybe they put 6K into a 401k. I see much worse than this all the time.

if we could reduce Mr. A’s expenses by 1%, that would save $940 per year. if he makes 100K and only saves 6K, 94K is going to expenses (those include taxes etc) Compared to the earnings on 6K which at 10% would be $600. reducing the expenses by 1% is the equivalent of a 16% return on 6K. And whats the risk to reducing your expenses rather than “chasing rate of return.” in almost all cases, the risk is zero.

is that what people focus on? is that what typical financial advisors focus on? no. they focus on chasing rate of return. pay ME the 1% to manage your money and i’ll make you 12% not 8%, which ends up being the same anyway (99% of the time)

why not just make a family budget. make sure your bottom line is in the black, not the red. Open up an equity line just in case, and put all that black into your mortgage. if you need extra, you can use the equity line, and if not, it all went to your mortgage?

this isn’t what i would advise to do, but i still don’t see the complexity.

I just wanted to post my experience so far with MMA. At first I was really skeptical. I mean come on, something that sounds too good to be true coming out of the mortgage industry?

After spending allot of time with the agent from UFF trying to wrap my mind around the concept it started to make sense. My wife and I bought our home 3 years or so ago on an interest only loan with the intentions of paying extra to pay it down. We never did, I know I know…real smart. We just started doing other things with the money. We did save but spent as well.

After being on the MMA for 7-8 months now we made one transfer from our new equityline to the first mortgage and paid off $5300 roughly on our first mortgage, that balance was moved to our line of credit but is now paid almost to $0 using our discretionary income. Our website is now telling us to send more money.

To break it down in the last 7 months we have paid off $5300 in the previous 2 years+ we had paid very little. It focused our attention on our mortgage and we will be paid off in roughly 9 years. After that we can invest/save do anything we want with that money and now it is such a great feeling to know there is some light at the end of the tunnel and while we invest/save after our home is paid off we will be secure with the roof over our head as guaranteed as anything can be in this world.

Like many have said look into what is good for you and dont buy it if its not for you but this has been and continues to be huge for us.

Jay

Jay – I have experienced much of the same with my MMA. We’ve been about 6 months on the program and we’ve reduced our principle balance by over $5K. In the last 2.5 yrs we had only reduced our balance about $2K (even sending in a little extra monthly). I know some people don’t think it’s wise to pay off your mortgage, but for us…that is our goal. Not to mention the fact that MMA has helped our focus and motivation. MMA has helped us with our spending because we see the effect immediately. Our goal is clearer than ever and I feel more in control of our financial future than ever before.

There are those posting who say just make a budget and stick to it. Sure – and how many times have you tried to quit smoking or lose weight? The road to hell is paved with good intentions (quote from my dad). For us, this works. For others, something else may work. And that’s ok. Do what works and assists you with your goals. Just because you don’t agree, doesn’t mean it’s wrong or a scam. It’s just not YOUR choice.

Shari

I agree. Maybe for some people out there they could do this on thier own but I never would have. We are now moving in a much more positive direction than we ever were before and its exciting to me. It makes me want to find ways to cut expenses even more to make better progress.

If someone can do that on thier own I respect that but for me, im going to be saving tons of time and interest that I would not have done on my own.

Honestly paying my home off in 9 years just by following a system that I dont have to put too much effort into is totaly worth the $3500 in my mind. But that is me, some people wont want to do that so again I say if you can do it on your own feel free……I would have spent $3500 on a vacation this year anyway. So now im out one vacataion but im going to pay off my house.

Thax yall
Jay

That was suppose to be “thanx yall”

Sorry in a bit of a hurry.

Jay

Recent results of MMA analsys: Pay off existing morgage in 7.5 years, that’s with $1,200 per month figured in as “discreationary income”. Here are the facts – I am 50 years old. I have 24.4 years left on a 30 year $162,800.00 1st morgage @ 6.125% – monthly payments are $989.00. I have a FIDELITY mutual fund that has paid an annual average yield of 17+% since inception ( that’s 1989 – granted the past is no guarantee of the future, however, it’s a no load fund, below average risk with a great track record, regardless, anything over 6.125% is good). Here are a few of my options: 1)Pay $3,500.00, DISIPLINE myself, follow the plan, pay off the morgage in 7.5 years. 2) Invest, starting with the $3,500.00, add to it the “discreationary income” of $1,200.00 per month @ 10%(conservative rate for my fund-given it’s track record thus far), pay off the house in approximately 6.5 years (plus the tax advantage stays for 6.5 years, continue to invest and make $$). 3) This is the path I am taking – Starting with a 10K IRA (rolled it over from old 401K money from a previous job), add to it $200 per month @ 12% (again very conservative – last 2 years the annual return has been 15+%)I can do one of two things – take the earnings and pay the balance due on the morgage at approximately 12 years (saves me $47,429.00 in interest payments and another $105,346.00 in principle + I keep the tax advantage for 12 years). Then start from scratch, continue to invest the $989.00 for the remaining 12.4 years and earn $315,551.88. Or I can forget paying off the house take the tax advantage every year, by the end of the remaining 24.4 years the pot would be worth $506,837.00, subtract the $47,429 for interest paid over the past 12.4 years (remember,I could have paid it off), and the $105,346 in principle payments over the past 12.4 years, net result = $354,062.00 in the kitty at the end of the morgage. Just another twist to the thread.

Thats awesome. Glad you have the time and know how. I would just have some money in my savings and a few new toys and be paying my mtg for 30 years.

And honestly most people in this country are more like me. I have friends who have degrees in finance and were plugging along just like most people. This program is for people who are not currently doing things like that on thier own. Like I say, if you can do this or something better on your own more power to you.

For those of us who cant or have not been, its a life saver. I believe it was this thread, if not it was another on same topic….Chase, US Bank & Wells Fargo are knocking down these guys doors to be a part of it. You will be seeing this in the next few months/years. If it were a scam they wouldnt be wanting to get involved. The final meeting I went to before I signed up the westerm regional director for US Bank was at the meeting and seemed impressed. That was probably the final nail in the deal for me.

Thanx much
Jay

Jay

Jay,

You’re right. This will be the next big thing that banks start offering their clients when they do Equity lines. People need direction and this is perfect for all homeowners who want to pay down their mortgage the fastest way possible. People who think they can do this themselves are fooling themselves just for the sake of argument. This program is designed to fit everyones unique situation and adapt to change when needed…..do you have a program that does that? Are you selling it? NO? then your not smart enough to do it on your own.

Are these same people running their own self designed operating systems on their PC’s…Again, don’t have your own homemade copy of Windows? NO? Get over it, this program works and it wouldn’t matter if it cost 10,000, it would still save you hundreds of thousands in life long interest.

Brad

Banks and lenders are in the business to make money.It doesn’t make a bit of difference to the lender if you pay off your mortgage in 10 or 30 years – the interest rate and principal don’t change. They actually prefer the shorter pay-off: the sooner they get their money back, the sooner they can give it to the next borrower; the sooner you are building equity, the lower the risk for default at a loss. Why do lenders offer lower interest rates on the 15year mortgage? Right, they have something to gain. Now they can entice more people in taking out equity lines to pay for everything from cars to electric bills to groceries. It doesn’t bother them that you are using it to your advantage, they are making money as you are using it. Can you see that just because banks are interested in this isn’t necessarily an endorsement of the product from the consumer standpoint? What has bothered me about most posts of the proponents of the program are the lopsided claims, without clearly stating the premises. How about the following statements:
A) It works, but not for everybody
B) Just like investing, paying off your mortgage early might not meet everybody’s investment goals; especially if you are looking at the long range and you are seeking a higher return.
C) For the majority of home owners paying off their 30 year mortgage in 10-15 years requires making a substantially higher payment each month. Doubling your payments for anything around 10 years.

the thing that i think bothers most of the people who have questions about it, is the MMA program doesn’t really save you money, what its doing is taking your income, subtracting your expenses (investments etc included) and then telling you to put the difference to your mortgage.

so, people are obviously thinking. the basic idea, okay, open a heloc so you can get money in an emergency, and then just send all the leftover money every month to the bank. no MMA software needed.

I agree, this is good for some, not for others. What i would like is for someone to discuss other than discipline and control issues, what is the benefit? what does it do other than force you to make a budjet (and keep track of it for you) and tell you to send the difference to the bank?

[For the majority of home owners paying off their 30 year mortgage in 10-15 years requires making a substantially higher payment each month. Doubling your payments for anything around 10 years.]

in order to pay off your 30 year loan in 15 years, you would have to make the equivalent 15 year (same interest rate) loan payment. the 30 year gives you the advantage of not being obligated to that payment.

next logical step, interest only loan still making the 15 year payment as long as you can. This again, if you really really want to pay off your house…(i hope you are religious and pray you don’t lose your income 6 months before its payed off, because you will have spent all that time paying for the banks house).

The one thing I dont get are the people who say “well if you loose your job all that money went to nothing and you will loose your home”. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you are 6 months 6 years or whatever from paying off your home you have access to all that money through your equityline. Draw out what you need untill you get back on your feet.

Yes you will be raising the balance again but you are no worse off than if you hadnt paid all that money. And every time you take money out the software shows you exactly how much that is extending your payoff encouraging you to get going again.

Im sure the next skeptics statement will be “So you put all that money in for nothing and you are raising the balance again” The answer to that is yes you are raising the balance but who in their right mind would loose thier job and just sit there and pout while all thier money and hard work goes up in smoke? They will do what most hard working people do and go out and get another job.

If a person who had invested their money in stocks or whatever sat around and didnt get another job they would be in the same boat, using up all that money they invested while still having a big mortgage payment.

It all comes down to how you use your money and what is right for you.

Wether you are trying to pay off your home or you are investing if you dont work hard and be smart with your money you are in trouble.

And just because certain people would prefer to do something other than pay off their mortgage with with their money doesnt mean that those of us doing so are getting scammed. As I said before, I would never be doing this on my own. Honestly before this came along I didnt even know it could be done.

It was very educational for me.

Jay

Jay, you are exactly right. The argument of losing your job holds no ground. MMA didn’t cause you to lose your job so it’s a situation you would have to deal with wether you started this program or not. How you deal with it is up to you. Whether you have invested your money or used MMA, it will still be a setback. But you’ll be glad you had something in place to cushion the fall, whichever method you choose.

Another argument I hear is about natural disasters. What about floods, tornados, hurricanes? First off, isn’t that why we have insurance? And second, if you owe the bank $200K and your house is destroyed, you still owe the bank $200K? If insurance doesn’t cover that, then what do you have? You’d have to cash in your investments to cover the balance of the loan. That argument doesn’t make any sense to me.

And I’m with you in that I was not investing properly before I started MMA. I had savings, checking, CD’s and a modest 401(K). For me, this is amazing. It’s opened my mind to many things I had not heard of or considered before. And I think I am very typical of the American public. There are those who invest and that’s fantastic. But for the rest of us, this is a great way for us to get farther ahead than what we would have done on our own. Everyone should just do what works best for them and stop bashing the other side. Neither way is wrong, or a scam. It’s personal preference.

Checkout the very wise comments from Ben Stein, the well know and highly respected financial commentator… he’s also a pretty funny guy.

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/37252

Drawing on the fundamentals of finance and his trademark wit, economist Ben Stein offers easy-to-follow advice on index funds, mutual funds, annuities, real estate, and the secrets of a building a winning stock portfolio. “How Not to Ruin Your Life” appears every other Monday exclusively on Yahoo! Finance.

“… I get many letters asking whether it’s better to pay off your mortgage or invest the money in the stock market instead. This is a complex question, but I’ll offer several ways of thinking about it.

First, no one ever spent a sleepless night because she had millions in the bank and stocks but didn’t have her home paid off. On the other hand, if you pay off your mortgage and deprive yourself of liquidity, you could be in for some miserable times.

As I see it, if money is even the slightest bit tight, hold onto it and pay off the mortgage month by month. There’s nothing magically good about having a paid-off mortgage, but there’s something seriously bad about Not having ready liquid assets even if your home is paid for. …”

Analyzing how to best employ one’s discretionary income can be a complicated issue… there are just so many different alternatives available. It truly takes both time and experience to weigh and properly analyze the many different options available, as everyone’s financial situation and goals are different.

Make sure you do your own research, educate yourself, and seek out the advice and opinions of as many reputable, educated, experienced, and hopefully wise professionals as you can. Dig into ALL of the details, ask tons of questions, and make sure you understand the answers… only then should you make a truly informed and considered decision.

Don’t be mislead by any one particular product or solution or promises of ‘magical’ results… find out all of the facts for yourself!

http://www.integramortgages.com/financialvoodoo

I am curious about MMA and this is a very good thread but I MUST say that Ron’s most recent post makes absolutely NO SENSE AT ALL! The guy is basically lying through his teeth and using big fancy words and slandering the facts about the MMA process. LOL Ron said:

>

Re-ocurring fees? origination fees adding to this costly approach?? There are no re-ocurring fees or any additional costs other than the $3500 for the software that most people pay for out of the HELOC and never miss it given that the product will make sure homes are paid off faster (any other method is better than what I am doing now paying min pymnt and I am very interested in MMA)… that $3500 and savings is better than paying $200,000.00 in interest that I am scheduled to pay now. So Ron… QUIT BASHING A PRODUCT THAT WORKS and while other ideas are welcome.. DON’T BASH A PRODUCT THAT WORKS FOR PEOPLE.

Ron is a LOSER!

I am on the program for 3 months. I have been busy telling people about how good this program is. The best part for me is that since I have a line of credit of $25,000, then I never have to worry about “overdrafts” on my checking account. My family are terrible spenders and had numerous credit cards when I joined MMA. WE did not any left over ..instead our credit cards debts continues to mount!

Also MMA opened my eyes to the fact that any savings I have is practically doing nothing for me …so I tranferred all my saving into paying extra principal to accelerate my mortgage payoff faster.
I even stopped paying into my Deferred Comp..in order to have more discretionary income!

I had 28.5 years left on my mortgage when I started. Right now , my website shows 9.1 years payoff.

Also, the MMA program had already prompted me twice ($5,000 plus $6,000). This means I am 4 years ahead of my mortgage than those NON MMA people or skeptics.

Also since we started on the program, I never say NO to my children when they want to eat out or go to Disney because I know that I have my HELOC which serves as my REVOLVING CREDIT.

Come on you skeptics, just try it , even without the software you will benefit from the concept ..you will however..not come out with the best savings than if you have the software..plus who has time to sit down and do worksheets?

I LOVE MMA!!!If you are in Central Florida area visit my website at http://www.mmaservices.net

Maria

Ron:

When you mention “On the other hand, if you pay off your mortgage and deprive yourself of liquidity, you could be in for some miserable times” I laugh. Take this advice from the author of the book ‘The Creature from Jekyll Island’ G. Edward Griffin.

Increasing one’s net worth by eliminating debt carries zero risk. All other investment strategies carry risk. True, there is an inflation factor, but home equity generally keeps up with that, while many other investments fall behind. Even those that show long-term gains in terms of dollars, when adjusted for inflation, turn out to be modest performers. Residential real estate may have its ups and downs (related to tampering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve); but, in the long run, it has a good track record for keeping up with inflation.

There is nothing illiquid about owning one’s home free and clear. If an emergency should arise or even an investment opportunity-of-a-lifetime, there is nothing easier than to reverse direction and obtain a home-equity loan. Any home owner with equity can be rolling in cash within an hour. That’s liquidity.

Regarding banks having control of equity, just the opposite is true. When a mortgage is paid off, the equity lies entirely in the hands of the home owner, not the banks.

Ron you are a snake in the grass from what I can tell.

Your concept of “dead” equity is common among investment brokers who would rather have home owners let them invest their money into something else. In some cases, that may be wise, provided the alternate investment can deliver a sufficiently high yield to make up for continuing mortgage interest payments plus tax liability on profits from the investment plus the broker’s commissions plus the risk inherent in the investment itself. It has been my experience that, for all but the most savvy investors, elimination of mortgage interest is the best first step toward financial security.

I am not saying investing is not a bad idea. Quite the contrary. But MMA is quite an option to consider for those that are perfectly content sitting pretty with NO mortgage payment and in perfect position to invest or use the equity to pay for school for the kids, a vacation home, invest along the way, etc. It seems to me Ron is making this idea of MMA (endorsed by an NBC affiliate in Las Vegas recently) as a scheme created to somehow create a worse situation than many homeowners already are in (making minimum payments and paying hundreds of thousands in interest)

Good day sir!

And also Ron, while you offer FREE (as you like to cap the word so will I) spreadsheets to help people who want to pay additional payments that is great – for those who choose to use a method better than they are currently doing. But anyone who has been around the block knows full well that you offer these free products to offer YOUR service as well (why else should I have to enter my email address to receive it? – lol).

Additionally, $2.2 mil and 5 patents (pending currently) says that FREE spreadsheet does not take in all the factors of an open-ended HELOC which drives the system and all the banking math required to pay off your loan in the least amount of time, guaranteeing that the lay person does not make a mistake (how many of us are math wizzes and devoid of human error?) and better than the formulas patented in the MMA software whose principles created such a stir in Australia that over 50% of Australians now use and pay off their homes in as little as a third of the time that Americans do – I dare you to beat the MMA software. You’d be a millionaire if you did. FREE spreadsheets are much better than paying the minimum payment every month. But in the service industry, people make a living off of charging people a fee to do it better, faster, with tangible benefits exceeding that of simply doing it yourself.

“Doing it yourself” is what got us into this mess to begin with. Bottom-line, for $3500, paid through the HELOC instead of straining your checking or savings account, you know what you are getting – the best method I can find (beyond taking investment risks) to manage your money PERIOD, a reputable company, a money back guarantee, and a perspective that is focused on the mortgage payoff date and really seems to be the way I am leaning.

I also am thrilled with the idea of the HELOC being a security blanket should I be out of a job for a while or some other diaster because when I pay more money to principle on my mortgage it is not easy to extract that money unless I pay up thousands to refi and with the HELOC, I would just write a check.

We all know Ron doesn’t make his money providing “FREE” products. He works in the, you guessed it, loan-origination business!

I don’t know about you all but I don’t have time (or the patience) to worry about how every payment I make or additional income received and other factors will affect what numbers I enter into a spreadsheet or trusty calculator. It is of course true that numbers don’t lie, people do (intentionally or not). Am I the only one who doesn’t want to have to keep track of every transaction with in addition to everything else going on in my life.

If I didn’t already feel over-worked, over-taxed, and under-compensated (LOL) I wouldn’t feel such a need to figure out a better way out of dealing with the biggest expense I have in my budget (my mortgage payment) and with the assurance my finances will be taken care of correctly, every time and that every penny is accounted for.

The MMA (and there is only one “MMA” out there and that is the Money Merge Account provided by United First Financial – not to be confused with other “accelerator” programs) appeals to me because it, in my opinion, delivers the solution for unexpected expenses and financial setbacks that I worry about constantly – and I know for sure I would have the support I need from that company and I can’t find one person on the ‘net who has used the product and sorry they did (seems that everyone loves it and wants to also try and earn income helping share with others the success they have had).

I don’t have to know anything other than what it coming in and what is going out when inputting information. I can do that much.

And seeing that the banking knowledge known to a small group of Elites that has sent consumers, businesses, and governments into more and more debt is very destructive to all of our economic lives and designed to earn expontential profits off of a statistical majority of people from all walks of life the solution, it appears to me is not what minimum payment I can afford, or how many times I need to refinance, or how many millions I can make sending my money elsewhere, instead of taking advice from someone who offers more loans and debt – I will choose a product that can get my mortgage PAID (aka no more mortgage payment- whoohooo!) in as little time as possible and THEN I can start to take consider more riskier solutions – and without the hassle or stress added to my already over-packed life trying to figure out interest rates and how much and when, etc. I can just enter my income, enter my expenses and GO!

If I am going to bother and get a HELOC and the responsibility that comes with it, I want to make sure it’s done right! “If it’s worth doing (and boy is it if you’re like me) – it’s worth doing RIGHT.”

If you can do it yourself, great. Do I want to? NO! Can I be assured that I will pay off my mortgage and have someone other than myself to blame if something doesn’t work out in the long run? Only with MMA – it appears (WITH the benefit of liquidity in the form of a HELOC in case of an emergency). Obtaining financial freedom and getting rid of my mortgage (and bankers and brokers in my life) is too important to trust some free spreadsheet whose quarantee is based solely on the accuracy of the information I input. And I doubt some free spreadsheet is as easy to use as the MMA software. I HATE MATH!

I agree, RON is a loser!

Come one Guys, let us defend MMA , let us re educate the public! Can you imagine a debt free America in about 8 to 10 years? MMA is the “anti biotic” for debts!

I still find it hard to beleive that there are so many folks who’d rather pay $200,000 in interest instead of $75,000. Come on, America! Do your math, be smart! Join MMA! Stop paying TOO much interest to the banks!Keep it in your pockets. For me, it was a no brainer. I am pocketing $180,000….now, that is my retirement money which I never thought I’d have! I’ve managed to save $15,000 in deferred compensation over the last 7 years, but I am stopping that paycheck deduction as well. I’d rather pay off my mortgage fast.
I know that I have an Equity to fall back to just in case.

Thanks United First Financial, you are a saving grace!

I’m really glad to see people that use the MMA program post their experiences. You are well on your way to a better and a lot less stressful life. Can you imagine not sending $1,000 every month? I bet you are smiling right now.

I recently finished reading “The Millionaire Next Door” and I would highly recommend it. You can go to simplemma.com under Book Reviews.

I really like this book because it’s not a concept on how to make a million or based on people that will/might be wealthy in the future. It’s a study on lifestyles of real people that are already millionaires. This book distunguishes between true millionaires and the people that look like millionaires.

In summary the real millionaires are the dick and janes next door living an average lifestyle and making average income. The book talks about 7 factors of the true millionaires and not the millionaire wannabes. The first two most important are (1) Living well below your means and (2) allocating time, energy, and money efficiently, in ways to build wealth.

Unfortunately the authors don’t really go into if the millionaires kept their mortgage for 30 years or paid it off, but after reading it I’m sure that they didn’t pay twice the amount of the original price.

They do talk about people that have huge homes and people saying “the interest paid is tax deductible” are bunch of morons. People like that just care about how much they are saving in taxes rather than considering how much they are paying on the interest of the loan and all other expenses go along with owning a huge home.

Also on a side note the authors came up with a simple formula to determine if your wealth is where it should be. I created a calculator on my web site under book reviews based on their formula if you want to see where you are standing.

This RON guy with Integra Mortgages has an interesting name for his company… based, I assume, on the word INTEGRITY.

At first I thought he was just not the brightest bulb in the chandelier and just had not educated himselb about this program – the Money Merge Account. Then someone pointed out to me that there is a method to his madness. His entire marketing plan seems to be based around hanging out on blogs, posts and forums and smearing the name of United First Financial… misstating facts… and making up stuff that is simply not true.

Why? To drive traffic to HIS web site!

He even has purchased KEY WORDS in Google… so that his companies site comes up when people Google United First Financial.

Does his marketing plan have integrity?

Would you do business with someone that cannot sell his own product on it’s merits… but instead slams someone elses?

It would not be so bad if he at least explained that he is only voicing an opinion… or that he is simply trying to capitalize on the web traffic that United First Financial is creating. But he is not upfront about that.

Instead he tries to make United First Financial … that has sold 10,000 of these software programs so far… with ZERO complaints in the Better Business Bureau… look bad.

The worst part is… neither Ron… nor the guy that runs THIS BLOG (the simple dollar) … REALLY understand how this program works. If they did… they would not make untrue statements and/or make it sound like it is so simple to do it yourself.

The UFF software will save you way more money than if you took every penny of your discretionary income and threw it at your mortgage. For one of my clients… the software beat the scenario of throwing every penny of their discretionary income at their mortgage by SIX years and $48,000. That is HUGE… and while I would never say that a super smart math person could not get close – if they knew how to do the math… 99% of us could not without this tool.

Please respond if you have seen the powerpoint (not video) presentation from UFirst that I am describing here . It uses a $200,000 mortgage as example, $5000 monthly income, and $4000 expenses ($1000 discretionary income). It leads the viewer through a month by month for the first year.A principal payment of about $3000 is made every 3 months from the HELOC. At the end of one year it shows the MMA method produces a balance of $184,700 whereas the conventional has a balance of 197,400.In this comparison it doesn’t apply the same $12000 of additional payments from discretionary income that was made using the MMA. If I were to make the same additional payment with my regular mortgage payment the balance of the conventional method would be $185,000. Does that mean the benefit of the program neglecting additional payments is about $300 for the first year for a 200k mortgage? It sure looked that way in the presentation I watched.This question is for the people who have seen the PPT that I am referring to and therefore can respond intelligently. I am still sitting on the fence and I want to know how much of the results is due to the application of discretionary income (we regular people call them additional payments) and how much is due to the timing of payments and the use of the HELOC that uses daily interest computation.

Ralf if you are one of those people who wants to know every variable in the program, basically figuring out the program’s secrets (no one will) then you will be on the fence for quite a while. Good luck.

Ralf – part of the process is definitely timing and amounts to send to the first mortgage. Another is the fact that many people cannot/do not set money aside to send in the extra principle payments. Even if they COULD do it themselves, WOULD THEY? And if they do set money aside, how many actually end up applying it to their mortgage? Using the heloc in a sense forces you to use your money better. Another factor in using the software is the visual. I stay much more focused when I can see the effects.

We just had an unexpected hospital bill for about $1,500. We paid it out of our heloc and it added a couple of months onto our mortgage. If that had come out of a savings account that we were building to pay extra on our mortgage, we would have no idea the effect it would have. And if we hadn’t set anything aside (which many people don’t) we would’ve had to make payments and feel it every month for several months. For me, knowing that hospital bill just cost me a couple more mortgage payments, caused me to cut back on some other things to try to “make it up” to myself. It’s kind of backwards from the way most people think of things, but it works!

You have to be really educated, disciplined and willing to spend a lot of time on this to make it happen on your own. And if you don’t save at least $3500 more than you would have had you bought the program (not to mention your time spent), then the program would have paid for itself.

Ralf first of all, instead of asking people like us about the program, why don’t you contact someone that actually works for the company? Also, one can easily see that the program only works with an open-ended loan (HELOC) and just applying additional payments every month (which, again, in your current scenario means that money is not easily recoverable in case you need to use it unless you already have a HELOC) and then running the ANALYSIS which the money back guarantee is based on (and since it’s based on the money back guarantee I see that many people finish 10-20% ahead of schedule) and just see which ends up paying your mortgage off faster with the benefits of having all the additional money you pay towards mortgage available to you in case you need it. The product only works when the variables that only a HELOC can deliver is utilized and if you don’t trust the analysis then hope off the fence, ignore all the positives, and keep doing something else, whatever that may be.

I don’t mean to be rude but you just have to weigh the options: Is there another product out there that can get my mortgage paid off faster while also allowing me to not change the way I pay my bills or buy what I need change the way I am living now? Is there another product that offers a money back guarantee? I can’t find another one that doesn’t carry low-risk. In life, do you mostly get what you pay for? In other words, there probably is a reason why MMA is more expensensive than the “others” .. because it works.

Basically the way I look at this is I really wouldn’t feel like I’ve made any changes to my lifestyle that restrict me in any way, gives me peace of mind with the liquidity, and also gives me (since HELOC is tied to my mortgage) the interest I pay on the mortgage and HELOC is STILL 100% tax-deductable! That’s AWESOME!! I have to qualify for a HELOC first. But for those who qualify, this product is revolutionary. And for all the spreadsheet gurus… I don’t care who you are. MMA will beat your formulas – 99% of the time. And I can depend on the program. The only naysayers are the ones who aren’t on the program. Just my opinion through careful observation.

That statement is 100% true. Of all the blogs, forums and such that I have seen ( and ive seen quite a few ) I have not seen one single person who is on the program who is displeased or unhappy with the program. Its all people who are either selling something of thier own or people who dont quite understand the program.

Also I checked with the BBB and chamber of commerce in utah and colorado, they along with their parent company have a squeeky clean record. Seriously, check them out. If the program didnt work or if there was not value in it wouldnt you think you might see a complaint about it? Or someone who was on it complaining about it somewhere? Wouldnt people have called the D.A. to look into it?

I havent seen any of that anywhere, in fact there is a Las Vegas TV station ( NBC affiliate ) who has a finacial team whos only job is to check out different aspects of finacial things as a consumer advocate service for thier viewers and they say after investigating it for 6 months that they bought it and three of the team are now on it.

Like I have said before, it is working for me.

Jay

Jason, et.al.
I lead off my post by asking people who had seen the UFF PPT, to answer a question about the presentation, because the UFF REPRESENTATIVE could not.Nobody answered my question in their posts – including you. This is a discussion board, and I have not bashed the program; I even said in an earlier post that we can agree that it works.But all the UFF presentations I have seen have used examples where people make extra payments (Mary earns $2200 and has $1850 expenses and paid off her 200k mortgage in 11.6 years using the $350 discretionary income as extra payments – example from the UFF video). There are 3 factors why it works:
A)It helps people to control their spending
B)It sends additional payments towards the mortgage
C)It times when payments are made.
I only want to know how much of the result is based on C) or the infamous algorithm.
The reason for my wanting to know is that I can do A) and B) myself and since my mortgage is small I like to know if C) justifies the expense.
In an earlier post I said that I rather use any discretionary money and invest it at 10% or better rather than getting a return of less than 6%. But I also said I understood that some people have a different investment strategy or different priorities.
The only reason this product would be for me is for C).
This is an intriguing product, so when people ask questions they might just want to know. Like buying a cell phone with dozens of features, but you are only interested in one particular one.It might not matter that everybody who has this phone likes it, if I have a question about this one feature. Not everybody works for banks or competitors or is trying to write the software themselves or is getting personal. We are discussing it. If you only want to hear the success stories then use your own website and control the posts. This is an open forum.If you are tired of it or do not want to respond to questions then do not. Many of the questions that come up are because UFF in their marketing strategy uses some “hyped up” examples, like in the video where the lady gained $50000 in equity in one year and will pay off her mortgage in 5 years. Obviously this is less “due” to the program, but to her tripling her mortgage payments.If the company would lay out the program as I did in A),B),C) then fewer people would be so skeptical. I am just curious how much does the program itself contribute and how much is a result of the additional payments.If I had gotten a straight answer using a simple example rather than “it works because people say so” or “what do you have to lose we have a money back guarantee” I would not have to write this post. The UFF rep did not have the answer or the example I was looking for,so I asked the question here. If you are annoyed by that – too bad.Or, you could just use your software, plug in $100K mortgage, $2000 income and $2000 expenses ($0 discretionary) and no other loans and tell me how many years will be saved. My UFF rep did not want to do it; so I guess you will not either or any other rep out there.What is wrong with that question that I can not get it answered?

Ralf – I have seen the PPT presentation but I don’t know how to answer your question based on that presentation. I can tell you that in order to beat the algorithms, you need to know
A) when is the best time to send in extra money so you can pay it back down quickly without paying too much interest on the heloc
B) how much to send so you save the most on the primary mortgage while paying the least on the heloc
C) how to recover from monetary fluctuations and still save the most interest
I’m not sure if this is what you are looking for.

The PPT presentation is very general for explanations sake. It doesn’t show how the software works for fluctuations in income and expenses. Most people do not have EXACTLY the same numbers every single month. Especially their expenses. So if you have a good month or unexpected expenses, the algorithms take that into consideration.

It sounds like you are very disciplined in your spending – that’s great. More people should be like that. But what if you miss something? How will you know when and how much to send to the first mortgage? How will you know when it’s ok to send a chunk and when you should hold back? Will your figures save you more than $3500? Will you stay on track in updating your spreadsheet (or whatever tool you use) for however many YEARS it takes? What if you get busy and fall behind in your figures? Are you likely to crunch the numbers until you are caught back up? The algorithms play a huge role in that they take all of that time, work and human error out of the equation. I think some people could utilize the principles of the program and save themselves a good bit of money. However, the algorithms will save you more than the cost of the program plus your time and energy in figuring everything out on your own.

You asked about $100K mortgage with $2K income and $2K expenses with no other loans. In order to figure that out I’d need more variables. For example, how often do you get paid? If you truly have 0 discretionary income, and no way to “find” any by consolidating or limiting expenses, then this will not work for you.

Good luck in your quest for the answers you are looking for. Sorry if this post didn’t help.

Shari,
thanks.

There are BBB complaints about United First Financial’s original company, Acclerated Equity here.

Also, it appears Money Merge account is trademarked, and NOT by United First Financial. Here is the USPTO page.

I have one thought only to the people that say this is a scam and that you can do this by yourself, DO YOU, if not why, and please don’t give me the its not to my benefit tax wise, I say this because at the end of a thirty year period if you pay your home off in 12-15 years and take the mortgage payment your not paying make it available for additional investments I believe you would come out far ahead.
For Me here is the big thing for the average consumer, Wouldnt you prefer the long term security of a home paid off?

Robbie Wright,

Would kind of fool are you? What complaints?? A total of FOUR!! And this wasn’t even about the MMA, it was their mortgage company. ALL were resolved. And we all know that the mortgage company helped THOUSANDS of people. Is that bad to you?? We all know there are people that you can never please. Get real Robbie.

For everyone else: here is the “complaints” he so graciously posted out of stupidity.

Customer Experience

Based on BBB files, this company has a satisfactory record
BBB Definition:

satisfactory record – A business identified in our report as satisfactory has, based on Bureau files, been in business for at least one year, and has voluntarily provided the Bureau with all information requested about the business and its product or service. If any complaints have been received about the business, their number has not been considered by the BBB to be extreme, given the nature of the company’s business and the volume of business transacted. Complaints are also generally typical of what might be expected for this type of business. A business stated to be satisfactory has not been the subject of any recent law enforcement actions concerning its dealings with the public. If the business has been contacted by the BBB about its advertising or selling claims, it has modified or substantiated its practices to the Bureau’s satisfaction. In addition, the BBB has a clear understanding of the company’s business, and the business is not in an industry which has raised significant marketplace concerns.

with the Bureau. A satisfactory record
BBB Definition:

satisfactory record – A business identified in our report as satisfactory has, based on Bureau files, been in business for at least one year, and has voluntarily provided the Bureau with all information requested about the business and its product or service. If any complaints have been received about the business, their number has not been considered by the BBB to be extreme, given the nature of the company’s business and the volume of business transacted. Complaints are also generally typical of what might be expected for this type of business. A business stated to be satisfactory has not been the subject of any recent law enforcement actions concerning its dealings with the public. If the business has been contacted by the BBB about its advertising or selling claims, it has modified or substantiated its practices to the Bureau’s satisfaction. In addition, the BBB has a clear understanding of the company’s business, and the business is not in an industry which has raised significant marketplace concerns.

means a company has been in business for at least 12 months, and properly addressed matters referred by the Bureau. The company does not have an unusual volume of complaints, or any government actions involving its marketplace conduct. The Bureau understands and has no concerns about the company’s products, services and type of business.

When considering complaint information, please take into account the company’s size and volume of transactions, and understand that the nature of complaints and a firm’s responses to them are often more important than the number of complaints.

The Bureau processed a total of 4 complaints about this company in the last 36 months, our standard reporting period. Of the total of 4 complaints closed in 36 months, 2 were closed in the last year.

Contract Issues
BBB Definition:

Contract Issues – Claim of alleged failure to honor contract or agreement, work performed without authorization, or invalid contract.

Resolved
BBB Definition:

Resolved – The company resolved the complaint issues.

2 – Company addressed the complaint issues. The consumer failed to acknowledge acceptance to the BBB.

Billing or Collection Issues
BBB Definition:

Billing or Collection Issues – Claim alleging billing errors, unauthorized charges, or questionable collection practices.

Resolved
BBB Definition:

Resolved – The company resolved the complaint issues.

1 – Company resolved
BBB Definition:

resolved – The company resolved the complaint issues.

the complaint issues. The consumer acknowledged acceptance to the BBB.

Refund or Exchange Issues
BBB Definition:

Refund or Exchange Issues – Claim of alleged failure to honor company policy or verbal commitment to provide refunds, exchanges, or credit for products or services.

Resolved
BBB Definition:

Resolved – The company resolved the complaint issues.

1 – Company resolved
BBB Definition:

resolved – The company resolved the complaint issues.

the complaint issues. The consumer acknowledged acceptance to the BBB.

Company Management

Additional company management personnel include:

Mr. John Washenko – Vice President
Mr. Jim Bagley – General Manager

Skyler Witman and John Washenko are also officers in National Loan Servicing Center. A separate report
BBB Definition:

report – A summary of activity reflected in a company’s BBB file. Includes basic business background, BBB membership information, and Bureau complaint activity over the previous three years. Also reports may include any known government actions, advertising issues
BBB Definition:

advertising issues – Claims alleging print or electronic media advertised claims or practices misrepresent the service or product offer.

or other information that results from activity conducted by the BBB.

is available upon request.

Skyler Witman and John Washeko are also owners of United First Financial. A separate report
BBB Definition:

report – A summary of activity reflected in a company’s BBB file. Includes basic business background, BBB membership information, and Bureau complaint activity over the previous three years. Also reports may include any known government actions, advertising issues
BBB Definition:

advertising issues – Claims alleging print or electronic media advertised claims or practices misrepresent the service or product offer.

or other information that results from activity conducted by the BBB.

is available upon request for United First Financial.

Additional Telephone Numbers

Additional Phone Numbers
Tel: (800) 530-3080

Robbie.. Money Merge Account is someone elses name, and therefore, are you implying that the company is “stealing” a name of another?? HAHAHAHAHAHA. Not even gonna answer your ridiculous argument Mr. Gumshoe. LOL – Money Merge Account is going nowhere and the name will never change and trust, the lawyers know a thing or two about trademarks.. Robbie = LOSER!

Ralf,

I am not on the program. Sorry I couldn’t be more help.

Does anybody know if the MMA program is simply a mortgage accelerator or does it also assist in the acceleration of other debts by using a HELOC. The reason I ask is I have approximately $65,000 in debts consisting of studentloans and auto loans. Would the MMA program allow me to pay off one debt at a time (like a debt snowball program) or all at once ($65,000 with the HELOC). And, even if I could pay off the debts with the HELOC, is it a good idea to trade a HELOC interest rate for interest rates at 6% to 7%?

Cory, Yes, the MMA would work very well with the debt consolidation as it is a interest/debt elemination tool. It would work either by paying one off at a time or for better results(probably) paying off all of them. You should have an analysis done because every situation is different and then you would be able to see in writing exactly what the MMA program would be able to do for you and your personal situation. There is no charge for the analysis. You have nothing to lose!

Ralph,

I will answer your question. For a mortgage with a balance in the amount of $100,000.00 and the term on the loan is for 360 months (30 yrs) with no other liabilitie’s and $0.00 dollars in discretionary income the loan would be paid of in 19.5 years and you would have saved $50,812.10. Now, that is if you are paid BI-WEEKLY. If you are paid WEEKLY then the savings for the same scenario would be 14.2 yrs and $72,753.96 in interest savings. If you are paid semi-monthly or once per month then the system apparently(based on what it told me) would not work for you. This is why we give analysis to determine the benefit because if there is not a benefit then UFF would not offer you the system, it does’nt matter if you were willing to spend $3500.00, $5000.00 or $15,000.00 on the system. You have to keep in mind that this system will “float” interest meaning it will compromise short term “Daily Interest for long term “Compounded Interest” using the line of credit. It will determine for you when and how much to distribute according the the “algorithms” that are built into the software.

Algorithm- any systematic method of solving a certain kind of mathematical problem. This is what you pay for! UFF has never claimed that this program is for everyone. Again that is why you need to have the analysis done to see exactly how and if it could benefit you and your own personal case. Something to keep in mind though is if the client doe’s not have any discretionary income they are certainly not going to be able to pay down the mortgage balance on there own for sure. So you can see that the answer to your question, how much is the result of c)in this case it is $47,312.10 after the investment of the software. If you need any further information I will be more than happy to assist you, just send me an email with the best time to contact you.

For Everyone,

I took Ron’s advice and requested from his company (Integra Mortgage) the FREE excel spreadsheet and did receive it via email in about 4 minutes. In the spreadsheet they are using $1014.73 dollars in extra payment every month applied to principle. Well I sent them another email requesting that they compute the spreadsheet with $0.00 dollars extra payment per month due to a lack of discretionary income and I have not heard back from them yet.

Furthermore, That spreadsheet has me a little confused.
1.They show a discretioinary income of $1000.00
2.They show an account with a balance of $3500.00 with a yield of 5.05% (dividend $14.72 per month)
3.The two combined equals the extra pmt of $1014.73 according to their spreadsheet.

The confusing part is the interest savings of $298,399.31 that his spreadsheet say’s that I would have saved and the reason I am confused is because if I made my original payments as scheduled according to my ammoritization schedule the total amount of interest would only be $231,676.37 so how can this save me the additional interest in the amount of $66,722.94?

Ron, can you shed some light on this for me?

also. as “insignificant” as it seems. For higher dollar amounts, but even for this one. That 14.73 in earnings is almost assuredly taxable, so using those numbers, just means that at some point, we’re going to have excess taxes that will probably be paid from the HELOC. THe concept, which may make sense (really a testament to that zero discretionary income spreadsheet no one seems to want to provide) is okay, but there are factors that the realistically “professional” salesperson really need to take into consideration.

Wow,

I am not sure that I understand you. Could you elaborate please?

All i meant to say is that people like to see things work down to the Penny. 14.73 is a pretty accurate number to be working with rather than 15 bucks.

What that means is, if you are going to be using accurate numbers, you ought to be considering all the factors. If that 14.73 was used as an expense to an investment for example, rather than paying additional principle, it would be tax deductible (assuming you were over your standard deductions, this makes a difference).

what that means is. 14.73 * .67 (assumin a 33% tax bracket), you can only set aside 9.87 to go towards your payment, because you will be getting a tax bill for 14.73 * .33 = 4.86

this is not a big number. But imagine it was $1000/mo in income from dividend paying stocks (i do not advise or recommend the market to an inexperianced investor, i am merely searching for 1000/mo taxable cashflow in this example).

That 1000/mo many would say is working much better for us to pay a 1000/mo interest only mortgage on an investment property rather than paying towards our principle residence. in the case of paying another mortgage, you have a deduction for your income. In the case of paying towards principle, you should only be sending 667 towards your mortgage (you could send the entire 1000 to negate interest charges, but when you have to pay the additional 333 in taxes, you will need to pay it out of your HELOC.

Theres plenty more, i will break it up into a second post to go into a few responses to other questions people have asked

I saw it asked “Wouldnt you prefer the long term security of a home paid off?”

this post is going to be a focus on the one word in that sentence i do not agree with. Security.

lets start off by clearing up that the banks cannot call your note due any time they want like they could in the 20′s, so having a mortgage doesn’t mean the bank can take your house. Only missing your payment can do that, and we have discretionary income above our payments in this case, so we cannot lose our homes.

okay, that aside, lets take a look:

There are three tests that rank top three for almost any “average” consumer when it comes to their money.

1. Safety (is it safe or can i lose some or all of it)
2. Liquidity (can i get to it if i need it without paying a lot for it)
3. Growth (is it growing. Takes money to make money right? not always, but okay, sure.

1. is your home equity safe? people say yes, almost always. consider this:

Brother A and B each have a $500K home. Brother A’s is paid off, brother B for simplicity, owes 100%. Lets also assume that brother B earns with the money the same 500K, the exact amount of his mortgage payment. This isn’t an argument about investments other than home equity, so lets worry about that for another time.

both brothers have the same outgoing cashflow to their mortgage from their own earned income (income they go to work to make).

Mr. Smith lives accross the street from Brother A and B and also has a 500K home, but he doens’t have a lot of discretionary income, in fact, he is having trouble making his payment (or something happens in his life and a change needs to be made) and he gets foreclosed upon, or needs to sell quickly to move etc.

becasue he only paid 200K for the home when it was built, he is okay with selling for 400K because he needs to move quick.

What happened to the Brothers.

Brother A has a home worth 400K, so does brother B, lets not try to hide anything here. But brother B has 500K in his investment earning his payment still.

If brother A needs 500K now to buy a house or move or anything, he needs to have another 100K stashed somewhere, because he cant pull 500K from his home.

Brother B already has the money. Its up to him what he wants to do with it. If he wants all 500K for something, he has it, no matter what happens to the market.

scenario 2 can be avoided for now as it relates to a natural disaster or anything of that nature. The most notable thing, Brother B always has complete control of his finances. Brother A has to ask the bank for his money, needs an income and good credit AT the time he asks for it.

(also a key item to note is that in an event such as Hurrican Katrina, your equity line will almost definately be frozen by the bank, so if you need to get the funds then….good luck. people couldn’t, and YOU wouldn’t be able to either.
[this has much more to do with number 2, liquidity, so I wont go further.]

number 2: LIQUIDITY
arguable the most important feature of your dollar.

again, assuming you have the funds in an account earning the same rate of interest as your mortgage, you have 100% liquidity, use and control of your money. Once you give it to the bank, HELOC or not, you may not have access. Helocs can be frozen for several reasons, again the example of many homeowners during hurrican Katrina who could not access their HELOCS to buy food, pay for gas, stay in a hotel etc. If that money is in an interest bearing account, you have complete control and liquidity.

number 3: Growth.

Many people do not understand that home equity does not grow. By paying into you mortgage, you deduce debt, but those extra equity dollars in the home do nothing in terms of growth. in other words, the appreciation of your property is not based on what you owe, only that value of your home. Again, home equity is a dollar that you have all the potential in the world to lose, but no possibility for it to grow.

NONE OF WHAT I HAVE SAID IS INTENDED TO SAY THAT NEGATING INTEREST FROM YOUR CASHFLOW IS BAD. I for one would much rather have an investment 100% under my control making my mortgage payment for me, that have my home paid off. I am in control of every dollar. I determine what goes where, when, and how. The bank does not dictate anything to me, not even the interest rates. (Banks don’t create those either guys. Its just a determination of what THEY get the money for and how much they need to charge to keep the lights on and the doors open)

Also, one thing that keeps coming up, over and over, is people are doing ROI calculations on the $3500 cost of the MMA.

Guys, the MMA program and a ROI calculation really ought to take into account the dollars that you are sending in extra. Yes it may help keep you disciplined paying extra dollars, but that isn’t ROI.

the ROI for the system should be how much it would save you in interest if you use it only for one purpose, timing your payment. Other than that, you are measuring a very subjective ROI based more on how disciplined you were before and after purchasing the MMA. (this is a good time for us to remember that the MMA program is simply letting us know what we should be doing, it isn’t creating money…that would be cool.)

I am still waiting for someone to explain to me how the exact dollar amount that you can send back to your HELOC during the month, paid on day 1 from the HELOC to the mortgage isn’t the best way? carrying a balance on the HELOC never seems like it would reduce interest, and if it did, we should just get the biggest one we can (which is a simple way we know that doens’t make sense)

Wow,
First off, Brother “A” has no mortgage in your scenario. That means he has $2916.00 a month ($35000.00 per year) liquid (assuming a 7.000% interest rate on brother B’s mtg) going somewhere other than his mortgage because he doesn’t have a mtg. Brother “B” on the other hand doe’s have a $2916.00 mtg pmt so he has to have an investment vehicle that is bringing him that kind of return on his money.
Second, The value of a person’s home is not determined by one guy across the street having to sell his property under duress. Now, let’s pretend that the real estate market doe’s take a broader downturn and the brother that has the mortgage is now upside down and will continue to have to make his mtg pmts on a property that is losing value so now he has to make a better return than he did before to offset that or liquidate some of the money in his investment account just to be able to sell the property to stop the loss.
Thirdly, When is the last time you had to borrow 500k? And if you truly understood lending when it comes to real estate you would understand that anybody with a home free and clear could borrow atleast up to 50% of that homes value even if they had the worst credit/ lowest income in the world. Brother “B” could not borrow against his home because it is leveraged out no matter what kind of impeccable credit or income he has.
lastly, Growth- If i have liquid money per month because I have no mortgage expense I can take that money and grow it in a number of different way’s and still have the security of knowing that no matter what I will still have a roof over my head. Something that you have not mentioned is what if the markets take a downturn and my 500k stock portfolio is curently in a drawdown period and what if I truly did need my 500k, but at the time that i need it the value on the account is only 450k? What happens then? Furthermore, unless you money is in your hand YOU are never in control of it.

Wow,

Regarding the comment for the banks keeping their lights on and the doors open.

That is a lot of lights and doors across the Nation not to mention the $500,000,000. million dollars that the CEO for Bank of America made last year.

Wow should read ‘The Creature from Jekyll Island’ to get aquainted with the fiat monetary system we have in place before he makes comments about ‘keeping the lights on and doors open’ LOL .. -J

Rich, I feel most of your response lacking one thing. having understood my comment before criticizing it.

for example. brother A has no mortgage, so he has 2916/mo,

brother B has a mortgage, 2916/mo paid for with the 500K he has in cash from his mortgage (from the earnings of course). This means that he has the exact same 2916 brother A MUST have as discretionary income IN ADDITION to the 2916 from his 500K. I made an assumption that he could earn the same 2916 from his investment, again not necessarily in the stock market. I am not debating this possibility as it really isn’t that relevant to the discussion. (assuming now that they have the same job and income)

The value of Joe Across the street, along with the value of ted and mary and james next door to the brothers and Joe IS what determines the value of the home. So, as is the case in many areas, if multiple sales are made at less than current values, the value of the homes will go down. (The reason for the decline is irrelevant because they will both move the same amount. it really doesn’t even matter, again it was a stated assumption to illustrate a fall in the market).

you said: “brother that has the mortgage is now upside down and will continue to have to make his mtg pmts on a property that is losing value so now he has to make a better return than he did before to offset that or liquidate some of the money in his investment account just to be able to sell the property to stop the loss.”

this makes no sense and has nothing to do with the situation. The point is that at any time, Brother B can take his 500K and pay off his mortgage and be exactly where brother A is. But if that isn’t in his best interest, if he has a better use for the money, if they have a need for liquid funds, he has it whereas brother A may not. Brother B does not need to do better on his investments because the property is losing value any more than brother A. that just doesn’t make sense.

Having put in my time at a mortgage bank, I know what it is to have to call someone, with a paid off home, or almost paid off home, who has poor credit and/or no income, and tell them their only option is limited to 50-60% of their equity and oh by the way that will be at 10-12% interest only ma’am, im very sorry to tell you. If they can qualify for that. Im sorry, but the bank doens’t want a note on your home with no payment. They want a payment from you income. people need to understand and frequently do not, a mortgage is a loan against your income, not your equity. You equity is simply what backs it up in case your income fails, that way the bank doesn’t get screwed.

you said: “Brother “B” could not borrow against his home because it is leveraged out no matter what kind of impeccable credit or income he has.”

That is non-nonsensical. Brother B already has the money. He wouldn’t need to leverage it. Its already under his control, so you’re point is moot.

you said “Growth- If i have liquid money per month because I have no mortgage expense I can take that money and grow it in a number of different way’s and still have the security of knowing that no matter what I will still have a roof over my head.”

This gets back to the beginning. you must remember, Brother B’s payment is paid by the 500K itself (in an assumed safe enviroment). Therefore the liquid money per month is something that they BOTH have. And both have the exact same security that they have a roof over their head. Brother A with no payment, and Brother B with his payment being made by his earnings on the 500K alone, and if he so chooses, at anytime, can pay off the home, although as this entire text is conveying, that wouldn’t make much sense.

Lastly to respond to your comment, i am not recommending the money be invested in the market. I am making the assumtion that the money is in a safe investment that can return the dollars necessary to pay the mortgage expense. Therefore, the value of the account being at 450K suddenly is a moot point as well. (although a good description of the trouble and timing should brother A need the funds and the market happen to be down).

Jason…do you really believe that banks are on a different set of rules when it comes to paying for the land, power, and employees to run their businesses than any other? you say that as if Bank of America can print more money to pay their bills.

To take what has been discussed a bit further, i think it is important to consider more the homeowner working to pay off his home, not just paid off vs 100% financed.

here is a simple example that might get some people thinking.

two people, lets have them be sisters so we can keep this example separate.

two sisters, same jobs, same everything, again same 500K home.

Both purchased with 20% down, but sister A on a 30 year loan, and Sister B on an interest only.

considering that other factors will come out in favor of sister B, i will ignore them for now and focus only on lets say 7 years down the line.

Sister A has sent extra payments to the bank and only owes 150K now, which Sister B still owes 400K (80% or 500K) and sent those extra payments to her safe, liquid accounts, which does not matter for this example).

If both Sisters Lose their Jobs, are in financial trouble, etc, and can not make their payments, lets take a look.

Simple questions. Who is better off. Sister A having sent all extra payments to the bank or sister B who has that money in a fund that can pay her payment.

Lets assume that neither can make their payments, even though sister B would be able to.

which home does the bank want first? the one worth 500K that they are only owed 150K or the one worth 500K that they are owed 400K. so who ends up in foreclosure first. And in the real world, who keeps on making their payment from their liquid accounts until times are better. Now, if you have a HELOC, that may work for a time, but your rate of interest, and how much you have access to on your heloc could be a problem. A 15K heloc with a payment of 2916 on your mortgage (remember its not payed off yet) means 5 months of payments to find a job, but then it means at that point, 15K in debt on the heloc (lets be honest that money would be missing from sister B’s side fund) but it means NO MORE ROOM on the HELOC.

so, is that the best thing to do. or would it be better to accumulate that money in the side fund, and pay it off instantly? the two best places to be in theory are 100% financed or paid off complete. if you owe 1% and you cant pay your payment. man is the bank okay with taking that equity. if you owe 100%, they will work with you even if you can only send them 300 bucks a month because its more than they would get by taking your house.

http://www.mortgageplannersonline.com/docs%5Cmarketingresourcecenter%5Chomeequity%5CHow%20The%20Affluent%20Manage%20Home%20Equity%20Article.pdf

take a look at this article and just look at the numbers when it comes to the mortgages. A key to remember is that you don’t need 8% in your investments to make it work, its just an example, and make sure you notice the honesty in that the interest only rate is well above the 15 year rate, and it still works out a lot better not paying the home down.

(i don’t agree with every statement in that article, but its a good place to start).

Update on the United First Financial Money Merge Account…

One of the top 5 banks in the country is going to be publicly ENDORSING the United First Financial Money Merge Account software. They are setting up a co-branded equity line for it, as well as funding a team of their people, trained in the program, to take phone calls.

We have now sold more than 10,000 of these, WITH a money back guarantee, with ZERO complaints in the Better Business Bureau.

Our new VP is a former executive of ING.

As for the MATH.. it DOES work. This is not a new concept. It has been around more than 12 years. The only thing that is new is that previously you had to do the math yourself… if you know how (see below to figure out if you would be able to do those calculations).

Now you can buy a software tool to do it for you. Could you roof you house yourself? Of course. Have you?

I can explain the Math to you so that you get it. I can also run you as many Analysis scenarios (backed by the money back guarantee), to show you that this does MORE than use your discretionary income. In fact, we can take someone that currently has $0 in discretionary income and still knock 8 to 11 years (on average) OFF their 30 year mortgage.

The State of Utah audited our company a few months ago and found that the EFFECTIVE interest rates for the helocs our clients were using was a little over 3%.

Does it make sense to borrow money at 3% to pay down a 6% loan?

See… you could take your current budget. Whatever your current discretionary income is, we can have you invest it somewhere else if you want… such as your 401K, your kids college fund, whatever. Then… with this program… we can still build equity in your house about 25-30% faster.

So why does it pay off faster even with ZERO discretionary dollars?

There are 3 concepts that drive this…

1 – Value of your stagnant – sitting around money. We all have thousands of dollars sitting in our checking account waiting to be spent. We can put the value of that money to work for you with this program.

2 – Open-ended heloc versus closed end mortgage. If you borrow $1 from a heloc @ 10% – you pay 10 cents if you pay that dollar back the last day of the year. But put it into a 30 year mortage at the beginning of the mortgage (first 10 years) it will save you $4 to $5 in interest over the life of that loan. Does paying 10 cents to save $4-5 sound like a good idea? So let us borrow against the value of your stagment money.

3 – Interest Cancellation. By treating your heloc like a checking account… and depositing income into it… you constantly drive down the average daily balance of that account. Primary mortgages are calculated on month end balance – helocs on average daily. If you borrow $1 at 10% interest… you only pay 10 cents if you pay it back the last day of the year. But what if you pay it back in 3 months or less? Then you are paying less than 3 cents in interest… and have an EFFECTIVE interest rate of less than 3%. By constantly washing your income through that heloc you achieve this lower effective interest rate.

See… even if you THINK you have $0 discretionary… this program uses the 3 concepts above to FIND money. Is it CREATING MONEY? Not really… But in a way you can look at it like that… because you would never be able to do the math it takes to find these nickels and dimes. And it is TRULY just nickels and dimes. But nickels and dimes add up to dollars… which applied to a 30 year mortage at the beginning of a mortgage… saves 4 to 5 times that amount in overall interest over the life of the loan.

All you have to do to understand this program is get someone to run an Analysis for you on numbers YOU understand. Then… use your own tools to see if you can beat the results (which would be guaranteed). If you CAN beat the Analysis… then you should not buy the software, unless you just want to save time. If you can NOT beat it… then it is a good investment for you. Of course… even if you can beat it… you will have to ask yourself if you really want to do that kind of math every month, month after month, year after year, when you could have just bought the right tool for the job.

Anyway… national PR campaign starting this month. Bank announcement next month. Soon everyone is going to know that this works, and it is NOT a scam. It is going mainstream. Those folks that have been voicing opinions on something they really do not understand might want to get up to speed for credibility reasons.

Most folks on this forum seem to have a braincell… and questions are well spoken and thoughtful… but on some of the OTHER forums and blogs- I have seen YAMS with more going on.

Anyway… if anyone is curious about their numbers…or just want to do an comparison …. I can run an Analysis for you.

Note…. there was one accurate statement I found on this blog by a skeptic. And that is that this program will not work for someone who constantly spends MORE than they make. But it does not appeal to those kinds of people. It appeals to smart money people who are a bit more disciplined.

Other NOTE: Do other strategies work too – YES! We never try to say that investing money other places is not a good idea. However like someone pointed out… most other investments carry varying amounts of risk. The thing with this it that it is SIMPLE and EASY.

If you can type NUMBERS IN BOXES and click a mouse… you can make this work… no math, 10 minutes a month, on average.

Best wishes…

407-697-8869
http://www.u1stFinancial4u.com

“One of the top 5 banks in the country is going to be publicly ENDORSING the United First Financial Money Merge Account software. They are setting up a co-branded equity line for it, as well as funding a team of their people, trained in the program, to take phone calls.”

Wells Fargo

There was a free seminar presented by Harj Gill, (creator of the mortgage accelerator concept) in Las Vegas this past Friday. Folks, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THE MMA PROGRAM. THEY SIMPLY COPIED MR. GILL’S CONCEPTS AND ARE CHARGING $3,500. Mr. Gill’s software (Speed Equity System) is virtually free and does the exact same!! The only difference is w/ MMA, you have to update the inputs more often because it operates like a check book. With Speed Equity, you simply give the software your budget and input your monthly HELOC statement everymonth. This automatically updates everything (even if you are off on your budgeted income and expenses). This is all simple math, there are no fancy math engines that make MMA special. Those of you thinking about doing the MMA program, you owe it to yourself to check out http://www.speedequity.com first. You can request to attend a free webinar this week, which is presented by Mr. Gill himself.

Could someone let me know how well the MMA program will work when I start out with a large balance in my HELOC. My understanding is that you can’t get a HELOC if you already have a 2nd mortgage. I’ll need to open the HELOC and immediately pay the $60K 2nd mortgage that I have.

The way I understand the program, you pay your 1st mortgage with a payment from the HELOC funds (say $3-5K), knock down the balance of the HELOC and start all over again.

What happens when the HELOC balance starts out high?

Tom – If you start with a large heloc balance, it will just take longer for the program to prompt you to pay extra to your first mortgage. It will wait until your heloc balance considerably low so as not to accrue unnecessary interest charges on the heloc. Be sure to get the right kind of heloc or it won’t work.

Todd – that’s cool. I hadn’t heard of this method at all until I got involved with MMA. But now I see several that work on the same idea. I say check them all out and decide which you like the best because the principle is sound and you will pay your mortgage off faster by using them. The only ones I would be leery of are the ones that require you you refinance your entire mortgage into a variable rate line of credit and using it as a revolving account. Not because I think it’s a scam, but because I think it has a greater potential for overspending and lack of discipline.

I checked out the website you posted but it doesn’t give a lot of info. Can you answer some of my questions? Is this a web-based program like the MMA or a disc sent to you? Can you use it for multiple properties at once or one property at a time? Can it be transfered to other properties after the first or do you have to pay again? Are there any monthly/yearly fees to pay? Is there a good visual of when your mortgage will be gone to help keep you on track?

For the record, some people may choose to update their MMA per transaction, but I do it once per month as I get my statement in. I just verify that my heloc and mortgage statements match my MMA numbers. Takes about 15 minutes per month.

Shari –
Here is what the Speed Equity system has: Web based w/ free updates; works for every type of mortgage; $29/year to use for however long you want; tells you exactly how much interest you will save and the year/month of payoff; tells you when to transfer from HELOC to primary; tells you how much money you should transfer to save the most interest; has what if scenarios built in; has graphs; built in budget to keep you on track; has an amortization schedule of current loan compared to that of Speed Equity; access to free seminars and webinars presented by Harj Gill; backed by the 3rd largest bank in the world; soon to be endorsed by a bank in the US to help provide clients w/ getting the right HELOC; endorsed by a producer of the NBC affiliate in Vegas (I know UFF thinks this station endorsed their product, but they did not, the Saving You Money team producer is using the Speed Equity system); online forum so you can chat w/ other users of the Speed Equity system to see how you can make the system work even better for a particular situation; and money more functions.

I’ll give you this, UFF did their homework by studying Harj Gill’s system when they developed MMA. It is essentially the exact same program. For my situation, it will take me 7.9 years to pay off my mortgage, all of my other debts, and the HELOC, and I will have saved $259,973 in interest (so this program will cost me a total of $232 – $29×8). Most MMA software updates (what if scenarios, true cost, graphs, full comparable amortization schedule ….) have been included in the Speed Equity system for years. I wonder where UFF got their ideas when they incorporated their updates (maybe they spend $29/year to keep an eye on Speed Equity??) Lastly, I don’t know this for fact, but I’ve been told that over 1,000 home owners in Las Vegas signed up for the Speed Equity program during the first week following Harj Gill’s free seminar on July 6. More and more by the day are begging for the information Harj provides, but he is only a one man show at this time. He does get some help from the producer of the NBC affiliate, but even more help is on the way. Mr. Gill has a plan, and his system will be a household name very soon.

If you were made aware of Speed Equity prior to MMA, compared the two, I think you would have chosen Speed Equity (unless you are in it for the money, then of course MMA is the way to go). This is a serious question, how long can UFF and their MMA product last at the current cost of $3,500 if the INVENTOR of this system has virtually the same product for nearly no cost? Once the word gets out even more about Speed Equity (and it will very, very soon) I just don’t see how UFF will continue doing business as usual.

Todd

Boy, the people pushing these MMA’s sure do put out a lot of misinformation. One guy said you’ll have perfect credit and never be late on your bills, that is simply a made up story as the UFF program doesn’t automatically pay any bills, including your mortgage.

Writing checks on your HELOC just means that instead of being able to spend all your available cash you can start spending your home equity as well. What a great idea, NOT.

It’s a waste of money and a waste of time. You can do better than it does by just paying down your mortgage every month with your leftover cash. If you are worried about running short then nothing is stopping you from getting a HELOC, just DON’T USE IT. The interest rates on HELOCs are sky high compared to most mortgages.

Sure are a lot of people trying to dress up a pig with some lipstick and sell it to suckers for $3500.

Don’t be dazzled by all the numbers they throw at you, most of the people promoting these systems are financial illiterates and don’t understand simple economic or accounting principles.

Run away from the people trying to sucker you into these schemes.

Henry,

You’re confused. “One guy said you’ll have perfect credit and never be late on your bills, that is simply a made up story as the UFF program doesn’t automatically pay any bills, including your mortgage.” OF COURSE it doesn’t pay bills for you. You always have control of your money. And the credit building technique isn’t required but used by customers simply by paying their expenses on a credit card and, since one of the keys is keeping your money in the HELOC for as long as possible, and paying it in full every month using the same money they would have used originally.

Henry you said “writing checks on your HELOC just means that instead of being able to spend all your available cash you can start spending your home equity as well. What a great idea, NOT.” .. well duh there. No one is promoting the idea to spend all of the money on your HELOC. That is certainly not something the software program would have you do. The HELOC is merely the vehicle that drives the program and only lets you leverage money, in calculated amounts, sent to the primary mortgage and all is based on how much income you deposit into it, etc. You need to learn more about the program rather than make these childish comments.

You said “You can do better than it does by just paying down your mortgage every month with your leftover cash.” Uh.. the typical borrower already knows they can send extra payments to principle but do they have that extra money? Alot of people do not. And the program works WITHOUT spending extra money (that you cannot recover without refinancing – which is the cost of the program right there for some).

You said “The interest rates on HELOCs are sky high compared to most mortgages.” and if you knew anything about the product you’d know that the interest is based on average daily balance.. and the interest is not a fixed rate such as with a conventional mortgage.. the ACTUAL interest you pay on the HELOC varies but is MUCH lower than you are paying now.

You said “Sure are a lot of people trying to dress up a pig with some lipstick and sell it to suckers for $3500.” which is a clever statement but no substance or evidence to back up such a blanket statement. You should run for office!

You said “Don’t be dazzled by all the numbers they throw at you, most of the people promoting these systems are financial illiterates and don’t understand simple economic or accounting principles.”… what like YOU, Henry?

You said “Run away from the people trying to sucker you into these schemes” .. well I’d ask the satisfied customers what they think as well. I don’t hear them complaining.. only people like you are ARE NOT AWARE OF HOW THIS WORKS!

Ignorance abound..

Todd – thanks for all the info on the Speed Equity System. It is almost identical to the money merge account as you said. Why has it taken so long for it to be known? If Harj Gill has been around for years, you would think that more people would have heard of him. I know he is only one person, but he must have been lacking something in his product to prevent him from being mainstream.

I’ve never seen the Speed Equity System but I have seen the Money Merge Account and I have also seen the Saving You Money Team’s clip from the NBC Affiliate out of Vegas. The system they are showing is most definitely the Money Merge Account. It shows the name and it’s identical to the first version of the software that I had (before the last upgrade). It even says that it costs $3500. They do show a book saying that the original idea came from Australia – is that Speed Equity? Was he not known in the US because he is Australian and wasn’t promoting the product over here?

Either way, the idea of using a heloc as a checking account to accelerate your mortgage payoff without changing your spending habits is awesome. If I had heard of Speed Equity first I may have purchased it instead, but I am very pleased with my MMA. The agent who sold us the system is wonderful and has been helpful and professional every step of the way. I hope UFF has more agents like him, because he is a great representative for their company.

Shari
I believe Harg Gill introduced his product in the United States in 2002. He is very well known in Australia and Europe, where he first introduced his concepts in 1995. I don’t know why he has not aggressively taken his product to the mainstream in the U.S. I think he knows the success UFF is having w/ their product and maybe feels he is partially responsible for it, (since UFF used his concept). All I can tell you, Speed Equity will be a household name very soon. Harj Gill is working behind the scenes to empower people about his concepts. Major financial institutions endorse his products (another major endorsement may be coming soon). It is growing like wild fire. Since March 2006, UFF has around 15,000 customers scattered about the U.S. Since July 2007, Harj Gill has over 1,000 customers in one city alone! People are begging to belong to his newly created forum. This week alone, Harj is presenting three free advanced training sessions for his members. Regarding the Saving You Money Team’s clip from the NBC Affiliate out of Vegas, only the first clip was about the MMA product. If you watched the other 4 clips, they were distancing themselves from MMA and the producer is now helping Harj Gill promote Speed Equity. I know this because the producer attends the free online webinars and describes his situation w/ the product. Yes, both Speed Equity and MMA are very good programs. If you are not interested in selling MMA (becoming an agent) and just want to pay off your existing mortgage and other debts, then Speed Equity seems to be the logic choice. If you feel you can benefit from selling MMA and turn around a profit, then MMA is for you.

Todd,

The reason that Harj’s business has exploded in Las Vegas was because of the scam that was perpetrated on the viewers of KVBC. The Saving You Money Team reporter did the story on Money Merge Account and knew it. He even closes the broadcast by saying that he has been “test driving” the program himself along with two other reporters. Then, lo and behold, Harj pops up in subsequent broadcats and the reporte says whoa, don’t spend $3500, we’ll get it for you for free, just e-mail us. Harj got thousands of free leads because UFirst agents directed their prospects to the news station website and then KVBC pulled a bait and switch.

Harj is not the eventer of the concept. The National Bank of Australia came out with the idea over 20 years ago; long before Harj Gill. In the UK Virgin and Royal Bank of Scotland rolled out the (Virgin) One Account in 1997… I don’t think Harj Gill was at the Board meeting.

UFirst has never alleged that they originated the concept. The algorithms in the software are unique and proprietaty to UFirst and were not copied from anyone. There are many ways to skin a cat and math is math. If I want the answer “10″ I can multiply, divide, subtract, add. I can use many different starting numbers and still get the answer of ten: 2×5, 3+7, 15-5.

You can go with Speed Equity if you like, but I promise you that you will not get the customer support and coaching that you’ll get from UFirst and the UFirst guys haven’t been embroiled in the numerous lawsuits Harj has. There is an old expression that goes like this: “You get what you pay for.”

Todd,

I forgot to mention that Jim Snyder from KVBC is helping Harj Gill is that he let it slip in one of the subsequent broadcasts to the original story on MMA that he had a vested interest in Harj’s success.

I thought reporters were supposed to report, not get paid as a lead generator.

Why has Harj been in so many lawsuits?? Is it because of a defective product? I just placed an order to see what it does and compare the two and I haven’t received the online software or anything other than a mailing list he is sending and two copies of his book last week of August… so I wonder if he just didn’t take my money for his “defense fund” .. maybe Todd can elaborate??

Typo in my earlier posts. Harj is not the INVENTOR. KVBC did the original story on MMA and implied the $3500 fee was a value considering the $300,000+ savings the subject homeowner was to achieve. In the “subsequent” broadcasts Jim Snyder in effect bashes the idea that someone else is trying to make money from Harj’s concept. If Jim Snyder was on Speed Equity from the start, why even do a piece about MMA? It seems as though there was an agenda and not investigative journalism.

Oh, by the way, I think someone else created “math” and it was before Harj Gill’s time.

I believe the lawsuit has to do w/ his divorce and the rights to his software property. To get around the rights to his software, his wife, (or ex wife) appears to have renamed her version High Speed Equity system. I don’t believe Jim Snyder is the one helping Harj (maybe he is, but not publicly), rather it is Jim Snyder’s producer. Bryan, you are absolutely correct in stating “There are many ways to skin a cat and math is math. If I want the answer “10″I can multiply, divide, subtract, add. I can use many different starting numbers and still get the answer of ten: 2×5, 3+7, 15-5.” That is why I chose to pay $29 per year for Speed Equity (total $232) and you paid $3,500 for MMA. Why? Jason, if you give me your numbers that you had ran for your MMA analysis, I will plug them into the Speed Equity and post the results here. You don’t even have to tell me the result of your MMA analysis prior to knowing what the results are from Speed Equity. If you really want, I can send you your Speed Equity “analysis” via email, just so you don’t thing I’m full of it. If you save more than $3,000 w/ MMA vs. Speed Equity, you did the right thing, but if you did not, I would hope you would be honest and post the results. When I compared the two for myself, the payoff date was the same, 7.9 years. Again, Speed Equity, like MMA, tells you exactly when to make a lump sum payment, you can see the results in real time and it keeps you on the right path, sort of like a dashboard in a vehicle :) I agree w/ Shari, no matter what side of the fence you stand on this issue (Speed Equity or MMA), the concept is great!

Todd,

The Speed Equity system uses an HSBC account accoring to the website. Is there a specific name of this equity line they have or is it just HSBC’s basic HELOC? Also, as Jason V states, the site offers the software and books to be delivered in August, but no phone numbers to follow up on or e-mail that works in order to find out when you would actually get the software to use for comparison purposes. Any idea how to contact them?

Todd,

Before I get the numbers please give a contact for Harj because I ordered the software book bundle and I have not received the software!!

Jason

Was you credit card account charged? If so, you should have received an email w/ your access codes. Check your spam mail as well. According to the bulk emails I receive from Harg Gill, he still has over 300 orders to set up and he is in federal court this week. It appears he is nearly done w/ his court issues and was awarded to receive his property rights back as of yesterday. I don’t have any contact info for HG, but you may have luck trying info@speedequity.com or enews@speedequity.com. If those don’t work, sign up for one of his free webinars and ask him personally. Hundreds of people sign up to these webinars, so I would think somebody could help you out. Or, I’m sure you could find the contact info for HG by contacting KVBC.

Todd,
I am a strong proponent of “free enterprise.” The more competitors the merrier. Let the public decide. You chose speed equity. That’s great. I have nothing against someone having a product and marketing it successfully based on its own merits.

I do take issue with scams,lies and deceit. Harj Gill is portraying himself as the inventor of the concept, which is false. HSBC is giving away Harj’s book because he struck a strategic alliance with them to give them loan business, not because they recognize him as the “guru.” KVBC had no business doing a story on a MMA homeowner, reporters saying that they were on the product themselves and then promoting/endorsing another product. At the time Harj Gill was on the sequel broadcasts, he was still entangle in legal matters and had no business being on TV. He is still selling “Vaporware” since he has not officially gotten the legal right to sell his product.

In addition, you mentioned in a previous post that Harj is “a one man show.” So, what about customer service? Follow up? The product actually being delivered?

If you really are looking for price, there are guys all over the internet offering something “just like the MMA” for as little as $99. As a matter of fact, you can contact blogger Ralf from Integra Mortgages who has a “free” product that does the same thing.

Haven’t you wondered how he can charge so little? I mean, I can buy something just like MS Office for $79 at Office Depot, but it isn’t the same, no matter what the box says. C’mon Todd, you sound like a smart guy, use a little common sense, heh?

Bryan

All I can say at this time is Speed Equity WILL be a household name soon. I wish I could elaborate more at this time, but negotiations are still taking place from what I understand. Like I said in my previous post, I will gladly run your numbers so you can see just how my “$79 MS Office” software compares to MMA. I hope one of you UFF agents will afford me this opportunity. It was even for me, 7.9 years for both.

Regarding Speed Equity, I just want my product or I am reversing the charge on Friday that’s all I know!! I ordered on Monday and no email replies to my requests for an explanation. This product isn’t legit it appears. I’d sue him but he’s already gonna be broke after this lawsuit… this stuff happens all the time with people who are so full of themselves they peddle a product, get arrested, and you never hear from them again and even continue to have a cult following from blogs their leader writes from jail, (see the Dorean Group) on and on..

I’m just angry in my above post but I’m pissed.. but eh.. for all I know Todd IS Harj (or wife!) – LOL

Ah, the power of Google.

Gill v. American Mortgage Educators Inc et al
Plaintiff: Harjit Gill
Defendant: American Mortgage Educators Inc, Lisa Jane Rosenberger, Perfecto Bobadilla and Robert Rosenberger

AND GUESS WHAT? Lisa Rosenberger sells her product at this website (for a price of $250 or a CD VERSION ON JULY 27, 2007 for $350) ..

the link to the OTHER product can be found if you click my name above

I’d be pissed to if you were actually charged and did not receive the software access. Jason, your right. I think Lisa may be his wife (or ex). Last week she titled her software “High Speed Equity” system. They are the exact same thing, and this is what is being litigated in the federal court. Harj just won a battle and has received all the rights to his property from american mortgage educators. If you ordered a book from Harj, I would think you should be receiving it any day since it is now his sole possession. Jason, the Speed Equity system is ligit, Just like MMA is ligit. Provide me contact information and I’ll show you the Speed Equity software and plug in your numbers. After all, it is just simple math.

Thanks Todd. But I just want my software at this point. I can handle the rest – thanks!

Todd,

You said the payoff date is the same. Did you know that depending on the timing of the transfers you can pay off in the same time but still pay more in interest?

I don’t need a side by side comparison w/ Speed or Hi-Speed or 5th Gear or Rollin’ down the hill Equity. I will tell you the fundamental difference:
The founders of UFirst have never been in a lawsuit and they started this company to make a difference in peoples lives, not just make a buck.
What $3500 buys you is customer service and free upgrades for life. There is no way for $250 that Harj can offer any sort of customer service. Not to mention that he is recruiting “agents.” How on earth is there any money to pay someone a commission on so little revenue?

The bottom line is that, so far, there is nothing to show for all of Harj’s hype. In many of the articles I have read about him, he is touted as a “consumer advocate.” What kind of consumer advocate is in constant “pre-launch” mode for a product? He had no business doing seminars, appearing on the news or taking any money whatsoever until his legal todos were finished. I believe you when you say Speed Equity will be a household name… just like ENRON.

While I would easily agree that this program works.. I remember when you mentioned that the payoff dates matched. This is fine and dandy but since the money-back guarantee is based on those numbers , it is purposely a conservative estimate..and many are on pace to pay off (I’m reading the latest Broker Banker article this month on United First Financial) 20% sooner! So WOW.

I think Bryan pretty much justified why I am happy with MMA. Todd, the program may work better than what homeowners are currently doing (paying min pymnt every month as most of us do) and also utilizes the HELOC to accomplish the amazing results when we put our money to work for us.. but I don’t see the customer service, clean track record, and 20% faster payoff time potential, money-back guarantee, and let me repeat – customer service!! that only United First Financial provides Todd!

Keep it coming, that’s all fine and dandy. Like I previously posted, there is a master plan taking place as I write. Just be sure to tune in to CNBC in the upcoming months. Read the upcoming issues in Money Magazine. Keep an eye on Bank of America. Take interest in Suzy Orman and Microsoft Money. May want to glance at the web site of the National Association of REALTORS in the near future. No stones are being left unturned. WOW!

Todd, are you anticipating this will create a business opportunity for distributors or what (how when then product is so cheap)? And where are you getting this information because the webinars were cancelled this week due to Harj’s court appearance and the newsletters mention none of this… and I still have no software or login info and NO RESPONSE TO MY EMAILS the speed quity emails (I’ve tried them all).. hmmm…

What I see is a company I can work for, United First Financial, (and get paid well for) AND HELP PEOPLE (not “help”) but actually HELP PEOPLE GET OUT OF DEBT AND IMPROVE THEIR QUALITY OF LIFE. That’s awesome. No other product can offer this…

Hmmm, that’s funny, I attended his live 2 hour webinar last night.

Why did I just get an email from him yesterday that the webinars had to be cancelled (even states 7/18)??

I’ll be on tonights then

Tonights may be cancelled, you’ll have to just check around 7pm. I beleive the topic (case study) will be covering multiple investment properties. There were a couple UFF agent lurkers attending last night. You be sure to give Harj hell.

Todd, now I’m skeptical again.. you said yesterdays was not cancelled when I have an email that states it was and now tonights will be cancelled? And I don’t care about multiple investment properties.. I don’t have ‘em – I NEED MY FRIGGIN LOGIN INFO OR I’M RESCINDING MY ORDER I PLACED ON MONDAY
!!

I just filed a complaint via PayPal since Speed Equity sure ain’t speedy and hasn’t delivered with the “inventor” Harj Gill bogged down in a lawsuit..

Jason V,

I would contact your credit card company and dispute the charges. Harj is BROKE. The books are on backorder because he has no money to print them. He has zero people in “customer support.” He has zero financial backing. I am curious about all of these strategic alliances Todd seems to have so much inside scoop on. Sounds like someone’s selling wolf tickets.

Here’s how the Speed program works: This came from a real person on his webinar (which had about 1,000 people on it)…to digress for a minute: how do you answer questions from 1000 people on a webinar? Anyway, here was the question: There was a guy who said he had 2 years worth of income as his available line of credit- how much should he transfer to the first mortgage? The answer: 2 months worth of income. If the guy makes $10,000/month that would be $20,000 from the HELOC. If he has only $200 in discretionary income, that means it would take him 100 months to pay back the HELOC. That formula is a recipe for disaster.

TRUTH- MMA is the ONLY mortgage accelerator software that is DYNAMIC and uses proprietary algorithms to determine the precise dollar amount and timing with zero risk.

Better yet, file your complaint w/ the BBB! That way there will be a paper trail left behind.

Jason V.,

You are wise to cancel. Harj is BROKE. He has no financial backing and personally can’t support his business. The books are back ordered because he can’t afford to have them printed. His customer support staff: ZERO. His IT Dept. staff: ZERO.

I wonder where Todd is getting this inside scoop on all of Harj’s new strategic alliances. Sounds like someone’s selling wolf tickets.

A real prospect on on e of Harj’s webinars asked how much he should transfer from his HELOC if the HELOC was equal to two years income. Harj told him 2 months. Now, if his income was $10,000/mo. then he would transfer $20,000. Now presume that his discretionary income is only $200. That means that it would take him 100 months to pay down the HELOC using that method. THAT is a recipe for disaster.

MMA is the ONLY mortgage acceleration software that uses strategic proprietary algorithms to take variable situations into consideration and give the homeowner the most optimal results with ZERO Risk.

He probably was talking about the initial injection. The initial injection is $2,000 to $3,000 greater than your monthly net income. Regarding subsequent injections, the software does not recommend you spend more than 30% of HELOC in finance charges for ultimate results. The software accounts for every variable and adjusts the payoff balance accordingly. As soon as you make a withdraw from the HELOC, your payoff balance changes. As soon as you make a deposit, your payoff balance changes. If you decide to spend $5,000 on a vacation, the software calculates the true cost of how that $5,000 effects the payoff and the added interest to the mortgage. The what if scenarios are great. I really like the side by side comparison of the amortization schedule too. It’s really an ah-haw moment to see just how much you are saving. Bryan, I just hope he finds a way to make enough money to keep his business alive because I find the software very helpful. I guess I could always purchase the CD version from his ex if something happens to him. But, I’d probably just fork out the $3,500 and not have any worries. Jason, you know what you should do, since it appears your being screwed by Harj, go buy his ex’s CD version and you can always compare MMA w/ theirs. Maybe you’ll have a perspective client say to you, I’ve heard of that Harj guy and he says I can do the same thing for about $200. You would be equiped w/ that handy dandy CD, plug in the numbers, and tell your prospective client, hell no, here is the $3,300 difference…. I hope I’m not confusing any of you. Jason, if you provide your personal email, I will send you something you will like.

Jason – Thursday night seminar is a go. 7-9 PST. I hope you get your situation cleared up. If not, there will be over 500 people listening, so sound off (write off in this case)

He finally sent the email with login information!

I love how people always say “You don’t have to pay $3500 bucks if you can do it yourself” Really, then I ask you–do you cut your own hair?do you mow your own lawn? do you do your own taxes? do you eat fast food or go out to dinner?

All of these things you could do on your own, right?

But you don’t..why? Because it is easier for us to put these things in the hands of professionals. People that do it for a living and you can trust them to take care of your needs.

Another question, have you spent $3500 on the things above? Not in a lump sum, but over the course of your life, have you done that? I’d say yes. And what have you gotten from all of those things…maintenance. You keep paying over and over again.

With the MMA you pay $3500 for a program you will have for LIFE…Let’s say you live for 50 years, do the math…$6 a month. What?? That’s a Whopper Meal, supersized with a Coke and onion rings people…I love it, but I’ll take the software and lose a little bit of flubber in the meantime :)

Oh…I’ve been on the program for 8 months and I love it. I sleep well at night know that I got ripped off for 3500 bucks and I know that I was projected to payoff in 7.8 years and now I open up my account and I see I am going to pay off in 7.3 years…that really sucks. Before I got into the program, I was on pace to pay off the house in 28 years!
BTW, I could also lose weight by running around the block everynight…instead I go to the gym and have a personal trainer. But I’m wasting money there too…but I still love Whoppers :)

Actually…I was wrong. Don’t do the program. Do it yourself, pay off your house in 8 years, and have fun crunching numbers and trying to find a way to do this the most EFFECTIVELY.
Meanwhile I’ll use my $3500 program and just punch in my numbers and let it do the work…just like I do when I get off my fat behind and step up to the counter and order an extra value meal instead of making some fresh burgers at the house for more than half the cost…

Could someone please answer me this.

I keep reading that even if you have ZERO extra money per month, you will still pay off you mortgage sooner.

how can you do this?

Lets say I owe 180k at 6% on a 30 yr fixed and I am at the first payment on year 4.

I make 4k per month and spend 100% of it every month. How much sooner will I pay my mortgage off?

Lets now say I have 500 dollars extra every month? Now how much sooner will I pay my mortgage off?

If I just sent the 500 dollars to my mortgage company myself every month would I pay it off in the same amount of time vs using the MMA program?

Please help. I don’t understand how you can pay off your mortgage sooner without any extra money.

Sean, here’s an explanation from appleday over at fat wallet:

So why does it pay off faster even with ZERO discretionary dollars?

There are 3 concepts that drive this…

1 – Value of your stagnant – sitting around money. We all have thousands of dollars sitting in our checking account waiting to be spent. We can put the value of that money to work for you with this program.

2 – Open-ended heloc versus closed end mortgage. If you borrow $1 from a heloc @ 10% – you pay 10 cents if you pay that dollar back the last day of the year. But put it into a 30 year mortage at the beginning of the mortgage (first 10 years) it will save you $4 to $5 in interest over the life of that loan. Does paying 10 cents to save $4-5 sound like a good idea? So let us borrow against the value of your stagment money.

3 – Interest Cancellation. By treating your heloc like a checking account… and depositing income into it… you constantly drive down the average daily balance of that account. Primary mortgages are calculated on month end balance – helocs on average daily. If you borrow $1 at 10% interest… you only pay 10 cents if you pay it back the last day of the year. But what if you pay it back in 3 months or less? Then you are paying less than 3 cents in interest… and have an EFFECTIVE interest rate of less than 3%. By constantly washing your income through that heloc you achieve this lower effective interest rate.

See… even if you THINK you have $0 discretionary… this program uses the 3 concepts above to FIND money. It is truly just nickels and dimes. But nickels and dimes add up to dollars… which applied to a 30 year mortage at the beginning of a mortgage… saves 4 to 5 times that amount in overall interest over the life of the loan.

I am confused about how this concept works with zero discetionary income. I have seen the post that Robert submitted, but it still does not make sense.

I even had a UFF agent run the numbers for me and I pay my 30 year mortgage off in in 14.5 years. Unfortunately the agent could not give me an explanation of how it works except for saying the same thing Robert posted.

I am really interested in the concept, but could someone please show me on paper how this concept works with zero discretionary income.

Justin,
Maybe this will help:

Assume that you make $5,000 net income per month. Let’s say that you use a credit card to pay all of your bills during the month (you probably cannot pay all, but most). Let’s assume all of those bills run up to $5,000. You have nothing left (ZERO discretionary income).

Now, let’s (for analogy purposes) deposit your income into a 1% savings account with interest compounding daily instead of a 0% checking account like most Americans have.

OK. Beginning of the month. You deposit your paycheck into the savings account. You pay all of your bills using the credit card.

Middle of the month. You deposit another paycheck. Now this money is earning interest compounding daily.

Beginning of month 2: you deposit another paycheck. It is now adding principal on top of principle on top of the interest. You pay your bills on the credit card again.

Middle of the month. You deposit your paycheck again. You pay your credit card for the balance owed on month 1. No finance charges assessed (maybe some airline mileage points accrued).

Technically, if you perpetuate the float of the credit card and deposit your income this way, it is the equivalent of putting the starting $5,000 in the bank and leaving it there to compound. Over 30 years the interest gained would be about $1,750

Now, that’s nothing to shout about considering taxes and inflation, but the point is that you captured the time-value of your money. It is as-if you created $1,750 without having any original principal to save. Now imagine being able to cancel interest at a rate of 6%– That is equivalent to your $5,000/month paying down over $30,000 in mortgage interest over the life of the loan.

One additional principal: Your monthly bills are your monthly bills. If you get paid weekly, you get 4 extra pay periods a year. If you get paid bi-weekly the an extra 2 pay periods. If you didn’t indiscriminately spend that money, then that becomes “discretionary income” as well.

Hope that makes sense.

Ralf, Sean & Justin

You cannot pay off your mortgage faster without any discretionary income. The MMA is only generating a very, very tiny amount of “extra” money by running all your transactions through the Heloc. If you put all your income in a can as you are paid, and then pay all your monthly expenses including the mortgage out of this, and then simply send in any additional income you have when you feel comfortable, you will come out ahead of the MMA. The reason why is because the MMA will cost you $3,500 plus the interest on the Heloc; a cost you don’t otherwise have. The magic use of the HELOC won’t generate enough income to overcome all the costs. I am not on the program, and I don’t have to be to understand that it isn’t worth much, unless you want to buy a system to remind you to do what I’ve already described above. Also, the timing and amount of extra funds you send to your mortgage per the system is relatively insignificant, compared with doing it on your own. The large amounts of time and money you can save on your mortgage are very possible, but whatever you do, you’re still going to be footing almost all of the cost yourself by finding ways to cut your expenses. A big push with this program is that you don’t have to change your standard of living, however many supporters right here in these posts admit that it only works with discretionary income. This is coming from someone who was also interested in finding out how this program could work. I have no other interest here besides providing clear factual information. For more info on why the HELOC is almost useless, read the posts by thetruthbetold on the UFF thread on Scam.com.

Chris,

I just love blogs. Do you know that if you go to a website like bankrate.com they have numerous articles by “experts” that all have differing opinions about a topic, such as whether it is even better to pay down your mortgage faster at all. All of them have degrees up the wazoo and have numerous years of experience in their fields.

It’s amazing the variety of opinions by people with no identity and no background other than what they read on another blog!

UFirst never claims that this is a cookie cutter solution for everyone. I have done numerous analysis’ and the program is not beneficial for some. For a few, paying extra to their mortgage is better than MMA, for most, the MMA beats anything else out there hands down.

Chris = doesn’t know what he’s talking about!

Chris,

I have been researching MMA for about a month now and I am still somewhat undecided about the software. I have seen the thread from truthbetold, which you mentioned and seen many other threads of people bashing MMA. Yet, not one person that has used the program has complained openly on forums or to the BBB.

I dont know how factual these numbers are, but I keep seeing between 8,000-10,000 units being sold on blogs. If these numbers are true and their have been zero complaints, how bad can it be. In fact it almost seems too good. Can you come up with any reasoning for MMA having zero complaints with this many users?

By the way thanks for the anagolgy Bryan, but I am still not 100% clear.

The above posts from Bryan and Jason V don’t surprise me at all. I am not bashing them or the MMA, yet they begin by bashing me. Here are some of the common statements I see made about the program and why they are in error.
1. And I doubt some free spreadsheet is as easy to use as the MMA software. I HATE MATH!
Jason V @ 1:00 pm June 26th, 2007
You don’t need a spreadsheet to beat the MMA. Just do what I outlined in my first post.

2. The UFF software will save you way more money than if you took every penny of your discretionary income and threw it at your mortgage. For one of my clients… the software beat the scenario of throwing every penny of their discretionary income at their mortgage by SIX years and $48,000. That is HUGE… and while I would never say that a super smart math person could not get close – if they knew how to do the math… 99% of us could not without this tool.
Benjamin @ 2:48 pm June 28th, 2007

The above statement is simply not true. You will beat the system by throwing the same amount of your discretionary income at your mortgage that you would in the MMA, and you don’t need to be smart at math at all to do it. I will elaborate on this below.

3. Ralf if you are one of those people who wants to know every variable in the program, basically figuring out the program’s secrets (no one will) then you will be on the fence for quite a while. Good luck.
Jason V @ 8:37 am June 29th, 2007

Sorry, there are no secrets to the program.

And for all the spreadsheet gurus… I don’t care who you are. MMA will beat your formulas – 99% of the time. And I can depend on the program. The only naysayers are the ones who aren’t on the program. Just my opinion through careful observation.
Jason V @ 9:29 am June 29th, 2007

Again, you don’t need a spreadsheet, and you don’t need formulas. What I outlined in my first post will beat the MMA 100% of the time.

Justin, zero complaints from users, proves nothing about what the program actually does and doesn’t do for you. A lot of things appear to be “as good as it gets” until you finally come to terms with all of the details. The reason they are claiming that the program beats what you can do on your own is because they are misleading you about your monthly and discretionary income. The software assumes your monthly income is 4 times your weekly income but when it actually applies the income to your loan balance they use the correct number, which is 52 times your weekly income divided by 12. The reason they do this is to understate your discretionary income so it doesn’t look like much money out of pocket. They use a higher discretionary income than they print on their analysis form, which make you think their system is far better than just paying the same extra amount on your own.

Chris,

I don’t know how you sleep at night. First of all, I never “bashed” you. I simply stated that the so called experts even have varying opinions on financial matters, so a blogger is just another person with an opinion. I wonder why you find that offensive.

In addition, your statements are downright lies. How can you make a statement that presumes someone is a liar about how they represent their product when you weren’t there? If Benjamin, for example, did a comparison of the MMA analysis and a mortgage calculator with extra payments and found the MMA to outweigh the direct payments, then who are you to say that that is not true?

It’s okay to be skeptical. It’s okay to have a contrary opinion and it’s okay if you don’t buy a MMA. But making character assassinations means that you lack character. You said you weren’t bashing anyone or the program but hypocritically make comments that imply we are confusing the truth to get people to buy something they don’t need.

The truth is that people overspend their budgets. People are beholden to debt because they can’t break the cycle. People regularly overdraw their checking accounts because of Debit Cards. As a country we have a negative savings rate for the first time since the Great Depression. Only about 8% of homeowners make extra principal payments on a continual basis.

I HAVE ONE QUESTION FOR YOU CHRIS AND EVERYONE ELSE THAT MAKES THE ASSERTIONS YOU HAVE:
Other than sitting at a computer blogging about how we are somehow selling snake oil, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO CHANGE THE FINANCIAL CLIMATE IN THIS COUNTRY FOR THE BETTER???

Chris simply put – you don’t know what you are talking about. You make assertions without really knowing WHY a HELOC leveraging the banks money is used in addition to discretionary income to pay off your mortgage in as little as a THIRD of the time. Simply sending your discretionary income to your mortgage principle is a lifestyle change in that you can never get that money BACK (unless you refi)! But you are missing that discretionary AND leveraging the banks money on your line of credit is also KEY! Do you not see the advantages in creating a valuable liquid investment when you use a HELOC with the Money Merge Account and have money available to you at all times and the benefits that are enjoyed when paying your mortgage FIRST and then paying bills (and taking into consideration floating money)? Can you do this without any spreadsheet and pay off as quick as you would via Money Merge Account by simply sending in discretionary once a month? LOL – most of the time.. NO!

You simply don’t understand bank products NOR how finance works and YOU are not able to pay off your mortgage in as little as we are without sending extra money out of your checking and NEVER getting it back unless you REFI!

You use your paycheck to offset interest calculation and you just pay your bills as usual! NO LIFESTYLE CHANGES! People are reluctant to send in all their extra money because WHAT IF THEY NEED IT!!

Instead of refinancing and rolling over thousands in fees to get into MORE debt..we are offering this product for $3500 and rolled into the HELOC to get you OUT of debt .. basically you use the banks money to pay for it and most people recoup this cost in 3-5 months.

Chris! PAY ATTENTION to the principles of using a HELOC and the CAM mortgages in Australia, etc. YOU CANNOT DO THIS WITHOUT A HELOC if you don’t want any lifestyle changes!!

Jason V,

I’m well aware of everything you are saying and it does not change a thing. Yes, I can do exactly what you are saying and still come out ahead of the program, and I can do this without a HELOC. If you are paying down your mortgage faster, it is coming almost completely from lifestyle changes. The money you are saving by using the HELOC(which is also offset by the price of the software) is a tiny, tiny amount and it has little relation to the large amounts of interest you are saving on your home.
Who cares what they are doing in Austrailia. The standard fixed loan there is 1 to 5 years-maybe 15 at best, and the interest rates are higher as well.

Bryan

I sleep great at night knowing that I share exactly how the system works as opposed to the alternative, and I don’t have anything to hide. What I have said has nothing to do with character assassination. I haven’t told anyone not to use the program. If that is what they decide to do, then that is there choice.

Different points of view from investment professionals with degrees up the wazoo also has no bearing on what we are talking about. What I have outlined is not a matter of opinion. The numbers in the program are being fudged. They are right when they say that it is just math. It is math, but it is not complicated, and the math argument can be used both ways when it is used fairly.

I don’t need to be “there” every time an analysis is done to know that the program will not “outweigh the alternative of direct payments”.

To help change the financial climate in this country, I provide fair, honest information so others can make educated decisions. This is far better than saying nothing at all. Sometimes I lead courses on debt and budgeting, and they are always free. There seems to be a real misconception out there that somehow consumer debt is expected and unavoidable. That is a myth. Here is some advice that a lot of people could use. Spend less and save more.

Some of the most common pros I hear regarding the MMA program is that “it beats the alternative every (or 99% of the) time, and that it can be accomplished with no discretionary income. That is simply not true. It never beats the alternate when the same numbers are used, and it always uses discretionary income.

Chris and others,

Why do you need a HELOC you might ask?

You need the HELOC because the program is using more than your own money to pay off your debts. The program also utilizes the bank’s money to pay down the debts. The HELOC is also an open-ended loan which allows you to use ALL of your money (entire paycheck) for a given period of time, until it is needed to pay monthly expenses. No other system will do this.

This is probably one of the most misunderstood parts of the program, yet one of the most important factors. Many people feel that the program works solely on the discretionary. That is not true. Although the discretionary income is a very large part of the program, there is something else happening at the same time, which is only accomplished by using the HELOC. The Money Merge Account program uses mathematical calculations to determine when to transfer lump sums of money from the HELOC to the principal on your 1st mortgage and exactly how much, to the penny. When the money is taken from the HELOC, that means that you are borrowing from a higher interest rate (HELOC) to pay down a lower interet rate (1st mortgage). But, then you deposit your paychecks into the HELOC, bringing that balance back down so that you are paying less interest on the HELOC and therefore saving more money on the 1st mortgage in interest than you are paying on the HELOC. The discretionary kicks in and gets that HELOC down to the optimal balance (determined by the MMA program) so that another transfer will take place. This will save you more money in interest thanif you were to just take whatever discretionary income you had left at the end of the month and apply that towards your 1st mortgage although that would show amazing results(but then again many people would be wise not to send all their extra money away into a closed end mortgage – not easily recoverable!). Again, the goal too is no change in your current lifestyle.

Again, Chris, the cost is relative. First of all, people are saving as much as tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars by utilizing the Money Merge Account. Even if they are able to save $35,000, that is a 1,000% return on initial investment in the form of interest savings. And if they save $350,000 (not an uncommon event), that is a 10,000% return on inital investment in the form of interest savings. And if they realize that savings over a 12 year term, that is an average of 833% annual return on initial investment in the form of interest savings. And to top that off, it is a guaranteed savings as long as their income, expenses, etc stay the same or get better. $3500 is saved within 3-5 months for most people.

Last of all, the $3,500 cost of the product is not paid out of the client’s checking account, but usually taken directly from the HELOC. In other words, the bank is lending them the money to purchase the program that will then save them large sums of money in the form of interest savings. This method of payment should result in no change in lifestyle! People will often roll the closing costs of a refi into their loan (which is quite often more than $3500). We offer the same thing, only instead of doing it for the purpose of accumulating debt, we offer it in order to become FREE OF DEBT.

Also!

Using a credit card with the Money Merge Account system can both dramatically increase your results and allow you to enjoy added benefits.

First, understand that the interest rate on a credit card, if used properly with the Money Merge Account, is irrelevant. That is because, if the card is paid in full at the end of every month, no interest has to be paid to the credit card company.

The Money Merge Account is most effective if the client’s money is deposited into the HELOC and allowed to sit there as long as possible. This minimizes the amount of interest that accumulates on the HELOC, thus allowing more of the deposited money to go toward principal. If a credit card is used to pay most of the debts throughout the month (utility, gas, groceries, entertainment, etc.), then the balance in the HELOC stays lower for a longer period of time, resulting in less interest accumulation. Then, when the credit card bill is received, it is paid in full with money from the HELOC. No interest is paid on the credit card because it is paid in full at the end of every billing cycle.

Also, be sure to shop for the credit card that wil return the greatest value for you. For instance, if you like to travel, you might want to get an airline/travel rewards card. If you like to buy Sony products, get a Sony Rewards card. If you just want money, get a cash-back card. In other words, get whatever you desire from your card. Think about it, just by using your card to pay your bills, you might be able to travel to Hawaii for free every year, or possibly many times a year!

This system will not only result in paying off your home quicker, but also giving you extra rewards, for FREE! And, this simplifies the Money Merge Account system by minimizing the amount of checks having to be written out of the HELOC.

Jason V

The reason the Heloc factor is one of the most misunderstood parts of the program, is because it really isn’t necessary. The Heloc is the least, not the most important, factor of the program. The amount of savings on your home generated by running all your money through the Heloc doesn’t even make the charts when compared to the amount that came from your discretionary income. Yes, the Heloc could potentially save me a small amount more in interest than if I was to just apply my left over income to the mortgage. However, you forgot about the $3,500 fee you paid for the program that I didn’t, and it gets even better for me when I apply that amount to my mortgage as well. You are still talking about “no lifestyle changes”. It doesn’t matter what vehicle your money is in, if you send in one additional penny of dicretionary income to your home loan that you otherwise wouldn’t have, then you have changed your lifestyle.

What would happen in this country if we went back to the good old days of cash or even checks used solely for everything? What if we got rid of credit and debit cards, maybe use the cash envelope system along with a budget? Studies have shown that it is way easier for people to spend money and more of it when it is more convenient; just slide a card. You probably saw the commercial about the guy that held up the entire line at a store because he wanted to use cash. That was pretty funny on one hand, but it also reminds me about the pull that the slick plastic has on a whole lot of people in our culture.

Jason V,

Dale Carnegie says that “A person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.”

People like Chris have their minds made up and don’t want to be receptive to new ideas.

I for one am going to stop chiming in as I find it more productive to educate the public than try to perform brain surgery on straw men.

Chris,

Thanks for the comments about spending less and saving more. DUH! What will enable people to save more? Money Merge Account and, as you like to say, paying more money to principle! BUT.. how many people are better off spending all of their left over money into their closed-end first mortgage? What if the car breaks down or the furnace goes out? I think even you know enough to know that the Money Merge Account will enable homeowners to accumulate more quity faster than if their left over money just sat in a savings account.. no comparison. The software encourages you to be frugal since every expense makes an instant change to the payoff date!

Will power will only get you so far. Me and you know that consumers have a bad habit of spending what they don’t have. But how can we get them out of this mess and change their perspective? Would you suggest they spend all their extra money to principal? Uhhh.. like the majority would stick with it.. nor is it recommended to do such a thing since they have no cushion or room for error by sending their extra money away.

This way, customer’s pay their mortgage FIRST and can live the way they currently are and end up far better than what they are doing now!

And you keep saying that people will end up AHEAD of what the Money Merge Account would by paying discretionary to principal every month! Uhh.. the answer is NO! If something were to happen unexpectedly they just end up BEHIND because their extra money has been sent to principal and then they have to refi (there’s the cost of the program right there — AND they are BEHIND).

The program is easy and that’s why the technique is so powerful… NO CHANGE IN LIFESTYLE insofar as you can keep living the way you are (many might reconsider some of their expenditures since the software constantly keeps your “eye on the prize”) and just end up paying off faster and always having money to fall back on.

Let the money go to work for you instead of earning interest for the banks sitting in checking and doing nothing…

You can live the way you are now and pay off in 6-12 years rather than 30 or take Chris’ advice and send all your extra money to principal. Which is more reasonable to ask of somebody who is trying to get out of debt and has a hard time controlling their finances? Send more money away out of your checking never to be seen from again if you need it – or knocking years off your mortgage and saving TONS of interest with no noticable change to your daily life AND with more financial security and without taking investment risks to lose it all?

Common.. there is a reason why there is a legal battle with Harj Gill and his ex-wife, etc. It’s that using a HELOC and knowing the system can pay off your mortgage and accumulate LIQUID equity MUCH faster even if you intend to sell in a few years and also uses a system that homeowners CAN STICK TO! We’re not asking them to send additional money to principal – that’s the WHOLE POINT here. Most people know they can send more to principal – DUH! … but most people don’t.. I wonder why (I am being sarcastic Chris)?

I can’t understand how you don’t see the value in the product. If you are a financial planner and feel that bashing the system is the best way to protect your bottom line – you should wake-up and realize that you can offer this to your clients as another option!

Chris,

As my final remarks to you:
The last paragraph of your last post about cutting up the credit cards and paying cash, etc. is the only thing you’ve said that I agree with. It is that philosophy about debt that has me selling MMA’s in the first place. You might enjoy this video on the subject from an old SNL episode:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xt0c6_snldontbuystuff

Chris, you are simply a loser and your numbers – I await you to show them – will not beat our numbers unless you ask them to put themselves at risk by forfeiting all of their discretionary, and tied permantly into a closed-end mortgage – not smart for those that worry about not having enough money to cover .. well the cost of life!

Nothing is ever black and white and just sending extra money to principle DOES NOT pay off your home quicker than the Money Merge Account would have you if you only KNEW HOW IT WORKED, IDIOT!

I am making this statements becasue I know you work in the banking industry or related fields and really offer nothing but strawman solutions to a nation in debt – yea send more of your money to principal – we have a better way. You have no argument other than “spend less” or “pay more to principal” – you are a moron or, even worse, know better and are just trying to CONFUSE PEOPLE for your own gain!! What are going to offer them? “Lower interest rates” won’t do it.

And based on your protecting the cashless society is even worse. Having cash and writing checks is great (or if you want to use plastic.. use a debit card!) .. “holding the line up to use cash” .. what a statement.. it doesn’t take FOREVER to do that!! Write a friggin check is that too much to ask?

Chris = LOSER!

Chris said “Studies have shown that it is way easier for people to spend money and more of it when it is more convenient; just slide a card. You probably saw the commercial about the guy that held up the entire line at a store because he wanted to use cash.”

WELL DID YOU READ MY POST ABOUT USING YOUR CREDIT CARD TO ACCELERATE THE PERFORMANCE OF THE MONEY MERGE ACCOUNT! I GUESS NOT – SINCE YOU HAVE PROVEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.

Chris said “It doesn’t matter what vehicle your money is in, if you send in one additional penny of dicretionary income to your home loan that you otherwise wouldn’t have, then you have changed your lifestyle.”

FORGIVE ME THEN. We change your lifestyle by IMPROVING IT! How’s that Chris? Would you be happy with “No lifestyle SACRIFICES?”

It’s safe to say – “Chris has me Pissed.”

The point of all this is – can you do this yourself? YES – sort of. If you want to pay additional money to principal – that helps but didn’t we already know that? Why aren’t people doing it now (am I getting through Chris)? Can you also have the financial liquidity and added security of having your equity available with the signing of a check should an emergency arise or an investment opportunity with the HELOC and do it yourself? Yes – but you don’t (not many Harj Gill’s out there). Otherwise you’d be rolling in money – or already doing this.

If I wanted to find a way to get out of debt faster and you had known about this product but not shared it with me and instead told be to “spend less and also spend all my extra money to principal” when a MUCH easier and viable solution in the Money Merge Account was available – I’d smack you silly.

Everyone who qualifies should be on this product.

Chris you’ll have to forgive me on my response to that part of your post – the paragraph about using credit cards. I thought you were defending the idea of using credit cards since it is quick and easy. I agree with you about getting out of debt and changing our habits. Our program will work to change the outcome and help in this regard – and is easy for anyone to follow and carries less risk then sending all your extra money away to the mortgage company and not available should the extra equity be needed for whatever reason. I’ve already beat that horse to death already though. I’m sure you understand that people can live the way they are now and finish AHEAD!

I don’t work in any industry related to this topic. I also never recommended that people use all their dicretionary income to pay down their mortgage. I was only using that in my example, because that is what the program does. It doesn’t matter if your using your own money or borrowing from someone else and them paying them back, you are still throwing your own discretionary income at your mortgage. If the same amounts of money are used, the timing is insignificant. So what if a hardship comes along; it will adversely affect your plan no matter what situation you are in. If you have a Heloc, it could snowball. People using the do-it-yourself approach may already have an emergency fund or they can build one up before they start. If it makes them feel more comfortable, they could even have the “security” of a HELOC as well without having to use it. The reason most people are not already doing what I have outlined, is because they want a quick fix and they don’t want to take the tough steps necessary to curtail their spending. It is interesting that you guys get more & more fumed with each additional fact I share. And the name calling, what is that all about? There is absolutely no reason for it, because it only weakens your arguments and character.

If the system is so great, why do the numbers need to be fudged to try and prove to someone that they cannot beat it on their own?

Do you ever hear about disgruntled credit card holders complaining on line or at the BBB about how it is fraudulant, unfair & unethical that the credit card companies made them spend way beyond their means and thus caused them to incur massive amounts of debt that they will never be able to crawl out from under? No, they knew what the consequences would be when they let their spending get out of hand. The same can be said about a lot of people using the program. Many are simply unaware of the alternative methods. Others will end up a lot worse off down the road than the analysis projected and just attribute the difference to their own personal decisions. This is why it doesn’t suprise me at all that you don’t hear many formal complaints. After all, as others have said, even if you make one big lump sum payment to the mortgage and then pay off that amount plus the HELOC and quit the system, you have saved time and interest on your mortgage. It just cost you $3,500 to do it.

Chris said “I also never recommended that people use all their dicretionary income to pay down their mortgage. I was only using that in my example, because that is what the program does.”

But Chris does still not get through his thick skull that people can pay this down their mortgage without changing their lifestyle! And if you are not recommending to send additional money to principle.. how ELSE are they going to pay down their mortgage at an accelerated rate? Every penny that you don’t spend goes toward the balance instead of sitting around doing nothing in your checking accout.. that’s powerful!

“So what if a hardship comes along; it will adversely affect your plan no matter what situation you are in.” Uhhh.. my point was that if you tried to match the results of sending all discretionary to mortgage, because on our program you’ll pay it off faster than if you were to simply send all your extra money at the end of the month, then you’d have NO MONEY FOR EMERGENCIES and YES you will have access to those funds with the MMA and no refinancing and wasting additional money in fees – just write a check!

You also said Chris “People using the do-it-yourself approach may already have an emergency fund or they can build one up before they start.”

What if they DON’T? They could start but would it be better to use that money to offset interest on the mortgage and pay it down faster and having that equity – since they may never need it – built up faster?

You also said “The reason most people are not already doing what I have outlined, is because they want a quick fix and they don’t want to take the tough steps necessary to curtail their spending.”

And that is why we offer the Money Merge Account. Easy, fast, guaranteed or your money-back.

And, lastly, how can YOU beat our product? YOU CANT SO YOU DESERVE THE HARSH WORDS SILLY! Don’t talk bad about something you know little about!!!

Chris I had just about enough but you barfed the following: “No, they knew what the consequences would be when they let their spending get out of hand. The same can be said about a lot of people using the program. Many are simply unaware of the alternative methods. Others will end up a lot worse off down the road than the analysis projected and just attribute the difference to their own personal decisions.”

Now you are just trying to find reasons to bash us by suggesting that we are somehow ENCOURAGING homeowners to spend more than they can afford. Did you not read the actual article for which you are posting? The software as a financial dashboard encourages frugality by showing how every scenario will affect your payoff date. If people choose to not follow the software then that is just sad. And that is not our fault for showing them the door. So don’t even go there. Personal responsiblity is just that. Don’t even come at us with that last-ditch effort to discredit United First Financial.

Again, show me a better way. (and then I’ll correct you- LOL)

Jason V.

Holding all other variables of income & expenses the same, you will not significantly pay down your mortgage without changing your lifestyle. It doesn’t matter how many times you say otherwise.

Send me a copy of a typical recent analysis for a new perspective client.

Chris I’d love to send you an analysis but that would violate the privacy clause (I’m sure you understand) – we make a pledge never to give our clients information for any reason whatsoever.

You also said “Holding all other variables of income & expenses the same, you will not significantly pay down your mortgage without changing your lifestyle. It doesn’t matter how many times you say otherwise.”

If your income pays down your mortgage FIRST by using the HELOC to drive the Money Merge Account software, and letting it sit in the account reducing the average daily balance that an open-ended loan such as a HELOC provides does INDEED allow you to make your transfers and use discretionary to pay off your mortgage. And the reason why you have no change in lifestyle is because you will continue to pay your bills and usual costs for entertainment, groceries, etc. as usual and by changing WHERE you put your money you CAN pay off your mortgage allowing you to not have to change the way you live currently. You pretty much just put your money to work for you with the Money Merge Account. And the details I’ve already described above. Again I STRESS to you – If your definition of using discretionary income is a change in lifestyle – then it’s a change for the better. But you are not sending in extra money in the traditional sense. I don’t have to change the way I live currently. My money, when I am not using it, is saving me years and tons of interest on our mortgage. Most of us at UFF practice what we preach. We USE the software! If you continue to want to argue about what “change in lifestyle means” then you just need to understand that you can pay what you are paying now, and by changing WHERE you put your money, you will pay off your mortgage much faster! If you don’t feel like you’re doing anything different then that is not a change in your lifestyle. Where you put your money to work for you is another thing – a good thing. Lifestyle means your current standard of living. I’ve made many posts before.. ‘Why a HELOC’ or addressing the $3500 cost in comparison to the VALUE and perspectives, etc. Re-read or contact corporate or a United First Financial Branch Manager. Have you read the most recent Broker Banker magazine article? Mortgage acceleration has made it to the United States and it is here to stay. United First Financial has 24/7 customer support, and it’s the only company that offers all the service we do!

Chris why don’t have YOUR numbers ran and do the comparisons on your own mortgage?

You can visit my Branch Manager’s website at http://www.lessthan30.com or also http://www.MathNotMagic.com or if you’d like my site – http://www.mmamortgagesolution.com

I am not here to attract business but rather to dispell efforts to discredit what we are doing to help get America out of DEBT!

Jason V

That’s fine if you don’t want to share someone elses information. Just make a hypothetical scenario up, run the analysis on it, and submit it here for all to see.

Chris,

On the website I have you can click on a 50 min or so video called ‘Money Merge Account video tour’ which goes over all the numbers for you analytical types and should answer most of your questions. Let me know.

When I get back I’ll post MY numbers. And then (and I am clueless as to your point with this) YOU can show me how I can pay my mortgage off faster – again – WITHOUT getting all my extra money tied up on my closed-end conventional mortgage – keeping my cashflow nice and liquid. This will be EXCITING! THEN you can show US how YOU can beat our product!! LOL

Again, I will repeat your post from earlier “I also never recommended that people use all their dicretionary income to pay down their mortgage. I was only using that in my example, because that is what the program does.”

1st mortgage was $159,905 and $1309 per mon
2nd mortgage was $40419 and $366 per mon
auto loan was $8357 and $254 per mon
MMA was $3500

Total Monthly Fixed was $212,181 and $1929 / mon

New structure:

1st mortgage $159905 and $1309 per mon
HELOC $52276 $392.07/mon
total: $212181 and $1701.07/mon (saved $227.93/mon right off the bat)

Paid bi weekly at $1044 and weekly at $594 from spouse

Discretionary is $1100/mon + $227.93 saved

Pay off in 7.2 years saving 20.8 years and saving $216,627.53 in interest

Chris,

Also, in the months I saved on my mortgage.. had I deposited my extra funds and what would have been my mortgage payment.. depositing that into an account with 4% rate of return I would have $1,060,942.82 sitting there. at 6% that would be $1,351,321.38 sitting there .. at 8% $1,743,436.11!

So either way.. dont talk bad about a product that WORKS for ME! I’ll be laughing all the way to the BANK sweetcheeks! I don’t care what YOU do.

And vote for Ron Paul in 2008!!!

Ok guys, after reading everything this is what I am thinking.

First, I all ready have a 80k HELOC with zero balance. I keep it for just in case something happens etc….

180K loan, 6%, fixed 30 yr, I am on payment 1 year 4.

Every month I will only have $500 extra. This is the only extra income I will have per month.

Scenario 1 – I pay the $3500 and use the program.

Scenario 2 – I send the $500 every month to pay down principal.

Which scenario do I come out ahead in and by how many months?

I am thinking scenario 2 because I am not taking on any additional debt from the HELOC which I will pay interest on nor paying $3500.

I all ready have an 80k HELOC, so in BOTH scenarios I have something to fall back on if needed in an emergency. There is no additional risk of not using the MMA program.

Paying $500 to the principal vs putting my check into a HELOC and having $500 left over at the end of the month requires THE SAME AMOUNT OF DISCIPLINE. I still have to spend to my budget no matter what.

I do not see any benefit to the MMA program. Could someone show me how using the program will save me more money given my parameters.

Someone do the MMA numbers and I will use an online program for the 500 extra per month and lets compare.

Jason,

You lost credibility with the whole Ron Paul statement, and lets take politics out of this unless you have a reputable candidate to standby.

I really like the concept of MMA, but you are not helping the cause. You base your scenarios with inflated numbers and myself and most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck with no discretionary income. Using inflated numbers just takes away how impressive the software can be.

I also do not know why no one has expanded on my statement regarding 10,000 units sold with no complaints. This is what has me sold on the product at this point. These numbers are even more impressive than cutting my mortgage in half.

And Chris,

Why would you not buy a product that 10,000 people bought with zero complaints on forums or to the BBB. I really want to beleive you, but why have their been no complaints from users.

Lets not forget. I can invest 3500 from day one and also use an interest bearing checking account in scenario 2.

And if anyone cries foul that no one has 3500 dollars to invest in the beginning, then lets leave it off. I still think I will come out ahead.

Someone please prove me wrong!!!!! I am interested in MMA but it doesn’t seem like the numbers add up.

Will some one who is against the MMA software please step up to the plate and make a valid arguement regarding the zero complaints.

You do not need a masters in math or engineering to see users of MMA apparently like it.

I personally don’t really care about there being no complaints.

All I care about are the numbers. If MMA saves me money in my situation then I would have no problem using it.

Justin, I don’t make purchase decisions based solely on the amount of complaints or the lack there of. There are over 300 million people in this country. How do you and I actually know how many people have bought this? I have heard a lot of different numbers. A lot of people that probably would complain, don’t buy the program to begin with. The reason I personally wouldn’t buy it is because I can do better on my own without any more special effort. Also, I chose a 15 year loan with a lower rate and a higher payment; that cut out half the time and a load of interest right there. I’d rather put the bulk of my extra money in other investments where I can get a better return.

some good info here.

Sean,

What good info? You just did a Google search for ‘money merge account’ and clicked the first link you saw on the first page that said ‘SCAM’.. this is a link to people who are NOT on the product and obviously DON’T understand it. You can find ANYTHING on the internet. I’d say the discussion on THIS thread is pretty good. Also I need more information about your budget. Go to the website I posted above and just submit the free analysis – you don’t have to give up your account numbers or anything. Just your budget!

Chris,

This program is perfect if you invest. But if you are one of the most savvy investors out there and already rich (doubt it) then I really hope you can earn more return on your investment than the Money Merge Account on your home. You can use the equity to invest (assuming you can get a higher rate of return!).

Justin,

Inflated numbers? I already said in my earlier post that I cannot post other people’s number – so I submitted MY numbers! Inflated? LOL – The program works so well for me it’s surreal. And by the way, I LOVE the Constitution and am fed up (for a long time) with the direction both the Left and Right have taken us. Forgive me for not taking all of my news from the mainstream corporate media and radio and print! I did my research on him and I am voting on PRINCIPLE. Look at the guys voting record! I just meant to be funny yet supportive and didn’t want to make this a political argument but to say I’ve lost credibility because I back a candididate that I believe in then bug off! Most of you sheeple have no clue what is going on in the world today. (And I don’t blame you)

You know a lot of people, when faced with something they don’t understand, will attempt to discredit it and make statements that conform to their conditioned opinion, whether it be about intial $3500, interest rates, etc.. this process breaks all the rules to so speak.

And I am just about tired of trying to further explain the process. NO ONE has been able to discredit what we are doing here. False statements are just that. There are lots of people out there with a mortgage that are perfect for the program – huge opportunity – and I am not wasting any more time here.

If you don’t request an analysis for you to do your own comparisons then it doesn’t matter what numbers you try on your own – you don’t know where to BEGIN! You can’t solve something you don’t understand. Chris, you’re a lost cause if you won’t take the opporunity to check it out for your self. It doesn’t affect MY payoff date! Don’t let me or others tell you what to think. Check out the numbers, complain all you want and try to weigh the options (media coverage such as Broker Banker, NBC Las Vegas) the lack of CUSTOMER complaints, etc. etc… if YOUR job to do what’s right for YOU. And if you hold to old-fashioned perspectives of putting all money into a checking account that earns squat and how loans traditionally work and interest rates affect payments, etc. Then so be it. This product will be household name soon and you all will just jump aboard later.

You got it – you’ll be doing this program sooner or later! Unless you simply bury your head in the sand and continue to say things like “the numbers don’t add up” – LOL – yea and we’ll all be getting sued in a class action soon and all those reputable media outlets will then have to say ‘whoops – we were duped’ – YEA RIGHT – they KNOW HOW IT WORKS. Most people in America DON’T.

Jason V,

How many times are you going to say that the program is something we don’t understand? I want to be very clear here, and I’ll even use capital letters since that appears to be something you think helps; THERE ISN’T ANYTHING ABOUT THE PROGRAM THAT I DON’T UNDERSTAND.

Every time the average person is directed to pay a big lump sum to the mortgage, they save about $5 or $6 using the HELOC. That’s it. Not only does that once-in-a-while transaction not amount to much over the years, but it needs to be weighed against the high price you paid for the software to tell you to do it.

I’m glad the program is going to work so well for you because you are choosing to spend all your extra money to pay off your home, even though the big claim from UFF is that you can do it with zero extra money. If you have more discretionary income than most people, than why didn’t you get a 15 year loan to begin with at a lower interest rate?

And why are people getting analysis back that show discrepancies between their proposed monthly income(weekly times 4 equals monthly) versus what it actually is(weekly times 52 divided by 12 equals monthly)?

Chris, think people can pay off their home in the same amount of time WITHOUT a HELOC? If not, then how ELSE to you think homeowners will pay off their mortgage as fast. Show me YOUR numbers! What is your plan and how is it better than the Money Merge Account? You are all talk a no walk. And I didn’t get a 15 year loan because I liked where that left my discretionary. If I had a 15 year – I’d still pay off in less than half the time. You still think that somehow your plan for people will work better than our plan? By the way what IS your plan? You said that you don’t recommend sending all extra discretionary to primary (since homeowners have no money in the bank if they need it). So what is your plan?

Jason V,

“He finally sent the email with login information!”

So what happen, did you try the Speedy Equity system?

Just trying to follow these threads.

Chris:

What are you paid and how often?

What is your discretionary?

What is your mortgage and rate? How many years left (preferrably months)? What type of mortgage is it?

What is your mortgage payment?

What is that VALUE of your home?

Tom,

I already use the MMA. I just wanted to see how it worked. The software starts out by asking ME how much I want to send to the mortgage from my HELOC and recommends $5000. I do no like it thus far and if I have any questions – there is no phone number! I’d have to wait for a webinar. It does not adjust to my situation and wants me to fill in the variables and read his book which I won’t receive until the end of Aug. It’s already not my cup of tea. I just want a program that I can input what I am bringing in and what I am spending and spend no more then ten min a month with it. I have plenty other things going on. My financial situation I know is taken care of with the Money Merge Account.

Chris said “Every time the average person is directed to pay a big lump sum to the mortgage, they save about $5 or $6 using the HELOC.”

Just where are you deriving these numbers genius? Since you seem to already know the algorithms built into the software (which is the bread and butter and really why we are paying the money).. How does the software work? Why does it work so well? What are all the variables? How can I make calculations to the penny? Why do you think that you can beat the MMA still without all of my money tied up in my 1st mortgage? Hmmm.

And about the discretionary income – the money back guarantee is based on this. So what? You’ll finish AHEAD of the projections. Get real. If I sent every penny of descretionary without this program and without a HELOC I’d pay my mortgage in 9 years. Not only does this take LONGER but it’s also risky to send all my extra money away. What if I want to go on vacation.. refi?

I’m not sure I understand the whole “discretionary funds” thing.

I have money left over in the old balance sheet once I pay the standard monthly bills. But what is left over is always spent on discretionary items such as dinner with friends, a new suit, a trampoline for the kids, etc.

I can’t just see that is going to change any. I (like many others) spend what I make on monthly bills and fun.

Jason,

I already outlined my ultra simple plan in my very first post. Again, I already have an emergency savings, so I can use all my extra income to pay down my mortgage if I want to. If other people have no savings, then they can save up the $3,500 just as quick as they would be able to borrow and pay it off in your system. They can also have a HELOC just like Sean said if that makes them feel more secure. There isn’t anything difficult about this. Apples to apples my friend. So what if you have the “security” of a HELOC. So do the people that do it themselves.

Most of the people that sign up for this are going to be doing it for 10, 15 or 20 years. Do you think there aren’t going to be a lot of them who ultimately decide that they would rather spend their extra money on other things in life than their mortgage? People change their minds all the time. What about the people who end up worse off with a debt snowball they cannot overcome? It’s nice to say they have the security of the HELOC and that it will just push out their payoff projections until they get back on track. What happens when they don’t get back on track?

And you still haven’t answered my question. Why are their income dicrepancies in some of the analysis people are receiving?

Are you beginning to see why a HELOC is used and why there is an ongoing court battle for the rights to market software that claims similar results to the Money Merge Account (and yet is not as easy to use nor does it work the same – both use a HELOC to drive the plan)? HELOC will enable quicker results then simply sending discretionary. And you disagree Chris because you don’t, again, understand how it works. If so, you’d be able to tell me what in the book written by Harj Gill that sells for $92 on Amazon.com !! Did it ever occur to you that there is a real good reason why the HELOC is used (not all HELOCs though – the right one) to drive the system? Maybe because it works and doesn’t ask you to send all of your extra money into your mortgage. Again, do you not see why without a HELOC sending all your extra money would be a bad idea? With the Money Merge Account can you see that people can live the way they are now (write the same number of bills and expenses) and paid off in 6-12 years. Chris – you are stubborn – that is a fact.

Tom,

Discretionary income is defined: The amount of an individual’s income available for spending after the essentials (such as food, clothing, and shelter) have been taken care of.

This program is not for everybody. If spend all of what you earn when you get it – and have no discretionary then you will save SOME money but do not expect to pay off your mortgage in 6 years. The program has nifty ways of finding discretionary. Every dollar you are not using now can be used to pay down your mortgage and that does give you an advantage over what you are doing now. If you have NSF fees frequently and have negative cash flow – then I’d say this program would not be for you. If you have even $50 at the end of the month then I can run the numbers and we’ll see what the analysis provides.
I’d ask you:

What are you paid and how often?

What is your discretionary?

What is your mortgage and rate? How many years left (preferrably months)? What type of mortgage is it?

What is your mortgage payment?

What is that VALUE of your home?

Jason V,

As I said above, you don’t need a HELOC to get the same or better results than the program. And you still haven’t answered my question.

And when I say most in 6-12 years – that is for those who qualify, and we use the free financial analysis to pre-qualify you. You won’t know until you ask. Again, not everyone will qualify unfortunately. Even with a little left over that you would just let sit there and add up until you find some gadget to buy -this program can change your habits and get you out of your mortgage sooner.

Tom,

Imagine what you could do if you made tiny changes in your spending habits just without the MMA. Avoid the starbucks every morning and brew your own cup. etc. etc. The Money Merge Account will show you how every move you make will impact the payoff. Say you wanted to buy that trampoline – you’ve got the money since you have accumulated equity much faster – and you can see how this affects payoff? Maybe it would set you back 2 months, would you do it? Maybe and maybe not. AFTER you pay off your home you will no longer have a mortgage payment and be able to live the life with your family that you unable to afford now. That’s the goal here. This definately requires discipline. But the software makes this much easier. Again, review the numbers and then make a decision.

Chris,

You said, “you don’t need a HELOC to get the same or better results than the program.”

You still haven’t explained how this is possible Chris!!!!!! And what question do I need to answer still from you?

Jason V,

Just in case you haven’t seen any examples pertaining the question I am asking you, I’ll post an example here from another thread.

“A perfect example of how these companies lie is contained, amazingly enough, in their very own Agent Guide.

They provide an example of a couple with a $200K loan at 6% who are paid $2500 every other week. Their expenses (excluding their mortgage) are listed as $2800.90, the analysis falsely claims their monthly income is $5000 and therefore their discretionary income is $1000/mo.

That is flatly false and understates their actual average monthly income by $416.67 and understates their average discretionary income by the same amount.

By doing so they make their analysis of a 21.7 year reduction in payoff look pretty good compared to plugging the same $1000 in discretionary income into an amortization calculator as an additional monthly payment. But since the real number is $1416.67, when you plug that in you see that you pay off your mortgage in 21.92 fewer years.

Gee, just taking your discretionary income and applying it to your mortgage generates a BETTER result than the HELOC money shuffle.

Pretty shocking news if you just coughed up $3500 in the belief that the early pay off was due to the money shuffling and not you digging an extra $1416.67 out of your pocket every month.”

Is this not true? Is this not happening? I want to know.

And if the above is happening, how is that helping to educate people, end the cycle of debt, and change the financial climate in this country as you say?

Jason V,

You said earlier that mortgage acceleration has come to the US and is here to stay. You are correct only in the fact that mortgage acceleration has been going on in the US for decades and decades, and it has been accomplished just as I’ve described, and it can match or beat your alternative system.

Jason V,

Here is another one. Please tell me this is not true of your program.

“How many of these mortgage acceleration scheme salespeople have you seen telling you that their product has a 100% GUARANTEE?

So what’s the truth? Well it might not quite be a 100% GUARANTEE, here is the wording from one of these firm’s Policies and Procedures manual:

“Customers have three business days (72 hours) after the sale or execution
of a contract to cancel the order and receive a full refund consistent with
the cancellation notice on the MMA New Client Fee Authorization Form (5
days for Alaska, 120 hours).”

What? 3 days?

Guess the folks touting the 100% Moneyback Guarantee forgot to mention that little detail.

No such guarantee exists. What does exist is a “Limited Guarantee” which the firm says (to its agents, not to the client) “This is a hold harmless clause that protects United First Financial …”.

They do not guarantee your results, despite that claim by several agents. They merely guarantee that if your income and expenses are as described in the analysis the payoff term will be as described. Well DUHHH. They do NOT guarantee that their agents didn’t mislead you into thinking the product was doing something wonderful that it is not. They do NOT guarantee that the listed “discretionary income” is correct. They do NOT guarantee that your $3500 was well spent.”

Ok guys.

I finally understand the program and see how you can generate a few dollars each month.

If have ZERO extra income then the program WILL NOT WORK.

Think about it. If you take 5000 from a HELOC and you don’t have ANY extra income, you will never pay that money back. After paying all your bills the original 5000 dollar balance will still be there. Eventually, the interest on the HELOC will be more then the interest you earned TODAY, not future value, on the mortgage. In the end it would EXTEND the amount of time it would take to pay off your mortgage and HELOC together.

The reason the MMA people say you can pay down your mortgage with no extra money is because they say 4weeks of pay equal a month. So 4 times 12 equals 48 weeks a year, when we all know that isn’t true. They then put the extra weeks of pay as discretionary money towards the loan but NEVER tell you that.

If you have say 500 or so per month you can generate around 4-5 dollars a month with the float/difference of interest saved on the mortgage vs interest paid on the HELOC.

So for your $3500 investment, you are getting back 4 or so EXTRA dollars per month that you can put towards your mortgage, IF you have some extra money every month. It depends how fast you can pay down the HELOC.

You would be much better off saving the 3500 and putting all your income into an interest EARNING account. You would earn interest on the float. At the end of the month you pay your bills and take any extra income, plus the interest you earned, and put it towards your mortgage.

Instead of earning around 4-5 dollars you would earn about double that, pay off your mortgage a couple months sooner and not spend the 3500.

UFF/MMA has a great smoke and mirrors show going on.

One last point. If you can take out a HELOC to do MMA, then you can take out a HELOC to have for an emergency. Do not listen to them trying to convince you that with out MMA you won’t have a back up plan in case of an emergency.

AND

It takes just as much discipline to do MMA vs putting your money in an interest earning account vs just paying your monthly extra income to your loan etc…. Bottom line is that you must spend to budget.

“Gee, just taking your discretionary income and applying it to your mortgage generates a BETTER result than the HELOC money shuffle.”

But why would I want to send all of my money had I not done this program into closed-end mortgage? How can I get the money back? Are you suggesting to take out a HELOC just for emergencies?

Chris,

IF YOU KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT CONTRACT LAW YOU’D KNOW THERE IS A THREE DAY RIGHT TO RECISSION FOR ANY CONTRACT ENTERETED INTO AND CAN BE CANCELED WITHIN THREE DAYS. THIS IS REQUIED BY LAW. THE MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE EXISTS BEYOND THE THREE DAY PERIOD!! COMMON MAN! ARE JUST TRYING TO CAUSE PROBLEMS?

Sean,

Everyone has seen that scam thread by now. Get off it. You don’t not nor do they know what they are talking about. What other account do you suggest I deposit my income in??

You are right on, Sean.

And all that talk about sophisticated software and mysterious algorithms (that no one should question) to describe how you will save that 4-5 dollars that you wouldn’t otherwise have been able to generate on your own.

Remember the Money Merge Account is EASY to use? How much time will it take me to track the amount of money I need to sent where and make sure I am sending the most possible and maximize the time I can save off my mortgage (and beat the Money Merge Account).. I am not really sure that you know they exact plan one should take. If you do, write a book and sell it for $19.95 and make a bundle.

Cheers!

You knucleheads have found how how to beat the program! CONTACT CORPORATE!

Losers.

I’m serious. What am I to do with my money if I weren’t on the program. Name the type if the account. WHEN to transfer. Let me know. We’ll be RICH!! LOL

I don’t think the three musketeers all have it QUITE figured out just yet – lol

Show me how I can pay off my mortgage FASTER than what I am set to pay now on the program. Prove me wrong you Sean and … Chris.

Jason

All the program is calculating is the amount of money you will earn by paying down the mortgage with the HELOC vs how much interest you have to pay with the HELOC. It maximizes the monthly amount earned, the extra 4-5 bucks. The more discretionary money you have per month, the more you can BORROW from the HELOC. This also explains why you can’t do MMA with out any discretionary income no matter what the agents say. If you don’t have extra money then you can’t pay back the money you borrowed from the HELOC.

You are always better off not borrowing any money at all, earning interest on the monthly income you can float and then paying the balance towards the mortgage.

The reason for this is because the amount of money you float earns interest while with MMA the amount of money you float only decreases the amount of interest you will pay on the HELOC.

Sean,

Why don’t you complain about Jiffy Lube! What scammers they are – I can change the air filter myself for less than $10 rather than pay them $35.. what a SCAM!! This is a business. If you can figure out the Money Merge Account formulas then you can do it yourself? Yes. Do YOU know? Absolutely not. A business provides a service – for a fee. Quit making it sound like we are selling snake oil.

Sean,

Again. You did not explain how I CAN DO THIS according to what you say! For all the people on the fence out there. Show them HOW.

You said “All the program is calculating is the amount of money you will earn by paying down the mortgage with the HELOC vs how much interest you have to pay with the HELOC. It maximizes the monthly amount earned, the extra 4-5 bucks. The more discretionary money you have per month, the more you can BORROW from the HELOC. This also explains why you can’t do MMA with out any discretionary income no matter what the agents say. If you don’t have extra money then you can’t pay back the money you borrowed from the HELOC.”

Do you not understand that by transferring the lump sum (determined by the program) and then depositing your PAYCHECK into the HELOC driving down the average daily balance you offset tousands in interest and pay a mere pittance on the HELOC compared to what you are offsetting on the primary. Remember one loan is closed-end – the other open-end.

You also said “You are always better off not borrowing any money at all, earning interest on the monthly income you can float and then paying the balance towards the mortgage.”

Right Einstein. But for those that are already in the mortgage and making the min payment – what do you do for them. HOW DO I EARN INTEREST ON THE INCOME I FLOAT! Easier said then done. Quit trying to figure out a complicated solution to a simple Money Merge Account system.

You said “The reason for this is because the amount of money you float earns interest while with MMA the amount of money you float only decreases the amount of interest you will pay on the HELOC.”

Are you suggesting that I can earn MORE interest than I am SAVING using the Money Merge Account? Please. And you still haven’t provided that magic account that I can deposit my income without any fees or restraints.

Jason,

In the jiffy lube situation I know what all choices are and what they are going to cost me, straight up from the beginning. I have a choice. Do it myself and save money or pay more and have it done. You guys make it like MMA is the absolute best and their is no way someone could do better on their own.

the problem is with your pitch. You tell people that they can pay down their mortgage with out any discretionary income, which isn’t true. You tell people that they would not have any back up funds if all they did was pay their extra money into their mortgage instead of using MMA when anyone who can get a HELOC for MMA can get a HELOC for emergency situations anyway. You use 4weeks of pay per month and then take the extra money to pay down the loan while you tell the client they aren’t spending any more money.

MMA uses the HELOC to make the situation more complicated. It also adds some wow factor when you can say, “Look, you only paid 10cents in interest on the HELOC but saved 10k dollars, that is what the program does by reducing the interest paid” when you don’t explain that the money saved is FUTURE earnings.

In the end you hope your client forgets about figuring out how it works and only concentrates on the final numbers. “See, you saved 200k in interest, isn’t paying 3500 worth it?”

If you guys where 100% percent straight up and showed what really was happening and than ran the numbers for your client with other alternative ways to pay down their mortgage, like any professional financial planner would, you would never sell MMA at 3500 a pop.

Bottom line is that you are being deceiving.

Sean said “If you don’t have extra money then you can’t pay back the money you borrowed from the HELOC”

Do you not understand that the paycheck is deposited into the HELOC which drives to the balance since the interest (as opposed to your conventional mortgage) is based on average daily balance. So when you make this transfer to your primary you are offsetting thousands in interest compared to the interest you pay on the HELOC (the rate on the HELOC makes very little difference as a result). Remember you are dealing with a closed-end and open-ended mortgage. Money sent to a closed end loan will do wonders compared to a HELOC who interest can be offset and reduced a great deal by leaving your income deposited for as long as possible.

You also said “You are always better off not borrowing any money at all, earning interest on the monthly income you can float and then paying the balance towards the mortgage.”

Thanks Einstein. But for those who ALREADY have a mortgage and making minimum payments, you still have not described the magic account one would earn MORE interest than I am SAVING by making transfers to my closed-end mortgage!!!

Sean said “You tell people that they can pay down their mortgage with out any discretionary income, which isn’t true.”

How many people do you know that have ZERO dollars at the end of the month? There is always going to be some money here and there. Otherwise you’re in the red.

you said “You tell people that they would not have any back up funds if all they did was pay their extra money into their mortgage instead of using MMA when anyone who can get a HELOC for MMA can get a HELOC for emergency situations anyway.”

I didn’t tell anyone that but you and the whole point here was that Chris’ solution was that I could do this WITHOUT a HELOC -hence my comments about what to do in an emergency. So there.

You said “You use 4weeks of pay per month and then take the extra money to pay down the loan while you tell the client they aren’t spending any more money.”

When I say you aren’t spending any more money I mean you are not writing any additional checks to anybody else than you are currently. Nothing changes from your day to day as you live it now. You still pay the same bills Sean!!

Jason V,

I already have a HELOC. I got it for free. I don’t need to use it though. It just sits there. Also, there is no reason why anyone has to let their money just sit in a non-interest earning checking account. There are lots of savings and checking accounts out there that pay good interest.

Again, the amount and timing of your extra payments is almost a non-factor. You simply need to apply the same total amounts that you have already decided to use to pay down your mortgage, regardless of the system you use.

At Jiffy Lube, you forgot the part about overhead & profit. You are paying them for a service you simple decide not to do on your own. Just like the MMA, you have to decide if it is worth it to you to have someone else do it for you. This should be true of every purchase you make. You have chosen to use the program, and that is fine; just don’t tell me I can’t do it better myself and that the program beats the alternatives every time.

So, are the numbers in the agent analysis being fudged or not?

I understand what you saying, and if you have extra money to pay down the heloc then you will make a few bucks extra per month from the difference in interest rates btween the HELOC and the mortgage.

What you aren’t realizing is that if you have ZERO discretionary income then you CAN’T PAY BACK THE HELOC.

My statement below is 100% true.

Sean said “If you don’t have extra money then you can’t pay back the money you borrowed from the HELOC”

Do you not understand that the paycheck is deposited into the HELOC which drives to the balance since the interest (as opposed to your conventional mortgage) is based on average daily balance. So when you make this transfer to your primary you are offsetting thousands in interest compared to the interest you pay on the HELOC (the rate on the HELOC makes very little difference as a result). Remember you are dealing with a closed-end and open-ended mortgage. Money sent to a closed end loan will do wonders compared to a HELOC who interest can be offset and reduced a great deal by leaving your income deposited for as long as possible

I’ve heard it said that even a much larger up front fee would be acceptable for the MMA since it saves you so much money. Why not pay 10, 50 or even 100 thousand dollars if you are going to save $200,000?

An agent or client, please tell me, are the numbers being fudged in the analysis prospective clients are receiving? Circle:

YES or NO

Sean you still haven’t told me how I can beat the current system I am on. What type of account do I deposit my income in to earn more money than I am saving my getting out of my mortgage in 7 years. You forget that I am already on the program and I have not changed anything from what I was doing before the program. That $3500 dollar mark I paid did not come out of my pocket. That was rolled into the HELOC, same if I were to refinance the home -so I don’t miss it. And for what it is doing for me. The price is worth it. So be a financial planner, if you will, and tell me just how I can do this. And make it easy and simple to do and without the prospect of human error (I don’t want to make any mistakes)… this is the type of customer I am and the customers we serve. People who don’t want to worry about their finances – live the way the are currently – and use the software as a financial dashboard to see how their expenses affect their payoff – just tell the software what going in and out and follow the prompts. EASY. I am one HAPPY customer just like all the others!!!!!

Sean you said “What you aren’t realizing is that if you have ZERO discretionary income then you CAN’T PAY BACK THE HELOC.”

The software will FIND discretionary because (and to you everything is black and white – ZERO discretionary – OK.) How many people actually spend every single penny every month?? Meaning if they bought a Snickers bar .. they’d be in the red. Nothing is black and white and there will always be money, even if it’s 10 dollars that you can put toward your mortgage when you are not using it and if you have even a few NSF fees a month. You are not qualified for the product. So if you spend every single dime of what you earn every single month, not only are you standing at forclosures doorstep (God forbid that taxes go up next year) and not qualified for MMA. MOST OF US HAVE POSITIVE CASHFLOW! That’s why we can go eat at Mickey D’s when we drive by, etc (hypothetical). And I get a better feel for their situation when I talk to them and ask them questions about their life and run the numbers. I don’t just sucker anyone into this. That not only would come back bad on me but the company.

Chris,

I will not respond to your arguing over a hypothetical scenario suggesting to charge $10 or $20 thousand for it… geez. $3500 is the price!

Now you said “An agent or client, please tell me, are the numbers being fudged in the analysis prospective clients are receiving? Circle: YES or NO”

If I started from month one I would only have as much as the analysis provides. Averaged out over the year YES THE INCOME IS MORE THAN ON THE ESTIMATE. But… WHO CARES when that means they will pay of SOONER than the projection!!! I didn’t even catch this until you pointed it out – but do I care? NO! If taken in a given one month span – it is accurate. Over the year .. divided by 12 then yes the numbers are a little higher. What does that matter other than I will pay off sooner? What’s your friggin point?

My point Chris, I don’t make my averaged income every month – that is INACCURATE! And the money back guarantee is based on what is on that sheet. So instead of claims of overstating income and getting into a legal mess or something (I don’t know the exact logic since I didn’t make the call for the company), I think the one month projection is just fine and dandy. And you of course are not seeing the bigger picture here.. that I will be paying by mortgage off sooner that YOU! lol

There you have it folks, the numbers are being fudged in the analysis to “try” and further show why you cannot do it on your own, when in reality you can.

Jason V said, “I don’t just sucker anyone into this.”

No, only some people.

Chris makes the above comment because he has not shown how to actually do it on your own, what account, how much, etc… I want the actual process Chris! Since you know it all.

Chris – OK – I am a prospective customer begging for your services… what do I need to do? What account do I deposit my money in to earn as much interest as I am saving on the Money Merge Account? hmmm…. or are you going to nitpick about something else and twist my words yet again or actually describe the process and not just say ‘an account that earns interest’. And describe how it will pay my home of AS FAST OR FASTER.

Sean you still haven’t told me how I can beat the current system I am on. What type of account do I deposit my income in to earn more money than I am saving my getting out of my mortgage in 7 years. You forget that I am already on the program and I have not changed anything from what I was doing before the program. That $3500 dollar mark I paid did not come out of my pocket. That was rolled into the HELOC, same if I were to refinance the home -so I don’t miss it. And for what it is doing for me. The price is worth it. So be a financial planner, if you will, and tell me just how I can do this. And make it easy and simple to do and without the prospect of human error (I don’t want to make any mistakes)… this is the type of customer I am and the customers we serve. People who don’t want to worry about their finances – live the way the are currently – and use the software as a financial dashboard to see how their expenses affect their payoff – just tell the software what going in and out and follow the prompts. EASY. I am one HAPPY customer just like all the others!

I just realized something.

Even if you have ZERO descritionary income, my way of using an interest earning savings account vs. a mma/HELOC will pay down the mortgage faster where using a MMA/HELOC can’t pay it down.

The Money Merge Account works great for individuals that live in a “feast or famine” career. In other words, many individuals may receive a great income one month and then go a couple months with a very small income. And then they repeat this cycle, again and again. There are also individuals who receive large sums of money on a quarterly or semi-annual basis. If this type of client has plently of limit on their HELOC, the Money Merge Account offsets interest accumulation when the money is received and also allows the money to be withdrawn when needed on the low-income months. This allows the bulk of the money to remain in the HELOC until the very last moment, offsetting interest accumulation for the maximum amount of time. So whether the client is paid consistently or sporadically, the Money Merge Account is a very powerful program.

Also for investors – the Money Merge Account is perfect. The result will differ from the homeowner who wants to pay off their home, but the process is the same. If you are an investor who believes in using the equity in your home, which is taken out in the form of a loan to invest somewhere that yields a higher return than what you are paying, this program can accelerate the process. Even investors receive paychecks or dividends from something in order to pay expenses. This is usually deposited into a checking account until it is used to pay bills. Use the Money Merge Account the same way. Deposit money into the HELOC, allow it to sit there as long as possible, and pay bills with the HELOC. This does not interrupt the investor’s strategy – it accelerates it! This simple act will offset interest, allowing the HELOC to get paid down faster, resulting in primpting from the program to transfer money to the principal of the 1st mortgage more often. This then increases equity at a faster rate, allowing money to be taken out more often and increase the investor’s portfolio. And this is all done without using the investor’s extra money or having to change their investment strategy!

Sean, remind me again how I can contribute to a savings account with ZERO discretionary you twit!

Sean, EXPLAIN the whole process. What do I do with my paycheck? How long do I keep it there? Can I use a savings account to write checks every month? How does this all work. You keep mentioning savings account and ZERO discretionary (which for MOST of us is not true again.. most of us have at least $5 left – we’d be in the red or facing foreclosure if tax rates increased!) and how does this work for MOST of us? What is your “system”? You keep posting your nonsense and do not come forward with the detailed process!! Since we don’t have a nifty software program to guide us – what is your friggin plan??? And does it beat MY PLAN which is the Money Merge Account!

Jason V.

I don’t know it all, and I’ll be the first to admit it. I do, however, learn knew things every day.

My point above is that the analysis is what drives the projection. By fudging the numbers, it greatly enhances their projection over what it appears you can do on your own, of course only until you plug the real numbers into your own calculator. If the value of the program can stand under it’s own weight, then there is no need to manipulate the numbers.

Have you actually run your own scenario outside the program? How about starting it with the extra $3,500 that you otherwise wouldn’t have spent? Forget about “huge amounts” as well as “certain timing” and just use your total discretionary income as a once a month pre-pay. You should be able to do it with an online calculator. If it is too confusing with your other debts, try comparing both scenarios on just the primary mortgage (assuming you can get an MMA analysis of just that loan). The comparison isn’t going to be all that much different with or without those other loans as long as the same income/expense variables are used in each system. Then share how your results compare.

Sean, where is my funds if I need it? Do I take out a HELOC too for emergencies? LOL – this is a pain just trying to get you to explain the process! You’re losing the attention of your customers Sean! You see I am willing to have my money work for me as long as I don’t feel like I am writing a check that I can’t recover! And if I might as well get a HELOC according to your plan for emergencies or a couple weeks without income – what is your plan for me. And if I get a HELOC I might as well just use the Money Merge Account and pay my bills like I’ve been doing – nothing different – only no more mortgage in 7 years saving me over 100% of the cost of my home in interest. And a nice nest egg to retire off of. So what about the $3500 that the bank loaned me? Who cares?? Eye’s on the prize folks!

Describe your MMA-beating process!

Chris – you said “I don’t know it all, and I’ll be the first to admit it. I do, however, learn knew things every day.”

Great because I am looking for a product to get my mortgage paid NOW not tomorrow. And you sure aren’t offering a money back guarantee or 24/7 customer support.

Now in answer to your question “Have you actually run your own scenario outside the program? How about starting it with the extra $3,500 that you otherwise wouldn’t have spent?”

I already did. In my post above I ran the numbers at bankrate.com and contributed my discretionary $1100 + the roughly $228 bucks that I saved by consolidating my car loan into the HELOC as well. That left me paying my home off in about 9 years. I spent $3500 (and remember this is not out of my checking but borrowed from the HELOC so, again, I don’t mind) and STILL beat the “just send your discretionary at the end of the month” scenario. I thought I already answered this.

Chris you also said “By fudging the numbers, it greatly enhances their projection over what it appears you can do on your own, of course only until you plug the real numbers into your own calculator.”

I’d appreciate if you didn’t use the word “fudging” as if we are manipulating people using inaccurate numbers. If you want to fuss over what is defined as inaccurate – Again I will say the amount of money I make in any given month is NOT accurate nor the same as my AVERAGE monthly income. In a one month snap shot the income projection is corret. And again what is your point being that I will only be paying my mortgage off ahead of the projection!! The goal is to PAY MY mortgage off. Not give myself headaches trying to figure this out on my own!

Again the part where you say “appears you can do on your own” – well how many times do I need to say .. I am not willing, without a HELOC, to simply send all my extra money away monthly and have it locked into my mortgage. WITH a HELOC I want to MAXIMIZE the use of my income to reduce 1st mortgage principal but also keep my HELOC balance at an optimal level. There are reason why the software will prompt certain dollar amounts, to the penny, at certain times. I have NO CLUE why it tells me this much and what time – but do I care? NO – because… IT WORKS!! And you won’t ever figure it out because that is why United First Financial is a top-notch professional company and stands to make the money and is garnering the publicity it has. The do mortgage acceleration better than the competition WITH a money back guarantee, and with 24/7 support and I just don’t have to worry. Please get off me about this “do it on your own” stuff. I have said I want this done EASILY and also live my life the same as before – and that’s what’s going on here. Three years down the road if I want a car? I just write a check and have full title in my hands and I (not the bank) determine the interest rate! It really gives me flexibility and more security. If I’m gonna go to the trouble to get a HELOC – I feel I have chosen the best method to ensure it’s done RIGHT – that’s the Money Merge Account!

Jason,

Here are the numbers.

Interest bearing checking/savings – 5%

3,000 monthly income, paid 1500 on 1st, 1500 on the 15th

1,000 montly mortgage
2,000 monthly bills

DAY 1

I deposit the 1500 of income and pay 1,000 mortgage leaving me with 500

DAY 15

I deposit the 1500 of income leaving me with a balance of 2000

DAY 30

I pay the 2000 in bills and have a ZERO balance.

I earn interest of 500 for 15 days and 2000 for 15 days giving me a total earned of $6.25 that I can put towards my mortgage at the end of the month.

I just paid down my mortgage with ZERO discretionary income.

This is something that MMA CAN NOT DO!!!

You do not know what you are talking about.

Using an interest bearing checking/savings account will beat the MMA method.

Chris – Let me phrase it yet another way in regard to the income numbers on the analysis. Some months I make more than others since some months have 5 checks. In a worse case scenario (remember the money-back guarantee is based on this) if I only bring in the amount of my lowest earning months I still pay off in the time indicated on my analysis. Your issue with this “fudging” of numbers is moot! Again, I will always make at least that number indicated on my analysis. If I don’t make that AVERAGE amount, which is what you are looking for, on the lowest earning months – then that is INACCURATE! Then I could ask for my money back! Sooo – don’t bring this up. Pay it off according to the analysis or faster – what’s your malfunction Chris?

Sean, way to go!!! You saved less than a year off of your mortgage!! Woohoo! If indeed you had absolutely zero dollars after you pay for everything not only are you eventually going to lose your home (well maybe an extra $7-$15 will help me stave off the court order for a few more weeks)! The MMA product is not for people you draw up in these scenarios.

Jason

You do not know what you are talking about.

I am all ready ahead with zero extra money.

Now add in extra money per month and I will still be ahead of MMA.

MMA borrows at a lower interest rate to pay the loan off. Instead of borrowing at an effective rate of say 3.5% to pay 6%, you EARN at 5% which is a better deal. The interest bearing checking/savings will always come out ahead in a head to head comparison using the same exact numbers.

There is a reason why savings accounts earn you higher interest (because the banks use your money since you keep your money in it) – do you think they’ll just let you write checks out there for free? Uhh minus the check write fee your plan falls to shambles? Correct me if I am wrong.

There are no fees involved. Check out Ing direct or Emigrentdirect. I am sure there are others but these are the two that come right to my mind.

No monthly fees, no minimums, free online bill pay, they can even tie it right into your own personal checking account to make transfers etc….

You float as much money as you can by using a credit card for your daily expenses, paying off the credit card and bills at the end of the month so you earn a higher amount of interest.

It is no different then floating your money as much as possible in MMA so you have a lower average daily balance in your HELOC etc….

Also, your HELOC is variable. So if rates go up then you will pay more interest in your HELOC.

When this happens the difference in interest between what you save on your Mortgage and what you pay in your HELOC gets smaller and smaller. Meaning less money earned.

Me, I will earn MORE money in my account as interest rates rise.

Jason V,

You said, “Again I will say the amount of money I make in any given month is NOT accurate nor the same as my AVERAGE monthly income. In a one month snap shot the income projection is corret. And again what is your point being that I will only be paying my mortgage off ahead of the projection!!”

I believe if you take a closer look, you will see that the analysis already factored in your total yearly income into the equation; not just your 1 week times 4 equals one month. The reason people would come out ahead of the initial projection is due to them finding more ways to cut expanses-the cup of coffee as you like to say.

Did you figure in your total extra income for the year and the $3,500 when you did your own analysis?

Sean,

The interest rate is 5% APY .. you’d have to divide your totals by 12 to derive the monthly amounts you think you’ve earned, correct?

Chris,

The point then is the customer has to sign off on the amounts they earn in one month on the analysis. Again, I don’t know why – but I don’t care .. if they leave off the extra income – then they also leave off the reduced payoff time. Fine with me.

Jason V,

I don’t believe they are “leaving off the reduced payoff time”. They are more likely using all your extra income for the whole year in their analysis to make the system look as good as they can. The only thing they are “leaving off” is your actual discretionary income for the year(which is the true monthly average) so your own analysis will look worse when you run the numbers yourself. Most of the people don’t catch this.

Jason,

I would like to see your explanation of how MMA works for people with no discretionary income. If it does not work for this type of person, you need to be upfront about it.

I still can not figure out why there are no complaints about the software. Are UFF agents only selling this product to people who do not complain. Is their anyone else intrigued about their being not complaints about the software?

After following this thread the last few days I can honestly say Jason and Chris have wasted a lot of my time. I know Jason is trying to do his job as a UFF agent and I can appreciate that, but you talk like a politician. You are just not being completely honest, or you just dont understand MMA yourself. (At least Ron Paul is an honest, straight shooting politician. I mainly do not agree with his domestic policies, by the way)

Either way, I have to get off this thread. To much bickering and not enough raw facts.

Yes, you are correct and I used 6% instead of 5% in my calculation. My mistake.

5% would be $5.21 instead of the $6.25.

This doesn’t matter because you are still earning monthly money with ZERO extra income.

Add in extra money and it only gets better and better.

No Sean what I was saying that you earn 5% over the course if the year, correct? APY and ANNUAL percentage yield. You have to divide your monthly gain of $5.21 by 12. That doesn’t seem to be “better and better”.

That isn’t true.

I can’t believe you give financial advice to people. All you know is to plug in numbers in a computer program and that is it.

I earned 500 dollars for 15 days at 5% and 2000 dollars for 15 days at 5%.

This is the calc.

Take 5% which is .05
Divide by 12 for monthly earned = .004167
Divide by 2 for 15 days = .002083
Now multiply that number by 500 and 2000 and then add it up.

1.04 + 4.17 = $5.21 for the month.

Give it up Jason.

I have said everything I need to say. Anyone with any intelligence will realize that the MMA program is not worth $3,500 and there are better alternatives.

CYA

Wait! – not so fast – no CYA yet buddy,

Sean I am NOT a financial advisor! And I am still not following you! I can see the math plainly. I will not have in my checking any more than my monthly budget for the most part. My average balance in my checking is less than $4500 if I were just using my household income (rounded numbers)so I will be able to EARN appx $18 bucks or so to send to my mortgage every month. And at a $200k loan at 6% interest and paying an additional $18 per month I still will have not even saved a YEAR with your plan. Again, how will I “float” my money and pay my mortgage off in much less than half the time!

Thanks for the advice about the IMG stuff though.. MAN I was only earning 0.6% and with them I could have earned 4%!! No gimmicks! Great stuff… but checks go to HELOC and I pay off sooner. I am waiting for Sean how floating my money and earning $18 per month to send to my mortgage will beat the Money Merge Account. 29 years compared to my 7 years. ?

I could accumulate over $2200 in 10 years. That’s WAY better than most checking accounts can claim assuming you float your month expenses on a credit card. But this falls insurmountably short of the 6-12 years average pay off with the Money Merge Account.

Wait, wait. I blame this on how late it is. You are suggesting I keep my discretionary in this account and let it compound. Can you run the numbers on that? I don’t know how to do it without taking hours… I sure don’t think it will come close to the Money Merge Account but I am still curious about the results.

Last post.

Jason,

What you are not understanding is that almost all of your pay off is happening because of the extra income alone regardless of what program you are using. Remember, MMA can’t even work without extra money per month.

All I am calculating is the amount of earnings I can generate per month with zero extra income. If I had 500 extra then I would earn an additional 500 for 30 days at 5% which is another $2.08. At the end of the month I would pay into my mortgage $507.29. This is the 500 extra plus interest earned.

With MMA and the extra 500 per month you would also generate a few dollars extra per month plus the 500 that goes to pay down the money that you BORROWED from the HELOC to pay down the mortgage. The extra bit of money per month is the difference in interest savings vs interest paid.

The difference between the two scenarios would only be about 3-6 dollars per month. It is a small difference but in the end with the interest bearing account you would pay off the mortgage a little bit sooner AND save $3500.

The bigger the money gets, the more extra money you could earn but the interest bearing account always comes out ahead. If rates start going up, the interest bearing account does better and better compared to MMA.

There is no magic with MMA. Almost all of the pay down happens with extra income that you would all ready have no matter what program you used. The little bit of money that you earn (this means money that you conjure up that you didn’t have) with MMA does very, very little and the interest bearing account will beat it by a small amount.

All MMA does is maximize that little bit of money you earn every month between interest saved vs interest paid on the HELOC. So instead of making 4.21 extra per month, you make 4.25 per month.

For your 3500 investment you aren’t seeing much return and could beat it by a few months or so and not spend the 3500.

That’s it, I am really done now.

Sean you said “The bigger the money gets, the more extra money you could earn but the interest bearing account always comes out ahead.”

Prove it. I want to see the numbers. And you are still missing that the HELOC allows me to pay sums to my closed end mortgage NOW that I don’t have otherwise .. amounts GREATER than just my discretionary! It’s my discretionary that keeps my open ended HELOC balance lower though to pay less interest on that than I am reducing off the primary. You are wrong. Your system will not even tie the Money Merge Account but end up behind. Your “last post” does not prove a darn thing. Where’s the proof. Do an “analysis” for us genius. Use round numbers.

Where is my emergency money? The interest I’ve saved in my checking/savings? I’d have to refi! If I need to make a large purchase I still have to rely on the bank to set the rate since I don’t have enough liquid equity to tap into for ME to determine the interest rate. You still haven’t proven the numbers Sean! I can leverage money from the line of credit to offset thousands and thousands in interest and pay very little with my discretionary helping to keep HELOC balance low. Sean still is a long ways away from making statements like “last post”

Guys all talk and no walk. Nothing the theoreticals from people like Sean and Chris. If you wanted to start paying off your home sooner NOW.. are you gonna rely on these two or United First Financial? lol – I think I made the right choice with the Money Merge Account.

Jason V,

What were the rates/terms of all three of your loans and the Heloc that you shared in your 4:57, July 24th post?

I had used about two years on my mortgage and paid some extra to principal during that time. There was one mortgage with a 6.25 rate and another with a 10.25 (80/20 loan). the auto loan was a 4 or 5 year term I think and the rate was like 13% or something ridiculous. The HELOC was is 9% variable of course.

I think it’s funny how you are just sitting around trying to figure out how to do this yourself. It’s hilarious. Yes, you need an account that functions as a HELOC (and you need it tied to the home since you want the tax deductions right?) – and yes you must figure out how much to transfer to principal out of the line of credit and how much to leave in the HELOC to keep the interest rates down. You’ll never figure it out. Harj Gill has a good idea and it will work better than what any other plan would for most people but United First Financial has perfected it and actually has a phone number to speak to an actual person if you have any questions. Personally I’ve never had to call and ask them any questions relating to the software since once you get it the person sits down and explains it and sets it up according to your financial situation. But the common denominator here is the use of the open ended HELOC to drive these style of programs. It is awesome.

Watch the NBC news broadcast here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5ibPz5mIzE

Watch the 50 min complete overview for the numbers people here:

http://www.u1stfinancial.com/portals/0/media/mma100.html

http://mma.fastmortgagepayoff.info/mma-news-clip

Here’s the NBC broadcast

Yes I am back.

Do this Jason, very simple.

180k 6% 30 yr

Lets use my example above with respect to income and the 500 extra per month.

Scenario one, add in 507.29 extra per month towards the mortgage.

Scenario two, add in one lump sum payment of 6,000 per year.

Lets say you BORROW that money at ZERO percent interest. Your extra 500/month goes to pay that back. It would take you all year to pay back the 6,000. So once per year you would put in 6,000.

Run the numbers on any available mortgage calculator on the web and what do you get.

The lump sum will beat it by ONE MONTH.

Now add in the fact that you are paying interest on the HELOC so it would take you longer to pay back the 6000 because some of it goes to interest and that you paid $3500 for the program and which one do you think will come out ahead now? Yes, the interest bearing account will with monthly payments to the mortgage.

Now add in the fact that I have an extra 3500 and it gets even better.

What, rates went up…….. it gets even better.

With MMA what do you do incase of an emergency? You would use the HELOC. With the interest bearing account you do the same thing. You open a HELOC, which you can do for free, but you would only draw from it in an emergency.

You got taken.

If you don’t understand that MMA is not the most optimal way then you simply are stupid and you deserve to spend 3500 for the “priviledge” of using MMA.

Yes I am back.

Jason do this.

180k 6% 30 yr

Use my numbers for income and the 500 extra per month.

Scenario 1

At the end of every month you pay down your mortgage by 507.29.

Scenario 2

You put in a one lump sum of 6,000 per year.
You are putting all your money in your HELOC and your extra money goes to pay down the 6k. To make it easy lets say your HELOC is at 0% so we don’t even have to figure out how much interest you would PAY into the heloc. 500 per month extra, so you pay off the 6k in one year. Of course the balance would be higher because you don’t want it to drop below your income that you put into it but that doesn’t matter since we aren’t paying any interest on the money yet.

This is what MMA is doing. You take a lump sum and pay down your mortgage. Your extra funds go to pay that lump sum back WITH interest and your income is used to drive down the average daily balance so your actual interest paid on the amount borrowed is less but you are still paying some interest on it.

Run the numbers on any mortgage calculator and what do you get?

The lump sum beats the interest account by ONE MONTH but this is without paying any interest on the borrowed money and with out taking into account the $3500 that you paid.

Now, add in that you are paying interest on the HELOC and that you paid 3500 dollars and which one do you think will come out ahead now. Yes the interest bearing account will.

Not only will I beat you by 2-3 months but I have 3500 to invest which makes it just that much better.

What, interest rates went up, I do that much better.

With MMA what would you do in an emergency? You would use your HELOC. Well with the interest bearing account you would open up a HELOC also except you would only draw on it in an emergency. You can open up one for free so no cost to you even if you never use it.

If you are not convinced then you are too stupid to realize what is really going on. If that is the case, than paying 3500 for MMA was probably ment for you. Me, I will beat you by 2-3 months and invest that 3500 and make even more money in the end.

Jason V,

I’m not sitting around trying to figure out how to do this myself. There is nothing to “figure out”. I already know how to do it, it is not complicated, and it will beat your system every time. I outlined it in my very first post. If I don’t even use an interst bearing account, and save my $3,500, I come out better than the MMA. If I use an interest bearing account it comes out even better for me. If I apply my $3,500 instead of save it, it comes out better still for me.

I’m just curious what your numbers were.

Sorry for the double post.

OH, Jason, your HELOC rate is way to high.

Mine is %7.24

variable of course.

Sean I see what you are saying. Cool – but I’m still a happy customer! I can’t believe a checking account can pay that much interest.

Sean, are you saying you need a HELOC to do what you are doing?

No, you don’t have to have one, but it is always nice to have one “just in case”.

Sean can you go to my website and send me an email since I don’t want you to post yours on the blog – I have some more questions!

email sent

Here’s what I don’t understand: If my mortgage interest rate is 6%, and I can either pay $500 extra on my mortgage or pay $500 (after taxes also) into a retirement account with an 8% return in the long term, why would I choose to pay down my 6% loan? Not to mention the extra savings I get by deducting my mortgage interest payments for federal income tax.

Your right.

You will, in the end, get a much better return.

Invest in a vanguard index mutual fund and I wouldn’t be surprised if you got an average 10% return over the next 20 years.

Some people feel more secure if they can pay off their house and have less expenses per month.

Nothing wrong with that, just depends on what is important to you.

Please, The MMA works like a charm, my numbers are I Have a $310K I/O 30 year mtg. I have only made my 2nd payment on this new refi in July and I will pay off my mortgage in 8.7 years with a savings of $327,765 in Interest. Oh and by the way I will make $250K selling the MMA this year.

Jonathan,

The interest you pay on your HELOC (check with your tax advisor) can be 100% tax-deduction. That is no excuse. And if you are an investor, why not use the equity you’ve built up to invest?

Sean,

Investing in stocks carries risk. Eliminating mortgage debt does not.

“why not use the equity you’ve built up to invest?”
where did he says stocks?

“Eliminating mortgage debt does not.”
UNTRUE

(going along with everyones blunt answers with no explanation)

taken from the title.

“A “money merge account” is a special home equity line of credit placed on your home.”

no it isn’t.

Real Estate investment (even if it’s your own home) carries risk.

Investing money by ‘reducing’ mortgage debt carries REAL risk.

When real estate and home values go down… the money you locked up as “equity” doesn’t earn you anything, not one penny more or less than if you had a 100% MORTGAGE! when you sell, you will get the same price, whatever that price may be.

BUT the ‘equity’you paid in can dissapear just as fast as it appeared… it CAN be lost forever!

Alternative investments also carry risks, EVERYTHING DOES, All investments carry some amount of risk!

Even, things like US treasury notes, FDIC insured savings accounts, carry risk… inflaionary risk!

Real estate is NOT a risk free investment!

Make sure you understand what you are really doing if you decide to make any investment, Including investing in real estate by paying your mortgage off faster.

Tim, if you are making $250K selling the MMA this year it seems like you ought to be able to pay off your mortgage in 2 years!

I’ve read both views (for & against)…my husband and I are seriously considering doing the MMA. My husband is sold on it, I am not. Per the UFF agent, we will save approx. $20,000. We currently have a 20 year mortgage at 5.25% and have 16 years left. We could save that much if we put approx. $100 extra down each month into our principal. Maybe what is holding me back is the push of the MMA. Agents boast on the product and try to get you to get everything set up right away, why? They sound irritated when I say, I want to take my time and make sure I understand what we are getting into…after all, this is OUR life and OUR investment. Their high pressured sales tactics just makes me think, they want their commission and who cares if you dig yourself into a hole 6 feet under. I would truly like to hear from people who have actually gone through the program with success ( NOT AGENTS SELLING MMA). But on a blog, how would you know whether someone is truly on the program and just an agent saying they are on the program?

DJ go to mortgage scams. there is a lot of information about UFF that helped me decide not to spend the $3500.

I have read most of everyone message and wow! Everyone here has an opinion about the MMA. I like to address DJ for a short. I became a MMA owner and agent at the same time. This program is very impressive if u take time and study it. I wouldnt make a move either if I felt that I was being pressured into getting this program and agents shouldnt do that. I liked this program because we are projected to pay off our mortgage in 4.25yrs. In April 2007, I had 29.4yrs left on a refi. Prior to that, I was able to find a company that would combine my 1st mortgage with my high-interest 2nd mortgage. Then 6mos later, the MMA came along and based on my descretionary imcome, my mortgage, and other debts of about 20+ credit cards, store cards, 2001 Cadillac DTS, will be paid along with my HELOC in 4.25 yrs. I did make the $3500 investment and according to my financial debt analysis I will save $397,000 in interest and pay out $76,000 in interest when all is said and done. Now I want the 3 skeptics to tell me that I made a mistake and when I invested my $3500.00 to save $397,000.00 so I can tell them where they can go. I became an agent to give back and help others. I do not used the pressure tactic approach because I really dont care whether they get the program or not. I am just satisfied with the fact that I was able to at least offer this program to them so that when they hear about this on the news, they would have had an oppty to get ahead of the game. And to the skeptics, now that I have a home-based business, my $3500 becomes a tax write-off and I know you are smart enough to figure that out. My financial analysis also showed me that I am paying my mortgage and debt off at a rate of 2.3% interest. That means that if this had been a 30 yr mortgage, I would be paying my mortgage back at the 2.3% rate. There is your interest-cancellation this program is speaking off. Im on board for the long haul. I dont even come online to even try to chat with anyone about the MMA. It’s a waste of my time. Jason V! you are just wasting your time chattin with Sean and Chris. They are not going to become agents or get the MMA program, but I can understand the challenge. I hope everyone here has a very nice day and may God bless you with your decisions. Y’all sho do make this hard. lol

super,

If you go back and re-read all my posts, you will find that I never dispute any of the projections from “the system” analsis. I don’t doubt that it is possible for you to achieve what you have said. However, the fact is, your projection has nothing to do with the MMA, the HELOC or the $3,500 you spent. It has everything to do with how much more of your discretionary income you apply to your loans. The time and interest you save has no relation to your $3,500 “investment”. By shuffling your money through the HELOC, you won’t even generate enough savings to cover the $3,500 cost. These are the facts; plain, clear & simple. Until you actually do the math, you will never understand.

Sorry super, you are not paying off your debt at a lower rate either. You are paying the same interest rate on less money being borrowed as you pay it down. Talk of effective interst rates is nonsense. Again, plain, clear & simple.

to pay off all that debt in 4.25 years is not the magic of the MMA. It is the absolutely HUGE amount of money you are dumping against your principle.

with 100K mortgage at 5.5% on a 20 year fixed, to use DJ’s loan, your payment would be $687.89 per month. No matter how you try and do it, to pay it off in 4.25 years you are looking at 2187.89 per month (roughly). You will have very little interest (10-15K) but you need to have the other 100K to pay it off.

therefore, we are talking about someone stupid enough to have 30K per year in cashflow that could pay off your mortgage that fast, that has HOW MANY credit cards?

that is just your mortgage. If you really have that much discretionary income (proportionally to your debts), you sir, are a complete and utter fool for having all those credit cards in the first place, unless they are ALL at a lower rate than your mortgage for example.

it just doesn’t make sense. if you have the cash-flow to pay all of that off in 4.25 years, your would not be carrying those debts at anything over 5% in which case, paying them off probably isn’t the best way to go anyway.

at least if you are trying to convince people, be realistic. DJ. 100 bucks extra is fine, but you don’t need the MMA to do that. I would rather see that money not get tied up in your home, but put to work in your savings and investments (keep from having to go to 18% credit cards), but again, you certainly don’t need the MMA to tell you to add $100 of your own money to your mortgage. without spending the 3500, you could add 3500 that to your mortgage day 1 saving you $6,500 in interest. thats the concept of the MMA altogether. When you really look though. 3500 gets you 6500 over 20 years. it takes 10 years to double your money at 7%. so in 20 years, you only need a 5.5% (notice this is exatly the same as your mortgage rate) return to get that and you have access to that money the entire time (and its not tax deductible as a payment to your principle).

another key point that i would like to make, is that NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU PAY TOWARDS YOUR PRINCIPLE. THAT 2.3% IS A BUNCH OF BS. your interest rate on the first of your home, if 6%, is 6% no matter what.

2.3% may be interest you are paying compared to the lifetime initial balance, but whatever you owe, in any given month, times your interest rate (6% or whatever it is) is what determines your interest.

try and tell anyone that on the MMA, if they start out owing 100K, that their interest is magically 2.3%, you are lying to them. And if you believe that is true, you should not be involved in ANYONES money. the interest rate is what it is, the amount of interest payed is ONLY affected, by how much EXTRA you throw into your principle. that does not affect your interest rate. (yes…that is a period at the end of that sentence)

Explanation of EFFECTIVE interest rate:
Principal Balance of 100 at 10% annual (let’s keep it simple-I don’t need some wise guy to start bringing in compounding).

If the principal stays at $100 your interest after 12 months would be $10.

If you are able to bring the interest assessable balance down to $20 (@10%) you would pay $8. The interest saved is EQUIVALENT to 2% of the original $100 hence EFFECTIVE RATE of 2%.

All of you skeptics and critics are so smart I thought you already knew that one.

Error above: Interest paid would be $2 not 8.

Chris,
Thx 4 the advice, but Im sticking with my guns on this one. I did read all of your posts. I didnt understand half of them because Im not a mathematician. All this was on my MMA and being that my wife is very happy with it. Im staying with it. Maybe you ought to go http://www.brokerbanker.com and convince this gentleman that the MMA is a joke. If it’s ok with him then it’s definitely ok with me, because he is calling on all mortgage originators, loan officers,etc to share this program with their customer before the banks do and besides that this gentleman owns the magazine company. And by the way Chris, dont give me the analyticals, it’s just a foreign language to me.

to Chris and Wow,

I got just one serious question and I hope you answer it truthfully. Have you guys checked out the UFF and studied the MMA program like I did or are you guys just guessing here? If you havent done so, then I hope and suggest that you do before passing judgement on me. Im versed on these things. Now my attorney general in my state told us that this program is legit. Im not going to take advice from you guys if you havent studied the program. I got too much at stake here and you guys got a lot of families looking for a way out. If you aint backed up by facts then you guys are stealing their dreams of becoming debt free. And you saw the debts Im talking about, you looking at a poor person that became middle class in a hurry. Guess how I got the credit delimna now. We never had it so when we got it, we didnt stop. We learned a hard lesson. Im talking about from $25,000/yr to over $100,000/yr salary in a real short period of time. You are right about one thing and Im going to confess it. I was a fool but I learned a lesson. This is my way out and Im taking it. Again I appreciate the advice, but Im in it now. Thanks so much for all your help.

Bryan,

Great, you just provided a wonderful example that further validates my position.
You start out owing $100 at a 10% annual rate.
You take $80 out of your pocket and apply it to the debt.
You now only owe $20 on which you pay $2 interest by years end.
What rate did you pay on the money you borrowed? $2 divided by $20 is 10%.
What rate did you pay on the $80? You paid 0% because you didn’t borrow $80.
There cannot be an interest rate on money you don’t borrow to begin with. The $100 has nothing to do with the equation, because you only borrowed $20. You have to pay interest on that $80 for a year in order to use that same $80 in your yearly calculation.

The same would be true if you reduced the principle by $6.67/mo for twelve months instead of making an $80 lump sum payment. You’re always paying 10% on the balance only. Unless your intent is to deceive yourself and/or others, effective interest rates are useless.

super

Yes, I have studied the company and the program. But, I went a step further and actually studied the math. The information I have shared is impartial. I have nothing to lose by discussing this with others, because I am not trying to sell anything. If there was any value at all to the program I would be on it myself. The company is “legit” in that it is legal. The true advantage to the program lies in the hands of the seller, not the buyer. It is much wiser for me to tie my own string around my finger as a reminder to send extra money in with my mortgage payment. If you want to pay someone else $3,500 for that string, feel free. Besides the expensive reminder, there is only one other benefit that I see, which is the income you could make as an agent. I wouldn’t have a problem with people selling it, if they would show the client the real amount of discretionary income used in the analysis, and that they are really only buying a $3,500 piece of yarn. I’m not going to laugh when this program finally goes away. I‘ll be just as sad then as I am now for all the folks that bought into it.

Chris,

It is sad that you don’t really get it. First of all, who said that the reduction in principal is “out-of-pocket.” Second, accusing me of selling the equivalent of snake oil is an attack on my character which is unfounded. I did my due diligence as well.

I have studied the origins of this concept. I have studied the debt to income and loan programs in foreign countries. I have tested countless analysis’ against mortgage “extra payment” calculators, investment calculators, etc. I have investigated the tax laws governing the mortgage deduction and the like.

I stand by the FACT that this is great program that offers numerous benefits to the homeowner. Is it right for everyone? Of course not. Is it some silver bullet? No. It is simply a tool. A very good tool.

People ridiculed Ted Bennet in the late 70′s when he identified the tax code allowing pre-tax contributions for retirement planning. The 401K! It is now a household word. Oh, and by the way, not all financial planners agree that that is event the best way to put money into investments for retirement. Nonetheless it is a great deal for many.

This concept is not going to go away. In fact it is an emerging market here in the U.S. More and more wholesale lenders and retail banks are offering “Asset Manager” type accounts and there are new “just like MMA only cheaper” companies crawling out of the woodwork.

Be careful making presumptions about what agents are telling their prospects to sell the program. I’m sure there are people in whatever line of work you do that are unethical or ignorant or both.

Bryan,

In your example you said “if you are able to bring the interest assessable balance down” (from $100 to $20). If this reduction in principal is not out of pocket, please tell us where it comes from. We all want to know. It surely isn’t going to come from the few pennies you save by running the magic software and borrowing the $80 from your HELOC.

The only thing I have discussed with you is the topic above. You came up with the self-described term of “snake oil” all on your own. However, that term does appear to be fairly fitting. From the encyclopedia, the expression is applied metaphorically to any product with exaggerated marketing but questionable or unverifiable quality.

Why don’t you go ahead and outline the “numerous” benefits to the homeowner for all of us critics to see. Does one of those benefits include the FACT that the program lies about the actual amount of the client’s discretionary income that is used to make their projection? If the software is so sophisticated and the math is so brilliant, it ought to be smart enough to be truthful with people about these basic but important details.

The 401K is a household word, and so is Tulipomania, at least in my house.
Besides, who cares about past successes and failures of supposed “too good to be true” products. We are only talking about this one.

You say this concept is not going to go away. I never said it was. There is nothing wrong with the concept of mortgage pre-payment. What I did say is that this particular program will go away. I’m betting that it will go away, or at least be significantly modified as far as price and disclosure goes. And when it does, it won’t be the same package as it is now.

Two of the main selling points of the program are that only a small amount of discretionary income is necessary and that a large amount of interest is saved using the line of credit, when in reality, the opposite is true. Large amounts of discretionary are required and very tiny amounts of interest are generated using the HELOC.

Does the fact that there are people in every line of work that are unethical and/or ignorant make it ok to mislead people in order to sell them this particular program? I think not.

You’re going to have to move way up the scale of argument quality to prove that this product in its current form is a great or even good deal for many. The fact that you’re even on here having to defend it, strengthens my argument that this program can’t stand on its own good merit.

Anyone interested in a $3,500 tulip bulb?

Chris,

I’m not going to have to move up my quality of argument because there is none. You continually misconstrue and manipulate everything that is said anyway. It’s not worth my time and effort.

I know that I don’t lie or mislead people. There have been numerous posts on this site that have explained many things that I don’t have to reiterate and you have chosen to ignore them or spin them.

While you are planting tulips and saving the world from big bad MMA agents, I will continue to do what I know is right as I answer to an authority much higher than myself and I know that I am in His will.

God Bless.

Bryan,

Nice try. Go ahead and claim ignorance, but it is you, through the product you are selling, who misconstrues, manipulates, misleads and spins the truth. You may be in His sovereign will, but you will still be held accountable for your actions.

I am praying for you.

i really would like someone like supertruckerups to explain how it is the MMA that amazingly cuts down the time to 4.25 years and not almost exclusively, the dollars you send from your other assets or income to pay it off.

if you have that much to prepay it with, i still contend you shouldn’t have credit card debt.

the EFFECTIVE rate calculation. Bryan, that is entirely misleading. You are paying a 10% interest rate. Chris is right. Every other dollar you pay off (the 80) comes from somewhere else. how does it not come out of pocket. respond to that please.

if i start out with 100 owed. my MMA software tells me to pay 20 bucks to my payment, and then i pay back my equity line 20 bucks, and somehow i only have $2 in interest, you would be correct.

the problem is, the only way for that to be the case, is if the rate on the loan was 2% in the first place.

the effective rate means nothing then. get a loan for 200 then, and just pay 100 of it off immediately, then the magic 80 dollars. look at that. a 1% effective rate.

so all you do then for the MMA, is tell someone to refi, cashout as much as they can, and immediately put it all back in. their effetive rate could be less than 1%. Is that really whats happening….no

I have looked at the concept and software a great deal. I would not be speaking against it otherwise.

It is a good tool for someone who needs $3500 worth of discipline, or cant understand to just pay their extra money to their mortgage. I contend there are very few people who need a $3500 motivation.

Something that you, as a purchaser, can simply choose to become a seller of. the lack of necessary qualification alone is a problem.

Anyone could sign up and tell people their effective rate is 0.000000001%. I could probably even make the numbers show that. is that not misleading?

“I will continue to do what I know is right ”

if what you KNEW to be true, turned out not to be, when would you want to know?

you don’t see a problem in a mysterious $80 for example. please explain how that did not come from the client but comes from utilizing the MMA?

Here is what I do not understand; I had an Analysis run by a UFF agent. They asked me my budget, when I get paid, my monthly expenses, etc. I have a few credit cards and a small balance on a boat loan so those all got paid off by the HELOC (in theory). The Analysis showed I was going to pay off my home in 14 years. The Analysis showed my monthly budget, which I checked against my numbers and it was correct. It also showed my monthly income as 4 times my weekly, as I get paid weekly. This Chris guy seems to think that is some big deal. But my budget has always been based on a 4 week month, as that is the safe way to base it. If I base it on my true monthly income and it is a short month, my paycheck does not arrive before a bill comes due and that is a problem. Now I am not an idiot and I know that this means I have more discretionary income left over than my budget takes into consideration. But right now what happens to that money? I end up spending it. The UFF agent pointed this out to me and said that part of what this program does is monitor your cash flow and maximize every penny. That makes a lot of sense. If the program is going to monitor my cash flow and spend those extra discretionary dollars on my mortgage before I spend them on ice cream or beer, that is a good thing. Now as for doing this with a savings account, well, I could have done that before, but I never have, at least I have not done a very good job. The UFF agent left me with the money back guarantee, which basically said that if the numbers I gave the Analysis were correct, and if I followed the program, that it was guaranteed to work or I could get my $3500 back. Pretty straightforward guarantee. I did go play with some numbers on an extra payment calculator and compared them to what Chris said about using a savings account and found out that he was almost right. The problem is though that he left out of the equation that the interest on the HELOC is tax deductible and the interest on the savings account has to be accrued, plus it is taxable. When I factored that in, the time value of making the payments earlier using the HELOC saved almost a year over trying to do it with 5.5% savings account (a little over 11 months). And here is the problem I have with that. A long time ago I read that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So, even if it only saves me the 11 months of interest savings and the future value of 11 months of mortgage payments, this is still more than 5 times the cost of the software and this software looks pretty dang easy to use. So the software was a means to an end that paid for itself. It will do something I previously struggled with doing on my own, and it did not cost me a dime in the end to use it. Seems like a good deal to me. I do not understand all these money merge bashers (or maybe I do). It is sort of like someone who spends every weekend standing in front of the Ford dealership telling folks they are stupid to buy a Ford because a Buick is better. You would start to wonder why it is so important to them and why they waste so much of their their time telling other folks what they should, or shouldn’t buy. Of course, it makes sense when you find out their Daddy owns the Buick dealership.

Sam,

I left taxes out because they don’t sway the results in favor of the MMA. The savings account comes out ahead whether taxes are applied or not. I am quite confident that it is you who left out part of the equation when you ran your own numbers. Think about it. With the HELOC, you are paying interest and getting a small tax break. With the savings account, you are earning interest and paying a small amount of tax. Which one do you think will come out ahead? The savings account, of course. Run the savings account scenario with the extra mortgage payment, and don’t forget to include the interest earned(less tax). Now add the $3,500 to the equation and it comes out even further ahead. Apples to apples, that’s all I ask. Suppose you just save all your money and pay off the entire mortgage when you accumulate enough in the savings account to do so. Sure, you would pay tax on all of the interest earned, but you would have offset that amount by itemizing the tax deductible mortgage interest all the way along. Using the HELOC, the tax savings on the interest paid is actually offset by a lesser tax credit on the reduced amount of mortgage interest paid.

One more thing to remember, if the interest rates were higher on the other loans that were rolled into the HELOC, then of course you will save more money than you would by just continuing to pay those debts off. But, this assumes either you already have a HELOC, or that you can get one for less (startup & fees) than the amount of interest you will save by making the switch. That is called debt consolidation, and to be fair, that would have to be factored in along side the savings account method as well.

I’m sure if you stare at your numbers long enough, you will realize that you are not saving anything at all over the savings account method because the other method is actually costing you. Now we are back to the value of that piece of yarn. Is it worth $3,500 to you to have someone else tell you not to spend your extra money on ice cream & beer, or can you do it on your own? Besides, the software isn’t going to force you to follow its promptings. You will ultimately be making your own choices regardless of which system you use.

Chris,

What you don’t get through your thick head is that the Money Merge Account software helps you to have a much higher chance of STICKING with the program!! Yes, you could use the savings account and use that small amount of interest + discretionary every month BUT … will most people stick to it?? Probably not.. changing the way you look at your budget is worth if for many.. including me!!

Bug off Chris!

Chris forgets the actual article for which he is posting it appears. In case he forgot, and I paraphrase “On the other hand, you could theoretically do it yourself. Start using a high-interest checking account (like Electric Orange, which gives you 4% interest) and then send every cent you can to the mortgage payment… Although that seems like a better financial deal than a money merge account (and it is), it has one huge risk: you. As we’ve discussed before, individuals are a huge risk because of their desire to spend money that’s “just sitting there” in an account. It wouldn’t take much at all over thirteen years for you to take money that’s already yours and spend it on something else.

One psychological advantage of a money merge account is that it encourages frugality. Why? It puts you in a situation where every dollar you spend basically goes onto your mortgage principal. See that bag of chips at the store? Is it worth it going onto your mortgage? You can use your own home as a psychological tool to be thrifty – and thus get out of the mortgage sooner.

If you have a lot of financial discipline, doing it yourself is a better deal than a money merge account. However, if you’re prone to spending extra at all and have found yourself saying, “Well, I have plenty extra right now, so I can afford it,” then a money merge account is probably the fastest way available to you to pay off your mortgage.”

Regards Chris!

Chris falls into the financial discipline category and doesn’t understand that he is a minority, though everyone has the ability.. most of us simply spend too liberally. Bottom line. Chris quit thinking that just because you know another way to do it on your own doesn’t mean the product will actually work for them.. BETTER! Bottom line: MMA will give that OTHER group a better chance at paying off their home much sooner simply because it worked for their personality type and helped change perspective and negative tendencies and traits that got them into the mess they are in. It’s only a matter of time until the banks start offering a similar Money Merge Account program. For those that understand banking in-depth and from what I’ve heard.. people who use these principles reduce bank risks and work for a Win-Win for both lenders and borrowers. Money Merge Account-type programs will be mainstream in just a few short years. (But Chris wouldn’t understand)

Jason V

And here you are, waging your last small argument in favor of the MMA, waving your banner that reads “it might be a really good motivational tool”. But, does this notion really work toward the software’s advantage, or is it just one last desperate attempt to try and prop up those with monetary stakes in the program? What really motivates people to do this is the time and money they save, not the software. If they were told the truth, they would be even more excited to learn how they could do even better on their own, for free. Caution, telling people the truth will not help them decide to send you $3,500.

Here is an interesting statistic. The national average rate of success for those who make resolutions at the start of a new year is about 8%. Do you think the MMA is going to generate much better results, considering that this commitment will likely require significantly larger portions of ones time & money as compared to the average resolution? What happens down the road when the majority of the “don’t stick with it” folks decide to quit spending extra money on their mortgage and invest it, save it, or spend it on other things instead? The person who wasn’t using your system will be much better off, because they didn’t spend one single penny for the ability to pay down their mortgage in the first place. Had they done the MMA, not only will their payoff date be further out than the ultra simple, easy, free method of doing it yourself, but they will still be in the hole on the line of credit.

I completely understand the need to try and help overhaul the way people think about and deal with their finances. However, sending already cash strapped people $3,500 further into consumer debt in order to stimulate them is not the solution, especially when it makes zero financial sense to do so. How about encouraging people to do this:

Cut expenses.
Spend wisely
Pay off consumer debt.
Stay out of consumer debt.
Build an emergency savings account.
Build wealth through investing.
Pay off your mortgage faster if that is your goal. For free.

Please don’t send me any money, the above advice was offered at no charge.

Jason said, “Bottom line: MMA will give that OTHER group a better chance at paying off their home much sooner”.

Just under the “bottom line” lies the fact that Jason has in his possession zero statistical data showing that the “OTHER” group has a better chance than the non-MMA group at paying off their home any sooner. What we do know, is that he and other MMA proponents have been proven wrong over and over again in this thread and many others, yet most never seem to rise above their fractured pride to admit it.

Jason V

And here you are, waging your last small argument in favor of the MMA, waving your banner that reads “it might be a really good motivational tool”. But, does this notion really work toward the software’s advantage, or is it just one last desperate attempt to try and prop up those with monetary stakes in the program? What really motivates people to do this is the time and money they save, not the software. If they were told the truth, they would be even more excited to learn how they could do even better on their own, for free. Caution, telling people the truth will not help them decide to send you $3,500.

Here is an interesting statistic. The national average rate of success for those who make resolutions at the start of a new year is about 8%. Do you think the MMA is going to generate much better results, considering that this commitment will likely require significantly larger portions of ones time & money as compared to the average resolution? What happens down the road when the majority of the “don’t stick with it” folks decide to quit spending extra money on their mortgage and invest it, save it, or spend it on other things instead? The person who wasn’t using your system will be much better off, because they didn’t spend one single penny for the ability to pay down their mortgage in the first place. Had they done the MMA, not only will their payoff date be further out than the ultra simple, easy, free method of doing it yourself, but they will still be in the hole on the line of credit.

I completely understand the need to try and help overhaul the way people think about and deal with their finances. However, sending already cash strapped people $3,500 further into consumer debt in order to stimulate them is not the solution, especially when it makes zero financial sense to do so. How about encouraging people to do this:

Cut expenses.
Spend wisely
Pay off consumer debt.
Stay out of consumer debt.
Build an emergency savings account.
Build wealth through investing.
Pay off your mortgage faster if that is your goal. For free.

Please don’t send me any money, the above advice was offered at no charge.

Jason said, “Bottom line: MMA will give that OTHER group a better chance at paying off their home much sooner”.

Just under the “bottom line” lies the fact that Jason has in his possession zero statistical data showing that the “OTHER” group has a better chance than the non-MMA group at paying off their home any sooner. What we do know, is that he and other MMA proponents have been proven wrong over and over again in this thread and many others, yet sadly most never seem to rise above their fractured pride to admit it.

Chris how old are you. You are college age or less. Bottom-line. That would explain your stubborness…

Chris said “Just under the “bottom line” lies the fact that Jason has in his possession zero statistical data showing that the “OTHER” group has a better chance than the non-MMA group at paying off their home any sooner.”

Well I do have proof. ME! It works for me – and didn’t work before because I just wouldn’t stick to it. I’m done with this blog. If you still want to complain – then complain to the author of this story ‘Trent’ .. you are an idiot!!

U1st financial is mortgage acceleration being marketed through Multi Level Marketing. The two primary ways mortgage acceleration is marketed in the U.S. is: Multi level marketing or 1st Lein HELOC. They both yield the greatest return for the companies marketing them. MLM is a pyramid and most know how the money flows with that scenario. 1st Lein requires the refinancing of your primary and all the fees that are associated with that.

The core concept of how the system works is sound and uniform. The way the program is marketed is the problem and will result in the same type of federal interaction as was seen in Australia. Already, the California Mortgage and Lending division has taken action against companies who have stepped over the line when it comes to marketing. History will repeat itself.

Now some facts about Speed Equity. Harj has been giving away the software to the viewers of the original channel 3 story for free. This has made U1st and their multi level marketing agents very unhappy. They (if the news story was about them at all anyway! see below) lost out on thousands of leads and millions of dollars. That means thousands of people are using Speed Equity in Las Vegas. Harj has been doing webinars for these people 100 at a time, again for free. I don’t blame the U1st people for being angry. If I owned a gas station and the station across the street was undercutting me by 50 cents a gallon, that would be very upsetting. But, and listen up U1st salespeople, if you start to say, his “gasoline” won’t power your car and it actually does, two things will happen:
1. you’re going to look ridiculous as they start posting to blogs like this and
2. you’ll do damage to the reputation of all the systems by undermining the credibiltiy of the core concept.

Now for a revelation that would be very easy for anyone to check as I have: the NBC station in Vegas never claimed to be test driving the U1st financial system. Not a single person at that channel is using the MMA system.

Also, I watched the news report on youtube and you’ll find that right in the middle there’s a picture of Harj’s book! Own Your Own Home Years Sooner! Nowhere in the report is there a mention of U1st Financial or MMA. As a matter of fact, how do we know the story isn’t about Tardus’ product since it costs just about the same! Has anyone else starting using Tardus’ product? Why hasn’t U1st attacked Tardus or CMG’s product? Heck, even Washington Mutual has a 1st Lein product that can be used as a mortgage acceleration program.

I would encourage everyone who is interested in mortgage acceleration to take a look at all the companies. Why not? You’ll have everything to gain and you probably should compare them side by side anyway. Should you order Harj’s book? Sure, they’re in print. If they weren’t why are they popping up on Ebay with a years subscription to his software? Or on Amazon? I think you actually get two books for the price at his website, so you could sell one on Ebay or give one to a family member.

U1ST, Tardus, CMG, etc should be thrilled with this strategy. If people understand the concepts as outlined in Harj’s book the knowledge could drive more customers to them. Shouldn’t it?

Darren said “Nowhere in the report is there a mention of U1st Financial or MMA.”

Uhh.. FALSE.. the guy in the video is using the MMA software.. notice it says ‘Money Merge Account’ right towards the beginning.

Speed Equity works. The software is more “do-it-yourself” oriented. For instance it wants YOU to decide how much of the HELOC you should put towards first (it recommends $5k) but what I like is for the software to tell ME how much, to the penny, to transfer to maximize interest savings and also keep HELOC balance low.

Darren don’t make it sound like the news special didn’t mention Money Merge Account because to prove you wrong (again) they mention “$3500 for the software – but it works” as well. Is the Speed Equity $3500? No. If fact it’s free for some people. But they are of course referring to United First Financials product. Get your facts straight.

Thank you for pointing out my mistake regarding the story, but most of all, thank you for pointing out that Speed Equity does work. So I heartily recommend to everyone to try and compare them both, especially if you have a spare $3500 for Tardus or U1st whichever product this story is really about.

Darren,

Again you seem to be a little misleading. The $3500 I paid for the product was not taken out of my checking or savings account. I leveraged my line of credit to cover the cost and is included in the payoff plan. And, I stress this, if I have a question I need answered would I want to wait for a conference call to ask Harj a question or flip through the book or would I want to simply call a toll-free number 24/7 with help readily available? Hmm.. I still am a satisfied U1st customer (just like everybody else). The name of the game is to find a solution that works for your needs.

Also worth noting that UFirst is not currently bogged down in a lawsuit.. (cheap shot I know – BUT.. )

Enough bickering about our own opinions, time to look at some facts and figures.Ok, I understand that applying additional principle makes the balance go down, got it. I teach people about maximizing present value cashflow and how to be a bank. I keep hearing that this software cost $3,500, but read on a website that it runs anywhere from $1,800-$4,000. Does anyone know who has it for $1,800? What I would like clarification on is how the MMA account informing someone to transfer capital presents additional savings than those generated by using a disciplined bi-weekly program like I am currently on. Here are the stats; I have a 5/1 ARM with 4years left at 4.875% the balance is $416,786, pmt should be $1,693; I pay $1,794.
My second is fixed at 7.84% the balance is $116,720, pmt should be $903; I pay $1,081.
My real rate of interest is 5.52%.
I am on a bi-weekly program so I make an additional payment per year. That means I pay an extra $407 a month including the extra whole pmt per year. According to financial calcs that means I have shaved 7 years & 4 months off my mortgage, saving $156,990 in interest payments.
What would MMA software increase my reduced mortgage time and interest down to?
Thank you,
Kevin Osborne
http://www.oemoney.com

If you only have 4 years left to pay off you mortgage – then stick to what you are doing now, Kevin.

The 4 years is the time remaining on the 5/1 ARM. I just bought this house last year. I still owe approximately 22 years.

Kevin, this program works off of your discretionary income which is a large part of this program – how much money do you have left over at the end of the month?

And it’s not about sending all your left over money away to your mortgage company in a traditional sense. It’s more along the idea of making money you are not using now to offset interest now – until you spend it. I love it!

FACTS and only FACTS

If I get a loan for $100,000 I get to invest that $100,000.

Then I own %6 interest on that $100,000 = $6000 However I make %6 in my invested $100,000 = $6000 that equals $0 made $0 lost.

HOWEVER, the $100,000 loan happens to be a home loan. I get to write of the interest. Now that $6000 I lost turns into a $4500 loss. Therefore I made $1500.

The liars love to tell you how much interest you will save over the life of your loan, but they don’t tell you how much you lost by not investing.

BEFORE you waste your $3500 make sure you
1) max out your 401k match
2) max out your roth ira
3) put something away for your kids colledge coverdale first then Educational savings account
4) invest the $3500 you would spend on the program

STOP saying that the tax writeoff on your home is bad. That is not an TRUE comparison. You have to account for what you DO with the loaned money.

Everytime I see this Huckster comparison, I feel sorry for all those that have bought into this lie.

I can’t wait to here the responses that say “you just don’t understand the program”

Ok let’s just deal with the program
If the money shuffle (heloc – mortgage) does save any money then it would HAVE to be more than $20 a month. This would have to be money created through the shuffle to do anything. This is because a person could just take the $3500 and invest making %8 on it a year. That is $23 a month.

Just my humble opinion though.

Stocks carry risk.. and with the recent tinkering of the Fed this economy is on the brink, Ted.

Ted, I do not even know if that was supposed to be English? Discretionary income is a very volitile term… I am the group leader of Person to Person lending, currently generating a diversified interest rate of 24.06% on 240 loans. I have been using $65,000 of the credit card companies money and earning an FDIC insured 6%. I think to do a true comparison you need to just use the oportunity cost of the capital that I provided in my figures. Let’s say that I have an extra $407 per month available as discretionary income to invest against my mortgage. I want to know how much faster biting at the principle will pay off the loans as opposed to the bi-monthly with extra I am paying now.

Thank you,

Kevin Osborne

I am looking into a MMA and read that this won’t work for everyone. What are some scenarios where the MMA wouldn’t work? Also I already have a large HELOC for my 2nd morgage (fits the criteria for MMA). I have read that with large HELOC’s the MMA will just focus on reducing the HELOC first because the interest rate is higher than the primary mortgage. Instead of paying the $3500 right now couldn’t I just use the HELOC as a checking account to start paying down the loan, then begin the MMA at a later date since that is what the MMA would tell me to do? Am I missing something here?

Kevin, I will still need more information. How much money do you make per month? How often are you paid? How much is your home worth (so I can determine how much equity you have). You can fill out the free analysis (just need your numbers, not account info) at the website. Also I am curious about your method of using credit cards to earn interest?

Kevin I signed up for this since I am curious about the ideas behind it. Thanks (I’m 23 – never missed a payment)

After looking at that further it is a very interesting concept. I’d like to be a lender… send me an email from the site and we can talk more.

“Discretionary income is a very volitile term”

You critique my English by saying I use a term I didn’t even use. You guys are crazy if you fall for this. Go to http://www.scam.com and look for the scam alert thread. While MMA are not a scam they are a REALLY bad idea.

Yea have you heard that everything is a SCAM at scam.com? Is someone selling something and making a profit? Scam Scam Scamalamadingdong. Google something and put the word scam after it and you’ll see that EVERYTHING is a friggin scam. Ted get outta here. And your previous post didn’t make much sense at all. The discretionary bit was probably directed at me and not you.

How come people like Ted don’t realize the only complaints are from people who either don’t understand or who are not customers and not in a position to make statements as the customers of United First Financial – such as myself – do not complain and are happy with their decision. Customers of United First Financial think it’s a REALLY GOOD idea.

Kevin,

I got your message but I cannot respond to my inbox on Prosper? I cannot respond to your email although my contact info is on the site and the time zone is Central. Any time after 7pm. Later!

Hi jason,

I said that I would like to speak with you before approval. I screen everyone that wants to join my group. I had asked for your phone number, that information did not appear in your profile?

you can call my office line, visit http://www.pacoatings.com

Jason, like I said. It is NOT a scam, just a REALLY bad idea. I point you to the thread at Scam.com because the analysis is thorough. Anyone who reads through the thread and has undestands the concepts of addition, multiplication, subtractions, and percentages can figure out how stupid the MMA program is.

Just my humble opinon though.

>

OK you lost me. If you are a math wiz and it turns you on to spend time from your busy life to figure out how much and when and all that crap then fine. Money Merge is good for those that just want an easy solution in a manner that is workable in the sense that I don’t feel like I am doing anything different.

Jason, your telling me it is easier to open up the software on a regular basis and do what it tells you to do, than set up an automatic recurring payment through your bill pay that you never have to touch again?

You must be crazy.

1st – I think it is dumb to pay down your mortgage. I know there are pros and cons to this, I just believe the cons outway the pros. I don’t care what you believe with regards to this

2nd – Assuming you want to pay down your mortgage. It will take you longer to use the MMA than it would to set an automatic payment that equals the same discretionary income that you would pay using the MMA.

I love the “I don’t feel like I am doing anything different” comment In other words. For people who are controlled by the psychology rather than logic.

Dumb to pay down the mortgage… LOL that is the craziest thing I EVER heard. Tell me again why I would not want to free up that cash flow of not having a mortgage payment anymore? And having an asset that adjusts with inflation about as well as any other investment? And with a free and clear home I am one HELOC away from rolling in dough? That extra money I can use to put into an interest bearing account and retire a millionaire. Whatever man.

Typical banker rhetoric – it’s good to be in debt. I’m sure the banks love the idea that people like you wish to continue to pay them their interest and make twice the value of the home in profit… yank.

Jason.

Ok I’ll tell you again. Since you asked. I’ll base it on 1 year to make my point. (however I want to point out that there is a strong psychological foctor for all the people who are controled by their mortgage that it would be better to pay off their mortgage)

I have $100,000 in my pocket. I have the choice to pay off my $100,000 mortgage or stick that $100,000 in a 12 month CD. My mortgage is an effecive interest rate of 4.5% (plus it allows me to take all my charitable deductions). My CD is 6%. I lose $4500 on my mortgate, I make %6000 on my CD. Therefore, I am $1500 ahead for just that year. It compounds after that.

So LOL if it is crazy to be ahead %1500 then call me crazy.

OOPs sorry, I labled the dollars with % there should be a $ instead of a % infront some of the figures. Sorry about that. I’m sure you can figure out which ones should be corrected.

Jason, I found a link for you at about.com for Beginners that may interest you.

http://beginnersinvest.about.com/cs/personalfinance1/a/031901a.htm?terms=current+mortgage+loan+rate

If you aren’t able to understand these principles, I suggest you ask one of your friends to go over it with you.

Good luck. Let me know if you have any problems. I don’t think I’d be able to explain it any clearer though.

The one thing that I have not heard from all the clients that have bought the program (MMA) is complaints. All of them seem to be very happy and if this is a hoax why are there not complaints. All of you that say this can be done on your own know less than 2% of the US. even knows about Bi weekly programs much less about a program that knocks off 1/3-1/2 of their interest, saving in most cases $100,000′s of dollars.

TYPICAL. Why do you change ths subject we are talking about. I’ll assume that you concede that you have been proven wrong in regards to it not being smart to pay off your mortgage

Now lets move on to your newest assumption. No complaints. Like I said it is NOT a scam or hoax, just a really bad idea. Just like paying for a Bi-weekly program is a really bad idea. IF you wanted to pay off your mortgage, it is FREE, CHEAPER, and EASIER to set your automatic bill pay to send extra money to your mortgage each month.

Why don’t people complain – easy people that where duped into paying for this program have spend the time to identify the flawes.

If you are a user of this program, you should start complaining, you have been duped. You have lost money and you are working harder to achieve inferior results.

Ted you said “I have $100,000 in my pocket. I have the choice to pay off my $100,000 mortgage or stick that $100,000 in a 12 month CD. My mortgage is an effecive interest rate of 4.5% (plus it allows me to take all my charitable deductions). My CD is 6%. I lose $4500 on my mortgate, I make %6000 on my CD. Therefore, I am $1500 ahead for just that year. It compounds after that.”

Well you did make money. You lost money to make it though. In regard to the tax write-off I do recall somebody saying that your scenerio here would be like spending an extra dollar to save 33 cents. The end-goal here is to have no debt. And then you can invest the equity in something that has a higher yield, if you know what you are doing. The money merge account can streamline the process by increasing your equity faster to potentially earn more by re-investing the home equity.

I would agree that it would be ideal to for those who have a higher discretionary and ideal positive cashflow would be best suited to incorporate setting money away for 401k (contribute up to what company matches), maxing out Roth IRA, using the HELOC-mortgage program to accelerate the equity to then use to re-invest and make more money which then in turn speeds up the payoff time on the mortgage. By using my interest-saved dollars to invest rather than spend a dollar to save 33 cents. Customers using the HELOC-mortgage programs such as the Money Merge Account can then move into bigger and bigger houses, increase their cashflow and can turn their home into a valuable liquid investment whose more rapid increase in equity means more reinvested into a better performing alternative – if that’s what you want to do.

Ted you also mention the effective interest rate you notched down to 4.5%. Using the Money Merge Account it would be the same as having a less than 2% interest rate! It depends on your situation. But let’s keep the debate going here. No matter what your goal is – the Money Merge Account from United First Financial can be a great option with pratically 100% customer satisfaction and a money-back guarantee. Another component is the spending habits of many. The way the software acts as a financial dashboard and shows the exact payoff date which adds an effectivie psychological benefit as the date changes with every deposit and expense is great for me (as sticking with it is the hard part of any debt pay off plan) and I have 24/7 customer support. And I rolled the cost of the software into the HELOC). And just because there are lucratuve commission plans for those that want to turn it into a full or part time basis doesn’t mean that these types of business models is always a SCAM. Just like Avon, Advocare, and others – they offer a quality product – more costly but you know what you are getting. It is low overhead for the company and I think the marketing is just fine. It’s no different than a mortgage broker making $5k off of a home sale or a realtor getting 6% of the purchase price of a home, or commission paid to an insurance agent. Just because there are a lot of commission structured business models that are scams – not ALL of them are!! How a business chooses to make money should be of no concern here. The VALUE of the product is what should be debated taking into consideration all things.

Let me clarify above: “Using the Money Merge Account it would be the same as having a less than 2% interest rate! It depends on your situation.”

That is my situation I used as an example. You won’t know how much you can save until you have a free analysis prepared by a certified United First Financial agent.

Ted, not to mention the interest you pay on the mortgage/HELOC is potentially 100% tax deductible. (consult your tax advisor – blah blah)

Ok, I see that I can’t communicate with a financial illiterate. Let me just give you numbers and see if you can refute

Following taken from thread at scam.com
A UFF agent said this: “Ok to start I am an agent for UFF and here are the numbers for the senario that you have provided

Mortgage 250K, 6.5%, 30yr fixed- payment of 1580.17, no escrow
Income… Once a month- $5000
Monthly living expenses 3019.00
Thats a discretionary income of $400

What I got was a payoff of 18.3 yrs or 219 month”

Posting those numbers into an amortization table shows this: 214 months.

If you add a 1 time $3500 into the amortization table, you get: 208 months

That’s an 11 month difference, or almost a full year.”

JASON if you feel it is easier to pay $3500 so you can be bound to a software program, just to take a year longer to pay off your mortgate than to simply set up an automatic bill pay then let me know. Otherwise, verify the math and then respond.

Ted there are a lot of factors here which can be discussed. The example you provided was a one time a month paycheck. It is more advantageous when you are paid multiple times per month. Also, and I’ve covered this before, it is NOT smart to send all of your discretionary via auto bill pay into a closed end mortgage. What if one needs that money? And as for the example – obviously the Money Merge Account will not benefit that person. Now for you? That may be another story. Run your numbers – then decide for yourself whether you think the Money Merge Account can make sense – investor or not. Don’t take someone elses scenario as proof one way or the other. Think of it this way: Do you really think United First Financial is raking in money by creating a program that will ALWAYS take longer pay off then simply sending in your discretionary every month? LOL. NOT EVERYONE qualifies.

Ted, just ran the numbers. Simply by getting paid twice a week at $2500 instead of once monthly at $5000 – the payoff goes from 18.3 to 13.2 years. And by following the Money Merge Account program you are eligible to pay less interest than compared to a standard 30-year mortgage at 2.852% fixed. $194,875.98. So you don’t know the program or what you are talking about, Ted? – a financial illiterate indeed.

$194,875.98 in interest saved (or re-invested depending on the person who are and your goals).

CORRECTION: Twice a week? I am living up to your classification of “financial illiterate” huh? lol – I meant bi-weekly at $2500 instead of $5000 monthly. The frequency of pay is another key.

Yes you are finacially illiterate, you showed yourself again. If you use bi-weekly you created an an entire extra payment a year. I gave you numbers so you could compair apples to apples, not apples to oranges. Either compare against my scenario or create another scenario.

STOP LIEING

Then end goal has to be who has the most money at the end. Avoid %language becuase you just don’t understand it. I’m sure you can understand the concept of who has the most money at the end.

As for having money in case of an emerency, when did I say not to have a HELOC?

“Do you really think United First Financial is raking in money by creating a program that will ALWAYS take longer pay off then simply sending in your discretionary every month?”

Yes, you paid them money didn’t you.

I’m glad I can finally say that you have basically admitted that someone with the following scenario should not particpate in the MMA program

Mortgage 250K, 6.5%, 30yr fixed- payment of 1580.17, no escrow
Income… Once a month- $5000
Monthly living expenses 3019.00
Thats a discretionary income of $400

I just ran your numbers with your hidden extra payment every year and I get 13 years. You still lose, and all I had to do was set an automatic bill pay of an extra $200 every 2 weeks. Instead of $400 a month.

Ted,

Tell me why I went wrong with MMA:

I have a $160,000 interest only mortgage 6.279% and approximately $1,000/ month discretionary income. My MMA analysis showed a payoff in 7.3 years and $279,500 interest saved. This also included approximately $45,000 in other debts consolidated into my HELOC. By taking that same $1,000 discretionary income, and applying it to my monthly mortgage, the payoff is 11 years and $146,347 interest saved. This does not include the $45,000 debt payoff. I simply compared my MMA analysis to an interest only mortgage calculator from dinkytown. So, by using MMA, I will save $133,153 more than simply applying my discretionary income on my own and payoff my mortgage and all of my other debts approximately four years sooner as well.

I just have a quick question. I was presented this MMA program for the first time last week. I am very interested and I have been trying to do a little research into it. It sounds to me that the program does work–I think everyone can agree with that. My concern is not paying the $3,500 but can I pay that amount outright and not with the HELOC and what happens if in one year the company goes under? The program is web based. I have read several times that there have been no reports to BBB, but there is a possibility that things could go wrong. Do I just need to decide this is a risk I am willing to take or is there some sort of protection against this happening?

That sounds like a good deal Larry but I bet a lot of the savings are from the debt consolidation. What interest rates are you paying on the $45k?

To pay off a $205k loan at 6.279% in 7.3 years you need to make payments of $2,923.36 a month. Doesn’t matter how you look at it. So I’m guessing your $1000 discretionary, plus (about) $800 from your current payment means you’re currently paying about $1000 a month for that $45k debt? Or am I way off?

Just curious.

Larry, how many years did you have left on your mortgage? Is the $160,000 your principle remaining.

Also, are you positive that your MMA analysis didn’t create an extra payment a year by using the bi-weekly smoke screan?

Let me know and I’ll run your numbers.
Your debts complicate the issue so I’m not sure how to handle them. I can say without a doubt that if your debts were a higher interest rate than your HELOC then you saved money by rolling them into your HELOC (this is not a MMA strategy, this is get your debts as low interest rate as possible). Is the extra money you are saving by having the debts in the HELOC part of your $1000 discretionary? If not add the extra saved, that is your new “REAL” discretionary.

Respond and I’ll run your numbers.

One last thing, you should probably stop thinking about interest saved, this is not an appropriate way of looking at it. Rather think about interest you would have lost. This way can also look at interest you would have earned if you put your money to work for you. Then it is easy to think about how much you earned vs how much you lost = profit.

MMA loves to make you think about interest saved because it confuses the truth.

Ted, how many people are going to stick with your plan? Ask yourself why there is a market for this in the first place. Can you do this yourself? Yes. Why aren’t you already? Hmmm.. UFF/MMA is here to stay.

“How many people are going to stick with your plan?” Answer – anyone who wants to reduce their mortgage faster (I am willing to accept there are people out there that need this pscychological benefit)

“Why am I not doing it?” – Answer, it is not smart to pay off your mortgage early. (here is a research article that proves this point from the Chicago Federal reserve http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=891546)

So Jason now that you have been proven wrong, it is your moral responsibilty to help others by communicating how poor of an idea it is is to use the MMA. Your moral character is in question.

One thing you need to be wary of in these troubled times for banks is if you have an unused portion of your HELOC and they feel your in a declining real estate market they can shut down the unused portion of your line.

Ted, I like ya buddy

“The propensity of debt-averse households to forgo tax arbitrages is related to the findings in Graham (2000), who shows that many corporations give up SUBSTANTIAL TAX BENEFITS by holding TOO LITTLE DEBT.”

Here it is folks. The income tax is a fraud. And the Federal Reserve and it’s system should be abolished IMMEDIATELY. The Fed is the reason why government debt is never going to be repaid, they caused the (Bernanke admitted) Great Depression, and I also remember Baron Rothschild stating “Let me control a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.”

Carrying debt is a GOOD thing because it helps you pay less TAXES.

INCOME TAX FOR MOST OF US IS NOT REQUIRED.

On May 12, 2006 in Peoria, Illinois, the attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) begged the court to dismiss all charges against IRS victim Robert Lawrence in federal District Court.

The motion for dismissal came on the heels of a surprise tactic by Lawrence’s defense attorney Oscar Stilley.

The tactic threatened exposure of IRS’s on-going efforts to defraud the public. The move put DOJ attorneys in a state of panic that left them with only one alternative: beg for dismissal, with prejudice.

http://www.givemeliberty.org/RTP2/UPDATES/Update2006-06-09.htm

Paperwork Reduction Act. The OMB # is a fraud.

The 16th Amendment:

“It was not the purpose or effect of that amendment to bring any new subject within the taxing power.”

[Bowers v. Kerbaugh-Empire Co., 271 U.S. 170; 46 S.Ct. 449 (1926)]

http://famguardian.org/Subjects/Taxes/16Amend/LegIntent16thAmend.htm

Most people are VOLUNTARILY paying an unapportioned direct tax on their labor and it not required by any statute.

I wouldn’t trust the stocks at this time. Get out of debt. That’s MY plan.

OMB number on your 1040 is a fraud and does not meet the guidelines of the Paperwork Reduction Act.

Also in regard to the 16th Amendment. It can’t be any more clear. The 16th Amendment does not provide authority for a direct tax on incomes, but only authority for an indirect tax on incomes. A direct tax on incomes is a tax that diminishes the source of the income. An indirect tax on income is a tax on unearned income or profit; such a tax leaves the source of the income undiminished. Twice during the debates on the 16th Amendment (S.J.R. No. 25 and S.J.R. No. 39), Congress rejected the idea of bringing direct taxes within the authority of the 16th Amendment. Then twice more, on July 5, 1909, Congress rejected the idea by direct vote of the Senate. Despite this congressional hostility to the idea, the IRS and the lower courts admit they are collecting a direct tax. At a minimum this is scandalous. In reality it is probably criminal.

I dare you Jason to not pay your income taxes. I do agree however, that if we didn’t have to pay taxes (wich are basically social engeneering us) then having a write off would not make sense.

I’m giving up on trying to convince you that paying off your mortgage is a bad idea. You are obviously controlled by your emotions.

So let’s keep the argument at – Is an MMA good or bad. It has been proven to you that it is bad.

I like you to Jason. I am am curious if you have any personal beliefs as to why mortgage debt is bad. I bet we can find some common ground.

http://www.givemeliberty.org/RTP2/UPDATES/Update2006-06-09.htm

Is one victory. The DOJ dismissed the case with prejudice (meaning they cannot charge him for the same crime again). The OMB# again I said is a fraud. The income tax is not applicable to many people. My personal belief is that I am not liable for the income tax. Attorney Oscar Stilley agrees. This is also why people are pushing for the “Fair Tax” national sales tax and get rid of the organized crimesters that make up the IRS. Millions do not pay income tax.

You dare me not to? Millions do not. Direct, unapportioned taxes on most domestic labor is unconstitutional. So there you have it. A lot of court cases have come down the pike of people defeating the IRS in court. The Federal Reserve system must be abolished. Get out of debt. I do not trust the stock market because it will come tumbling down soon and many will lose a ton of money IMHO. Click on my name to learn more about Russo’s America: From Freedom to Fascism.

Ted

I have 30 years left on my mortgage, balance $160,000. The monthly payment on the debt ($45,000) I consolidated with my HELOC was approximately $975. The interest rate on my HELOC is 10%. The $1,000 discretionary income does not include the monthly savings from the consolidation.

So your saying you don’t pay taxes.

Also, I didn’t say anything about trusting the stock market. I said other investments. Buy you can’t wrap your head around the concept that your house is an investment.

Larry just dealing with your mortgage if you put an extra $1000 towards it a month without doing the MMA your payoff would be 8.75 years. There is no way that using the MMA will pay it off in 7.3 including your HELOC debt. You are missing something in the MMA analysis. This is a great example as to how they have convinced you that you are not adding as much extra as you really are. This thread doesn’t work well for you to post all your data. Go over to scam.com and look for the money merge account alert. You will be able to post your monthly data and get help to see where the “extra” money is coming from.

I didn’t say I didn’t pay my taxes. I am simply pointing out a problem. I LOVE PAYING MY TAXES!

Ok Jason.
So you think people should buy the MMA software from you, because
1) it will cost them money
2) it will lose them money compared paying the same amount of discretionary income as they would with the mma
3) spend more time opening up software and messing with it than doing an automatic bill pay
4) pay off their mortgage even though there are HUGE tax benefits because we shouldn’t be paying taxes anyway
5) You love paying taxes.

I think I have summed up your position well.

Thank you for the conversation.

To all the financial “gurus” expressing themselves here,

Here’s my situation. 15 yr fixed mortgage at 6%, 9 yrs left (currently paying $1,144/ mo., including taxes and insurance into escrow. balance; $60,000). Last year started extensive home remodeling renovation. Needed to open a Home Equity Line of Credit to finance this project. Opened one at amount for $170,000 at 7 1/4%. Presently, have drawn $131,000 from this line with monthly payments on this currently at $765. I have a car loan of $320/mo. (1 yr left). So, $1,144 + $765 + $320 = $2,229 total monthly (not to mention living expenses/bills of gas, elec, phone, food, etc. etc.) And, I am not finished with the remodeling (figure will need another $25k approx.)
My monthly incomes are: $2,350 (paid bi-weekly) and $710 monthly rental income. That’s $3,060 total monthly income. Since my equity line payments have risen steadily I am finding it VERY difficult to meet my needed monthly payments for everything. OK. Time to consolidate (I guess) the “biggies” (mortgage, equity line, and car loan) into a refinanced new loan of $224,000 (payoffs of above, closing costs and $21,000 cash out to finish remodeling). Monthly payments calculated on this new loan at 6.5%, 30 yr fixed will be $1,826 (including prop tax and home ins for escrow). That’s a savings of $404 from my current monthly outlay of $2,230 for the 3 “biggies”. Ok, I have lowered my total monthly outlay but I have also gone back to a 30 yr loan and, at my age of 54 this is not a very attractive outlook of having huge monthly payments well into retirement. (I do plan on staying in my home for yrs for those who want this info).
This is where the consideration of using the MMA program to pay down the term of this 30 yr fixed loan and pay it off in much shorter time is attractive. I have spent a good part of this evening reading the blog comments on the MMA (and other matters here discussed). A basic component of this back-and-forth here is why spend $3500 for a product that is for something that you could do yourself (added payments to monthly principle). I know there are more +’s and -’s to the argument (discipline involved in using the program etc.) What should I do? And, thank you all for the above contributions to this blog. Sincerely, Jim

Ted – people who want to get rid of their mortgage payment (the savings on the taxes is just great but when they finally pay off their home and have a great investment that can ride the tide of inflation and no longer have a mortgage payment it’s worth it) can do so with the Money Merge Account. If it means they accomplished that goal much sooner then they would have otherwise – then that’s wonderful.

Jim and others why won’t you just submit your numbers through the website and then make a decision? I’m not going to take a ton of time to put everything in from this blog and post a question and wait for a response. Just use the website. That way ALL of the information is submitted the FIRST time.

plus you get your analysis emailed to you via PDF and then you can run around and have Ted pick away at it!

Jason stop lieing, the MMA cost more and takes longer and is harder to implement. This has all been proven to you.

Jim you have a lot of variables. Using the MMA will not help you any more than paying any extra income on your mortgage

Your first need to rethinkg your bi=weekly statment though

“My monthly incomes are: $2,350 (paid bi-weekly) and $710 monthly rental income. That’s $3,060″

What is your yearly income? Divide that by 12 and you will get your monthly income. By thinking in bi-weekly terms you are creating only 48 weeks in the year, not 52. This is part of the MMA smoke screen.

I’d go to a different forum to ask your question. This type commenting isn’t condusive to helping you.

Jim

If you are truly paid bi-weekly, then your average monthly income is actually $3,255.83, not $3,060. This is $2,350 x (52/4) + $710, which is $195.83 more per month. If you don’t have any discretionary income after expenses, you’re not going to pay off your mortgage faster. If you do, and you just want to pay off your mortgage, there are several things you can do. First, figure out your average monthly discretionary. Send that amount, automatically if you can, in with your mortgage payment each month. If you have enough discretionary, you may want to look at a 15 or 20 year term instead right from the start. If you’re going to be making a larger payment anyway, why not start with a shorter term and a lower interest rate to begin with?

You didn’t mention anything regarding retirement savings. A lot of MMA proponents talk about paying off the house now and waiting until later to save/invest. You may not have time to do that. My parents, who are around 60 years old, bought a new house about five years ago. They could have paid for the whole thing with cash. Instead they financed 80% of it with a fixed low rate 30 year loan. They don’t mind the payment, because between the tax write off and the higher rate of return their CFP is making them on investments, they are way ahead of the “pay off your house and let your money sit in the walls” approach.

BTW, the Money Merge Account concept is worthless and the math proves it. The program is full of half truths, and half truths are whole lies. Those who sign up for it are either deceived, or they are just plain foolish. If someone really wants to pay off their mortgage, they can do it for free, and it will be faster, easier and less risky than the ridiculous program from United First Financial.

The best case scenario for the average MMA user is that they make a huge lump sum payment to their mortgage out of their HELOC about four times a year. If everything is perfect, they will save about $10 each time for a total of $40 per year. Say they do this for 15 years x $40 = $600 and the house is paid off. They have a net loss of $600-$3,500 = $2,900. So how did they avoid all that extra time and interest? Well, it wasn’t traded for the $2,900, it came from your discretionary income. If you do it yourself, you will be ahead of this, especially if you run all your money through a high interest savings account.

The difference though it that this program forces you to pay your money to mortgage first by design. It gives you a greater chance to stick to the program by depositing your income into the HELOC and paying your bills out of it. If you don’t trust yourself to stick with a financial plan (maybe you’ve tried before) go with the Money Merge Account.

Jason you LIE. The program forces you to do nothing. It gives you a suggestion and then leaves it up to you. You are more likely to pay off your mortgage it you decide a specific amount of descretionary income and then send that via bill pay to your mortgage in an automatic fashion. You can prove me wrong on this point by showing me a research study from a a peer reviewed journal. If you can’t do this then you have no research. It has already been proven to you that the MMA is 1) harder and 2) costs more via MATH
Stop lieing, you have no morals, and should be ashamed of yourself.

I will make no more posts on this blog. But to everyone out there on the fence. Ask yourself what type of person you are. Are you a financial numbers person like Ted or Chris? If you were, you would not have asked questions in the first place. Ted and Chris represent a minority of the homeowners out there. If you are serious about getting your home paid off and want it done right instead of developing a plan that a majority will NOT stick to (even if it’s two years down the road) .. Go with the Money Merge Account. Later.

In fact Ted thinks is better to spend a dollar to save .33 cents. He thinks your mortgage payment is a good thing and that you should pay the banks more than twice the amount your mortgage is for in profit. If you think paying $450k for a $210k home is a good thing – go for it!! Ask yourself: ‘what would you do without a mortgage payment?’

Now I’m done here.

Ted

It’s quite comical that Jason rails against spending $1 to save 33 cents in tax but fails to mention the true cost of the MMA which is much worse. In my best case example above, the MMA person spends $1 to save 17 cents. It is more likely that they will save far less, if anything at all.

I am so glad to see that Jason is leaving hopefully you won’t be confused by his lies. Please note that he was unable to defend any of his arguments.

Here is the conversation in a nutshell and will get repeated over and over untill the MMA agent looks at the truth and not just their sales material

Let me summarize the back and forth conversation:

UFF agents: It works…here’s an analogy. See, it works.

The rest of us: Mathematically, it’s slower, costlier, riskier, and much more complicated. All you need to do is put your discretionary income towards towards your mortgage. We provide proof

UFF agents: No, it works. You just don’t get it. It’s mathematically too complicated for us to understand. But it works.

The rest of us: Show us the math. We have the formulas and the spreadsheets. The numbers aren’t too complicated. We’ve run the numbers with past UFF agents. We’ve compared. UFF agents have said their system is slower. I repeate, the UFF system is slower. So, will you, Mr. UFF agent, show us your numbers?

UFF agents: No. I won’t show you the numbers. But here’s an analogy why you should trust us. People are too stupid to set up an automatic bill pay so they need to pay us $3500

To the UFF agent- I am sorry your were duped by UFF. It is ok to believe in what you are saling, but once you identify the lie and see the truth, you are morally obligated to stop spreading the lie.

To the person interested in the MMA
Don’t do it, MMA it cost you MORE, Takes you MORE time, Is HARDER to implement
Than setting up an automatic bill pay. to pay extra.

88The tax implications of paying of your mortgage should be saved for another thread. The MMA agent loves to start talking about taxes to avoid answering basic questions.

Chris, you are correct. It is commical. I just don’t understand how Jason doesn’t realize how he reveals himself to be a scammer when he makes statements like that.

I spending a dollar means I save 17 cents to get out of my mortgage in a third of the time then it’s worth it. Spending a dollar to save 33 cents and have a mortgage payment for 30 years sucks! I want that home paid off. I want the largest portion of my paycheck back in my control. It must be great to be a banker and have my customers think its a good think to pay me over 100% in profit alone in a home purchase.

It’s a war over your mind no doubt. What sounds right to you. No debt. Or keep your debt because it a good thing for taxes. GET OUT OF DEBT YESTERDAY!

ted and chris are a bunch of bullies jason mean what he says!!

Jason stop LIEING and leave. What sounds right to me is to have the most money. Paying off your mortgage does not give you the most money. Give up on the Tax discussion. This is a MMA thread and you have been proven to be wrong. If you want to argue about paying off your mortgage vs. doing other things with your money go somewhere else

If you think you can defend the MMA do so, but you know you can’t

Bob, if you say so. We are bullies, bullies that have hopefully saved people from losing thousands of dollars.

I think I have ONE supporter! Thanks Bob. No matter what you think the most money means to ME I look at it this way. I want to free up my month-end cash flow ASAP. Following the MMA program I can still retire a millionaire! Granted, Ted feels you could be EVEN RICHER! BUT (big but) you’ve got to keep on with that mortgage payment for the duration of the terms. I don’t really want anything than to GET RID OF THAT FRIGGIN MORTGAGE PAYMENT and finally go out on the Plaza and not worry so much about what I can afford on the menu this week. And with a plan I know anyone can follow up can a) get rid of your mortgage in 6-12 years. b) retire a millionaire. That’s quite enough for me!!!

Yes, IF you follow the MMA it will reduce your mortgage,(using Jasons terms “you’ve got to keep on with that mortgage payment the duration of the terms”) but it will take you longer, cost you more, and be harder than setting up an automatic bill pay each month. ALL PROVEN. Not just words from Jason.

You will be LESS likely to have your home paid off using a MMA than sending in automatic payments every month.

ALL LIES PEOPLE. Notice how Jason is still here. Another obvious lie.

just posted at scam.com but woth reposting here. Pass along to all those who may encounter this program. Well written explaination.

OK, this is how this guy’s program “works”… Let’s assume my monthly paycheck is $8,000, and on the first day of the month I do the following: Draw $8,000 on my HELOC which is used immediately to reduce my mortgage balance, and b) apply my paycheck of $8,000 to pay down the HELOC. On day 2, therefore, my HELOC balance is zero and my mortgage balance is $8,000 lower.

In subsequent months, the “cycle” works by paying my expenses by drawing on the HELOC and the HELOC balance gradually rises to $8,000. However, the average balance will only be about $4,000. For the month as a whole, therefore, I have saved interest on $8,000 of the mortgage while incurring interest on $4,000 of the HELOC. Assuming BOTH are priced at the SAME 6%, I saved $4,000 x .06/12, or $20. Over a year, that adds to $240.

Why the above does not work… The HELOC as a second lien will have a MUCH higher rate. If the rate was double the rate on the primary mortgage, for example, there would be a monthly LOSS (over just paying down the principal yourself). Further, it will take some days for my paycheck to be credited to the HELOC (GMAC takes 2-3 BUSINESS days I think). This will eat into the days of “savings” you receive. Finally (this is important), the date when the mortgage is credited for the extra payment depends on the policies of different lenders. In some cases, a payment will be credited to the balance at the end of the preceding month, which works to the borrower’s advantage, but in other cases, credit is not given until the end of the current month, which would reduce and perhaps eliminate any savings. I calculate that if you have a HELOC that is roughly 50% higher than your primary rate, you’ll probably break even. If the rates were the same, you could pull out ahead SLIGHTLY every month. But you know as well as I know that this is impossible (4 years ago this may have been possible when you could get lines for 4% and a small net gain would be realized every month… anyway, please read on…)

Another factor? The $3500 on a 6% mortgage would save $210 of interest a year. This ALONE is probably more than what I would save even if my rates for HELOC and primary were identical. Of course if my loan was much larger, there could be a gain, but again, this depends on the spread between the HELOC and the primary rates but again, read on…..

And the following and last factor is what makes the program TRULY a SCAM… Don’t forget that the $8,000 could have been left in a high rate savings account instead of plopping it into the HELOC (this is the ever-important “opportunity cost factor”). One could argue that money sitting in a checking account (where MOST people leave their paychecks so they can access and pay for monthly expenses easily) yields squat didley. There are full-function checking accounts that offer rates up to 4%. You’ll get at least 4% on that money “sitting around” while you eat away at it each month. That 4% (half the month), would work in the inverse and your YIELD would end up being 2%. So you can add that 2% to what you would probably break even doing the program (at best when taking into account the aforementioned factors). So break even, AND you then lose the 2%. 2% compounded on any amount you plan to pay down the mortgage with is what the “true” spread would be. By being smart with your money, you could in essence be ahead by 2% (compounded interest as long as it takes to pay the mortgage down) over what this program offers. THAT is the bottom line. S-C-A-M. Everyone wouldn’t analyze and obsess over such a program the way I have. There are tons of suckers out there that won’t see beyond the second paragraph in this email. To them the program makes sense – and works.

Regardless of all this so called magic, the bottom line is that you don’t want to pay down your lowest interest debt. You want it as LOOOOOOONG as possible. Take the money and invest it and you’ll almost guarantee a better return. If you want to go the ultra-conservative route (and in my opinion, the dumb route) go ahead and pay down the mortgage. But don’t pay some shmuck $3,500 for something you could easily do yourself. Don’t be a fool.

Ted,

Come on with the heloc rates. Your analysis is solid, but if you are in a state where heloc rates are 2X the 1st rates, how about this… in Illinois it’s simple to find a 1st rate at 6.5% and a 7.25% heloc rate – on a middle class home – at today’s rates. Good banks offer the heloc without fees – even w/o the common early closure penalty.

I’m also curious about how I can get an “almost guarantee”…

I used an Excel amortization table and another Excel spreadsheet to simulate the MMA side by side with making extra payments. I assumed a $240,000 mortgage, 30 years fixed at 7%. I assumed $500 a month available above monthly expenses, and for the purpose of the MMA, a $10,000 HELOC at 9%. I had Excel do a month by month calculation of the HELOC balance, and immediately after the HELOC was paid back down to zero, drew another $10,000 dollars to apply to the mortgage balance. I assumed an interest calculation based on roughly half the HELOC balance as many have noted above.

After paying down the mortgage and the HELOC, and factoring in the $3500 price for the software, the MMA came in at about $5900 more expensive and took 8 months longer than just applying $3500 to the principal, and adding a $500 extra principal payment each month.

The key comparison I wanted to make was in regard to UFF’s claim that the mortgage can be paid off with little change to spending habits and without increasing monthly mortgage payments.

Technically, the MMA claims I don’t even need the extra $500 a month, but I can’t reconcile it with the math that I would be able to pay the mortgage off faster without any extra money. The fact of the matter is, if I didn’t have the extra $500 a month to spend, and really was spending everything I made, there would be no way to pay the HELOC down so that I could draw on it again…until the mortgage was paid of.

I understand that my paycheck would bring the HELOC balance down, but my expenses would bring it right back up by the end of the month. So even if I’m only paying interest on the average balance, without any extra income above what I’m making and spending, there is no way to pay the HELOC down month over month.

I’m willing to hear an explanation of how someone with no extra income above what they make and then spend, can pay down the HELOC. And I’ve already conceeded to the fact that the HELOC is accruing interest on the average balance…all that does is bring the interest I’m paying per month on the HELOC down, not reduce it’s balance. Technically if I spend what I make, my HELOC balance will grow by the “reduced” interest I’m racking up.

I really want to hear how success happens with this plan. Claiming that the plan is not for everyone is also not a good response. UFF’s website states…”Our average customer will pay their 30 year mortgage off within 8 to 11 years — with little change to their day-to-day spending habits and without increasing their monthly mortgage payments.” If I have no extra money above what I make each month, UFF’s statement indicates that I can still be successful, paying off my mortgage in 8 to 11 years.

Eagerly awaiting, as I’m still willing to have an open mind.

At this point I’m sticking with my emergency fund in ING and paying the extra $500 a month on our mortage.

Pete

Pete, you cannot compare the math algorithms of your spread sheet to the MMA software. Your spread sheet is only providing results. It is not actually forecasting ahead (i.e. how much additional principal should I apply and when for optimal results) based on input data like fluctuations in income, expenses and changing HELOC balance. The MMA software actually does that for the user. The software is actually making decisions (suggestions) or forecasting based on those constantly changing numbers. It’s is an easy to follow plan for non-sophisticated financial people.

Pete, if you are really good with Excel and you understand amortization and disciplined with your finances, you could probably do this on your own and achieve the same results. (Or close to it.) The point is that most people are not. Most people don’t even have a clue what their Truth In Lending Statement really means. This is a great and easy to use system for non-financial people and non-excel users. It takes all the guess work out, makes all the decisions for you based on the circumstances and forecasts outward. If you ever have a problem or a question or unsure what to do, you can call a customer support rep for help for the life of the program. It is not a simple spread sheet program. The argument whether it works or not is over. It is proven and it works. You’ll just have to accept that like the first time I sold a computer automated general ledger system to an accountant. Sure, they could have duplicated it using paper and pencil or even lotus 123, but what is the point? The work is done for you, and is supported for the life of the program.

All this wrangling when round and round when bi-weekly plans first came out. Bi-weekly plans are now proven, simple and work Just like this does. And while it is easy for a user to use the software, because of all of the intricacies of the software, it is difficult to explain. If people want to pay off their debt and mortgage, this is one method and one tool for them to use. Suzie Orman has her ways, John Cummuta has his and so on and so on. Good luck.

United First Financial just hired P. Thomas Chester as CEO. Mr. Chester is the former Chief Marketing Officer for ING FINANCIAL’s broker division and the former Chief Marketing Officer for Surety Life, a division of Allstate.

I am sure he will be happy to hear that Pete is taking advantage of the services he used to market. I wonder if even Mr. Chester though could get Pete to look at the math of this correctly.

Pete and Ted both make underlying assumptions in their math that are wrong so the numbers are skewed. Since they do not fully understand the program it IS hard for them to do an accurate comparison.

Also in comparing using a savings account – everyone ignores the fact that the interest in a savings account is TAXABLE and must accrue. So even a 5.5% rate is insignificant.

Few people enjoy playing around with math… and the MMA program is simply a great tool for people who have more important things to do than play around with numbers but who want to get their debt paid down quickly.

All the skeptics on here want to compare their spreadsheets with the MMA analysis which is also nothing more than a spreadsheet (as United First explains). The REAL MMA software is an algorithm driven program that is easy to use and which performs 20% better than the Analysis software – according to an audit conducted by the State of Utah.

The company has sold more than 10,000 of these programs over 3 year period, is growing 33% a month and has ZERO complaints in the better business bureau.

Oh… and for SUE… who has a large 2nd on the heloc. Yes… you could wait a bit to purchase the software till you are about 6 months away from getting the heloc to zero. There are some advantages to getting the sofware early though. One is that it helps you make better financial decisions through the tools that have been integrated into it. For instance would you know which is smarter – financing a car at 4% interest or writing a check out of your heloc at 8.6%? The answer would surprise most people… but the software can always give you an answer based on YOUR variables – not an off the cuff guess.

Also another advantage to getting it early is that it works by “learning” your budget. The more history is has when it comes time to make a transfer, the more accurate that target number will be (as you know averaging 100 numbers together is going to be more accurate than averaging 10). The more information it has, the better.

United First Financial just hired P. Thomas Chester as CEO. Mr. Chester is the former Chief Marketing Officer for ING FINANCIAL’s broker division and the former Chief Marketing Officer for Surety Life, a division of Allstate.

I am sure he will be happy to hear that Pete is taking advantage of the services he used to market. I wonder if even Mr. Chester though could get Pete and Ted to look at the math of this correctly.

Pete and Ted both make underlying assumptions in their math that are wrong so the numbers are skewed. Since they do not fully understand the program it IS hard for them to do an accurate comparison. They simple choose the scenario they want… and go from there.

Also in comparing using a savings account – everyone ignores the fact that the interest in a savings account is TAXABLE and must accrue. So even a 5.5% rate is insignificant. On the other hand any interest you DO pay on the heloc side is probably going to be tax deductible (consult a licensed tax advisor to make sure it is true in your circumstances) and when you take that factor into account you easily see that MMA beats anything you can do on your own.

UFF says that you do not need to increase your monthly mortgage payments. That is true. You will send additional PRINCIPAL payments, but not every month – only when the software determines it is the appropriate thing to do… then it determinds a specific amount based on your individual cash flow history. Your minimum monthly mortgage payment does not change though.

Also… UFF customers do not have to change their spending habits to make this work… the software adapts to your budget. As long as the client gives the agent an ACCURATE picture of their budget and their spending habits as they are TODAY, than the software is guaranteed to perform as good, or better than that analysis. If a client WANTS to change their spending habits… it will affect the outcome… for better or worse. Whatever happens though… the software is always going to determind the quickest way to zero without the client having to spend hours playing around with spreadsheets and reworking their budget.

Few people enjoy playing around with math… and the MMA program is simply a great tool for people who have more important things to do than play around with numbers but who want to get their debt paid down quickly.

The skeptics on here want to compare their spreadsheets with the MMA analysis which is also nothing more than a spreadsheet (as United First explains) so, of course, they are going to make the mistake of thinking they are doing just as good a job. However, the REAL MMA software is an algorithm driven program that is easy to use and which performs 20% better than the Analysis software – according to an audit conducted by the State of Utah.

The company has sold more than 10,000 of these programs over 3 year period, is growing 33% a month and has ZERO complaints in the Better Business Bureau.

Oh… and for SUE… who has a large 2nd on the heloc. Yes… you could wait a bit to purchase the software till you are about 6 months away from getting the heloc to zero. There are 3 advantages to getting the sofware early though. One is that it helps you make better financial decisions through the tools that have been integrated into it. For instance would you know which is smarter – financing a car at 4% interest or writing a check out of your heloc at 8.6%? The answer would surprise most people… but the software can always give you an answer based on YOUR variables – not an off the cuff guess.

Also another advantage to getting it early is that it works by “learning” your budget. The more history is has when it comes time to make a transfer, the more accurate that target number will be (as you know averaging 100 numbers together is going to be more accurate than averaging 10). The more information it has, the better.

The 3rd is that it is GREAT and keeping you MOTIVATED and ontrack. The skeptics like to make fun when we say that… but it is true that less than 5% of people stick to a diet. Have you ever joined a gym? Yet in that same audit by the State of Utah the company found that 98% of our clients were loggin in monthly… so you can see that the discipline factor is there. Make it easy and they will do it!

Ben you are continueing a lie. Prove me wrong. Post numbers. Everytime a MMA agent post his/her numbers are inaccurate or misleading.

People don’t pay attention to these people untill thay can prove they are correct. The best case scenario they can generate about $20 through the heloc money shuffle. The good thing is you can get $20 a month by putting your $3500 in savings.

The more they provide “talking” without any substantiating fact the more you should realize how big of con artists these people are.

The challenge. MMA agents provide me your BEST case scenario. Provide the mathimatical variables. Don’t cheat and don’t lie. Let’s see who wins.

As for duplicating the program being hard. STOP lieing. It has been proven your program is HARDER, COSTS MORE, and TAKES MORE time. Read the thread before you come here and spread more lies.

“All this wrangling when round and round when bi-weekly plans first came out. Bi-weekly plans are now proven, simple and work Just like this does.”

There ya have it the MMA works just like a bi-weekly plan. Quoted from an MMA agent. I know he/she didn’t intend this, but it is a good example of proving a little truth with a lot jiberish to make the jiberish sound true. Psychological manipulation.

With the bi-weekly it is just as stupid to pay someone to use a bi-weekly payment plan, as it is to pay someone for a program that COSTS MORE, TAKES MORE TIME, and IS HARDER.

Of course banks love this they make money.

Oh wow! Not only do I not have any new information, but now I’m a little insulted, a little angry, and quite a bit worried for folks who would be suckered into the plan.

Where to start…

“Pete, you cannot compare the math algorithms of your spread sheet to the MMA software. Your spread sheet is only providing results. (YOU SAID IT, NOT ME :)) It is not actually forecasting ahead (i.e. how much additional principal should I apply and when for optimal results) based on input data like fluctuations in income, expenses and changing HELOC balance.”

Just as a point of reference, I do forecasting and analysis for a living and my degree is in Mechanical Engineering with minors in Mathematics and Physics. No, not everyone has that education, or even the desire of those pursuits. That is irrelevant based on some of the comments made by UFirst reps…or should I say, is the meat of the UFirst marketing plan?

Without any historical reference data to build on I can assure you that your program is incapable of making an intelligent forecast of one’s spending/savings habits based on a set of intial inputs. To contradict me on this point would go to discredit any of the mathematics incorporated in the MMA software.

I can also solve the problem of when the best time to deposit funds toward the principal balance of your mortgage is…right now. From a mathmatic perspective the best time to pay on principal is always as early as possible. Please, please try to tell me that your algorithm will at some point actually calculate that you’ll save more money by strategically waiting for several months to make a principal payment. It will only discredit the MMA even more. There is a case to make, based on interest accrual, of when to pay on the balance within a single month’s billing cycle, however, any variation from that is always a loser.

Ah, and now the UFirst marketing plan…

“The argument whether it works or not is over. It is proven and it works. You’ll just have to accept that…”

This coming from an organization whose agent has already admitted above that the numbers in the examples are a little funny.

So far the only thing proven to me is that with about 20 minutes and Excel I can save $5900 and 8 months.

To tell me to just accept something unexplained when your trying to sell it me, is an invitation to me to be foolish.

I can also say without fear that my spreadsheet is as predictive a model as the MMA software is at the intial point. If the MMA model contains breakthrough mathmatics in predictive analysis, then what fool would use it for paying mortgages…for goodness sake…the scientists working on the cure for cancer need this type of math! Scociologists working on community modeling need this type of math! Human development doctors need this type of math! Break open the MMA software and let’s start saving the world!

So far, the only value I see in the MMA is that it is a form of checkbook on steriods. It is a tracking utility that will do some calcualtions of future savings (this is merely using financial formulas for the time value of money) and will flag the user when they have money above their expenses (Quicken, or even a paper checkbook will do this too.) It does seem to consolidate all of one’s financial variables, which is valuable indeed, but to claim a special algorithm that will allow the prepayment of a mortgage without any additional funds being applied to the principal is quite a stretch.

“All this wrangling when round and round when bi-weekly plans first came out. Bi-weekly plans are now proven, simple and work Just like this does.”

Bi-weekly plans are easliy explained and supported by basic mathematics. You pay extra toward the principal.

That was a poor arguement choice if you’re still trying to convince me that one can “…pay their 30 year mortgage off within 8 to 11 years — with little change to their day-to-day spending habits and without increasing their monthly mortgage payments.”

“Pete and Ted both make underlying assumptions in their math that are wrong so the numbers are skewed. Since they do not fully understand the program it IS hard for them to do an accurate comparison. They simple choose the scenario they want… and go from there.”

And you know this how? You have yet to inquire what my calculations are, or are you so used to making mathematical assumptions with no knowledge that you instinctively know…MMA is good math, just accept it…Pete and Ted are wrong, I just know it.

If the MMA is so powerful, why does it matter what scenario is chosen? Those are some pretty basic numbers that were selected. Explain to me how they are specifically chosen to prove my point and fail in the MMA model.

I can tell you one difference in my analysis and the MMA model…I don’t hide the extra paychecks of those who are paid every week, or every other week. Perhaps, that’s what is different about the MMA algorithm…it deviates from true mathematics. I will say though, that my assupmtion is that the math in the MMA is clean, but the inputs are manipulated for the customer to justify the $3500 price tag. It’s already been confessed to.

What has been proven to me at this point is that you count on the portion of the population that doesn’t “…enjoy playing around with math…” ,or “…who have more important things to do than play around with numbers…”, or better yet “…don’t even have a clue what their Truth In Lending Statement really means” to drive sales of your product.

When the success of your product depends on the ignorance of your customer, you are taking advantage of people, not helping them.

This is my favorite quote though…

“I wonder if even Mr. Chester though could get Pete and Ted to look at the math of this correctly.”

I don’t even know Ted, but in this case I’m sure I can speak for both of us when I say…We will eagerly await contact from Mr. Chester.

Pete

I thought I’d point out this stuff goes back to the middle ages. Ever heard of the phrase Pig-in-a-poke

Here is a wikipedia link to explain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig-in-a-poke

As I was looking at my on line money merge account, I decided to google the words “money merge account”.

All I can say is that there seems to be a lot of heated debate.

If possible, I would like to add a few comments. Not as a person giving advice, but as an American homeowner.

I have worked in finance and banking for many years. So I understand all of the in’s and out’s of paying off your mortgage vs. not. There is an endless debate that could be had on this subject. But for me, I purchased the program because I wanted a program that changes with my ups and downs, -and because I am an educated consumer.

I started using this program about 3 years ago and I am now 9 months away from paying off my house, including my HELOC. Initially, my payoff analysis showed that I would pay my house off in 6.2 years. But for those of you who have never used the program, this system “learns” and adapts to every aspect of your household financial life. It’s not just about paying an extra $200 a month, or paying Bi-weekly payments, or paying your house off because you have an “extra $100k sitting in your pocket, or deciding on your own how much to transfer” LoL. It’s about real life. Life doesn’t just stay at “$200″ extra a month. It doesn’t sit still and collect dust, life moves up and down. People’s finances change, their expenses change. Everything changes.

Not to get to deep, but 2005 was the first year since the great depression that as a nation, as a people, we had a -negative savings rate. That means that as an entire people, on average, we all spent more than we made that year. For those financial pro’s on this site, what do you think that means? It means that if there isn’t drastic change, and quick, this beautiful country that i love is either going down, or it will be owned by foreign countries. Goodbye freedom!

Because of my background in finance and banking, I am very familiar with all of the financial language used to try and sway people into never paying off their mortgage, and “maxing” it out to the hilt to “potentially” gain huge financial rewards in the far and distant future. I understand this, because I use to advise this. I also understand that there is HUGE financial incentive for me to advise this, regardless of how well the investments I advised on perform.

I still advise making sound investments. I have many investments which I continue to invest in, in conjunction with paying off my home.

I understand the incentives “some” people use to tell people that they should never pay off their home. I use to be one. Try telling the people I know personally who lost everything, including their house in 9/11 that, they followed that advice. People here that are advising people to never pay their house off, are actually telling the people that are trying to be a part of the solution that they have low morals, and that they should be ashamed of themselves?!? You say that they are telling lies, and half truths, etc, etc. Let me ask you something, who is misleading who? You are not using the program, yet, you are the experienced expert on it. (Don’t say you don’t have to use it to be an expert on it. I said the same thing, but I was wrong). Now, in the face of “being moral”, if you tell someone that they should never pay their house off, what incentive do you have to tell them that?

Lets be honest! The only reason you don’t want people to pay their house off is because you, yes you stand to gain big time from it. Why else would you advise this? You preach (just like I did) that you could WIN BIG by stripping (or if your more comfortable with “harvesting”) the equity out of your home. This is a very risky proposal, and the number one driving force behind it is greed. I know, I admit it, I was there. Not anymore!

Have you taken a look at the real-estate market? Have you taken a look at the national savings rate! Have you taken a look at the lending market? Have you taken a look at the foreign financial situations? etc, etc, etc.

The only NO risk debt, is NO debt. Sorry finance pros, but true.

If all of the financial tools that have been in the market for decades are the “solution” to people’s financial problems, why did we have a negative savings rate in 2005? Oh, and 2006. Again, the first time since the great depression. Read the news papers, look at the market indicators.

For all who truly care about the truth, do your homework. Look around and decide what is right for you. I am not “pushing” this program. It is not right for all, as nothing is. I do not care what the “financial Pro’s” on this site think, I am one of them, and you can not “Cat and Mouse” me. Have fun responding; I am going to go live my life! See ya!

question to all,i am considering a mma. i have a first and second mort. told to refi second into heloc. balance on first is 197,000, balance on second is 69,000. i understand the program will pay off the second mort.first. my question is now my payment on the second is 489.00 a month, if i do the refi the payment interest only will be close to 700.00 a month.will i actually incur a 700.00 a month hit in my mma account or by putting in my paychecks this is offset.If this is offset what will the bank be charging me monthly for this loan amount?Nick

As I was looking at my on line money merge account, I decided to google the words “money merge account”.

All I can say is that there seems to be a lot of heated debate.

If possible, I would like to add a few comments. Not as a person giving advice, but as an American homeowner.

I have worked in finance and banking for many years. So I understand all of the in’s and out’s of paying off your mortgage vs. not. There is an endless debate that could be had on this subject. But for me, I purchased the program because I wanted a program that changes with my ups and downs, -and because I am an educated consumer.

I started using this program about 3 years ago and I am now 9 months away from paying off my house, including my HELOC. Initially, my payoff analysis showed that I would pay my house off in 6.2 years. But for those of you who have never used the program, this system “learns” and adapts to every aspect of your household financial life. It’s not just about paying an extra $200 a month, or paying Bi-weekly payments, or paying your house off because you have an “extra $100k sitting in your pocket, or deciding on your own how much to transfer” LoL. It’s about real life. Life doesn’t just stay at “$200″ extra a month. It doesn’t sit still and collect dust, life moves up and down. People’s finances change, their expenses change. Everything changes.

Not to get to deep, but 2005 was the first year since the great depression that as a nation, as a people, we had a -negative savings rate. That means that as an entire people, on average, we all spent more than we made that year. For those financial pro’s on this site, what do you think that means? It means that if there isn’t drastic change, and quick, this beautiful country that i love is either going down, or it will be owned by foreign countries. Goodbye freedom!

Because of my background in finance and banking, I am very familiar with all of the financial language used to try and sway people into never paying off their mortgage, and “maxing” it out to the hilt to “potentially” gain huge financial rewards in the far and distant future. I understand this, because I use to advise this. I also understand that there is HUGE financial incentive for me to advise this, regardless of how well the investments I advised on perform.

I still advise making sound investments. I have many investments which I continue to invest in, in conjunction with paying off my home.

I understand the incentives “some” people use to tell people that they should never pay off their home. I use to be one. Try telling the people I know personally who lost everything, including their house in 9/11 that, they followed that advice. People here that are advising people to never pay their house off, are actually telling the people that are trying to be a part of the solution that they have low morals, and that they should be ashamed of themselves?!? You say that they are telling lies, and half truths, etc, etc. Let me ask you something, who is misleading who? You are not using the program, yet, you are the experienced expert on it. (Don’t say you don’t have to use it to be an expert on it. I said the same thing, but I was wrong). Now, in the face of “being moral”, if you tell someone that they should never pay their house off, what incentive do you have to tell them that?

Lets be honest! The only reason you don’t want people to pay their house off is because you, yes you stand to gain big time from it. Why else would you advise this? You preach (just like I did) that you could WIN BIG by stripping (or if your more comfortable with “harvesting”) the equity out of your home. This is a very risky proposal, and the number one driving force behind it is greed. I know, I admit it, I was there. Not anymore!

Have you taken a look at the real-estate market? Have you taken a look at the national savings rate! Have you taken a look at the lending market? Have you taken a look at the foreign financial situations? etc, etc, etc.

The only NO risk debt, is NO debt. Sorry finance pros, but true.

If all of the financial tools that have been in the market for decades are the “solution” to people’s financial problems, why did we have a negative savings rate in 2005? Oh, and 2006. Again, the first time since the great depression. Read the news papers, look at the market indicators.

For all who truly care about the truth, do your homework. Look around and decide what is right for you. I am not “pushing” this program. It is not right for all, as nothing is. I do not care what the “financial Pro’s” on this site think, I am one of them, and you can not “Cat and Mouse” me. Have fun responding; I am going to go live my life! See ya!

As I was looking at my on line money merge account, I decided to google the words “money merge account”.

All I can say is that there seems to be a lot of heated debate.

If possible, I would like to add a few comments. Not as a person giving advice, but as an American homeowner.

I have worked in finance and banking for many years. So I understand all of the in’s and out’s of paying off your mortgage vs. not. There is an endless debate that could be had on this subject. But for me, I purchased the program because I wanted a program that changes with my ups and downs, -and because I am an educated consumer.

I started using this program about 3 years ago and I am now 9 months away from paying off my house, including my HELOC. Initially, my payoff analysis showed that I would pay my house off in 6.2 years. But for those of you who have never used the program, this system “learns” and adapts to every aspect of your household financial life. It’s not just about paying an extra $200 a month, or paying Bi-weekly payments, or paying your house off because you have an “extra $100k sitting in your pocket, or deciding on your own how much to transfer” LoL. It’s about real life. Life doesn’t just stay at “$200″ extra a month. It doesn’t sit still and collect dust, life moves up and down. People’s finances change, their expenses change. Everything changes.

Not to get to deep, but 2005 was the first year since the great depression that as a nation, as a people, we had a -negative savings rate. That means that as an entire people, on average, we all spent more than we made that year. For those financial pro’s on this site, what do you think that means? It means that if there isn’t drastic change, and quick, this beautiful country that i love is either going down, or it will be owned by foreign countries. Goodbye freedom!

Because of my background in finance and banking, I am very familiar with all of the financial language used to try and sway people into never paying off their mortgage, and “maxing” it out to the hilt to “potentially” gain huge financial rewards in the far and distant future. I understand this, because I use to advise this. I also understand that there is HUGE financial incentive for me to advise this, regardless of how well the investments I advised on perform.

I still advise making sound investments. I have many investments which I continue to invest in, in conjunction with paying off my home.

I understand the incentives “some” people use to tell people that they should never pay off their home. I use to be one. Try telling the people I know personally who lost everything, including their house in 9/11 that, they followed that advice. People here that are advising people to never pay their house off, are actually telling the people that are trying to be a part of the solution that they have low morals, and that they should be ashamed of themselves?!? You say that they are telling lies, and half truths, etc, etc. Let me ask you something, who is misleading who? You are not using the program, yet, you are the experienced expert on it. (Don’t say you don’t have to use it to be an expert on it. I said the same thing, but I was wrong). Now, in the face of “being moral”, if you tell someone that they should never pay their house off, what incentive do you have to tell them that?

Lets be honest! The only reason you don’t want people to pay their house off is because you, yes you stand to gain big time from it. Why else would you advise this? You preach (just like I did) that you could WIN BIG by stripping (or if your more comfortable with “harvesting”) the equity out of your home. This is a very risky proposal, and the number one driving force behind it is greed. I know, I admit it, I was there. Not anymore!

Have you taken a look at the real-estate market? Have you taken a look at the national savings rate! Have you taken a look at the lending market? Have you taken a look at the foreign financial situations? etc, etc, etc.

The only NO risk debt, is NO debt. Sorry finance pros, but true.

If all of the financial tools that have been in the market for decades are the “solution” to people’s financial problems, why did we have a negative savings rate in 2005? Oh, and 2006. Again, the first time since the great depression. Read the news papers, look at the market indicators.

For all who truly care about the truth, do your homework. Look around and decide what is right for you. I am not “pushing” this program. It is not right for all, as nothing is. I do not care what the “financial Pro’s” on this site think, I am one of them, and you can not “Cat and Mouse” me. Have fun responding; I am going to go live my life! See ya!

Ted you are a spokesman for the way things should be. A perfect world. I am an advocate for those that want to change the outcome with little change do their day to day life. Setting auto bill pay does not take into account fluctuating discretionary and taking advantage of every extra dollar while it’s not being spent. With the HELOC the money that is not being used right away is keeping balance low and saving interest. And comparing the interest rate on the HELOC to a lower rate closed end mortgage is comparing apples to oranges. It doesn’t matter whether you have a 9% HELOC or a 16% HELOC. The payoff time will differ very little.

Jason, I am a spokesman for the truth. You are a spokesman for the LIE. I expressed bill pay to demonstrate to you that there is an easier way. This is when your argument was that an MMA is easier. So, if you don’t want to use bill pay then, so be it. Spend your money and then send everything left over to your mortgage company. This will still beet the MMA smoke screan.

I still bet that someone with a bill pay set up will beat someone who tries to manage a very difficult MMA program though.

Oh Jason, I am still waiting for that article from a peer reviewed journal to defend your “research”

You have been proven wrong. Defend yourself with some numbers (truth) or leave.

Someone began a piece: “As I was looking at my on line money merge account, I decided to google the words “money merge account”. So, who are you; Stephen, Jeremy or Jmartin?

The reason people aren’t saving is because they have a consumerist mentality. They don’t need more programs, what they need to do is quit spending more than they make.

You also said, “The only NO risk debt, is NO debt. Sorry finance pros, but true.” So, a guy paid $400,000 cash last Spring for his house. Now, he wants to sell, and only gets $350,000 for it. You would say he had no risk because he had no debt. I would say he just lost $50,000.

Chris said “The reason people aren’t saving is because they have a consumerist mentality. They don’t need more programs, what they need to do is quit spending more than they make.”

Consumerism is the way Americans are conditioned to be via the media – everything. Come to terms with reality. The Money Merge Account works well with those who have not shown financial restraint in the past. But I recommend it to as many people who see the benefits as possible.

Ted said “I still bet that someone with a bill pay set up will beat someone who tries to manage a very difficult MMA program though.”

Difficult? LOL – now THAT’s a lie! Does your neighbor own it or something? Ted is so anal about the fact that others find benefit in the program when HE KNOWS how to do it on his own!! But he must come to terms with the fact that if someone went ahead and tried it HIS way (sending all their extra money to principal on their own – and possibly taking out a HELOC as an emergency fund) and three years down the road (probably MUCH sooner) fail and can’t stick with it I argue while they could have paid off a couple months sooner Ted’s do-it-yourself way – the MMA client beats (or as Ted says “beets”) Ted’s method – retire rich – get rid of the mortgage payment sooner – AND cross the finish line.

I say pay your mortgage FIRST rather than LAST Ted.

Ted said “There ya have it the MMA works just like a bi-weekly plan. Quoted from an MMA agent. I know he/she didn’t intend this, but it is a good example of proving a little truth with a lot jiberish to make the jiberish sound true. Psychological manipulation.”

Well Ted, you know better. Hopefully you know by now that bi-weekly payments simply equate to sending one extra mortgage payment per year and can cut about 5 or so years off of a mortgage. The Money Merge Account allows you to pay off 6-12 years for most people with positive cashflow and works MUCH faster than a bi-weekly pay off plan.

Ted really is crazy now. He wan’t peer reviewed articles.. you want an article? How bout the feature article in Broker Banker Magazine or the concepts shown to viewers of NBC Las Vegas? He was faced with the personal gym scenario of not sticking with even if your intentions are there (to get fit). Diet.. you name it. Of course he’ll say “I need numbers – I’ll beat em every time” .. well sure there. For the one that simply paid the gym fee and did it on their own that’s great. ON PAPER you’re looking good. A majority of people DON’T reach their goal. Now comes the personal trainer…

“They don’t need more programs, what they need to do is quit spending more than they make.”

Tell that to an alcoholic who lives in a bar. You don’t need AA – you just need to put down the frosty mug.

Again, Ted and Chris need to re-read the article from which they are posting. Can you do it yourself? Covered. Does the Money Merge Account worth it for those that need to change their bad spending habits? Covered.

Intead of calling everyone who advocate the program as a viable solution among many options a “LIER” – why don’t you just come to terms that “PERSPECTIVE” is very much what you’re arguing here. Posing article for the almight Federal Reserve crummies whose fiat monetary system has steadily, like watching a slow train-wreck, caused the value of the dollar to decline and allow government to grow way beyond what it was ever designed to – buried under a practically insurmountable pile of debt. But not to worry. Ultimately it is the TAX PAYER who will shoulder the burden. As G. Edward Griffin says – getting out of debt is the first best step – no risk – to living life financially free.

Stay in debt – in fact according to that article from the Fed Bank – or even take on MORE debt to save you money on your taxes… right. I think LONG TERM solutions really do not resonate well with those who are already concerned about the “long term” whether it be Social Security or stocks or whatever. I don’t have much faith in the system. I think getting out of debt and freeing up month to month cash flow is the best first option for most people. Especially younger folks.

Chris and others on his side, I just wanted you to know that what you’re doing in this discussion is appreciated. I agree with you 100% and hope that people thinking about this program take the time to read and understand your messages. Thanks to people like you on other boards, a simple google search turns up many conversations where the seemingly more intelligent people are always against this program.

Thanks

“I started using this program about 3 years ago and I am now 9 months away from paying off my house, including my HELOC. Initially, my payoff analysis showed that I would pay my house off in 6.2 years.”

i still would like someone to show me how the fact that you are paying more than 25% of your principle per year is attributed to the MMA, and not a huge amount of money you could easily see applied to your mortgage.

Im sorry, but if you have a 400K mortgage for example, you are telling me that the the MMA is helping to create 100K in cash to pay per year to your loan. That simply can not be.

Jason you are missing the point. The MMA takes LONGER, is HARDER, and COSTs more. With the MMA a person is still doing all the work, still writing every check, still entering in every bit of their financial information. ALL variables that will cause someone to quite.

I love that after all your lies you are left with the MMA only being a motivational tool. How laughable.

As for a peer reviewed article. I knew you would respond with non-peer reviewed sources. However, if this product is SOO researched then there should be a peer reviews article (this is how people prove their content/strategy is valid and reliable)

I have another question for you though. Would you pay off a loan for $200,000 that you had to pay a yearly interest of .0025%?

I have to apologize. I attempted several times to enter my comments 15 comments up from here and it would not let me enter my comments under my name (Jeremy). I thought the system must have been rejecting my name so I entered my middle name of Stephen, and then entered my first initial and last name of Jmartin. It looks like today the site finally caught up and posted each attempt I entered. Sorry for the duplicate posts. Hope all have fun posting. See ya.

Jeremy your post was very well thought out and nicely written. Thank you for not continuing spread the altered truth that most MMA promoters do. To bad you didn’t just take all the extra principle you paid extra toward your mortgage and do it without using the MMA. You would probably be even closer to paying off mortgage.

Jeremy, since you focused more on paying off your mortgage that using an MMA. I’ll ask you the same question I asked Jason V. Would you borrow $200,000 at an anual interest rate of .00025%?

For me, the unanswered issue is still centered around UFirst’s claim that folks can…

“…pay their 30 year mortgage off within 8 to 11 years — with little change to their day-to-day spending habits and without increasing their monthly mortgage payments.”

The key for me is the “without increasing their monthly mortgage payments.” If the program forces/encourages folks to pay more toward their mortgage, that is fine. We know that works. Just come out and say it. But to indicate that a special mathematical algorithm is what is responsible for the success really is a “pig in a poke.” There is honestly no other way to pay down a mortgage without paying more toward the principal. Banks and mortgage companies are not stupid.

If as UFirst claims I can pay off a mortgage in, let’s say the upper limit, 11 years without increasing the amount I pay to the mortgage company, how do I explain to the mortgage company that I don’t owe them the other 19 years of payments? Does the algorithm somehow make me exempt from paying any interest and all of my 11 years of payments have gone toward principal only?

Of course, I’m being sarcastic, however, at this point those guesses are as good as any because nobody is willing or able to explain how a mortgage can be paid off early without paying extra toward the principal. So far all I’ve heard is “…just accept it…”

I think we’re all intelligent enough to surmise that the MMA recommends throwing everything possible at the mortgage, and because every penny the MMA participant spends is drawn against the HELOC and therefore reflected in the debt outlook, that the participant’s spending decisions would be effected by this knowledge. I’m fine with that, and you’re right, that may in fact help folks. To continue to claim though, that folks can pay off their mortgage without paying extra toward the principle or changing their spending habits, is to deceive people into thinking the MMA has some unique method, unattainable anywhere else, that is worth spending the $3500 on.

So what is it? A unique algorithm that has escaped everyone else who has ever studied mathematics, or is this really a sophisticated calculator utilizing the tried and true time value of money standards, coupled with a debt account tracker, that encourages folks to pay as much as possible, as soon as possible, toward their mortgages?

And don’t get me wrong, I do find value in meeting people’s psychological needs, especially when it comes to fostering healthy attitudes toward money. I’m actually in the camp of wanting to pay off my mortgage early. We put an extra $500 a month toward our principal currently.

I’m just not willing to pay the $3500 for a program that will drive me toward the same behavior I’m already conducting. I also don’t think it’s right sell folks a program under the guise that it won’t cost them anything extra each month toward their principal by claiming a special algorithm. As I said before, if this is truly a breakthrough in predictive analysis, to contain it in a mortgage calculation tool would be both foolish and irresponsible.

Still waiting for an explanation of how folks can pay down a mortgage without paying anything extra toward principal…

Until I, and anyone else considering this program has this explained, the following is a fraudulent marketing practice…

“Our average customer will pay their 30 year mortgage off within 8 to 11 years — with little change to their day-to-day spending habits and without increasing their monthly mortgage payments.”

Jason V. I ran the numbers on YOUR situation using MMA payoff 7.2

If you would have used your $3500 and refinanced into a 15y mortgage and then paid the amount of discretionary income you stated then your payoff would have been 6y7m But you probably wouldn’t have sticked with those extra payments unless a software program told you to.

oops should have said stuck. Man my grammar sucks sometimes. :-)

This is probably one of the longest discussions I have heard about the mortgage accelerator programs
around. I think it took me as long to read it as it will to actually pay off my mortgage. Our company has developed a software program that will accomplish for the home owner that the mma program does. I truly believe these programs are incredible and we actually used the software for 6 months before we brought it to market. I will explain the differences and let you make a decision that works for you.
Ease of use- When a home owner purchases our program they actually own the software and it is installed on their own computer. They don’t have to log into a website to know what they are supposed to do. All they have to do is turn on their computer.
Our program will work with credit cards or a heloc.
Our price is $1,000 less than mma.
Our plan is based around actually selling the product rather than having a mlm style.
If you would like to compare programs please check out our website at http://www.mortgagewedge.com
You can also email me at pmikel@mortgagewedge.com
No matter which program you choose to use I believe these programs can help people achieve what most people never do. One of the main reasons we developed this program is because of watching my father pay off our home in 7 years when I was growing up. When we first thinking about this product he thought it was a great idea because in the 70′s he paid off his home by saving everything in an account and paying it off at once. He told me this system would have been better for him because he would have been able to save the interest over those seven years as well.
Thanks for letting me contribute and good luck in whatever you choose.

Sorry for all the posts but they are worth reading. Each statement starts with Jason V’s quote and then the truth
Jason V “Increasing one’s net worth by eliminating debt carries zero risk” – Truth -You risk through a HUGE opportunity cost

Jason V “there is nothing easier than to reverse direction and obtain a home-equity loan.” Truth – Not if you can’t get the loan. Also, I can think of a lot of things that are easier.

Jason V “is there another product out there that can get my mortgage paid off faster while also allowing me to not change the way I pay my bills or buy what I need change the way I am living now?” – THEN Jason V “I am an advocate for those that want to change the outcome with little change do their day to day life” – Truth you have to pay more towards your mortgage principle in order to pay it off. This requires you to change your behavior (Like Jason V admitted) The HELOC money shuffle will create some money through interest cancelation but it won’t create enough to cover the amount you would have saved if you took your $3500 and paid it towards your principle.

Jason V “ACTUAL interest you pay on the HELOC varies but is MUCH lower than you are paying now.” – Truth – Do I really need to explain this? See next distortion.

Jason V “ACTUAL interest you pay on the HELOC varies but is MUCH lower than you are paying now.” – Truth – Do I really need to explain this? See next distortion.

Jason V “Even if they are able to save $35,000, that is a 1,000% return on initial investment in the form of interest savings.” – Truth – No return on investment is money made, not money you didn’t lose.

Jason V “IMPROVE THEIR QUALITY OF LIFE. That’s awesome. No other product can offer this… “ Truth– I can list lots of other products that can improve someone’s quality of life.

Jason V “works MUCH faster than a bi-weekly pay off plan” – Truth – if you put the exact same amount of extra principal per month using a bi-weekly as you do using the MMA the bi-weekly will win every time

MY FAVORITE
Jason V “The MMA product is not for people you draw up in these scenarios.” (regarding someone with $0 discretionary money) Jason V “$3500 is saved within 3-5 months for most people.” Jason V “This program is not for everybody.” Jason V “Well I do have proof. ME! It works for me” Jason V “And as for the example – obviously the Money Merge Account will not benefit that person.” (regarding someone with $400 discretionary income” Jason V “spreadsheet gurus… I don’t care who you are. MMA will beat your formulas – 99% of the time – Truth – The MMA never wins when compared to simply paying the same amount of extra toward principle let alone 99% of time. Who is this program for? Is it just to motivate people?

Jason V “I’m done with this blog.” Aug 15th

Jason V, “I don’t just sucker anyone into this.” – Truth -no, only some people.

Jason V “Difficult? LOL – now THAT’s a lie” Sorry, difficult is a subjective term I should have defined it to make it objective. I do consider turning on my computer, opening up a browser, logging into a website, entering in my financial actions and data, reading that I need to shuffle my money around, taking the action of shuffling my money around on a regular basis to be more difficult than identifying through budget planning how much I am willing to send extra towards my mortgage each month in a automatic fashion easier.

Jason V “Chris = doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” Truth – It would be too numerous to post all the informative factual posts from Chris

Jason V “Spending a dollar to save 33 cents and have a mortgage payment for 30 years sucks!” Truth – This is a total distortion. Having a mortgage allow itemized deductions. Through tax deductions a 6.5% interest mortgage is around an effective 4.02%. Also, it doesn’t suck if all EQUAL Variables are kept equal the person who uses the deductions and invests come out more than $100,000 ahead.

Jason V “Well you did make money. You lost money to make it though.” Truth – Of course Jason quickly skirting the fact that the total NET money was far greater

Jason V “Using the Money Merge Account it would be the same as having a less than 2% interest rate!” Truth – I honestly think Jason believes this. I don’t think he really understand what % interest rate means. Maybe not a lie, just stupidity.

Jason V “by getting paid twice a week at $2500 instead of once monthly at $5000” – Truth – The most common lie by MMA distorting the how much you are paid by talking in bi-weekly terms

Jason V ”Ted, I like ya buddy” – Truth – I doubt it

Jason V “I will make no more posts on this blog.” – mmmm

Jason V “The income tax is a fraud. And the Federal Reserve and it’s system should be abolished IMMEDIATELY. “ – Then later Jason V “I LOVE PAYING MY TAXES!”

Jason V “If it means they accomplished that goal much sooner than they would have otherwise” – Truth – The MMA takes longer

Jason V “program forces you to pay your money to mortgage first by design.” Truth – This program forces you to do nothing

Jason V “Ask yourself: ‘what would you do without a mortgage payment?’ Now I’m done here.” Truth – Notice how he implies that investing is a good thing after your mortgage is paid off, but my point for this lie is than he is still here.

Ted you are clueless as to why United First Financial and people like Harj Gill are out there doing what they are doing. Other companies have taken similar approaches. Using the HELOC/Mortgage program is so great because it works. Not one customer complains – only finance gurus who don’t understand that their solutions are already well known – yet many do not stick with. I wonder why. It WORKS. You deposit your money into the HELOC so YES you pay your mortgage first. The money you don’t spend now is reducing interest for homeowners. Yes indeed these clients are better positioned to follow through to the finish line. Ted and Chris: ask yourself “why is this concept cropping up seemingly out of nowhere?” “why are there no complaints from customers?” “why does the author of this blog says that the program encourages frugality and can be a great idea for those who spending habits are not as good as they could be?”

MMA works. I’m outta here. FOR GOOD. I’m tired Chris and Ted because they do nothing to help people get out of debt because deep down and as shown in previous posts they actually think keeping your mortgage payment is a good thing. Or that somehow the simple idea of sending extra to your principal will change the current financial landscape. The MMA – they accomplish this. The do-it-yourself method seems to work for a small minority. Ted and Chris cannot come to terms with this.

Again, NO CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS. THE CONCEPT IS GENIUS. Pay your bills as you always have – pay your home off sooner since your money went to work for you rather than sit around in a checking account doing very little for you. Can you do it yourself? Yes (covered in the original article). Will you? A majority of you will not without help. And if you think you should keep your mortgage then why in the world are you here talking about a program that is catered to those who want to pay off their homes or build equity much faster taking advantage of the concept.

FACT: Australians use this concept now and most of them pay off their home in half the time Americans do. Obviously there is a reason why we use the HELOC to drive the program. Obviously the benefits are enjoyed by the customers as they do not complain. Only financial pimps and Debt-loving folks like Ted make harsh remarks.

I AM DONE WITH THIS BLOG! Good luck everyone! I’ll be a millionaire and that’s fine with me! THANK YOU UNITED FIRST FINANCIAL!

No customer complaints.

Only complains are from Ted and Chris lovers who know squat about why the HELOC concept (used in Australia now for over a decade – Aussies pay their homes off in half the time we do – and our banks love it!) and why it is becoming so popular. They have no clue why people and companies who are recommending this concept find it so unique. The main reason is because there is a high chance you’ll stick with it.

I repeat: no complaints from customers. Only Ted and Chris lovers who no nothing about the program benefits.

know*

Jason V “and why it is becoming so popular” Becuase slimmy sales agents misrepresent the truth. See previous posts demonstrating the lies.

Jason V “Aussies pay their homes off in half the time we do” I wonder why the % of Americans who own ther homw is 60% and Australians have dropped from 40% in 2001 to 32.6% today. The Australian argument is a farce, the goverment has cracked down on these organizations and many are undergoing major lawsuits. In fact if I were a MMA agent I would be VERY worried about what the government of Australia has done to agents of similiar programs.

The lies continue.

Most home loans in Australia have very short terms; less than the typical 15, 20 & 30 year loans that are common here in the US.

I do know about the MMA program benefits:
It might help people start thinking about their finances. You can make money by selling it. It can remind you to pay more toward your mortgage. It is possible to pay off your mortgage by using it. I’ve never disputed any of this.

At what point does the virtual silence of the current customers become that much more important than the complaints of the “potential customers” who decided not to use it? Especially when a lot of the ones not using it are paying off their houses faster, easier, cheaper and with much less risk.

Remember, I work in an industry totally unrelated to this subject. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter to me if someone buys the program or not. I do, however, believe that the way the company is marketing this product is unethical.

Why doesn’t UFF just have the brilliant engineer who designed the sophisticated equations, that no one else can duplicate, put an end to this once and for all? They could show the exact amount of money used to pay off the typical mortgage that comes from floating the money through the HELOC. Then everyone could clearly see what it amounts to, which is hardly anything. And when the $3,500 fee is deducted from this, it will show a net loss. Better yet, why don’t they just get a patent on these newly discovered equations and then reveal them for all to see and verify? Because there aren’t any.

Very well said Chris. I agree. For me the only problem is the misleading statements and sometimes outright lies. These are what gets my blood boiling. I would care if MMA agents told the truth. I just would move on because the MMA takes Longer, Costs more, is Risker, and is Harder to implement than other simple ideas.

Mmmm.

Is the MMA the same as “mortgage cycling?” Sounds like the same deal, and Craig’s book is less than 70 bucks; plus, it comes with a free calculator.

I hope Jason V is truly done with this blog. People, don’t believe his lies. I’ve posted MANY of them. If you want to pay off your mortgage do so, but DONT’t use the MMA, it takes LONGER, is HARDER, and COSTS more than simply sending in your extra principle payments you would be paying using the MMA. This is a proven mathimatical fact.

Idenfity 1 lie they give you then leave. Don’t give your hard earned money to someone who lies to you.

I’m glad to see that others picked up the torch and have been working to help out ‘the folks’ ; Kudos… Here’s some more Independant 3rd Party Opinions about the MMA Schema:

“I was shocked to read the Money Merge Account article [in the Miami Herald]. I am not opposed to prepaying a mortgage, I’m only opposed to paying $3,500 for the privilege of doing so.
The identical savings used in the example could be achieved by paying an extra $582 each month [from someone's discretionary income].

Is that simple fact worth $3,500?

Why would anyone purchase a program when there are multiple online mortgage calculators for free that tell you the same thing?”

by: Robert Grauer, Ph.D. Associate Professor, CIS University of Miami
2007-05-27 The Miami Herald

“I must take exception with the Money Merge Account. The strategy and services it offers — doing certain financial calculations for the borrower for a sign-up fee of $3,500 — provides scant savings and may bring more financial difficulties in the future if borrowers are unsophisticated or undisciplined.

The borrower is much better off using the $3,500 for the MMA sign-up fee to make a one-time extra payment to the mortgage principal.

Borrowers can calculate their own potential cost savings from extra payments to principal by using free Internet based mortgage calculators.”

by: Manuella Adrian
2007-05-27 The Miami Herald

For more FREE information about fee-based mortgage prepayment schemes and voodoo, go to http://www.integramortgages.com/FinancialVOODOO

It’s funny.

Ted talks about wanting “proof” from the UFF people; however, he offers no “proof” himself that NOT using the MMA is just as easy, cost less in the long-run; and faster.

Where is your “proof,” Ted. Are you a banker who sells mortgages for a living?

Here comes Ron back in the fray. He works for integra mortgage or whatever.. just follow that link he gave ya! .. whatever Ron. Go ahead and post the comment stating that sending in one extra payment principal is better (somehow) than paying off your mortgage much sooner. Hmm.. let’s see are you going to sign us us for a bi-weekly program? And then I can save a few years rather than go ahead and pay it off in half the time with MMA…

Ron has already been exposed! Thanks to Ted he is back… Ted has no solution for those who are not good and sticking to their own plan.. financies, diet, getting in shape, etc. Many times to follow-through you need help. Ted says too bad – just to it yourself. EVERYONE KNOWS THEY CAN PAY OFF THEIR HOMES SOONER BY SENDING EXTRA TO PRINCIPAL! But they aren’t doing it – yet want to pay off their homes sooner. Ted cannot come to grips that this is a service just like any other. You can dry clean on your own – you can change your own oil – you can verticut and seed your lawn on your own – all to save money. But you want it DONE and done RIGHT. United First Financial’s Money Merge Account is here to stay. And with 100% customer satisfaction you can bet that will be in a good position to reach your goal.

Get lost Ron.

There really is nothing to debate here. The only question is whether the program is worth it to the person who buys it. I have one client who was determined that he could beat our Analysis… so I challenged him to send me his spreadsheet on how he was going to pay down his mortgage.

I then took his numbers and plugged them into our Analysis. We beat his projection… but not by a huge amount.

He bought the software ANYWAY. Why? because the last paragraph he included in his email said it all…

I just proved your point for you. There is no way I would want to go through this work every time my budget or income changes and I see now that I would have to rework these numbers almost every month to stay on track.

Is it for everyone? No. The financially undisciplined cannot be helped by anything. Do you have to increase your monthly mortgage payments? NO… you are sending additional PRINCIPLE payments when it is APPROPRIATE. If your budget or cash flow changes – so does the program, automatically, without you having to rework anything. The HELOC money shuffle allows you to get your money into your mortgage as FAST as possible… TIME is an important element to savings. The software has one simple job… to find the fastest way to ZERO.

Money back guarantee – ZERO complaints in the Better Business Bureau. Smiles on our customers faces… priceless.

Jason again comes back.

Jason either defend your lies or leave. Come on. You are morally corrupt.

People do you really want to spend $3500 to be motivated, knowing that you will start almost 10months behind the person who doesn’t need to be motivated.

Jason
You have no proof that using the MMA “software” will MOTIVATE people any more than identifying through budget planning what would be the exact same amount of extra principle that they would send in using the MMA.

Your analagies are completely false. You may want to brush up on your analogical reasoning skills.

Here are some better analagies that you should make.

You can change your own oil OR pay someone who says they are changing your oil, but doesn’t and charges you for a filter you didn’t need for $3500.

or Mow your own lawn or pay someone $3500 who tells you that if you mow your own lawn but do so while whereing their specialize underwear your lawn will be greaner.

I have already proven to you that you lost around 9 months doing it your way on your plan.

I also have a very specific question still out there for you. Would you get a loan with an annual %rate of .00025%?

Doppleganger
I have provided proof. Search the thread. It is basic math. If you want me to prove any scenario give it to me, I’d be happy to do so. Just don’t lie on your end. I’ve also posted MANY lies (1 should be enough) The only thing I can’t prove. Is the “ease” question this is subjective. I dealt with this previously as well. Here is the repost.

Jason V “Difficult? LOL – now THAT’s a lie” Sorry, difficult is a subjective term I should have defined it to make it objective. I do consider turning on my computer, opening up a browser, logging into a website, entering in my financial actions and data, reading that I need to shuffle my money around, taking the action of shuffling my money around on a regular basis to be more difficult than identifying through budget planning how much I am willing to send extra towards my mortgage each month in a automatic fashion easier.

Sorry, I can’t prove the motivation question either. However, if someone is going to charge $3500 for a product that is only to motivate, they should have some research.

Let me preface this by saying I am a renter, I don’t own a home or have a mortgage so I have no stake in this. I am, however, a full time robotics engineer with a degree in electrical and computer engineering, so my math base is sound (six degree of freedom derivatives using matrices for robotic arms makes calculating compounding interest sound like a day off). And please don’t tell me that just because I don’t have a mortgage I can’t possibly understand this, it’s just math people. I don’t need to have a shoe in my hand to tell you how to tie one. I stumbled onto this MMA thing a few days ago and it intrigued me since I like formulas, but I see a lot of people crying scam and not really understanding what is going on.

Is $3500 expensive for software? Maybe for the average Joe, but just trying buying a .Net or server license sometime. More importantly though, this is a product and a service. Yes, it is possible to pay down a mortgage faster by simply being disciplined and setting out a good budget with a spreadsheet and sticking to it. In fact, just about every person I’ve read on forums hawking or defending UFF MMA states exactly that upfront, so I don’t see how they’re being misleading. But the fact is most people can’t make a budget, don’t have discipline and couldn’t setup an Excel cell calculation to save their lives. Most people also can’t change the radiator in their car or diagnose a plumbing problem. Is it a scam then that the hourly rates for auto and plumbing work are so high? It’s a trade off, you’re paying someone else to do the thinking for you. You’re trading money for time and a skill set you may not possess. So just because it costs a lot doesn’t mean it’s a scam. Think about it, just buying a house 6% commission goes to the two realitors involved who, when you get down to it, are only feeding you listings from the MLS database and then doing a bucket of paperwork. Yes, you can do all that yourself but many people don’t have the time, experience, or financial/legal skills to do so. It is not a scam that realitors take 3% each, it is their business, we pay them that much because (for some poeple) it’s worth our time to do so.

That being said there are two points with the UFF MMA program that I see most of the detractors glossing over or missing entirely. (1) The software calculates when to take money in and out of the account so as to keep the daily minimum balance of the HELOC – which determines the interest on it – to a minimum. Yes, you can do this yourself, but this makes the calculations more complex than simply depositing your paycheck when you get it and paying your bills whenever. By balancing the in and out flows of money you keep the daily balance down so the interest you pay on the HELOC is as low as possible that month. That’s where this software is slightly more sophisticated than a quick spreadsheet.
(2) A lot of people are also saying you could do the same thing by simply paying your extra income towards the principle on the mortgage. This is true, but that is a one-way transaction, once you pay that money to the bank you can’t get it back out in the case of some emergency. The point of the HELOC is that you can borrow money back out of it if you need to. Now, again, you could set this up with a bank or yourself, but please do recognize that paying money towards the principle from your savings/paycheck vs from a HELOC (no matter who sets it up) does not have the same flexibility once that money is paid into the mortgage. Also the software allows you to vary your monthly expenses, part of those expenses could be towards a savings account. If you have $500 in discretionary funds each month going towards the mortgage principle, just call another $100 an expense, shuttle it to a high yield savings/Money Market/ETF and apply the other $400 to the principle. To the UFF MMA software it is just another “expense”, you are still free to keep a savings account so you have money other than what you draw from the HELOC.

The MMA software is expensive, yes. It can be recreated by a savvy individual, yes. But it is a solution for people that don’t know how or don’t have the time to do it themselves, and in addition it is *optimized* to do it really well. I can write you a wall following routine for a robot in an hour, but to optimize the code it might take me a few days. In this case you could make your own MMA, but you’ll need more time or skill to make it be as efficient with the balances as possible. The underlying financial math is sound for the system, the debate seems to be whether it’s worth the $3500 or not. That comes down to the individual and their level of knowledge and what other debts they already carry. It’s not for everyone, but that doesn’t mean it’s a scam.

In fact, what I see here is a great opportunity for someone to make a business by working out the same automated payment calculator and undercutting the $3500 cost that UFF is charging. Of course it’s a fair amount of work to write the code correctly, and I’m sure there’s got to be some legal hurdles to selling financial software (probably counts as professional financial advice). I’m afraid my software legal experience is with military robots which have their own set of rules, the land of finance law is totally different.

And finally I think a pretty good quick measure of if this is a scam is by looking at the Better Business Bureau website and seeing that UFF really does have zero complaints. Zero! I’ve researched a lot of companies because I buy a lot of electronics online, and I have never seen a company with zero complaints. They’ve been in business a bit over two years, but zero is still a noteworthy number.

To summarize: if you understand finances and have the time and/or a good adviser to set up a similar program, then it can probably be done cheaper. You may or may not be able to get the same level of optimization, who knows, you might even be able to get more.

If you just want to pay a professional to give you an automated solution to follow a payment plan then this may be a solution for you.

And for a little perspective, if you used a buyer’s agent and a sellers agent to buy your $350,000 house then you probably paid them $21,000 for taking care of the details of the sale – 6%.
If you buy this program you paid UFF $3,500 to take care of the details of paying down the mortgage in a fast flexible way – 1%. Looking at it like this I don’t see why people would think $21,000 for agents is OK but $3,500 for financial planning assistance is not. For people who don’t want to, or can’t do it for themselves both these services offer something of value.

Ted

Here are the parameters of my situation
I have a Mortgange with 257000 left on it. 6.5% interest rate. Lets talk round numbers. I clear 4350 a month (goes into my checking account). My monthly expenses are 1850 for mortgage, 571 for HELOC, 975 for rental property. Total equals 3396 for “hard expenses.” I would say the other MISC expenses (utilities, insurance, basic living) is around 800 bucks or so. So, I’m left with a reserve of lets say 200 bucks. Not much; however, with this 200 bucks, I was able to pay off my mortgage in 12.5 years using the MMA system. Any thoughts as to how I can do this without a 3500 investment? Thanks

Doppleganger you are leaving out some variables. I’d like to see the bigger picture

What is your Heloc Balance?
How many years are left on you Mortgage?
Is there another mortgage for your rental?

You say “what you have left” and then you say “I was able to pay off” This is an inconsistant tense. Could you please clarify?

I’ll run some basic numbers using the limited info you gave me.

If you have a loan for $257,000 at 6.5% Your mortgage would be $1624.41

If you had $200 a month extra to pay on your mortgage it would take you 22y and 3 months. If you used an MMA and kept just these variables the same you would be around 23.7 years.

Ted

My HELOC balance is around 34000, I have 28.5 years left on my morgage. Yes, there is another mortgage for my rental; right now I have an interest only loan for around 6% (I think). I pay 975/month on it, and I get 850/month rental income…taking this one at a loss.

Yes, in regards to the grammar; I have 200 dollars extra a month. If I applied this 200 dollars into the MMA, I would be able to pay off my mortgage, and HELOC in 12.5 years. Also, forgot to mention I have 7K extra cash in a savings account, and 10K in a brokerage account.

Thanks.

Doppleganger your interest rate on your heloc?

I’ll assume it is 6.5% as well although it is probably higher.

To clarify, Total debt at $260,400 you are saying that you will have this paid off in 12.5 years by paying $2621 a month? $200 of this is extra towards principle and the rest is your standard/required payment?

Is there anyone out there who has tried Harj Gill’s program as well as the MMA with U1st Financial? I’m wondering if they are similar and would yield the same results? They certainly differ in price! Thanks

Ted

Fixed rate on heloc is about 9.25% right now; and yes, payingg 2621 a month on the mortgage, will have it paid off in 12.5 years using the MMA program. Thanks

Dopple

jtheletter,

Great post bud.

Just a couple of points…

From what I understand, the MMA does not interact with any kind of automatic payment utility. It’s still up to the user to follow the advice of the software. It all boils down to personal discipline no matter what plan you use.

I also agree that the math in the MMA is probably clean and that there is no funny business going on internally. What I do take issue with, and it has still not been answered by anyone, is how folks can “…pay their 30 year mortgage off within 8 to 11 years — with little change to their day-to-day spending habits and without increasing their monthly mortgage payments.”

I wholeheartedly believe that the MMA program prompts folks to pay extra toward their mortgage, very agressively in fact, via it’s recommendations. That in itself is great. That’s how you pay a mortgage off early. I’m even for a program that helps folks stick to a plan. There is probably even an acceptable amount to charge for that service. How disciplined do you think folks will be though if they’re being told that they don’t have to change their spending habits or pay extra toward their mortgage? If they continue to spend what they earn, now they’ll be in the hole for the $3500, plus whatever they’ve leveraged on the HELOC.

I’m sure it’s a powerful piece of tracking software, but the claims around it represent a dangerous and I would even say (until someone tells me how to pay a mortgage off early without applying extra toward principal) unethical practice.

It’s also been indicated above in the thread that the examples used to display the features of the program don’t include the “extra” paychecks one incurs if they are paid weekly or every other week. The examples allow those “extra” checks to be applied toward the principal…going against the key selling point of the program. Plus, for someone living paycheck to paycheck, expecting, as the UFirst rep will tell them, that they don’t have to change thier spending habits, this program will not only lead to discouragement, but further debt.

Right now I just can’t appreciate the fact that one of the key defenses for UFirst is that not everyone is disciplined enough to stick to a plan of paying extra toward their principle each month, yet that is the only way their program will work. The kicker is that they’re selling it under the guise that you don’t need to send extra to your mortgage company.

I would have absolutely no problem with MMA vendors if they were truthful, letting folks know that the software is designed to squeeze every available penny out of thier income and apply it toward their mortgage principle. Let folks make a $3500 buying decision with the facts. Fooling them into thinking that they’ll pay their mortgage off early without paying extra toward the principal is only inviting them deeper into debt (since everyone is so undisciplined) when they continue to spend what they earn.

Pete

I’ve read the whole thing. I have never seen an answer from a UFF rep that addresses the following:

With no discretionary income each month (i.e. expenses=paycheck), does the MMA program accelerate the mortgage payback?

Simple question. Only one. Just need a straightforward one line answer.Dont derail…please…

Smith,

With no discretionary income each month (i.e. expenses=paycheck), does the MMA program accelerate the mortgage payback? NO! Not unless there is enough equity in the home to consolidate debts and “create” discretionary.

“no discretionary income” is really tough though. I mean, does one really spend – to the penny – every bit of what they make? If taxes go up (they always do) that person is in trouble. Now, is there enough discretionary here and there to account for the price of the software? Only running the numbers will tell. It it cannot pay off sooner than you are now – the program agents use will not generate an analysis.

So Ted – how to you respond to jtheletter’s comment. I see you avoid it like the plague. There was another similar post before that which really was a good one – which you avoided as well. I just don’t think it’s worth sticking around and making this seem like we are ripping people off! How dare you? I mean common. This program puts discretionary to work be default since you pay your bills out of the HELOC also you are able to float other expenses via credit card if you’d like which can provide other benefits. No lifestyle change claim is valid since you still pay the same bills and can live your life as you had before. But instead of letting your discretionary sit there and finally build up so you go buy the next gadget or junk that you don’t need – it is reducing interest. The way you live your life in fact does not change. Your discretionary is there by default since you deposited your money there. Again it’s good because without the borrow doing anything – the amount of money that is not being used – even beyond discretionary lets say the money that is going to be used next week to pay a bill – it’s all saving you money.

Here is an interesting article on LOC mortgage acceleration. Carolyn Bond, CEO at the Consumer Action Law Center in Melbourne, Australia weighs in.

http://www.butterhomes.com/blog/index.php/mortgage-accelerator-under-fire-australian-securities-and-investments-commission-taking-action-against-mortgage-brokers/

Excellent link Chris! It sort of qwells the case to consider how “successful” this program has been in Australia, eh? Everyone should read this link before deciding on MMA participation.

Still waiting for that response on how UFirst can pay off a mortgage “…within 8 to 11 years — with little change to their day-to-day spending habits and WITHOUT increasing their monthly mortgage payments.”

It shouldn’t be a hard question to answer, it’s the key point to UFirst’s claim in “helping” folks. One would think that UFirst reps could speak to the chief claim of their product.

And the arguement “I mean, does one really spend – to the penny – every bit of what they make?” is irrelevent. UFirst calims that I can pay off a mortgage without any extra income going toward my mortgage, so if I am someone living paycheck to paycheck the MMA will ruin me.

Brilliant math or astronomical fraud? I’m still willing to be convinved if someone from UFirst can answer the only question I’m asking.

Pete

Wow! You may also want to check out the other links in the article on the webpage that Chris provided. Australian Courts and watchdog organizations are really starting to thump the MMA concept down under.

Pete

Chris, Great LINK (above) with great information and research for those looking to understand ‘equity accelerator’ schemas. My hat is off to you sir… you’re a true professional, a gentleman and a scholar!

We can only hope that our State(s) or Federal Government entities here in the USA will also take similar enforcement actions to STOP the deceptive and misleading marketing and sale of ‘equity accelerator’ schemas.

For Consumers to directly report concerns about Fraud or Financial Crimes, you can contact your State’s Attorney’s General via the following link: http://www.naag.org/ag/full_ag_table.php

**************

Because I think Chris’s content is great and germain to this blog… I want to quote it directly here:

Carolyn Bond, from Chris Butterworth’s article “Mortgage Accelerator Under Fire; Australian Securities and Investments Commission taking action against mortgage brokers” (link above):

“I look on with great interest at the promotion of ‘mortgage acceleration’ type programs in the US. The type I’m talking about are ones that, in one form or another, allow all income to be paid into a line-of-credit (LOC) until required. Claims tend to be made that this can cut years off your mortgage without requiring additional payments {or significantly changing your lifestyle}.

US promoters are correct to say that this program was sold in Australia before it was ’discovered’ by US borrowers. However consumer organisations such as [Consumer Action Law Centre, Melbourne, Australia], and our national financial services regulator – the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) – concluded years ago that there were NO SAVINGS to be made, and that promoters were ENGAGED in UNLAWFUL CONDUCT.

Examples and charts showing massive savings have all been shown to include SIGNIFICANT INCREASES in PAYMENTS being made to the Mortgage [Debt] (in addition to the funds deposited temporarily). Any savings made by depositing regular salary into the LOC amount to possibly a few hundred dollars per year, and unless the borrower has significant funds to deposit, these SAVINGS are LESS then the ADDITIONAL INTEREST PAID on the LOC – even if the LOC is quite small (say $50,000). Borrowers who pay any money for software, monitoring or other services, are often THOUSANDS of DOLLARS WORSE OFF.

…Our regulator ASIC says, on its website: http://www.asic.gov.au :

‘in reality there is no magic trick or secret type of loan that will let you own your home sooner. Substantial SAVINGS are ONLY ACHIEVED by consistently MAKING ADDITIONAL PAYMENTS on your mortgage. You therefore need to be very careful when [someone] claims that you can own your home sooner and make substantial savings by using a line of credit mortgage [HELOC / ALOC].’

ASIC has taken action against mortgage brokers promoting this type of product, as well as companies [selling] calculators to consumers….”

http://www.butterhomes.com/blog/index.php/mortgage-accelerator-under-fire-australian-securities-and-investments-commission-taking-action-against-mortgage-brokers

Thanks for your professionalism Chris, Kudos!!

Ron and Chris,

I just thought I would point out that the links to the Australian articles you have provided are talking about a system which requires homeowners to refinance their first mortgage in to a variable HELOC. There is a reason that the regulators have a problem with doing it that way. By refinancing your first mortgage into a variable HELOC you are most likely going from a lower fixed rate first mortgage into a higher variable rate first position HELOC.

The program I use never required me to refinance my primary mortgage. In fact, the company providing the program I use states they will never provide a mortgage accelerator product that requires you to refinance your first mortgage to use the system.

Also, you claim that consumers using an early mortgage payoff system, do not get any real savings from it. Well, I have. Am I not a consumer? And an informed one at that.

Before I stared on this program, I invested in multiple investments. The money I didn’t invest went into my savings account and earned me around 0% to 1.5%. I kept the money there just incase I ever needed it.

With this system, I continue to put money toward investments, and I am able to cancel interest on my mortgage with the money I would normally have sitting in my checking and savings account earning me around 0% to 1.5%. I still have access to my money through the line of credit for when I need it.

I work in the finance world. I have for many years. This program makes it easier to pay my mortgage down, while I also continue to invest. And yes, it did not require a lifestyle change.

Weather there is a snake under my foot, or I think there is a snake under my foot; my reaction is the same.

Wheather it costs more (in interest in the long run) to pay off my loan in 10-12 years; I’ve still paid it off in 10-12 years…not 30. If I do pay higher fees and interest; what do I care? I’ll have 20-22 years to more than make up for it. Perception is reality; and ignorance is bliss. Will I do the MMA program, not at 35hundo dollars. However, I will partake in the SpeedEquity system. I’ll keep an eye on this post and let you all know how ignorant I am. Take care.
Dopple

Ted, Chris and Ron (Mr. voodoo),

What is your financial interest in taking all this time to post negative comments? Please don’t try to tell the readers here you have none. The average reader is smarter than that. Unless you are Mother Teresa, you definitely have something (undisclosed) to gain by trying to say that the program I use doesn’t work, when you don’t even use it. Please don’t say you have used it. I have used it now for 3 years, and it is very obvious you haven’t used it.

All I can say before I get back to “having a life” is that I am much further ahead than I was before. And it is not because someone suckered me into a “magical” program. See ya.

Wow, great posts! I have learned alot so far. But has anyone ever heard of the Mortgage Accelerator Plus Program (MAP)? How does this program compare with MMA or SpeedEquity?

I know the price of the product is abut $1295. And they claim that their product is not software driven like MMA?

Ted, Ron, Chris and all the other in regard to that “link” here is a comment I thought was worth posting in regard to it:

1- we never claim that we do not make additional payments to the principal
mortgage. We say we are leveraging the heloc and discretionary money to make
THOSE ADDITIONAL PAYMENTS TO THE MORTGAGE. Clients make 2-6 additional
payments to the mortgage each year. So he is not talking about us because we
do not claim that.

2- Aussie lady is talking about 1st home equity mortgage programs. We are
not that.

3- she says she doesn’t know a sole who uses a heloc like a checking account
nor has she herself so she basically discredits herself BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T
HAVE A CLUE HOW THEY WORK. Or the power of the float and interest saved when
you do.

3 – the word sole should be “soul”

Chris and Ron! You BOTH should get a life and realize your “link” about the Australian problems are simply LAUGHABLE!! HAhahahahaha! You know NOT what you are talking about and you post deceptive articles that have NOTHING to do with the program that we are discussing! Hahahaha! LOSERS!

Ted, Chris, and Ron – Hurry! Call for the government to step in and stop all these people from paying off their homes early!

Come off of it you den of vipers.

And people such as John Commuda, Harj Gill, and UFF should all be able to sell a software product if they want to – as long as it is ACCURATE! What are you people? They can charge whatever they want to whomever they want ! This is AMERICA!

Jason seems to be saying that he thinks it is alright to sell and charge more for something than it’s actually worth? That the true honest value of a product is not important? That any price is OK if you can find an uninformed sucker who will pay you for it?… what a truly miserable point of view, especially coming from someone promoting and selling a product. And he claims he’s not trying to rip people off…

I don’t know what others think about that kink of morally corrupt and disreputable comment, but personally I am disgusted! Jason, you weren’t credible to begin with, as evident from your many comments, but the above just gives a bit more insight into your true mindset and motivations. As they say, loose lips sink ships!

So Jason is OK with selling something, even if deceptive and misleading (even illegal) sales and marketing claims are used to trick folks into buying it. Jason is also OK if you GROSELY overpay for a product someone decides to sell… even if buying the product ultimately causes you to loose thousands of dollars or more, as compared to other alternatives!

Watch out for Jason… there’s a $3500 plastic toothbrush out there that he’s OK with… he might even think it’s OK to take a first born child in exchange for selling ice to Eskimos. Lets all pray for the folks in Kansas.

*******

I saw this comment and thought it was great advice….

Remember that “Scams are there to Trick YOU”

Make sure you find out ALL the facts; educate yourself; talk to a lawyer, accountant, or CPA; and Don’t Get Tricked!

Protect yourself and your family!

Ron,

You really are now insane to continue to makes these comments and fail to realize there is a great benefit when the process of leverageing a HELOC to pay down your mortgage faster. Customer’s in order to do this most efficiently must not use too much of their LOC because then they would be paying too much in interest on the HELOC. The idea is a perspective change and a way to pay your mortgage first. Why do you think Harj Gill has made waves with his book and has had NBC doing an interview on this. That customer was very happy as are all the others. Get lost you sorry sack.

Great – thank you Ron for pointing out that you make tousands per transaction to get people INTO debt and “meet their financial needs” .. they could just go straight to a lender and do that – so why should they go through you?

It’s one thing to be a broker. But to misrepresent another product to earn more business is really sorry. And just looking at your used-car salesman pic on your site confirms to me personally you are looking to make a buck at every turn – no matter what. And it has been well established that you frequent blogs such as this to say everything is a scam and to go to your website so people can see just what a great person you are.. and use your services. Heck realtors make 3-SIX percent on every transaction! A lot of money indeed. Make no mistake. This is a service we are selling which consists of a software program that drives the concept.

The concept is unique because I can deposit my income as I did before, pay the same bills as I did before, and the only different being I put my money to work for me until I need to use it. And the software program helps me to see how my financial choices affect my bottom line – and therefore reducethe amount of “stuff” that I purchase.

Ron said: “Jason seems to be saying that he thinks it is alright to sell and charge more for something than it’s actually worth?”

What, like paying $300 just to submit an application to me. Or revealing that the lender is bumping up my interest rate a tad to enable a yield spread premium to be paid “outside of closing” to.. YOU? Or charging me $100 for you to run my credit report when it cost you less than $20 bucks?

“The Simple Dollar is for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two.”

Sometimes in order to cross the finish line – you ask for help. Telling people they can just eat healthy doesn’t solve all the problems. Telling people they can just write a check consiting of every last free penny they have to mortgage to beat the MMA by less than a year also doesn’t mean that it will actually happen. Discipline is in order – and this concept helps. Again, get lost Ron and quite making straw man arguments when you know nothing of the concept itself and its true value since you have not implemented it yourself. Quit generalizing to the point that it really does nothing to add to the discussion on this blog. “Make sure you find out ALL the facts; educate yourself; talk to a lawyer, accountant, or CPA; and Don’t Get Tricked!” you say. Well are you going to talk to the CPA’s that work for UFF or the CPA who never heard of it? Don’t get tricked – as Ron says. Well that applies to anything. Strawman argument. What a snake you are.

Ron said: “Jason seems to be saying that he thinks it is alright to sell and charge more for something than it’s actually worth?”

What, like paying $300 just to submit an application to me. Or revealing that the lender is bumping up my interest rate a tad to enable a yield spread premium to be paid “outside of closing” to.. YOU? Or charging me $100 for you to run my credit report when it cost you less than $20 bucks?

“The Simple Dollar is for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two.”

Sometimes in order to cross the finish line – you ask for help. Telling people they can just eat healthy doesn’t solve all the problems. Telling people they can just write a check consiting of every last free penny they have to mortgage to beat the MMA by less than a year also doesn’t mean that it will actually happen. Discipline is in order – and this concept helps. Again, get lost Ron and quite making straw man arguments when you know nothing of the concept itself and its true value since you have not implemented it yourself. Quit generalizing to the point that it really does nothing to add to the discussion on this blog. “Make sure you find out ALL the facts; educate yourself; talk to a lawyer, accountant, or CPA; and Don’t Get Tricked!” you say. Well are you going to talk to the CPA’s that work for UFF or the CPA who never heard of it? Don’t get tricked – as Ron says. Well that applies to anything. Strawman argument. What a snake you are.

Ron sometimes in order to cross the finish line – you ask for help. Telling people they can just eat healthy doesn’t solve all the problems. Telling people they can just write a check consiting of every last free penny they have to mortgage to beat the MMA by less than a year also doesn’t mean that it will actually happen. Discipline is in order – and this concept helps. Again, get lost Ron and quite making straw man arguments when you know nothing of the concept itself and its true value since you have not implemented it yourself. Quit generalizing to the point that it really does nothing to add to the discussion on this blog. “Make sure you find out ALL the facts; educate yourself; talk to a lawyer, accountant, or CPA; and Don’t Get Tricked!” you say. Well are you going to talk to the CPA’s that work for UFF or the CPA who never heard of it? Don’t get tricked – as Ron says. Well that applies to anything. Strawman argument. What a snake you are.

sorry about the double posts. Sometimes my post doesn’t show and then I think there was a network error and repost. Sometimes it takes a while…

Jason or Benjamin if you are out there. When I get my HELCO will the bank charge interest on the entire LOC or just the amount I use, say for the cost of the MMA and the additional principle the MMA dirests me to make? Am trying to make sense of how the HELOC will save me so much interest if it is at a much higher rate than my 1st. Thanks

Well first make sure that your HELOC is not a fixed rate. It must be an adjustable rate and have an interest only option. If it is in fact adjustable that means that the interest you pay on your HELOC is calculated on the average daily balance. So in very generalized terms let’s say you have a $5000 balance on your HELOC and you deposit $4000 and leave it in there for almost the entire billing cycle. You would only be charged the interest on the difference which would be that $1000 (roughly). So instead of being charged on the entire $5000 balance you would only pay interest on that $1000 (roughly). Then toward the very end of the cycle you pay your bills. At this point the website has a very good video explaining the processes in much much more detail.

Kind of off topic but if you combine the principals of MMA with the Infinite Banking Concept (IBC) you can learn to become your own banker using dividend paying whole life insurance. Wish I could start another thread on this. R. Nelson Nash espouses the concept. Anyone who is interest can buy the PDF online for around $17. For what it’s worth. Regards.

Jason, do you honestly think your rants… those of an ignorant salesman with an obvious agenda… will sway the opinion of anyone reading this? Do you actually think you will change anyone’s mind here?

Since you seem to be unable to read the many above links that have been posted to qualified independent 3rd party opinions, those individuals who actually understand finance and what they are talking about, I will re-iterate some of them here so folks can educate themselves and make up their own minds:

If any homeowner, consumer, real estate professional, lawyer, or accountant is interested in more detailed information and truly analyzing these equity accelerator programs ‘particularly the Money Merge Account’ for themselves… below are some links to information that should shed a lot of light on this particular topic.

1) Jack M. Guttentag, Professor of Finance Emeritus and former Jacob Safra Professor of International Banking at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (one of the Worlds Best Graduate Finance programs) Earlier he was Chief of the Domestic Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, on the senior staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Jack is also a Yahoo Finance Contributing Author.

Professor Guttentag states, “Based on everything I know, I have considerable confidence in my main conclusion, which is that the bulk of the reduction in interest payments comes from the borrower’s savings rather than from the program mechanism. … Neither the MMA nor any of its siblings provide the means for separating the contribution of the program to interest saving from the contribution made by the income the borrower allocates to principal reduction. The reason they don’t is that they want to pretend that it is the program that generates the benefit.
”
http://www.mtgprofessor.com/A%20-%20Early%20Payoff/the_good_fairy_of_rapid_mortgage_payoff_is_back.htm

Mr. Guttentag also provides a number of FREE spreadsheet and calculators to homeowners: http://www.mtgprofessor.com/spreadsheets.htm
http://www.mtgprofessor.com/calculators.htm

2) Don Taylor, Ph.D., CFA, CFP, holds a Doctorate Degree in Finance and is an associate professor of finance at The American College, and writes the “Ask Dr. Don” column for Bankrate. He says the following, about even automatic type mortgage accelerators:
They are “Not for the financially indisciplined… Of course, all borrowers already have that money available with a conventional mortgage, too — and without the cost of refinancing. A borrower would simply need the financial discipline to use all that money as an additional principal payment. …Interest savings are still available the old-fashioned way by making additional principal payments on a conventional fixed-rate mortgage.”
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/mortgages/20061102_equity_accelerator_mortgage_a1.asp

3) Holden Lewis of Bankrate.com, agreeing with Dr. Don, also warns “Don’t pay ANY Money to a third party to help you set up a [equity accelerator] mortgage payment,” in Paying for biweekly mortgage program makes no sense:
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/mortgages/20030206a1.asp

4) Greg McBride, senior financial analyst for Bankrate.com, in the Miami Herald “McBride added that homeowners could better put their money to use in a Roth IRA or education funds, instead of funneling money into a mortgage accelerator.” Reff (Miami Herald 5/21/2007 Quick-pay mortgage system isn’t for all):
http://www.miamiherald.com/breaking_business/story/113980.html

5) Ben Stein (economist, writer, and funny guy) graduated from Columbia University with honors in economics. He graduated from Yale Law School as valedictorian of his class. He has worked as a poverty lawyer in New Haven and Washington, D.C., a trial lawyer at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., a university and law professor at American University in Washington, D.C., at the University of California, and at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA. At Pepperdine, Mr Stein has taught about securities law and ethical issues since 1986. Ben has written and published sixteen books, and nine nonfiction books about finance and ethical and social issue in finance…. plus most folks have probably seen him on TV.

In “When Paying Off Doesn’t Pay”, Mr. Stein writes “First, no one ever spent a sleepless night because she had millions in the bank and stocks but didn’t have her home paid off. On the other hand, if you pay off your mortgage and deprive yourself of liquidity, you could be in for some miserable times.

As I see it, if money is even the slightest bit tight, hold onto it and pay off the mortgage month by month. There’s nothing magically good about having a paid-off mortgage, but there’s something seriously bad about Not having ready liquid assets even if your home is paid for. …”
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/37252

6) Carolyn Bond, CEO at the Consumer Action Law Centre in Melbourne, Australia. Anon-profit, funded by the Legal Aid Commission and the Government Consumers Affairs Office (Consumer Affairs Victoria):

In “Mortgage Accelerator Under Fire; Australian Securities and Investments Commission taking action against mortgage brokers” Carolyn Bond says,
“Consumer organizations such as ours, and our national financial services regulator – Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) – concluded years ago that there were no savings to be made, and that promoters were engaged in unlawful conduct. Examples and charts showing massive savings have all been shown to include significant increases in payments being made to the mortgage.”

http://www.butterhomes.com/blog/index.php/mortgage-accelerator-under-fire-australian-securities-and-investments-commission-taking-action-against-mortgage-brokers

7) And … (short and sweet)… Steve Sushner, a Real Estate, Estate Planning, and Housing Attorney writes, “I reviewed this product for the first time last week. Frankly I am disgusted by it. It does NOT save any money, it merely moves debt from one location to another and in fact will cost most clients more money than it will save them (even if there was no $3500 fee and even if we forget the tax implications). The debt on the ALOC is almost entirely ignored. Additionally the program fails drastically when you realize that most people are paid twice a month, not once and in arrears. Substantial savings is realized on this program by these two false presumptions.

I so dislike this program (and find it grossly unethical- I’m sure the class action lawsuit is around the corner)….”
http://forum.brokeroutpost.com/loans/forum/2/95315.htm

8) There are also many examples of other independent 3rd parties all over the internet, who have similar opinions and have been posting, blogging, etc… to help inform the public about the true facts behind these equity accelerators, and exposing the deceptive claims of magical savings without spending income or changing lifestyle.

http://www.mtgprofessor.com/A%20-%20Early%20Payoff/the_good_fairy_of_rapid_mortgage_payoff_is_back.htm

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/mortgages/20061102_equity_accelerator_mortgage_a1.asp

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/mortgages/20030206a1.asp

http://www.miamiherald.com/breaking_business/story/113980.html

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/37252

http://www.butterhomes.com/blog/index.php/mortgage-accelerator-under-fire-australian-securities-and-investments-commission-taking-action-against-mortgage-brokers

http://forum.brokeroutpost.com/loans/forum/2/95315.htm

http://www.integramortgages.com/financialvoodoo

The ‘undisclosed’ motivation of all these folks is to help and educate others by sharing their knowledge and exposing the unsound finance behind the many pay-for ‘equity accelerator’ schemas.

The opinions of educated, credible and respected folks who are doing this after thorough investigation, without any expectation of compensation, would seem to carry far more credibility and weight than the ranting or misleading claims made by salesmen for these products.

While, many of the salesmen for these equity accelerators truly mean well, unfortunately they usually do not fully understand what they are endorsing and selling. Because of their financial ignorance, lack of financial education, and lack in understanding of financial analysis they very often (even un-intentionally) are mis-leading homeowners into spending money to do something (which if you so choose) you can already do for FREE.

That’s before the entire discussion about, if you can afford to, is it wise to pre-pay your mortgage at all?… there is also a great deal of information available about that topic online.

SO….. Don’t be misled, Don’t get swindled, and Don’t let yourself be tricked… Read, Educate yourself, and Protect your family!

http://www.integramortgages.com/financialvoodoo

The ‘undisclosed’ motivation of all these folks is to help and educate others by sharing their knowledge and exposing the unsound finance behind the many pay-for ‘equity accelerator’ schemas.

The opinions of educated, credible and respected folks who are doing this after thorough investigation, without any expectation of compensation, would seem to carry far more credibility and weight than the ranting or misleading claims made by salesmen for these products.

While, many of the salesmen for these equity accelerators truly mean well, unfortunately they usually do not fully understand what they are endorsing and selling. Because of their financial ignorance, lack of financial education, and lack in understanding of financial analysis they very often (even un-intentionally) are mis-leading homeowners into spending money to do something (which if you so choose) you can already do for FREE.

That’s before the entire discussion about, if you can afford to, is it wise to pre-pay your mortgage at all?… there is also a great deal of information available about that topic online.

SO….. Don’t be misled, Don’t get swindled, and Don’t let yourself be tricked… Read, Educate yourself, and Protect your family!

Does anyone here care what Ron just said? You can do LOTS of things for FREE Ron! That is what the service industry is all about! I could go straight to a lender without your help and SAVE my money I would have paid you! Why would a customer pay YOU – a broker? Oh, so you can help them find the best deal (we are not even assured of THAT anyway – think: subprime). Third party people, I don’t care what credentials they hold (even attorneys don’t always know the answers lol) are not all experts in all things (and may even have their own agendas – like YOU Ron). There is a better way to understand the legitimacy or viablity of any given concept without a thourough understanding of it – go straight to the source. Ask customers, profile the company, look up their track record.

What agenda does Ron have for YOU? “is it wise to pre-pay your mortgage at all?” he said. Hmmm. Does getting out of debt sound like a good thing or a bad thing to you? That’s for you to decide. As Ron says “Don’t be misled, Don’t get swindled, and Don’t let yourself be tricked… Read, Educate yourself, and Protect your family!”

Ron makes his money steering people to his site to help originate mortgage loans and making claims (speaking in generalities) about a concept he can not even begin to explain nor does he, by his profession, have any interest in getting you out of debt.

Again Ron – people know they can send more to their mortgage on their own – but this is something I found value in because it is so easy and always ensures my money goes to work for me by default – the beauty of the concept.

I talked to Carolyn at the Consumer Action Law Centre, and she informed me that their position doesn’t only apply to mortgages that are refinanced into a LOC, but also to “plans that involve a LOC on the side, where salary is paid in, and payments to the mortgage are transferred across”.

She also had the following to say: “I’ve seen it argued that these plans have a psychological impact; that borrowers are less likely to spend money if they know it’s coming out of their mortgage. We’ve seen that it can work in the opposite way. Some borrowers can’t stick to the plan, or don’t see the promised benefits, they then feel as if they have failed, or they realise they’ve got into something that is a con – and they feel they have much less financial control than they had originally.”

Chris and CAROLYN!! What is her phone number!! When she makes a blanket comment “or they realise they’ve got into something that is a con – and they feel they have much less financial control than they had originally.” THEN WHERE ARE THE CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS! They aren’t complaining to the company, BBB, or on blogs such as this.

WE DON’T make you think that the program cancels interest. YOUR MONEY leveraged from the LOC is used to make ADDITIONAL PAYMENTS and all of this OF COURSE if from YOUR MONEY – put to work! This really is getting hilarious!

Seriously Chris. What is her phone number? Also what gets me is “MMA and progams like it” – well stop right there. Claims made by others – other companies, other products, other claim – should not be associated with OUR product. Our product is our product. Blanket statements are really getting annoying here.

Chris I’m serious – email me her phone number or post it here.

Carolyn also said “I’ve seen it argued that these plans have a psychological impact; that borrowers are less likely to spend money if they know it’s coming out of their mortgage. We’ve seen that it can work in the opposite way.”

LOL. It can always work the opposite way if you are careless with YOUR money. What is she going to sue the credit card companies too? So basically she is saying that even though it works for people – ALL people should avoid it because the customer has full control of their money. What would make her happy. US spending the money FOR them? LOL.

Why don’t any of you nay sayers call me and we can discuss it. I’d love to give you a piece of my mind. Call me anytime Ron, Chris, Ted, any of you.

Jason, you can spray-paint and dress-up road kill… but it’s still just road kill.

When will you realize or admit, that the schema you are selling for $3,500 yields results that (in whole) are worse than what someone can achieve by simply pre-paying mortgage principal on their own?

Facts are facts, they are inescapable… unless you chose to make deceptive claims and misleading comparisons to divert people’s attention away from the true cold hard reality of the numbers, to sell your product.

If you actually understand, why not just tell everyone the whole truth?… though I can’t imagine anyone would then pay $3,500 if you did. Informed folks will not easily be parted from their hard earned money, when there is no value to be gained.

If you’d honestly like to learn and want some financial education on the matter I would be happy to speak with you anytime… nothing but ignorance and perhaps your pride is stopping you.

There are two points you make and two points only. Same with Chris and Ted, Ron. The first being – well I’ll quote the last post you made -”When will you realize or admit, that the schema you are selling for $3,500 yields results that (in whole) are worse than what someone can achieve by simply pre-paying mortgage principal on their own?”

How many times must I say that you can beat the concept by a matter of months by sending all of your extra money you earn to your mortgage company. The problem is (and I’ve used examples many times that a 12 year old could comprehend) that most people already know that and aren’t sticking to their plan. No different that a fat person trying to get thin or a scrawny person trying to get “ripped”. Paying for a service, in this case a concept driven by web-based software, nany people can finish AHEAD of what they would have on their own.

The second point you all cut to and really is echoed by all your “expert” financial advice from various people be it Bankrate or the Mortgage Professor is that they all believe that you should NOT pay your mortgage early and instead invest your money elsewhere – hence the reason why you and them spend so much time crying foul over one method that is out there that, if followed, will enable homeowners to pay off their mortgage in as little as 6-12 years. IF everyone in the world believed that you should pay off your mortgage early you all wouldn’t be here bashing this product.

Ron you are a mortgage broker. And you act like one too. Good for you. And no thanks of your financial education offer. The whole financial system will be in turmoil eventually. You have to pay the piper eventually and also stocks tumbling down in price means your retirement tumbles. That’s why getting out of debt – no matter what form – is in order as well as setting money away now for retirement using the IBC method.

If you want to argue whether or not paying your mortgage off is a good thing – save it for another post. If you want to argue the track record of United First Financial’s product and why it works – that’s one thing. But to argue whether or not paying off your mortgage early can go on and on just like whether or not central banks are tampering with the gold market can go on and on.

I think there is plenty enough information now on this blog as to whether or not it works and why and how you can achieve the results on your own. The decision is the homeowners.

The fact of the matter is that nearly everyone will come out ahead by simply taking the $3500 and using it as an additional payment to their mortgage instead of wasting it on scam software that tells you what is already obvious

If I already have a budget, am very frugal, and make an extra principle payment every other month, what else is there? Why would I need this program. Why would I open a home equity line of credit when my money’s in an account earning about 5% interest?

Jason,

This is a quote by the ASIC (Australian Securities & Investments Commission) the equivalent of our own SEC.

“…in reality there is no magic trick or secret type of loan that will let you own your home sooner. Substantial savings are only achieved by consistently making additional payments on your mortgage. You therefore need to be very careful when brokers claim that you can own your home sooner and make substantial savings by using a line of credit mortgage facility.”

That describes UFirst to a tee. Just in case anyone needs to be reminded, here is the chief claim that UFirst makes right on the front page of their website.

“Our average customer will pay their 30 year mortgage off within 8 to 11 years — with little change to their day-to-day spending habits and without increasing their monthly mortgage payments.”

How can you reconcile that Jason? Are you or any other UFirst reps ready or even capable of telling us how we can pay off our mortgages in 8 to 11 years without increasing our monthly mortgage payments?

So far you’re only response has been to say that anyone who disagrees with you/UFirst doesn’t know what their talking about or are losers. Great image you’re portraying for the company Jason. Do they teach you that when you sign up to sell the MMA? I guess they have a special mathematical formula that shows how you can garner more customers with rude and insulting comments. How would the folks at UFirst feel about your “marketing” tactics?

For me, I’m more inclined to go with a national securities organization designed to protect people than a smart mouthed, multi-level marketing huckster who still cannot/will not answer the one question I’ve been asking all along.

You are in direct contradiction to UFirst when you mentioned above that the MMA actually does direct folks to make extra payments toward the principal. How can we possibly afford you any credibility when you contradict your own organization…when it’s already been indicated that the examples are rigged to take advantage of the “extra” paychecks folks experience if they’re paid weekly or every other week…or when you claim that Carolyn Bond, a CEO of the Consumer Action Law Center, doesn’t have a clue how your program works? She reviews things like this for a living. Are you really that arrogant?

The fact that they don’t mention UFirst specifically is irrelevant. The concept is the same. Just because UFirst doesn’t sell the actual mortgage products doesn’t matter. You are offering a plan that leverages on a HELOC, and that is the meat and potatoes of all of these systems.

Want to prove that UFirst is different? Once and for all…tell us how folks can pay off their “…30 year mortgage off within 8 to 11 years — with little change to their day-to-day spending habits and without increasing their monthly mortgage payments.”

Still waiting to have my one question answered…

I will even go so far as to say that I will buy UFirst’s MMA from YOU Jason, if you can tell us all how we can pay off our 30 year mortgages in 8 to 11 years without making any additional payments toward the mortgage. Borrowing from a HELOC to pay extra toward a mortgage is still making an extra payment toward the principal. But that shouldn’t deter you because UFirst says I don’t have to increase my mortgage payment.

This should be an easy sale, right Jason?

Pete

Pete,

No one ever said you can can “pay off our 30 year mortgages in 8 to 11 years WITHOUT MAKING ADDITIONAL PAYMENTS toward the mortgage.”

YOU DO MAKE ADDITIONAL PAYMENTS from your HELOC. If you know good and well you won’t stick with a plan to send every extra penny to principal every month then seriously consider the Money Merge Account. Again from the article here on the Simple Dollar: “If you have a lot of financial discipline, doing it yourself is a better deal than a money merge account. However, if you’re prone to spending extra at all and have found yourself saying, “Well, I have plenty extra right now, so I can afford it,” then a money merge account is probably the fastest way available to you to pay off your mortgage.”

Who the hell thinks you can create money out of thin air to pay off your mortgage? Obviously, your money put to work is the power of the program. YOUR money. You can’t magically pay your minimum payment every month and expect it to somehow pay off years sooner. Again, WATCH the video’s and presentations that the company provides! Then you wouldn’t be asking such retarded questions.

The website says “without increasing their monthly mortgage payments.” That’s right. You pay your regular mortgage payment and the money you are not using is going to work for you as well and of course you make lump sum transfers throughout the year. You always have full control of your money and you don’t have to send all of your extra money away into a closed end mortgage (because you won’t get that money back unless you spend tousands to refi!).

The difference between the conventional method and MMA is that with the extra money you have, instead of sitting there in your checking doing NOTHING for you, that money is sitting there reducing your payoff time. And again, for those of you out there stating that you can do it on your own – SPEAK FOR YOURSELF! Who is more likely to follow through. From the company and satisfied customers who are set to payoff much sooner I’d argue that the do-if-yourself’ers will fail at some point.

And need anyone say that this program obviously is not for the Ted’s Ron’s and Chris’s. They do not understand that there are others that think differently than them. Oh well…

Mary,

“If I already have a budget, am very frugal, and make an extra principle payment every other month, what else is there? Why would I need this program. Why would I open a home equity line of credit when my money’s in an account earning about 5% interest?”

Uh Mary? In case you missed it: This program is for people who are not frugal and who are not making extra principal payments and who are not do-it-yourself’ers. Good for you Mary.

“…retarded questions.”

Wow! You really are a gem, aren’t you?

Why would we care to watch the presentation when we already know it cheats by hiding those extra paychecks?

If as UFirst claims, that I don’t have to change my spending habits, then what happens if I send extra money to my mortgage, leveraged against the HELOC (that’s still called an increase in your mortgage payment) and then spend the way I always have? Now I’ve borrowed money on the HELOC, and while my paycheck reduces the balance during the month, by the end of the month I may have paid back my monthly living expenses, but I’m still in the hole on the HELOC for what I borrowed to pay toward the mortgage principle.

I’ve seen you imply on several occasions that the money left over at the end of the month is what is reducing the balance on the HELOC. If I’ve been told (and that’s what UFirst does) that I don’t have to change my spending habits and that this program will still help me pay mortgage off in 8 to 11 years, how is that possible when I’ve spent my paychecks for the month?

You claim that this is for the undisciplined folks out there. It seems that the undisciplined would be the ones at greater risk. If they don’t cut back on monthly spending (which UFirst says they don’t have to do) they’ll be saddled with the extra HELOC debt and no way to pay it down. Or if they don’t ever send any extra money toward their mortgage( which UFirst says they don’t have to do) they won’t make any progress and they’ll be in the hole for the $3500…probably leveraged on the HELOC.

How can you justify the company’s claims of little change in spending habits and no extra payments made to the mortgage, when that is exactly what needs to happen to pay off a mortgage early, and is exactly what the MMA directs people to do?

You’re telling people that they can do one thing and then requiring them to do the opposite to succeed.

And all MMA stuff aside, your comments to folks on this board, especially the reference to “retarded” are insensitive and disrespectful.

I’ll be forwarding a link to this thread and to your UFirst website to as many folks at UFirst that I can.

Even though you don’t agree with some of the questions folks are asking, nobody is out of line asking questions about a product they want more info on…by the way, most good salepeople actually want folks asking them questions…and really good salepeople can actually answer questions about their product with more than just “accept it” or “you don’t have a clue” or “LOSER” or without condesending tones and disrespectful comments.

Pete

I really don’t care Pete. Call me if you want to discuss. By the way, you said “How can you justify the company’s claims of little change in spending habits and no extra payments made to the mortgage, when that is exactly what needs to happen to pay off a mortgage early, and is exactly what the MMA directs people to do?”

Because what people are doing is not changing their day to day spending habits insofar as 1) deposit money into account 2) pay bills into account 3) automatically using extra money is not an extra step the customer has to do! It’s done for them. Again, LITTLE change from what they are already doing.

Pete get it through your head. How many times should I have to post this without me thinking you are a little slow! I SAID: “No one ever said you can can “pay off our 30 year mortgages in 8 to 11 years WITHOUT MAKING ADDITIONAL PAYMENTS toward the mortgage.”

YOU DO MAKE ADDITIONAL PAYMENTS from your HELOC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m done here. I’ve said it all.

And by the way Pete. If you’re worried about my tone towards you – why should you deserve my respect when you accuse me of being a scam artist selling a product that doesn’t save people money? How more insulting could that be you ignorant fool?

And the hits just keep on coming.

“Pete get it through your head. How many times should I have to post this without me thinking you are a little slow! I SAID: “No one ever said you can can “pay off our 30 year mortgages in 8 to 11 years WITHOUT MAKING ADDITIONAL PAYMENTS toward the mortgage.””

Actually, UFirst says it right on their website…so do you on your website.

“YOU DO MAKE ADDITIONAL PAYMENTS from your HELOC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

And how does one pay that HELOC off if they haven’t made any changes to their spending habits and are still spending what they earn?

Jason, the company you represent clearly states that you don’t have to increase your monthly mortgage payments. It doesn’t matter where you get the money, if you send extra to the mortgage, you’re increasing your payment. The fact that it comes from a HELOC or from a long lost, rich uncle doesn’t make any difference. And if I pay extra from the HELOC but do not change my spending habits, thus freeing up money to pay down the HELOC, I’m in even bigger trouble down the road when I can’t pay down the HELOC.

My issue is and always has been with the claims of UFirst and the design of those claims to prey on those either not paying attention or not savvy enough to ask the right questions.

I’ve said it before, I have no doubt the program can work, but for most of the people it targets with the claims of paying off a 30 year mortgage in 8 to 11 years with little change to spending habits and without increasing monthly mortgage payments, I don’t think the MMA is marketed very responsibly.

I also don’t think it’s benefit overcomes the cost and the additional risk of a second loan, especially for those undisciplined folks who are evidently the prime candidates for the program. Why encourage folks who have problems managing their money to live out of a leveraged fund with promises of paying off their mortgage early without changing their ways? It just doesn’t make sense.

I know the comments you’ve made. What I’m asking is how do you reconcile some of the things you’ve said about how the program works and what the company itself says. The two of you are telling different stories. And no matter how you spin it, taking money from any source, even a HELOC, to pay down the principal on the mortgage is, in fact, sending an in extra payment. The fact that it comes from a HELOC just means I still owe that money to someone else.

Pete

Pete, I have to agree with your comments about being more risky for undisciplined consumers. I’m a new agent with UFF and maybe I don’t comprehend all the nuances, but it certainly seems logical to me that if you give an undisciplined person a large hole he can fall into (the heloc) there is a higher risk that he will use more than he should. The secret to the program seems to be keeping the heloc balance low, thereby having your paycheck deposits cancel much of that balance. That way you keep the interest low on the heloc even though the rate is higher. And since it does have a higher rate, if you withdraw large amounts from it for frivilous purchases, you cancel out any benefits from the program, and could end up in serious financial difficulty. Aside from the fact that an undisciplined person probably won’t have the credit rating to get approved for the heloc in the first place!

Having said that, if that person TRULY wants to turn over a new leaf, get his debts paid down and keep it that way, and can qualify for a heloc (or has one already maybe), then the MMA can be just the tool they need to keep on track, comparable to a trainer at the gym in Jason’s analogy. But that person needs to recognize the consequences of a relapse, just as an alcoholic in AA does.

Mary,

I would ditto Jason’s kudos to you for what you are already doing. That doesn’t mean IMHO that you might not still benefit from the program, but without knowing more about your situation, its impossible to say. It is obvious that you do want to pay off your mortgage quickly. Realize that the way you are doing it now, you are paying those extra payments to a closed-end loan, meaning that if you were to need those funds later for an emergency, or a large purchase, they are already gone, you can’t get them back. One of the benefits to the heloc is that you have such an emergency source if you really need it later. The fact that you are disciplined is great because you would not likely max out your heloc unless you really had a pressing need. But the main advantage to the heloc is that you are essentially using the bank’s money to send to your mortgage to pay down the principal. Most likely you would be able to send alot more that way and thereby pay down a lot more of your principle, thus cancelling alot more interest.

I don’t know how fast your method is expected to pay down your mortgage now, but I would recommend you do the Free MMA Analysis to see how it compares to your payoff time, then you could make a more informed decision.

Mary,

I would ditto Jason’s kudos to you for what you are already doing. That doesn’t mean IMHO that you might not still benefit from the program, but without knowing more about your situation, its impossible to say. It is obvious that you do want to pay off your mortgage quickly. Realize that the way you are doing it now, you are paying those extra payments to a closed-end loan, meaning that if you were to need those funds later for an emergency, or a large purchase, they are already gone, you can’t get them back. One of the benefits to the heloc is that you have such an emergency source if you really need it later. The fact that you are disciplined is great because you would not likely max out your heloc unless you really had a pressing need. But the main advantage to the heloc is that you are essentially using the bank’s money to send to your mortgage to pay down the principal. Most likely you would be able to send alot more that way and thereby pay down a lot more of your principle, thus cancelling alot more interest.

I don’t know how fast your method is expected to pay down your mortgage now, but I would recommend you do the Free MMA Analysis to see how it compares to your expected payoff time, then you could make a more informed decision.

I signed up for the U1st MMA program about 2 months ago. My wife was so excited aboout it, to be short I was not. Until I realized how powerful that mortgage end time and date is, the one in the upper right corner of the individual account software. That date is 6.5 years away and that just happens to be the date I’ve decided to retire. I now have a visual que that keeps me on track to retirement. All the nay sayers be damned this has motivated me to save like nothing else . Oh yes I am not an agent just a very satisfied customer.

A few of the benefits of the MMA (using your HELOC) I haven’t seen mentioned is that the interest you gain using the HELOC is usually tax-deductible because it is a HELOC. Another great advantage is that you can use your regular credit card to pay for almost every one of your monthly bills, most notably groceries, and then use the HELOC to pay of the full credit card balance each month. This payment becomes tax deductible (something you can’t do with just a credit card) and you also earn a greater number of points or miles on your credit card to gain more freebies from your credit card company. Depending on what card you have.

Thank you for the encouragement that I’m on the right track. The piece of this I don’t understand and need some help with is what benefit would a home equity line add to what I’m already doing?
Thanks for your input

Mary,
It sounds to me that you are managing your money and cash flow in a most responsible, efficient, and low risk manner… and you are already saving money!

1) Depositing income and savings into an interest bearing FDIC insured demand/deposit account has virtually Zero risk below the FDIC insured limits. http://www.fdic.gov/ … and you are earning some great interest income from your cash accounts at 5%! Everyone should follow your lead!

Here’s a link to other FDIC insured high yield deposit alternatives: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=online+savings+account

2) You are budgeting, thinking about your money, and you are frugal in your spending. That’s also great.

For folks who need help budgeting there are plenty of low cost books and software available. For example: http://quicken.intuit.com/personal-finance/starter-edition-personal-budget.jhtml is just $30. Your local Library should also have many great books on the subjects of budgeting, personal finance, and investing that anyone can borrow for free.

3) You have chosen to pre-pay your mortgage as a method of personal investment with at least some of your income/assets. That’s admirable and a fine lower risk investment choice if done in a prudent manner. But, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and remember that all real estate investment carries risk.

You probably want to make sure you are maximizing the advantage you get (usually 15 days grace period) for your 1st mortgage payment. Also, take a good look to see if your pre-payments are being retroactively applied to the 1st if they are also made during the grace period as part of your regular payment. That may be an additional efficiency you can maximize to your greatest advantage dependant on how your mortgage lender/ servicer has chosen to do their accounting and application of pre-payments.

4) Make sure you are putting money away for retirement in a 401K, IRA, etc… and that the money is invested where you are earning a return that’s inline with your future plans and personal comfort zone.

5) There are of course many other investments you could look into that carry more risks… I would explore some other ways to invest my money like mutual funds, stocks, bank CD’s, bonds, etc…. Keep in mind that virtually everything else will be more risky than an insured bank deposit account or CD, especially any real estate (your home included). But, if you want to do more, and take more risks… that’s probably one area where you have the ability if you have the appetite.

Keep up the good work, and don’t get caught up in the many ‘too good to be true’ schemas out there.

Thanks for your comment.

Mary, the home equity line is used essentially to put your equity acceleration on “steroids”. Like I said above, most of us working stiffs only have so much extra money that we can send to pay down the mortgage principal. The bank has quite a bit more, wouldn’t you agree. That’s the point of the home equity line (heloc), so that we can borrow enough from the bank to ‘significantly’ pay down the principal. You say you are sending an extra payment every other month. I don’t know how much that is, so lets say its $1000. Now if you had the heloc to borrow from, the software would prompt you as to exactly how much (and when) to send towards your mortgage principal, and it might tell you to send $3000 or 4000 instead of the $1000 you currently send. That’s why you might be able to pay off much quicker with the heloc and the software. The software also has the function of not prompting you to send too much from the heloc so that your heloc interest stays small.

And don’t forget that if you are sending those payments from your conventional checking or savings acct, that is money you can’t get back if you need it. God forbid you get laid off at work or something. You can’t call the mortgage company and tell them you need the extra money you sent. If you have a heloc in place, you might have funds to see you through the hard times. Remember, if you get laid off or disabled, no way will the bank approve you for a heloc then. So its also a safety net. And as ES pointed out, the interest you would pay MIGHT be deductible, though UFF forbids their agents from saying it will be, unless they are a licensed tax advisor.

Hope that helps you!

One more thing to address Pete’s question about “without increasing their monthly mortgage payments” from the UFF website. I could be mistaken, but this is my take on that. The “monthly mortgage payment” they mean is the payment you are under contract to send in to your mortgage company. You are “required” to send at least that amount, and that does not change. Typically the software will not prompt you to send extra payments in every month, more likely every 2 or even more months apart. And regardless of how often it prompts you to, you have no obligation to send in any more if you don’t want to, for whatever reason. Remember, the software only prompts the funds transfer, it doesn’t make the transfer for you, nor in any way does it have access to your accounts. I hope that makes some sense as my brain is starting to fuzz out!

This post is for any MMA Agents or Leaders of the UFF community. I am very much interested in what your mortgage Accelerator program has to offer. However, my only concern abuot your product is the potential longevity of your Company and how it will affect me as a potential client in the years to come.

I do believe your MMA Software has alot to offer in way of savings. But like any software, it can be replicated and used other business to market their own version/product at a more affordable price.

So as the competition rises, with the current business model UFF utilizes to market their product (sharing commisions of a $3500 product), how does it hope to survive in the next 5 to 10 years when other companies will offer a simlar product at a much reduced price.

With that said, my real concern in purchasing your product and services is not that it will not work, but that your company will not be around anymore for me use your web-based software to help me pay off my mortgage within “8-11 years.”

Any MMA proponents, please do not gloss over this post. I would really like a concrete answer to help me justify why I should invest $3500 to use your web-based software.

Respectfully Yours,

Al, ES and Mark,

I just wanted to say that as a client of the program for 3 years now, you guys are dead on. I admit that I would have had to agree with the naysayers on here if I had not decided to give the program a try and experienced it for myself. The reason it is so difficult to explain exactly what the program does for the homeowner is because there are so many different financial tools built into the program.

It is difficult to verbally explain what salt tastes like. It is even more difficult to be an expert on what salt tastes like if you have never tasted it in the first place. I give this analogy because there is so much more to this product than just a simple short explanation. It is much easier to use than to try and explain everything about it.

Many of the questions in this chat can be answered right on the companies’ website from the following link:

http://www.u1stfinancial.com/Default.aspx?tabid=118

Hope this helps.

Hi jthorpe, you raise a very valid point and I’m sure many companies would “gloss over” this subject.

I will paste from an email directly from Skyler Whitman, Co-founder of UFF:

“We have retained a legal data escrow company which is putting our mma program source code into escrow. This means that if we go out of business, the source code will be available for all clients that have purchased the software so that they can load the program onto their computer and continue forward with the product.

I hope this is helpful.

Thanks!
-Skyler”

The company is very solid. They obviously abhor debt, and are debt-free. They have no complaints registered with the BBB from clients. And they sold more MMAs last month than all of 2006, so they are growing quickly. Nothing in life is completely risk-free, of course, but UFF seem to have their bases covered.

FYI. Here is an example of someone who had no discipline with money and how MMA has change her attitude and her life. Read on. For those of you who are big spenders or shopaholics, you are in the same shoes as I was. Before Money Merge Account, I would spend every dime I had left at the end of the month, I used to like watching infomercial and would buy just about anything that sounded good to me, and then when the thing arrives, it would just sit or get lost in the garage. I also loved to eat out. Now, because of Money Merge Account and the financial dashboard that the Money Merge Account provides I can see how my mortgage is being affected with the money I spend or save. I am a cured shopaholic, I don’t like spending money anymore even though I have all that equity sitting there waiting for me to tap into. Nope, I refuse to do just that and I am on my way to pay off my 29 years mortgage (because we just refinanced) free and clear in less than 20 years (not 8-10 years, because we have a lot of credit card debt and a huge second mortgage). Good luck to those who believes that they are smart and discipline enough to beat the MMA system. On the same note, I would like to congratulate those, like me, on our way to financial freedom, and mortgage free with the help of the Money Merge Account. I am a true believer of the Money Merge Account.

OK, sorry if i come across a little slow on the uptake, but it still doesn’t make sense to me to borrow money (at a higher rate than my mortgage) to make an additional payment when the heloc is also an additional payment. I calculated it would be another $300 a month at 8.2% plus a $240 origination fee. I’m usually pretty good understanding this stuff but I admit, I’m baffled.

Mary,

I believe that the link that I listed in my last posting will answer your question. This link is:

http://www.u1stfinancial.com/Default.aspx?tabid=118

I believe it is the last question listed on their “Frequently Asked Questions” page.

I agree with the earlier comment. One of my concerns is also that with the exposure of this product, that other companies will catch on, and offer a newer, updated version that is half the price. New products come out that are great, but as time goes on, they can become cheaper. (See the new I-Phone from Apple) I beleive that this prodcut needs some time to prove itself over the long-haul. People have had sucess, but has anyone paid off their home using this program? It still seems like it’s in it’s infancy.

Al, thanks for the response Al. That does give me some reassurance to using your product. I showed it to my wife and she was reassured as well. However, I would like to know what real savings I can expect from using MMA software. If I can, I would like to give you some numbers maybe you can run for me.

If I have a 150,000 / 30 Year Fixed mortgage and make $500 extra payments per month. How much savings can I expect from MMA?

If you can, please email me any report to jthorpe2@gmail.com or simply post the results here.

Thanks,

Mary your paycheck deposits hold down the interest that is charged (remember: average daily balance – not a fixed $300.mo pymnt) and paycheck also represents your payment for the amount owed. Of course at the beginning the goal is to pay down the HELOC balance as fast as possible and then in a dramatically accelerated fashion you pay close to nothing in interest on the HELOC and pay down the principal on the mortgage very very fast. Again I ask you to watch the video at the website (it’s about 50 min long) and since you seem to be pretty smart it should make sense to you in just one viewing. It’s very detailed for all the numbers/analytical types and should answer all of your questions Mary.

Mary: When repaying a mortgage, it’s not the rate you pay that’s most important. What matters is the total amount of interest you pay over the term of your loan. With the Money Merge Account you use your line of credit to reduce the balance owing on your primary mortgage, and you reposition the money you have sitting in your checking and/or savings account to reduce the balance owing on your line of credit to shrink your interest charges. By repositioning your regular income to keep your line of credit balance as low as possible you significantly reduce the interest that would normally be charged on the line of credit. This means more of your money goes towards your principal balance each month, helping you repay your mortgage years earlier and save thousands of dollars in interest. The online software system and customer service provides crucial guidance as to the specific transfer amounts and timing that is needed to provide each individual homeowner with the best interest savings possible under this system. Optimum interest savings under this system is a delicate balance between your primary mortgage, your line of credit, your income, expenses, transfers, etc. If you transfer too much to your primary mortgage, it can cost you more interest on your line of credit. If you transfer too little, it can cost you “lost” interest savings on your primary mortgage. This system helps homeowners to reduce both the interest and time owing on their existing mortgage by strategically positioning their money where it provides much more financial benefit than “sitting stagnant” in a standard checking or savings account waiting to pay expenses. Also, unspent money that homeowners would normally leave in their checking and/or savings account is now working for them 24 hours a day without requiring them to change their lifestyle. When you need money for expenses, you can access it through your line of credit. Vast financial features and details programmed into the MMA software help to better educate the homeowner and assist in the greatest time and interest savings possible under this system. (this is from the company website)

jthorpe, there are other figures that are needed to run your analysis. The best way is to click on my link and go to “Free Money Merge Account Analysis.” It will ask you to enter all the pertinent info, income, discretionary income, time remaining on your mortgage, etc. They do not ask for sensitive info such as SS# or acct numbers. Then I can get back to you with the results. Thanks alot for your interest(pardon the pun, lol!!)

Mary, not to worry, you’re not the only one who has some trouble with the concept! See if this helps a little. OK, the first thing you must realize is that it’s not the rate that matters, its the amount that the rate is applied to that matters. For instance, lets say you have a credit card that charges 18%. Now, if you charge $1000 to the card and don’t pay it off, they tack on $180. However, if you pay it off in full before the payment due date, they will charge $0, nada, zilch! So now your effective rate is 0%, not 18%. You’ve just used $1000 of the bank’s money for up to 30 days with absolutely no interest. Not a radical concept there, most people are well aware of that.

The key is how much you borrow, and when you pay it off. The job of the software is to prompt you to borrow enough from the heloc to significantly reduce your mortgage principal without borrowing so much that you can’t pay down the heloc with your income. Again, without knowing your numbers, I’ll illustrate with an example.

If you take out a $200,000 mortgage at 6% you will pay $1199/month for 360 months (30 years), of which $231,677 will be interest. Now if you have an extra $5000 to send in with your first mortgage payment, you have paid the principal down to $195,000, and the total interest on that is $203,373 over the remaining 359 months. So for that extra $5000, you would save $28,304 in interest on your mortgage. Now if you could do that every 2 or 3 months, think how much interest you would save over the course of a year, 2 years,
etc.

Now, if you take that $5000 (or whatever amount the software says) out of the heloc, you need to pay it down to avoid the high interest charges there, just like you did with your credit card. So that is why you use your heloc like a checking account. You deposit your paychecks into it and pay your bills from it. Each time you deposit your paycheck, you pay down the balance that you borrowed to send to your mortgage. So its your paycheck, and any extra you have left over after paying your bills, that pays down your heloc. When your balance gets close to zero on the heloc, the software prompts you to boorow again fron trhe heloc and pay down your mortgage principal, and the cycle repeats.

So in the above example, you would never have more than, lets say, $10,000 borrowed at any time from the heloc, and usually less once your paycheck gets deposited. But lets say it is at $10000, with the 8.2% rate you quoted, that’s $820/yr, or about $68/month. So you essentially pay $68 to your heloc in interest to cancel $28,000 of mortgage principal! And of course you would do that as often as possible!

That’s the plan in a nutshell. If you are right now sending $1000 every other month in extra payments, compare that to the $68 you could be paying to the heloc. AND you would sending much more from your heloc than the $1000, and cancelling tons more interest than you are now.
I don’t know where you came up with $300 a month, though. You would have to have a balance of about $45,000 on your heloc for that kind of interest.
Depositing your paychecks and using it like a checking acct prevents that from happening.

That should make it clear as mud!!

Mary, not to worry, you’re not the only one who has some trouble with the concept! I’ll give it a go and see if it helps a little. OK, the first thing you must realize is that it’s not the rate that matters, its the amount that the rate is applied to that matters. For instance, lets say you have a credit card that charges 18%. Now, if you charge $1000 to the card and don’t pay it off, they tack on $180. However, if you pay it off in full before the payment due date, they will charge $0, nada, zilch! So now your effective rate is 0%, not 18%. You’ve just used $1000 of the bank’s money for up to 30 days with absolutely no interest. Not a radical concept there, most people are well aware of that.

The key is how much you borrow, and when you pay it off. The job of the software is to prompt you to borrow enough from the heloc to significantly reduce your mortgage principal without borrowing so much that you can’t pay down the heloc with your income. Again, without knowing your numbers, I’ll illustrate with an example.

If you take out a $200,000 mortgage at 6% you will pay $1199/month for 360 months (30 years), of which $231,677 will be interest. Now if you have an extra $5000 to send in with your first mortgage payment, you have paid the principal down to $195,000, and the total interest on that is $203,373 over the remaining 359 months. So for that extra $5000, you would save $28,304 in interest on your mortgage. Now if you could do that every 2 or 3 months, think how much interest you would save over the course of a year, 2 years,
etc.

Now, if you take that $5000 (or whatever amount the software says) out of the heloc, you need to pay it down to avoid the high interest charges there, just like you did with your credit card. So that is why you use your heloc like a checking account. You deposit your paychecks into it and pay your bills from it. Each time you deposit your paycheck, you pay down the balance that you borrowed to send to your mortgage. So its your paycheck, and any extra you have left over after paying your bills, that pays down your heloc. When your balance gets close to zero on the heloc, the software prompts you to boorow again fron trhe heloc and pay down your mortgage principal, and the cycle repeats.

So in the above example, you would never have more than, lets say, $10,000 borrowed at any time from the heloc, and usually less once your paycheck gets deposited. But lets say it is at $10000, with the 8.2% rate you quoted, that’s $820/yr, or about $68/month. So you essentially pay $68 to your heloc in interest to cancel $28,000 of mortgage principal! And of course you would do that as often as possible!

That’s the plan in a nutshell. If you are right now sending $1000 every other month in extra payments, compare that to the $68 you could be paying to the heloc. AND you would sending much more from your heloc than the $1000, and cancelling tons more interest than you are now.
I don’t know where you came up with $300 a month, though. You would have to have a balance of about $45,000 on your heloc for that kind of interest.
Depositing your paychecks and using it like a checking acct prevents that from happening.

You can click on my name and get your free analysis to get a better idea what your particular situation would look like. Then I could break it down better for you, but I hope this has made it somewhat clearer!

Sorry about the double posts, guys. I’m still learning how to post on this site, lol! My thanks though to Trent, site admin!

In this previous example, you are paying $68 a month in interest. Then it was compared to 28k in savings. But what is the actual monthly interest savings?? The 28k figure is based on a 30 year span, but what about in a 1, 2, 3 month timeframe?

If I’m understanding this right, we need to make sure we are comparing apples and apples here. Due to the time value of money, anything that is compared over 30 years time will be a large number. Have we figured what you would make in interest if you invested the $3,500 expense in a mutual fund making 8-10% over 30 years? I believe due to the time value of money its around $61,000! So we have to be careful and not get too excited over these figures thrown at us based on 30 years. Now if they marketed, pay only 61k for this product would people think of it differently?

Hi Brad, good questions! First , understand that the savings will be different for every person, even if they have the same 30 year, $200k loan at 6% fixed, because the payoff will depend on their income, their expenses, other debts, etc. The only way to know your own monthly savings would be to run the free analysis on your own numbers.

Now in the above example, they will pay off their mortgage AND their heloc in 11.3 years. They will pay $54k in interest instead of the $231k, saving $177,000 over 11.3 years, not 30. So divide $177,000 by 11.3, and they save $15,663/yr, or $1305/month. So they recoup their $3500, which did not come out of their savings to begin with, in about 3 months.

So to compare apples to apples, if they deposited the $3500 ina fund or any investment, and actually got 10%/yr, and compounded each year for 12 years, they would only have about $11,000, compared to the $177,000 they could have saved on their mortgage. Not to mention the risk involved in investments having 2% years or even down years sometimes.

Now take it a step farther. After the 11.3 years, they own their home free and clear, and now have an extra $1199 to invest EACH AND EVERY MONTH for the remaining 18.7 years they would have had to send it to their mortgage. Now, say they invest that each month, and only get 6% returns each year. They would have $494,000 after the 18.7 years in their account. PLUS they own their home!

Again, your results not only may vary, but they WILL vary. Run your own numbers through the analysis. It very well may not be for you, but you owe it to yourself to find out I believe.

This is one of my favorites, “You can use your HELOC like a checking account”. In reality, you can’t. With a checking account you must have a positive balance and you “earn” interest. With a HELOC you must have a negative balance and you “pay” interest.

Al,

Given apples to apples, doing it yourself beats the MMA every time. The time & interest savings on the mortgage are basically unrelated to the interest you are paying on the HELOC. The savings is due to the extra payments you are making regardless of what system you use.

In your example, the yearly payment is $14,388, and the person has $30,000 per year available in discretionary income to prepay the mortagage. Do you want me to run the numbers and show you how ridiculous it is for someone who has $44,388 per year to spend on their mortgage, to pay $3,500 for the MMA?

With your example, if they did it on their own they would pay off in 5.4 years and save 197K, and that doesn’t even factor in the $3,500 they saved or earnings from interest and/or investments.

Did you read this whole thread before posting? The only thing the MMA does is give you a picture of where you are, and remind you to make pre-payments. Monetarily, the MMA is a loser every time. This is because the small bits of interest you are saving with the HELOC shuffle, will never overcome the $3,500 cost.

Chris,

How much would the small bits of interest that I would save from the HELOC shuffle add up to?

Rich,

From an earlier post of mine: The best case scenario for the average MMA user is that they make a huge lump sum payment to their mortgage out of their HELOC about four times a year. If everything is perfect, they will save about $10 each time for a total of $40 per year. Say they do this for 15 years x $40 = $600 and the house is paid off. They have a net loss of $600-$3,500 = $2,900. So how did they avoid all that extra time and interest? Well, it wasn’t traded for the $2,900, it came from their discretionary income.

This one from Al is another one of my favorites:

“So they recoup their $3500, which did not come out of their savings to begin with.”

Let me see if I got this right. First get a HELOC, then spend $3,500 out of it, then deposit your paycheck into the HELOC, but the cost didn’t come out of your savings or pocket as others like to say. Are you serious?

Another one from Al:

“So to compare apples to apples, if they deposited the $3500 in a fund or any investment, and actually got 10%/yr, and compounded each year for 12 years, they would only have about $11,000, compared to the $177,000 they could have saved on their mortgage. Not to mention the risk involved in investments having 2% years or even down years sometimes.”

Oops, I think you forgot to mention that the person who does this on their own not only has $11,000 more than you, but they also saved the $177,000. Actually, they saved more, because they made money by earning interest in their side account rather than paying it.

Chris, the person in the example earns $5000/month and spends $4000. So their discretionary income is $12000/yr. I have no idea where you came up with $30,000, but it wasn’t from me! You say pay extra to the mortgage “when you feel comfortable.” Who ever feels “comfortable” sending their money from their savings acct to their mortgage company? Most people might do that a few times, then when they need that money for a new tranny, no more extra payments to the mortgage. But assuming they send ALL their savings in, that’s $12,000/yr. Now how fast will they pay it off, and how much will they save? Hey, if someone wants to send all their savings into their mortgage, more power to them, I’d say. But then what happens if they lose their job? The bank ain’t gonna send it back to them, and they can’t get a heloc without a job. No job, no heloc, no savings. Sounds like a great system just to save $3500 when that gets saved in a few months from the mortgage with the MMA system.

As for saving $40 a year with the MMA, say whaaaatttt? Don’t you think if that were true, maybe they’d have at least ONE complaint lodged with the BBB. I showed above how with just one $5000 payment, it saves that client $28,000.
So yes, I have read this whole long thread, maybe you might want to read just a few posts above where I explain that.

Anyone reading here that uses the MMA is welcome to gripe about the measly $40 it is saving you!

Al

Here is what you said:

“So for that extra $5000, you would save $28,304 in interest on your mortgage. Now if you could do that every 2 or 3 months, think how much interest you would save over the course of a year, 2 years, etc.”

Last time I checked, $5,000 x (12mo/2mo) was $30,000 per year.

The person using the MMA is no more comfortable than the one doing it on his own. Did it occur to you that those who do this themselves can also get a HELOC to have as a back up?

Ted says:

“As for saving $40 a year with the MMA, say whaaaatttt? Don’t you think if that were true, maybe they’d have at least ONE complaint lodged with the BBB. I showed above how with just one $5000 payment, it saves that client $28,000.”

It is true, Al, that’s the irony. Think about your statement above. The $28,000 savings is due to the $5,000 payment, not the MMA. The same is true in the do-it-yourself system. Why don’t you verify this with Jason V; he already conceded this argument in his posts above. The HELOC shuffle generates virtually no savings Al. It’s like me saying that I can set you up with a free system that will save you $177,000 in interest and 18.7 years off your mortgage. The savings isn’t due to the zero cost system, it is because of the extra payments.

Sorry, Al says, not Ted.

Hi Chris, yes 6X $5000 = $30,000. But the client doesn’t have $30k in discretionary income, they have just $12k. That’s why they use the heloc, so they can send $30k to the mortgage and not just $12k. That’s the advantage of using the heloc, you’re not only using what you have, you’re also using what the bank has. Pays it off much quicker that way.

Chris is exactly correct… the interest savings is due to the extra pre-payments of the mortgage debt from income that is earned. Folks can already do this themselves for FREE!

It is IMPOSSIBLE to repay a debt with money you do not have! Borrowing from a higher rate HELOC to pre-pay a first mortgage at a lower interest rate will INCREASE the total interest expenses paid.

Spending money before it’s earned results in more debt and more interest & finance charges! Don’t get fooled by misleading and dishonest comparisons!

The maximum amount of pre-payment is limited by an individuals discretionary income! there is no magic solution… no free ride… just earning income and paying back debts.

Folks who want to pay their mortgage off faster would simply be better off pre-paying $3,500 toward their mortgage, and then making extra pre-payments as their monthly budget allows.

I attended a seminar by U-First Financial about the Money Merge Account. One of the quotes they used in the presentation was that “Stupid people pay interest, and smart people earn it.” Now why would these use this quote for such a program?? Is there even a way possible if you follow their system that you EARN interest?? If I understand it right, you just eliminate interest but the program doesn’t offer you to earn interest. So I guess they don’t want smart people using their system, because “smart people earn interest”

Wow, Ron, you might think after all the time you’ve been in the financial world that you might have come across a term called “effective rate.” If you had read many of the posts in this thread you might have learned what it means. I even explained it somewhat in my reply to Mary above. Are you trying to tell me that if I have a credit card that charges 18%, and I use it to buy something worth $5000, and I pay it off before the minimum payment is due, that they will charge me 18% interest anyway? I think even you know that they won’t, therefore I have a 0% EFFECTIVE rate on that money I borrowed. It’s the same principal with borrowing from the heloc, except you don’t pay it off completely, you just pay it down. So yes, there is SOME interest charged, as in the example above, about $68 that I pay to use the money from the heloc to offset $28,000 interest on my 1st mortgage. So yes, YOU WIN!!!! There is no free lunch here, just the surf & turf special which costs the equivalent of 10 cents! I’d do that for lunch every day, even though it’s not free, wouldn’t you?? (my apologies to you vegetarians reading this!)

Chris,

I just wanted to say that I hear ya.

I get flash backs when I look at your posts, because I was where you are at 3 years ago.

About 3 years ago I said everything I could to discredit it and bash it. I felt like I could do the same thing on my own for free and possibly pay it off faster. I made the decision not to use it and to just do it on my own.

Then about 3 months later I overheard someone else talking about it and realized, three months previous, I said I could do it on my own. Then I realized, I hadn’t done anything different in the last 3 months than I always had.

The person I overheard talking about it said it was the neatest system they had ever seen and that it was so easy. I asked them a lot more questions and after taking a very close analytical look at all the system had done for them, I decided to give it a try.

I just wanted to say that I am one of the homeowners actually using this system. As I have stated in previous posts, I have been using this system for 3 years now. I have to say, it does everything the company says.

I am still using the system after 3 years and I am on track to be mortgage free in about 9 months. I’m not pushing the product. I have not included my info for anyone to buy it. I am just someone actually using it. I have worked in the financial world for years, and I am not normally a believer. Thanks.

Mr. Voodoo (Ron),

I have seen your MMA hate site and I have to say from all of the info you have posted on there, you have never used this system have you? Please don’t say you have, because it is very clear to a person that has actually been using it for 3 years that you have never actually used it.

Please don’t say that you don’t have to use it to be an expert on it, because I said the same thing 3 years ago. I was wrong.

The system is what I would call “genetically engineered” to take every possible advantage into account (in real life, not in a static world). The suggestions you have listed on your site that you can use for free are a nice token, but they don’t even come close. Please keep in mind; you are talking to a veteran user of the program and of the financial world. I can not be “cat and moused” into your narrow minded view of something you have never used.

Again, like saying you’re an expert on what salt tastes like, but you haven’t ever actually tasted salt. And yes, you do have to taste salt to be an expert on what it tastes like.

I don’t mean to be insulting. Again, I have been where you are at. I have just seen both sides now and I am 9 months away from being mortgage free.

Nothing anyone says can convince me that I will not be mortgage free in 9 months. And no, I would not have done that on my own, free or not, even though “I could do it on my own”.lol

And while we’re on the subject of “effective” interest rate, your interest rate on your mortgage at 6% is only 6% AFTER you’ve paid it all off in 30 years:

If you hold your 6% fixed rate mortgage for 30 years, the effective rate is 6%

If you hold your 6% “fixed rate” mortgage for 25 years, the effective rate is 9.43%

If you hold your 6% “fixed rate” mortgage for 20 years, the effective rate is 14.82%

If you hold your 6% “fixed rate” mortgage for 15 years, the effective rate is 24.16%

If you hold your 6% “fixed rate” mortgage for 10 years, the effective rate is 43.48%

If you hold your 6% “fixed rate” mortgage for 5 years, the effective rate is 102.00%

If you hold your 6% “fixed rate” mortgage for 3 years, the effective rate is 182.00%

If you hold your 6% “fixed rate” mortgage for 1 year, the effective rate is 580%

Information provided by the Non-Profit Consumer Asher Institute (2003)

So if you’re in the first 5 years of your mortgage, you are actually being charged between 100% and 600%! After one year on a fixed $200,000 mortgage at 6%, you have paid $14,389.20 (12 x $1199.10), of which $2456.02 has gone to your principal, and $11933.18 is interest payments. If you think that’s a 6% loan you might want to think again.

Also as Benjamin posted above “The State of Utah audited our company a few months ago and found that the EFFECTIVE interest rates for the helocs our clients were using was a little over 3%.

Does it make sense to borrow money at 3% to pay down a 6% loan?”

How about borrowing at 3% to pay off a 100-580% loan?

So folks, that is essentially why the heloc puts your equity acceleration on steroids. And its not illegal, unethical, or physically damaging like most steroids. But I do understand that it IS ADDICTIVE!
And no, there’s no free lunch here, just a very cheap and very scrumptious and healthy meal.

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) has acted to close down loan calculators on more than 100 websites of Australian financial institutions, including banks, credit unions, other lenders and finance brokers.

The calculators suggested that using a line of credit will result in the consumer paying off their home loan more quickly.

‘Most lines of credit charge higher interest rates than standard home loans, so when you stop to think about it, it was extraordinary to suggest that paying higher interest could pay off a loan sooner’, said Mr Greg Tanzer, ASIC’s Executive Director of Consumer Protection and International Relations.

A line of credit may also allow borrowers to make the bulk of their purchases or payments through a credit card with an interest-free period. This means that the borrower’s salary can sit in their loan account in the period between the date of purchase and the date of payment of the credit card. This mechanism slightly reduces the balance of the home loan debt for part of each month and therefore slightly reduces the interest payable. These types of savings are called offset savings. The credit card will be paid off each month by using your funds from the line of credit. The offset savings achieved for most people will be minimal.

Any savings made by depositing regular salary into the LOC amount to possibly a few hundred dollars per year, and unless the borrower has significant funds to deposit, these savings are less than the additional interest paid on the LOC – even if the LOC is quite small (say $50,000). Borrowers who pay any money for software, monitoring or other services, are often thousands of dollars worse off.

“It never ceases to amaze me how widespread and deep-seated is the belief that somewhere out there must be a good fairy who will solve all our financial problems. This belief sustains lotteries, which help keep poor people poor, and a host of schemes directed at homeowners that promise to pay down their mortgage loans quicker and easier.

Accelerated Mortgage Repayment Schemes Abound
Some of these schemes are outright frauds, such as the one peddled by Success Trust and Holding that I warned readers against last year. It took until August of this year before the SEC took action against them, by which time they had relieved more than 500 homeowners of several million dollars.” Jack Guttentag

“A ton of mail has come in on this article, some from people selling the MMA on commission, and some from borrowers who want to believe. Questions have been raised about my back-of-the-envelope calculation of the benefits, and I have to concede that my figures are rough. It is possible that I understated the magnitude of the benefit. However, I cannot get anyone from UFF to give me a copy of the program so I can test it more rigorously, and I am not going to pay $3500 for it.” -Jack Guttentag

I will be happy to personally show Mr Guttentag my account. If you speak with him, please let me know his contact info and I will be happy to show him my personal experience.

Thank you.

Jeremy

You forgot to post the rest of Jack’s quote:

“Based on everything I know, I have considerable confidence in my main conclusion, which is that the bulk of the reduction in interest payments comes from the borrower’s savings rather than from the program mechanism. Neither the MMA nor any of its siblings provide the means for separating the contribution of the program to interest saving from the contribution made by the income the borrower allocates to principal reduction. The reason they don’t is that they want to pretend that it is the program that generates the entire benefit.”

Again, no one is refuting that you can see results using the MMA. However, it is easy to prove that, mathematically, it is inferior.

Al said “Hi Chris, yes 6X $5000 = $30,000. But the client doesn’t have $30k in discretionary income, they have just $12k. That’s why they use the heloc, so they can send $30k to the mortgage and not just $12k. That’s the advantage of using the heloc, you’re not only using what you have, you’re also using what the bank has. Pays it off much quicker that way.”

So, if they only have 12k available, where do they get the other 18k to pay back the HELOC? And don’t tell me it gets magically generated by the MMA mechanism.

Al says: “And while we’re on the subject of “effective” interest rate, your interest rate on your mortgage at 6% is only 6% AFTER you’ve paid it all off in 30 years.”

Wrong. It is 6% regardless of how long or how short you pay. Time is always part of the equation Al.

Al: “So if you’re in the first 5 years of your mortgage, you are actually being charged between 100% and 600%! After one year on a fixed $200,000 mortgage at 6%, you have paid $14,389.20 (12 x $1199.10), of which $2456.02 has gone to your principal, and $11933.18 is interest payments. If you think that’s a 6% loan you might want to think again.”

It is a 6% loan Al. $11,933.18/$200,000 is 6%.

Ron quotes Jack Guttentag: “Based on everything I know, I have considerable confidence in my main conclusion, which is that the bulk of the reduction in interest payments comes from the borrower’s savings rather than from the program mechanism.”
He’s already admitted that he doesn’t know much about the program, so of what value are his opinions on it? Very similar to Ron’s having opinions without bothering to understand the product.

Chris says “So, if they only have 12k available, where do they get the other 18k to pay back the HELOC?” The answer: they make $5000/month. Each month they deposit that into their heloc, which calculates interest daily. So if they have a $10000 balance in their heloc, the paycheck brings it down to $5000. That money sits there for most of the month, ti they have to pay off their credit card which they’ve used to pay all their expenses. There is no interest charge on the CC since they pay it off in full from the heloc. At that point its about the time to get another paycheck, which they deposit in the heloc to bring the balance down. So for most of the month they have a $5000 balance on their heloc, which at 10%/yr charges interest of about $42/month, maybe a little more if they use a little more from the heloc to pay off their mortgage. Meanwhile for that small interest charge, they are cancelling tens of thousands from their mortgage interest.

So, no, there is nothing “magical” creating money here. The money already belongs to the banks, the client borrows some to pay down their mortgage, then pays down the heloc with their paychecks (60,000/yr in this example). Sure, they will pay a small amount from their hard earned money, but they will save MEGA amounts of their hard earned money that they would have paid to their mortgage. As I said, there’s no free lunch here, and no magic creating money. Its simply economics, and using the bank’s tools in your favor instead of theirs.

Keep trying, Chris, I know that one of these days you will figure it out!

Jeremy, congrats on your upcoming jubilee, i.e. getting out of debt in another 9 months! I doubt you will hear from Mr Guttentag about your offer, but perhaps you can show it to Chris. Then he can come in here and explain how you were able to pay off your mortgage in under 4 years with the program saving you only $40/yr.

Sorry about the $3500 you paid for the program. I guess you would have been paid off in 2 years if you had just sent that to your mortgage principal instead, huh!

Al,

There is nothing for me to figure out. Your math and logic does not work. Out of their 5K monthly paycheck, 4K goes to bills and the 1K discretionary goes to pay down the HELOC. The person in your example makes $60,000 per year.
They borrow $5,000 from the HELOC every two months which is $30,000 per year.
They have $4,000 per month expenses which is $48,000 per year.
They only have $1,000 per month to pay down the HELOC which is $12,000 per year.
They will have a balance in the HELOC of about $18,000 at year end.
There are only two possibilities with your claim:
1. The bank donated the other $18,000; we no this isn’t true.
2. You don’t know much about math.

In your scenario, this persons HELOC grows exponentially by $18,000 per year(3K every 2 months) each year plus interest, and they are even worse off.

Al

Is it sinking in yet? You are spending 78K from your HELOC each year and only depositing 60K in income. It won’t work Al. Even the MMA proponents on this thread will agree with me on this one.

Ron is nothing but a mortgage broker. He acts like one too.

I had to take a break, but I’m back for 1 last post. I tell the truth (unlike Jason V.) This is my last post, unless invited to respond.

I am not in the mortgage business (however people should pay attention to those who understand finances), I help children learn how to communicate. I have posted countless times on this thread to try an warn people that using an MMA is RISKIER, TAKES LONGER, is HARDER, and is POOR financial managment. I’ve provided proof and answered questions honestly.

I feel sorry for any individual who get suckered into paying for a plan/”program” like this. More than likely they won’t read this whole thread and they will believe the LIES of the MMA SALESMAN. My parting comment. Before you spend $3500 take 2hrs of your time (that is a $1750hr bonus) and educate yourself. Go to http://www.clarkhoward.com (Consumer Advocate), and http://www.scam.com (when they stop getting denial of service attacks) and read this thread. It is VERY telling.

Chris and Ron. I appreciate your honest responses. I’ve just decided that I can no longer “give pearls to swine” (Jason V. I am sorry but I am left with being forced to refer to you as swine)

Good luck everyone.

“There are none so blind as those that WILL not see!”

Chris, I’ll try it one more time. Please pay attention. If you keep ignoring what I’m saying, I see no reason trying to educate you.

Jan 1 – Write a $3500 check from the heloc to pay for the MMA program. Balance on heloc = $3500.
Interest for day one at 10%/yr divided by 365 days= 3500x 10%=$350/365= 96 cents.

Jan 2 – Write a $5000 check from the heloc to pay down mortgage principal and cancel $28,304 interest. Balance on heloc = $8500. Interest for day 2 on heloc = $8500. x 10%=$850/365= $2.33.

Jan 3 – Deposit $5000 paycheck into heloc. Balance on heloc = $3500. Interest for day 3 = 96 cents.

Jan 4-Jan 30 – Leave the heloc alone! Pay all expenses with credit card which will be paid off before any interest is charged. Balance on heloc = $3500. TOTAL interest for Jan 4-Jan 30= 96 cents/day x 26 days = $24.96.

Jan 31 – Write $4000 check from heloc to pay off expenses on the Credit Card. Balance on heloc = $7500. Interest for Jan 31 = $7500 x 10%= $750/365= $2.05.

TOTAL interest on heloc for January =
$.96 + $2.33 + $.96 + $24.96 + $2.05 = $31.26!

Feb 1 – leave heloc alone. balance = $7500. Interest on heloc for Feb 1 = $2.05.

Feb 2 – No change. Interest for Feb. 2 = $2.05.

Feb 3 – Deposit $5000 paycheck into heloc. Balance for Feb 3 = $2500. Interest for Feb 3 = $2500 x 10%= $250/365= 68cents.

Feb 4- Feb 27 – Leave the heloc alone. Pay all expenses with credit card which will be paid off before any interest is charged. Daily Balance for Feb 4- Feb 27 = $2500. Daily interest= 68 cents. TOTAL interest for Feb 4- Feb 27 = 68 cents x 24= $16.32.

Feb 28 – Write $4000 check from heloc to pay off expenses on the Credit Card. Balance on heloc for Feb 28= $6500. Interest on heloc for Feb 28 = $1.78.

TOTAL interest on heloc for February=
$2.05 + $2.05 + $.68 + $16.32 + $1.78 = $22.88

Lather, rinse, repeat!

Total interest on heloc for 2 months = $31.26 +22.88 = $54.14.

Interest cancellation from one $5000 transfer =
$28,304.

How many times would Jack Guttentag, Clark Howard, and Carolyn Bond spend $54.14 to save $28,304??
If they’re as smart as they think they are, as often as the software told them too! That could be 2-6 times a year.

Its just MATH people! People who can’t understand that call it a scam, or they buy the program and enjoy the ride!

AL are you crazy? I’ll quote you to make the point
ok so you “Interest cancellation from one $5000 transfer = $28,304.”

But you have “Balance on heloc for Feb 28= $6500.”

You are correct it is just MATH and “There are none so blind as those that WILL not see!”

Run your numbers doing an MMA identify the True amount of extra princple you are paying each month. Including the extra mortgage payment a year that most MMA agents add without talking about it and then compare that just paying that much extra principle payments each month. This is so easy to see the crazyness it is funny. Other MMA agents have already acknowledged on this thread that the MMA in ONLY a motivational tool.

Sorry, crazy, sounds like you know more about the MMA program than me. Couldn’t understand your post at all really. Please explain about the “True amount ofextra princple you are paying each month. Including the extra mortgage payment a year that ‘most MMA agents add without talking about it”.
I honestly don’t know anything about that! Thanks

Crazy pointed out: “Balance on heloc for Feb 28= $6500.” Yes, and on March 3 he deposits his $5000 paycheck; now his balance is $1500. what’s your point? I spelled out the first 2 months for you, do I have to do all 11 years for you too? The point is that its just more of the same: borrow a little, save a TON, pay it down with your paycheck, pay a little extra interest to the heloc. People, we’re talking about saving almost $200,000 here! You can’t get to the forest if you bump into a tree, then turn around and say, “nope, can’t get past that!”

BTW, Ted, if you’re still lurking, it really helps if you provide a specific link to what you’re referring to on clarkhoward.com. I just spent a week there it seemed and couldn’t find anything about the MMA. Saw something about a Metro Dream Homes scam, I’m sure that’s not what you were referring to.
Help a brother out here. I like Clark Howard, listen to him alot, but haven’t heard him weigh in on MMA one way or t’other! Thanks!

Al

It is you who ignores. Looks like you finally realized with your example that you don’t have enough discretionary income to prepay 5K six times per year. You didn’t spend $54.14 to save $28,304 in interest, you spent $5054.14; actually more, because you haven’t paid it all back yet. Why don’t you go ahead and run it out for a year. It’s all about net worth Al. I’m already ahead of you after two months. I prepaid $2,000 plus the $399 principal from my regular payment for a net worth of $2,399. Your net worth is $5,000 plus $399 minus $6,500 minus $54.14 equals a negative $1,155.14. Oops, I have “cancelled” less interest than you so far. It doesn’t matter Al because it’s all about net worth. If we keep going, my net worth will always be higher, I will pay off faster than you, and I will save more interest. Go ahead, run it out for a year. Why is this Al. Because I didn’t waste $3,500 on the MMA. It gets even better for me if I put my money in an interest earning account.

Sorry Chris, I don’t have the need or the desire to run it out for a year. Like I said, it’s not going to change very much since you just repeat the process over and over. If you can do it once in the first 2 months, why can’t you borrow $5000 every 2 months, or 6 times a year? You paying in your $5000 every month and leaving it in for the vast majority of the month. So your heloc balance hovers between about $1500 and $10000 every day for the 11 years. Again that means you get smacked for a whopping $20-$60/month interest on your heloc. Not bad to save $20k+.

Hey if you can beat it by doing it your way, my hats off to you! You would be an extremely rare breed. Most people won’t have a clue how to do it, and if they did, they’d stop after a few months instead of paying all the discretionary into a closed-end hole where they can’t get it back out.
I have never heard of anyone using the MMA that wished they had done it themselves. but I have heard a lot of people who tried on their own and are ecstatic they ended up getting on our program.
Our software makes it simple and takes the guesswork out of it. And saves tons of money, regardless of whether its a little more or less than yours does. So yes people are willing to pay for that.

You obviously have fun crunching your numbers. Most people would prefer having their fingernails pulled out with pliers, lol!

testing….I think it ate my last post!!

Since you invited me Al. Here is the link for Clark Howard http://clarkhoward.com/p/boards/ch/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=clarkhowardmoney&Number=739178&page=&view=&sb=&vc=1#Post739178

He also talked about an MMA in his 9/17/07 broadcast I believe (not sure on the date) you can download his podcast.

Al,

You can’t borrow 5k every two months because that is 30K per year, and you only have 12K discretionary to spend regardless of what system you use. If you want to create more discretionary by spending less, then you will have more than 12K to pre-pay and you can do that with any system as well. Look at month #3 Al. Your HELOC is at $6,500 and you deposit $5,000 income. The balance is now only $1,500, but you will be spending $4,000 from it on bills soon. Then it will be back up to $5,500. If you had spent another $5,000 for prepay in March it would be at $10,500. You cannot keep pre-paying more than you have in discretionary or the HELOC will grow exponentially.

I’m not a rare breed Al. There is no number crunching & guesswork. Figure out your discretionary income just like you would do with the MMA; 12K per year in this case. Send in 1K per month automatically as prepayment. Oops, the tranny just went out. Either I use money from my emergency savings or I use the HELOC I already have. It will beat the MMA every time.

Caution, with my system you will have to increase your monthly payment whereas with the MMA that extra prepayment amount is supposedly generated out of thin air.

Caution, with my system your true discretionary income is based off a realistic 52 week year whereas with the MMA they only show you 48 weeks (even though they use 52) to make it look deceptively better for them over what you could do on your own.

Chris, Re you trying not to understand this, or are you just incapable? The latter is excusable. How many times have you watched the MMA orientation video? My guess is 0 times, right? YES, you can borrow $30k/yr with $12k discretionary because you pay it down with your WHOLE income, not just discretionary. That’s $60k/yr offsetting your heloc for most days, except the 1 or 2 days each month after paying your expenses and before depositing your next paycheck. It’s called using “float” and OPM (other people’s money, ie, the bank’s money).
These are rather basic principles you should learn before you try to argue that thay aren’t possible. You’ll find that they are 2 of the larger reasons that the banks are able to amass huge amounts of wealth while giving their clients 1-2% on their deposits and charging 2-3 times the borrowed amount for mortgage interest. All we do is use those same principles for the homeowner’s benefit instead of the bank’s. So if you do understand these concepts, perhaps you are merely a shill for the banking industry.

There is NO WAY for you to beat our results using only discretionary income (12k) against our using up to 30k to pay down the mortgage. The results I showed for the first 2 months are simply duplicated throughout the payoff period. So your interest to the heloc remains extremely low (remember “effective rate”?) and so is barely consequential. Watch the video! http://www.u1stfinancial.com/Portals/0/media/mma100.html

As for the MMA showing only 48 weeks, perhaps you CAN teach me something. What exactly does that mean, and where did you get that rather dubious fact?

Chris, are you trying not to understand this, or are you just incapable? The latter is excusable. How many times have you watched the MMA orientation video? My guess is 0 times, right? YES, you can borrow $30k/yr with $12k discretionary because you pay it down with your WHOLE income, not just discretionary. That’s $60k/yr offsetting your heloc for most days, except the 1 or 2 days each month after paying your expenses and before depositing your next paycheck. It’s called using “float” and OPM (other people’s money, ie, the bank’s money).
These are rather basic principles you should learn before you try to argue that thay aren’t possible. You’ll find that they are 2 of the larger reasons that the banks are able to amass huge amounts of wealth while giving their clients 1-2% on their deposits and charging 2-3 times the borrowed amount for mortgage interest. All we do is use those same principles for the homeowner’s benefit instead of the bank’s. So if you do understand these concepts, perhaps you are merely a shill for the banking industry.

Al

I thought you said you read this thread. When UFF runs a client analysis they use a weekly income figure. They multiply this by 4 weeks and list this as the client’s total monthly income. In reality, the real monthly income is weekly x 52 divided by 12. This is important because discretionary income is monthly minus expenses. They “show” discretionary based on 48 weeks, but they “use” discretionary based on 52. Amazing, isn’t it? When the average Al, I mean Joe, uses the 48 week figure to see if they can beat the MMA, it appears that they cannot. If they use the same discretionary as UFF(seems fair doesn’t it?), they will beat the MMA.

Al said’
“There is NO WAY for you to beat our results using only discretionary income (12k) against our using up to 30k to pay down the mortgage. The results I showed for the first 2 months are simply duplicated throughout the payoff period. So your interest to the heloc remains extremely low (remember “effective rate”?) and so is barely consequential.”

Yes I will beat your results Al. When my home is paid off, you will still have a balance on your HELOC. The results you showed cannot be duplicated throughout the payoff period. If you borrow 78K from your HELOC and deposit only 60K income, you will have a HELOC balance that grows on average by $1,500 each month for a total of 18K each year. It will continue to grow by 18K year over year. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and run your scenario out for a year and see for yourself. After just five years, you will owe 90K plus interest on your HELOC. It’s just math Al.

Al says ”YES, you can borrow $30k/yr with $12k discretionary because you pay it down with your WHOLE income, not just discretionary.”

Your “WHOLE” income cannot go towards paying down both the 30K and your 48K in yearly expenses. You forgot the expenses Al.

You MMA proponents talk so much about using the banks principles against them, and then you go out and pay them more interest for something than is completely unnecessary because it only puts you further behind.

A real estate agent who is a friend of my niece sent a proposal regarding a United First Financial Money Merge Account to my niece the other day (Sept. 17, 2007). My niece asked me if I knew anything about this kind of account. I didn’t then but I googled the topic and read quite a bit about it last night, including most of this thread. It was very interesting to see the opinions from both sides. I was skeptical of the MMA to begin with, but at one point I actually started thinking this might be a reasonable strategy if your goal is to pay off your mortgage as fast as possible (which I personally don’t think is a great idea for most people anyway). But I was only fooled for a short while.

The following is a summary of what I learned and that others considering the UFF MMA may find helpful. I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I believe it is extremely important that people have all the proper information on this.

The UFF MMA is probably the most perfectly packaged, well-crafted scam or pseudo-scam I’ve ever heard of. It’s so good (i.e., bad) that I think my niece’s friend and maybe hundreds of others in the real estate profession might be promoting it thinking that it really is a good idea and worth the upfront fee ($3500) that is taken out of the HELOC or ALOC (as UFF calls it) to buy the service. It’s ingenious on UFF’s part that they pull the wool over the eyes of people in the real estate industry who then go out and sell the service believing it is worthwhile. This makes them come across genuinely to potential customers rather than having to act genuine, as they would if they knew that the service is really pretty much worthless. I’m sure many of the agents (maybe most) know that it’s all but worthless, but they can make their commission by using the misleading information built into the analysis program to sell MMAs. Some of them may have fallen for the scam themselves and later realized or had someone else point out to them that they’d paid $3500 and gotten very little. So now they are selling it to make back that money and then some. (Ponzi, pyramid, “multi-level marketing”?)

The MMA program funnels all of your income through the HELOC to capture interest savings that are available because the mortgage interest is assessed at the end of month while the HELOC interest is based on average daily balance. By timing transfers from the HELOC to pay down mortgage principal along with paycheck deposit timing and monthly bill pay timing, the program maximizes the interest saved. This interest savings along with all of your income over and above your monthly expenses (“discretionary income”) is used to pay down more of the principal on the mortgage. This sounds fantastic until you realize that the program’s interest shuffling algorithms only result in savings of a few dollars per month. Therefore, you could have just deposited your paychecks into a proper interest-bearing account of your own, paid your monthly bills, and then sent everything you had left (your “discretionary income” plus the small amount of interest earned for the month) with your normal mortgage payment and had it applied to pay down principal. The tiny amount of interest you would earn each month, when maximized by paying your bills with a credit card that you always pay off each month, should be slightly more than the interest saved by the MMA program’s “advanced” algorithms. So this method would actually end up paying off your mortgage slightly faster than with the MMA and, most important, you will not have wasted the initial $3500.

In the initial analysis, UFF’s agents enter how much discretionary income per month will be going to pay down principal based on your monthly income and expenses. With fairly small monthly amounts used to pay down principal, you get pretty dramatic results in shortening the mortgage term and overall interest saved. Of course it is widely known that making the equivalent of one extra mortgage payment per year reduces a 30-year mortgage by about 7 years. So the UFF MMA is just taking that method to the extreme. They claim these tremendous amounts of overall interest saved by eliminating your mortgage, but they won’t admit (or in some cases perhaps don’t realize) that almost all of that saved interest is due to prepayment and very, very little is from the interest juggling exercises the MMA program does.

Further, few or no complaints are registered about this scheme because the smokescreen that is built into the initial analysis makes most customers believe 6 or 8 months into the deal that the program is magically doing even better than the initial analysis showed that it would. The smokescreen that UFF uses on the initial analysis is that if you are paid weekly, they consider 4 weeks of pay to constitute the month. If you are paid every 2 weeks, they consider two paychecks to be your monthly salary. This ends up leaving 4 pay weeks out of the initial calculation. So as the first several months go by and you have a month or two with an “extra” payday in it (5 paydays in a month for weekly earners; 3 paydays for bi-weekly earners), all of that extra paycheck ends up going to pay down your mortgage principal. Therefore, your results look even better than the initial analysis projected as far as how quickly your mortgage is paid off and the overall interest saved. This is why UFF’s agents will sometimes say that the program doesn’t work well if you are paid monthly or twice a month instead of weekly or every two weeks. It’s not that it wouldn’t work pretty much the same for these people; it’s that it won’t have the built-in deception of 4 weeks of pay going straight to mortgage principal to make the program look like magic. Absolute genius! (as well as absolutely immoral and unethical!).

Because of the way the MMA is put together, it probably isn’t illegal. The “sophisticated” algorithms that the software uses to manage the interest on your primary mortgage and the HELOC by timing proper amounts being transferred from the HELOC to the mortgage, along with the timing of your incoming salary deposits and outgoing monthly payments, actually does reduce the interest you would otherwise pay each month by a very small amount. So it has some monetary value, but nowhere near $3500. But because it has some value in this way, along with the supposed “value” of the ability for users to monitor how every bit of money they spend or decide not to spend affects the projected payoff date of their mortgage, it is probably not illegal. So I’d call it a pseudo-scam rather than just a scam.

All of this discussion doesn’t even go into the opportunity cost of using all of your discretionary income to pay down a debt at 5 or 6% interest when you could be investing that money elsewhere and over time almost certainly earning a better annualized return in mutual funds, ETFs, stocks, bonds, or other investments.

UFF and many of their agents will make a lot of money selling this nearly worthless service to people who don’t know better. It is a tremendously well-crafted and insidious pseudo-scam that will claim many victims before some kind of mainstream media coverage exposes it for the sham that it is.

To anyone reading this original post (Sept. 21, 2007) and who will be looking for information in previous posts in this thread: Good information has been provided by Ron, Chris, and Ted, among a few others. Bad information has been provided by Bryan, Benjamin, Al, and especially Jason V, among others. They may not be bad people, but they definitely provide bad information.

To Ron, Chris, Ted, and anyone else on the correct side of this issue: Please feel free to excerpt any or all of this message to post elsewhere or to repost here at a later date. I may repost a version of this myself now and then, here and there in an effort to inform as many potential victims as possible. If any of you feel this information needs clarification in spots, please post what you think should change. I’ll check back later.

To Bryan, Benjamin, Al, Jason V., and others on the wrong side of this issue: Note that I will not be engaging in any discussion on this thread. Why? Frankly, there is nothing to discuss. It is all about what is right and what is wrong. The information you are posting here is wrong. If you are an agent for UFF and are selling MMAs after reading and understanding the information in this thread and elsewhere that I have summarized here, you are not just wrong—you are unethical and immoral and your actions are reprehensible. If you simply don’t understand this summary, there’s not much else I can do to help you. But please stop promoting something that is simply unnecessary (other than the fact that you make a commission every time you sell it so you create more discretionary income for yourself to pay down your mortgage faster). I am not posting this material for any monetary gain, which Jason V has so often wrongly accused Ron of in this thread just because Ron is in the mortgage business. My line of work has nothing at all to do with mortgages, finance, or anything even remotely related to this issue. There are intelligent and scrupulous people in all businesses, and my guess is that Ron is one of the many in his line of work. By the way Jason, if there were no Ron’s out there creating mortgages, you’d have to find some other scheme to use to bilk innocent people out of $3500.

My advice to anyone who has read this far is to remember that each person’s situation is uniquely their own. Paying off a mortgage as fast as possible might be right for someone in some particular situation in life. But buying the UFF MMA is not the most efficient and effective way of doing that for anyone because the very first thing the program does is add $3500 to the debt that you are trying to eliminate. That can only be the proper first move if that $3500 is somehow going to be made up later. The good information in this thread and in this summary should make it clear to all that the program has no special algorithm or payment timing that can come close to making up the extra debt you’ve taken on when you sign on the dotted line.

Thank you for reading.

Can I just tag on to what Chris is saying with a reminder that UFirst actually markets the product with the following statement…

“Our average customer will pay their 30 year mortgage off within 8 to 11 years — with little change to their day-to-day spending habits and without increasing their monthly mortgage payments.”

OH, BUT WAIT! COULD IT BE? UFIRST HAS NOW CHANGED WHAT THEY CLAIM ON THEIR WEBSITE! Boy am I glad I was able to document the first version of their miraculous claims here! Just think, it could have been lost to the ages!

Now UFirst claims the following…

“Qualified homeowners using the Money Merge Account can now pay their 30 year mortgage off in a fraction of the regular time with little to no change in their day to day spending habbits.”

No more mention of not needing to send extra to their mortgage…hmmm…now why would they change so significantly? No more promise of 8 to 11 years without increasing their payment to the mortgage company? Is the MMA no longer capable of this?

That’s their misspell of habits…they must have been in a hurry to change the claim.
Not that I’m a spelling champion myself, mind you. You just expect a little more from someone wanting $3500 of your money. 

Al,

So you’re basically saying that one with a $60,000 annual income can borrow $78,000 against the HELOC every year. Where does the other $18,000 dollars come from? No amount of shuffling will turn $60,000 into $78,000. Even if the HELOC has an interest rate of 0% the fact that you use your whole income to pay down the HELOC is irrelevant. You’re still borrowing $78,000 per year and only have $60,000 to pay it back with.

I don’t care about the interest on the HELOC…how do I get someone to give me $78,000 and only require me to pay $60,000 of it back?

You will be behind by $18,000 every year if you opt to send $5000 toward your mortage principle out of the HELOC every two months. It does not compute. Feel free to refer to my earlier posts to familiarize yourself with my level of understanding in mathematics before you make a comment about me not understanding the program or the math behind it. By my calculations, with a $60,000 income I would only be able to send an extra $5000 toward my principal 2.4 times a year, not 6, to avoid borrowing more than I make. In that case I would be better off sending the extra $1000 a month straight to the mortgage company. Why wait 5 months to send $5000, when I can send $1000 in month one, in month two, etc… By the time the MMA tells me to send the $5000, I’ve already sent $4000 toward the principal.

And don’t tell me that I’ve sent $5000 in month one, because money that is not mine (borrowed against the HELOC) is having to be repaid over the following 5 months (plus a little due to interest accruing) AND I’m having to pay off an additional $3500 for the program.

Like I said before, the MMA may have some value in helping folks stay on a system, and it can force folks to reduce spending when they see it leveraged against their mortgage, but there is no way anyone could apply $30,000 toward their principal balance with only $12,000 in discretionary income without a DRASTIC change in spending habits…something that UFirst claims is not required. And that does not even include the need to pay off the $3500 price tag for the program.

Al, don’t run anymore scenarios for me until you’ve either explained where the extra $18,000 comes from, or concede that at the end of the first year, you’ll have an $18,000 HELOC balance.

While I do need to taste salt to speak to what salty means, I don’t need to jump off a cliff to know that it’s a foolish thing to do.

Pete

And just as a “for the record” comment…

Both Al and Jason’s UFirst websites still make the following claim…

“Introducing the Money Merge Account, a powerful tool to help you fulfill your dream of home ownership and save money for your future. The average Money Merge Account customer will pay their mortgage off 100%, in 1/2 to 1/3 the time, with little to no change to their day-to-day spending habits and without increasing their monthly mortgage payments.”

Al and Jason are still claiming the MMA can pay off your mortgage earlier than 30 years without increasing your mortgage payments.

I’m still waiting for either of them to explain how that’s possible.

Of course, Al has stated that the MMA only prompts you to make extra payments, it doesn’t actually make you do it, and you’re not actually required to pay more than the “contracted” amount of your original mortgage payment. The kicker is though, unless that amazing explanation is still forthcoming, the only way any mortgage can be paid off early is by making those extra payments.

Pete

I’ll continue my invitation. I have to say thank you to Bill your comments are spot on and true. Unfortunately, they will fall on deaf ears.

Anyway. Pete,nice catch! The good thing is that they can’t get their words off of the internet archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070714072132/http://www.u1stfinancial.com/

If it does leave this spot, then you know with out a doubt that this company is trying to fraud you.

Ok, now I’ll just lurke unless I’m invited to return.

I went to a seminar last night from UFirst. ONe of the quotes they used, is “smart people earn interest, and stupid people pay it” They emphasized this. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but with the MMA, you don’t earn interest, you only pay it. You don’t have a savings account anymore, you only have debt to payoff.Isn’t that right? Someone needs to tell them to quit using that slide in their presentation!

Steven

Remember those small amounts of money ($5 or $10 a few times per year) that get generated by floating a big prepayment through the HELOC? You actually do save this amount because your mortgage interest is closed ended and the HELOC is open ended. Uff is calling this savings “earnings”. They are most likely calling the rest of the interest you end up not paying on your mortgage “earnings” as well. Technically though, when you prepay your mortgage, you don’t really save “or earn” any interest. People tend to forget that time is part of the equation. If you have a 6% loan, you only pay 6% on the amount borrowed for the amount of time you borrow it. As you prepay, you drop down the amortization schedule, you are charged interest on the new balance, and the payoff date is reduced; but you are still paying 6%. Claiming savings on funds that were never due to begin with is like going to the car lot and saying you saved 50K because you didn’t buy a car.

Another great link (from above) that folks should read and digest… it’s so good it deserves to be front and center here.

From the Clark Howard website:

“Because mortgages are effectively compound interest in reverse, most people don’t realize the fact that paying even a little bit extra on a typical long mortgage on a regular basis can save an astounding amount of time and interest on the loan.

In fact, the math is so misunderstood by so many people that there are entire industries of schemes designed to take advantage of our collective lack of understanding of the math. They have many different ways to skim a little off the top for themselves while tricking folks into paying extra on their mortgages.

Now it appears that UFF and others have learned that they can skim more…$3500…from homeowners by convincing them that it is their software that doing some kind of magic, when all it is really doing is tricking you into making more than the minimum payment on your original mortgage. For some reason they don’t want you to realize that you can do it for yourself for free and that you will save even more by putting the $3500 on your own mortgage.

IMO all of their talk of the HELOC and “interest cancellation” is gobbledygook to help them take advantage of people who don’t understand mortgage math, and to get you to pay $3500 for something that you don’t need at all.

A few months ago I heard Clark Howard tell a caller to his show that the new wave of mortgage merge and mortgage accelerator programs are MLM schemes. He has also been quoted as saying they “stink like rotted fish”.

There appears to be at least two different mortgage merge or mortgage accelerator schemes that sound a lot alike in their hype.

One that gets reviews from people other than their own MLM marketers appears to involve getting a new ARM mortgage merged with a HELOC. The fact that it is an ARM at time when fixed rate mortgages are still the lowest in decades is reason enough to avoid it.

The other, from United First Financial, appears to use your existing mortgage and add a HELOC. There’s a MLM entry fee of $3500–which you borrow from a HELOC to pay for the “magic” software and to join the pyramid. Then you borrow even more via the HELOC to pay on the principal on your first mortgage.

With both schemes, somehow INCREASING your total debt and or borrowing at a higher rate plus giving extra money to someone else is supposed to magically save money for you.

Perhaps the most misleading misinformation for both schemes–which is prominent on many different websites as their MLM pyramids grow–is that you can somehow magically pay down your mortgage in 7 to 9 years without any changes to your existing budget.

That’s just plain NOT the way money math works.

If you want to pay off a mortgage faster than the original schedule, you will have to pay enough extra within that time frame to pay off the entire balance plus the monthly interest on the unpaid balance for the entire time. That’s going to be a big change to your budget and spending habits.

A couple of months ago two MLM mortgage accelerator scheme marketers came to these forums to dispute Clark’s statements. But those two posters managed to make about 3 dozen posts without giving a single concrete fact to support their claims.

…No proof at all that their scheme(s) work nearly as well as keeping a fixed rate mortgage and paying all your spare money on it instead of giving any of your money to somebody in a MLM pyramid to line their own pockets while tricking you into paying a little extra on your own mortgage.

Since then there have been some other MLM marketers coming here making many posts with incredibly outlandish claims, but never giving an answer to any direct questions, or providing a single mathematical fact to back up any of their claims.

More recently, one person even posted what he/she claimed to be actual UFF mortgage analysis data sheets…but which were full of errors, contradictions, and discrepancies. One overstated the cost of the original mortgage interest by over $100,000. The other contended that someone would be able to pay off their mortgage by living on less than $300 per month for all their living expenses for several years. Both had what I consider amateurish errors in calculating monthly income and expenses from yearly data.

In all those posts, they did not make a single reply with actual verifiable figures to prove that these MLM mortgage accelerator or merge schemes can save any money at all compared to just paying the $3500 on your own mortgage and then continuing to pay extra on the principal on your normal mortgage by yourself.

Nor was there any proof that borrowing money at a higher rate with a HELOC or a merged ARM can magically save money compared to just paying extra on an existing lower-rate fixed mortgage.

If you know anything about how loans and interest work, you will see that they misrepresented how interest on average balances is calculated.

…In fact, they couldn’t even show how you can pay off even a 0% mortgage and/or a 0% HELOC faster without paying a lot more out of your budget during that time.

The odor of rotting fish is still there and has become even stronger after the explanations–or lack thereof–from the people who are trying to sell the schemes.

There are no new “secrets” about how loans and amortization work.

It is possible to use ordinary math to calculate an amortization schedule to show the exact amount of time, principal, and interest for every payment, and the savings for prepayments on a loan. You can do it with a pencil and paper, or with payment tables, a spreadsheet, or a financial calculator. You don’t need a $3500 software package to tell you how.

IMO no matter what their fancy (and very well-done) presentations promise, you will come out better by paying all of your extra money to reduce your own mortgage principal instead of giving any of it to somebody else to put in their pocket or to reduce their mortgage.

If these new schemes really did work for anything other than lining their own pockets, why aren’t they willing and able to provide concrete numbers and amortization schedules to prove it?”

http://clarkhoward.com/p/boards/ch/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=clarkhowardmoney&Number=739178&page=&view=&sb=&vc=1#Post739178

Ron what you don’t understand is that many will not do it on their own. They won’t stick with.

Jason,
That is a spurious argument, and does not justify anything, least of all misleading folks into spending more money, and getting $3,500 further into debt!

Unless an individual first actually tries on their own (after being properly informed and understanding) then they have not failed… And you simply cannot possibly know who may or may not stick with it on their own. Everyone with a home and a mortgage is smart enough and able to do it for themselves!

Paying money for anything does not guarantee stick-to-it-tiveness or results! In fact, I am inclined to believe, especially with the product you are selling, that those who will not stick to it on their own, will similarly not have any better results after spending thousands of dollars they don’t have.

This is exactly because; You must still you do ALL of the same things as you would have to do on your own! The product doesn’t do any of that for you automatically! You must still have the exact same self restraint, self control, and self reliance… you still have to write the checks, control your own spending, and choose to pre-pay your mortgage on your own, every day, every month. There is no magic or miracle… you do it all yourself, for yourself!

And if you save the up front costs, you are that much better off from day #1!

Jason, it simply is not your (or anyone’s) decision as to who gets a fair chance and who doesn’t get the right to decide for themselves! When a salesman doesn’t explain the whole truth and/or makes misleading or deceptive claims (no matter the reason)… then they are taking that right away from their client!

If anyone doesn’t understand why Nationally Syndicated Consumer Advocate, Clark Howard has reportedly said pay-for equity accelerator schemes, mortgage merge, and mortgage accelerator programs “Stink Like Rotted Fish”… then make sure to do some research and educate yourself.

http://clarkhoward.com/p/boards/ch/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=clarkhowardmoney&Number=739178&page=&view=&sb=&vc=1#Post739178

For more information and links to other references go to:

http://www.integramortgages.com/financialvoodoo

This question is for Bill. I read your post that if your against this program you must be “on the right side of the fence”. You also said that if your for this program you are “on the wrong side of the fence”.

My question is, if I am a client and I have been using this program for over 3 years, and I am now due to pay off in about 9 months, which side of the fence am I on? The “right side or the wrong side?”

When I first started on this program, I understood up front exactly how this program works. I understood that it utilizes your income cycles, i.e. Monthly, Semi-Monthly, Weekly, & Bi-Weekly.

I understood that you place your regular income and your discretionary income against your balance to help pay down your mortgage and save interest.

You stated: “By the way Jason, if there were no Ron’s out there creating mortgages, you’d have to find some other scheme to use to bilk innocent people out of $3500.”

I don’t understand why you stated that I was “bilk” out of $3,500. This program was explained to me exactly the way it has performed for me. I was referred to this program from a friend and it has performed as promised for him also. Where are all of the “bilk” out of $3,500 people you are talking about?

As I have stated before, there are those who claim to know everything about this program, and then there are those of us who actually use it. I am the latter, and yes, you do have to use it to know everything about it. If someone says you don’t have to use it to be an expert on it, they are speaking out of a lack of personal experience.

I am a satisfied customer. Why do I care that the facts are communicated? Because I have seen what this program does in real life and I have seen what debt can do to people in real life. If debt is managed properly it can be a good thing. The problem is that based on national statistics, the majority of America mismanages debt. I have seen it personally in my profession and anyone that says paying off your home is a bad thing needs to take a look at national statistics in reference to debt, foreclosures, and misspending.

Some how, Chris, Ted, Ron and the like seem to “Glaze” over whenever I (a satisfied client) have posted a comment on this program. I guess because I am not on the “Good side (opposers) or the Bad side (agents)” of the fence, my experience as an actual customer doesn’t matter.

Jeremy

How about posting all your numbers. A four year payoff isn’t attainable for the typical customer regardless of the program they use.

Jeremy, you were put on the wrong side of the fence. If you hadn’t paid for the MMA and simply put the same amount of extra principle you already must have done, you would have already paid off your mortgage. The MMA put you behind. Congratulations on being so close, it is too bad you would have already been there.

Chris,

Are you asking me to post 3 years of my personal financial information on the internet??

Let me ask you, will you post your last 3 years of personal checking account and credit card information on the internet? Even if you remove your account numbers, you know that any informed finance expert would tell you that is a bad idea.

You stated in your last post that “A four year payoff isn’t attainable for the typical customer”.
You are right. I only had a little over 10 years owing on my home before I started on the program. I am not saying that my results are typical. I am just stating my personal results. I know it will take longer for other people.

This program is not magic. For those of you with the same questions I had, look at the frequently asked questions FAQ on the companies website. They help to dispel some of the “fallacies”. This is the link:
http://www.u1stfinancial.com/Default.aspx?tabid=118

RON said “Everyone with a home and a mortgage is smart enough and able to do it for themselves!”

How many times do we need to tell you that OF COURSE people can do it on their own and ITS COVERED IN THIS ORIGINAL ARTICLE YOU IMBUSAL!

And it really gets annoying when you post the SAME link and your SAME crap regarding how much you care about people getting “scammed” and steer them to your website in order to originate more loans as a mortgage broker!

And so there you go. After one reads Trent’s article here he tells you front and back why MMA can be great and how you could accomplish it doing it on your own. Why do you keep slandering the product?? If you are going to complain about the price then one could complain that you do not deserve to make $300 or more just as an application fee, etc. etc. This is a business and it’s not a not-for-profit you moron!

You are a snake Ron! Are you retarded?

Why don’t you just go around town and tell people they can lose all weight for FREE! And they can change their brake pads for FREE! And they can build muscle WITHOUT a trainer!

DUH. DUH. and DUH.

Ron is DEFINATELY a fraud and DEFINATELY only here to draw him some more business acting as a sham knight in shining armor here to get us BACK INTO debt while he has no clue how the system works and just why people have stuck with our wonderful product. Just read the testimonials from folks in this thread. And if you say you can do it on your own – when everybody knows you can based on the friggin article! – and if you continue to call it a scam when in fact the product works! – then I’ll spank you!

And if you want to argue the price.. then let’s also argue how all the fees you back into each loan are not worth the value they get in return.

Bug off Ron!

EVERY service will set you back SOME amount of money. It doesn’t matter if you are a realtor, broker like Ron, or an agent of United First Financial. That seems to be too much for people like ‘crazy’ and Ron and Chris and others to stomach.

Crazy,

In your following post you stated: “If you hadn’t paid for the MMA and simply put the same amount of extra principle you already must have done, you would have already paid off your mortgage. The MMA put you behind.”

I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but what is it with those of you speaking as if you are actually using the program, when it is clear that you never have.

You are missing the biggest points. In reality, I would not have paid my mortgage off this quickly without this. I have found that there is a major difference in simply stating “I can do it on my own” and having something in my day to day life that helps me to actually following through on it.

When I first saw this program, I also said “I can do it on my own”, then 3 months later I heard of someone else having success with it and I realized, I was doing NOTHING different than I always was “on my own”.

Like I said before, this program is not magic. I probably would not have stuck to it in the first place “on my own” and I have worked in the financial world for longer than I want to admit.

Jeremy

Are you serious? I am only interested in what your remaining balance, term & interest rate was when you started the program and how much average monthly discretionary income you were using for prepayment. Shouldn’t be any harm there. When it comes to the actual math, a lot of people making extravagent claims either:
A Don’t want to share their figures.
B Their figures are flawed.
C Their situation is not even close to the norm.

Chris,

My remaining balance that I owed on my mortgage when I started on this program was about $110,000. I had about 10 years to payoff and my interest rate is 5.25%. My discretionary income varies widely from month to month because I am self employed. But I do have respectable discretionary income. It has had a lot to do with getting the loan paid down faster, but it is also money that I normally would just have sitting in my savings account for a rainy day. Through this program, I have still had access to money for a rainy day, it is just sitting against my mortgage balance canceling interest until I need it. I haven’t changed anything in my life, other than keeping my money against my mortgage, instead of having it sit in a savings account earning around 1 to 2%. I still invest in a variety of different investments. This program has helped me to see the cause and effect of my regular income and my sitting around money and that has made the difference between me thinking I will “do it on my own” vs. actually carrying it out in real life.

Jeremy

Looks like you spent at least $17,000 per year on prepayemnt. Most people don’t have even close to this kind of discretionary income, not to mention the sign up fee. So you paid $3,500, and probably saved less than $200 by shuffling your money through the HELOC.

Chris I will say that I look forward to a program that you create that will accomplish what you are explaining with all the features of the MMA software. I’ll buy from you. That is where to VALUE comes in. We have no complaints and happy customers and they understand the cost of the software. You should see $$$ signs.

Til then…

So Jeremy, you needed to spend $3500 to relize that you could take your discretionary money out of your savings account and pay it towards your mortgage? Amazing. The MMA money shuffle saved you at best $5 a month. So lost big time. You should be very angry.

Jason V. I have the program. pay me not Chris. Give me $3500 and I’ll a call you 1 time a month to encourage you to pay your extra principle towards your mortgate.

Crazy again is too stupid to figure out that even though one can do it on their own – a minority actually follow through. Dumb – dumb…

Jason. So you are saying that a majority of people need to spend $3500 to relize that they could take their discretionary money out of their savings accoutnts and pay towards their mortgage?

Crazy. So you are saying that a majority of people need to spend $300/mo on supplements to realize that they could just eat healthier and not eat in-between meals? What’s your point.

Jason V, I am trying to clarify. Answer the question it is a yes or a no.

Jeremy,
It is not really worth agruing with these guys. They all obviously have some sort of agenda that is being threatened by the existence of a truely amazing financial program. I am another very satisfied customer of this program. Although I have not seen the level of success that you have I have in just 3 months seen a tremendous reduction in my 2nd mortgage. When I started this program I already had a $39K balance at this time (3 months later)I have an average balance of $35K. I never would have been able to pay my 2nd down by 4k in three months without the discipline of this program. The thirty five hundred has not been a second thought for me (I also thought at first that 3500 was exorbitant). I had alot of discretionary income that I was just p-s-n off. I now have a financial direction that I have never had before. To me what is sad is that these guys are going to cause people who could benefit from this to not give it a chance or a look.

Mark, you’re right it is not worth arguing with us. As Ted has shown, the MMA takes LONGER, is HARDER, is RISKIER, and is MORE expensive. Than simply putting that exact same amount of principle towards your mortgage that you do using the smoke screen, completely immoral sales practice driven MMA program. Believe the LIE just stop convincing others to believe it as well.

Chris and the like,

What so homeowners are missing is a way to make more educated decisions on the money they earn and spend on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Most people make spending decisions based off of emotion, instead of rational thinking. If you are saying that “people can just do this on their own”, are you saying they can, or they will? Just saying “they can” profits them nothing. Saying “they will” is a different story. If someone “will do it”, then that is fantastic! But if you are saying that people are doing it on their own, then you need to take a closer look at national consumer finance and spending. 2005 is the first year since the great depression that as a nation, we had a negative savings rate. If the advice you’re giving has been around for as long as it has, why are we going down financially as a nation if “people are doing it on their own”?

Paying off your mortgage as early as possible and positioning your self for financial independence is based on income variables and daily spending decisions you make along the way, not just a static statement of “I can”. Tools are needed in real life, not just empty statements.

It is clear that you have other motives here. I do not believe that your motives have been disclosed, and I do not believe that you intend to. Please save your breath trying to appear as Mother Teresa. She would not attack someone for sharing their genuine experience as you have. I am not looking to “gain” from this thread, like some others. I have simply worked in the world of finance for so long, that I know something good when I have personally experienced it. Thank you for your time. Please respond to someone else now.

Al or Jason V,

People on this tread have been talking about how well or how ineffective the MMA Software is in paying off your mortgage.

How does the MMA work in paying down any Credit Card debts that I may have along with my Mortgage?

Mark,
Did you aleady have a HELOC for your 2nd mortgage when you started the MMA? Your 4 month results are fantanstic.

So Jeremy. Answer the question. Are you saying that people should spend $3500 to be motivated to spend their discretionary money towards their principle? Arguing about “if they will do it” is a STUPID argument. The MMA does NOTHING for a person. The PERSON still has to do ALL the actions. This is RISKY is is crazy. The people who would be suckered into this are more likely than not to encounter the following scenario.

Take $5000 from Heloc and put on mortgage, put paycheck on Heloc. Pay bills. Then spend all extra money. uh oh. Now they are even more in debt.

The MMA does nothing exept save from $3-$5 through the heloc mortgage shuffle. This is lost money when you calculate the cost of the program and what your money would have done in a money market account.

Crazy,

Do you ride a bicycle to work?

Crazy has a mental disorder.

Based on his logic – he is not very intelligent either. Poor ‘lil fella.

Making comments like “it is HARDER” is just silly being that he has never used the program nor does he intend to.

Obviously it is EASIER because customers are actually following through! They are paying down their mortgage faster! I wonder why? It’s the most powerful snake oil on the planet! Heh.

Several people using the MMA have expressed how happy they are with it, despite the fact that their success has nothing to do with the program at all. Obviously, if the same or better results can be experienced without spending the $3,500, then they must be based on something else. The only way this works, is to decide to spend extra money on your mortgage, and then to actually make yourself do it. A common expression I hear from the proponents, is that there are so many satisfied customers. There are also thousands upon thousands of satisfied homeowners that have (that’s have, Jeremy, not can) done this on their own over the years, and with results superior to the MMA.

Is it really any wonder why most MMA customers are so satisfied with the program? A lot of the users cannot grasp the math to begin with, let alone when explained to them. Then they are made to believe that their savings is due to the program. Take, for example, Mark above. Even if a person only pays one lump sum prepayment, the amount of “future savings” supersedes, not only the amount of that prepayment, but also the cost of the program. UFF, claiming that this savings is because of their program, and therefore it pays for itself, is brilliant deception at its best.

Sue says of Mark’s situation, “Your 4 month results are fantastic”. Well duh, the day you borrow a big lump sum and send it in as prepayment, your mortgage reduction results look the same that day as they do in month 4 or until you make another prepayment. The real question is, how much does Mark owe on his HELOC?

Pete

Looks like UFF has changed the marketing statement on their website again:

“Qualified homeowners using the Money Merge Account™ System can now potentially pay off their 30-year mortgage within 1/3rd to 1/2 the regular time – with little to no change to their day-to-day spending habits and with out increasing their minimum monthly mortgage payments.”

Mark says, “To me what is sad is that these guys are going to cause people who could benefit from this to not give it a chance or a look.”

Please, you’re knocking us for helping people make informed decisions based on the facts. If the MMA had any mathematical advantage at all, it would be able to stand on its own merit. Claiming that prepaying your mortgage with the MMA is better than doing it on your own, is like telling someone it is better to have $1,000,000 now, than to have one penny that is doubled every day for the month of October. People that only see dollar signs will jump at the million and gloss over the fact that they could have had $10,737,418.24 by October 31st.

Jeremy, if the truth is a motive, then yes, I am guilty.

“they could have had $10,737,418.24 by October 31st”

I want that program.

No, I do not ride a bicyle to work. I would if I live a little closer to my work though. Now answer my question. It is a simple question.
I have another question as well. Why don’t any MMA proponents throughout this thread answer basic questions?

Sue,
Yes I did. The fact that I did already have the HELOC made it much easier for me to start the program. As the weeks went by I began to realize the power of this program and have become a bit of a mizer. Believe me I have never been thrifty or mizerly in my life (but always wanted to be better with money). The way I was able to pay down the 2nd mortgage is that I really began to focus on my finances finding where I was leaking money and I started working Overtime for the first
time in many years.
The point here is that if you are someone who can do this on your own by all means take a shot at it, but if your someone like myself this program will work. Who ever was saying previously that it is not the program but it is the individual is correct it is the person. Unfortunately for people like me I needed a tool (a good tool is always good to have and unfortunately good tools
are sometimes expensive)to get things acomplished.
Again, for me it’s that end date in the upper right hand corner of the software that is keeping me motivated.

Jason V said “I want that program.” regarding doubling a penny.

No problem. Send me $3500 and I’ll tell you how to do it. You won’t do it on your own unless you have me to tell you how to do it. You will have to send me your money, then register with my website and log in every day and then do what my algorithm tells you to do every day. You will have to send in the money my program tells you to each day. Don’t worry, it works 100% guarantee. I will give you all your money back if it doesn’t work for you, but you will have to do what the program says. Everyone who does it is satisfied and there have been absolutely no complaints. We even had astro physicists develop our algorithm and then amazingly regular folk beet it by 20%. Follow my double your penny program for 30 days and you will have 10,737,418.24. Remember you CAN’T do this on your own. It is just like having an exercise instructor and driving your car to work.

Mark. Here is a link to a FREE calculator that would given you your NEEDED end date payoff. Sorry it is not in the upper right hand corner. But it does show you what you are doing without lieing to you. If anyone has others they like please post. Mark was taken for $3500 let’s not let someone else take the effort to do a web search for a mortgage payoff calculator.

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/mortgage-calculator.asp

Hey crazy the program is working for me. And there is no kinda spin you can drum up to change that fact.

“We even had astro physicists develop our algorithm and then amazingly regular folk beet it by 20%. Follow my double your penny program for 30 days and you will have 10,737,418.24. Remember you CAN’T do this on your own. It is just like having an exercise instructor and driving your car to work.”

Crazy one word for you: “no”. that was not even humorous. Stupid in fact. And I’d sue you into the ground on day 32. ;)

Mark,
Your situation sounds like mine. I have a large HELOC for my 2nd. I have been paying absolutely nothing on the principle for almost 3 years.I even called the person who sold me the HELOC to see what other options I had. Of course no one ever mentioned that I could cancel interest by using it as a checking account. Will give them the benefit on the doubt that they didn’t know!
But since I have the HELOC in place I am going to try this out. I don’t have anything to lose (but interest I am paying out each month).I am not planning on using the software at first because if I’m not mistaken it would not tell me to make a payment to the primary mortgage until the HELCO is zeroed out which will take me 6 years or so according to the analysis I had done. Is this what you’ve experienced? The $3000 you’ve saved should only be your discretionary income as well as the interest savings from depositing all your checking and savings money there.Thanks for sharing your info.

Jason V. Why would you sue me? You would have $10,737,418.24 if you followed my program. This is proven. It is working for everyone that uses it. No spin can be drummed up to change that fact. Rememember you can’t do this on your own. What do you say Jason V?

Interesting how all my arguments sound like the arguments from a MMA sales person. I wonder why I can’t get them to accept my program. Even when it is mathematically proven. OH, They lie and they don’t understand math.

Sue. What you are saying to do would be wise. It won’t save you tones of money, but it should save you about $3-5 a month. If you don’t spend any money to do it you will be ahead in the end. Make sure your Heloc doesn’t have any regulations on it about how many checks you can write. When you get your Heloc paid off, it will become less wise for you to then start using your Heloc. Simply start paying your extra principle towards your first and forget about your Heloc. If you Heloc has a yearly fee, you may want to lose it all together. (this depends on what you do with your money and if you think you will need to access the money for some reason)

Mark “Hey crazy the program is working for me”
What does “it’s working for me mean”
Just because you made a horrible financial decision, that is now encouraging you to make other questionable financial decisions in no way means that it is working. Mark you should be angry that you were lied to.
Also, what did you think of the Bankrate calculator? Pretty handy hugh?

At least I can see where Chris is coming from. For you though ‘crazy’ .. you are not even worth responding to. No one should feel like they have to respond to him. Just ignore him.

Jason V you just don’t understand. You don’t understand the math. This works. You need to pay for my double the penny program, because you won’t do it on you own. Don’t you get it. If you could do it on your own then you would. It is a great motivational program.

But since I can’t see where you are coming from you are not worh responding to. Maybe I’ll just ignore you.

Sue
Your plan to focus on your heloc is wise. If later you find your having trouble sticking to your goal then consider buying the software. If you can do it on your own more health to you. I have tried numerous times in my life to stick to a mortgage pay down but was never able to. Good luck to you.

Mark,
Thanks for the encouragement. A friend did the MMA anaylsis for me which showed no injections to the 1st mortgage until the HELOC is paid down.(my HELOC is my 2nd and is large). Chris mentioned earlier that “of course” (or ” duh”- his expression) you saved 3000 in interest the first few months because you injected it into your 1st. But since you already had a Heloc for a 2nd as I do, the software did not tell you to prepay your first at all. THe $3000 should be your discretionary income as well as interest savings from letting all your checking and savings money sit in the HELOC, thus reducing the principle balance. My analysis has me paying off my large HELOC in 7 years, then I will whittle down my 1st by making additional payments. We never dreamed we’d be able to pay down our interest only loan with our small amount of discretionary income. In fact it looked unbelievable at first but after picking it apart (double checking with my own amortization schedule) and subracting the discretionary income that accumulates in the account, I can see that the interest savings makes a huge difference and keeps compounding in my favor rather than the bank’s.
Although I am not personally using the MMA product at this time I am grateful that a friend showed me the program. i would still be making those exhorbitant interst payments with no hope of ever paying off the loan. As the HELOC gets payed off I may in fact purchase the software.
I did the anylsis with borrowing the 3500 for the software with the HELOC and not doing so. Purchasing the 3500 with the HELOC only added one month to paying off my morgage.So for those busy folks who don’t want the hassle of trying to figure out the optimal time to pay down their mortgage this seems like a good product. It also looks like a good tool for keeping you on budget.
I was extremely skeptical of this program and wouldn’t have given it a serious thought, but I knew and trusted the person introducing it to me.
In fact, I knew there was something to it when the mortgage guy at the bank who is known as a “mover and shaker” got excited when I tried to show him what I planned to do. He spent a week researching it and is now testing it with one of his rental properties.
So Mark, I applaud you for taking a huge step on the road to financial freedom. I am right behind you!

Sue congratulations to you for realizing that you can use your discretionary money to help pay down your loans. You have pointed out the only quality that I have seen to the MMA. That is: those who look at it see that it is a fraud and it kickstarts them to sending their discretionary money to pay of their principle.

The only variable that should be looked at is. How much extra money is going to your principle based on the math Heloc/paycheck/mortgage money “shuffle” You will create about $3-5 a month at best. The program itself actually casues you to loose this benifit.

You make the point “Purchasing the 3500 with the HELOC only added one month to paying off my morgage”

For many people this is a lot of money.

Crazy,
I don’t buy that the MMA concept is “fraud” at all. I always try and keep an open mind and do know that when things seem too good to be true, they usually are. But I also know that sometimes they are true. That’s why I like to read both the pros and cons so I can make an intelligent decision. I have looked at the numbers on the anylsis that was done for me. I’ve picked it apart and it appears that I can pay off my HELOC in 7 years saving much more interest than $4-%5 per month. I’d never payit off at that rate. So I am taking the plunge and figure I have nothing to lose and much to gain. If I’m wrong then at least I tried.
I could never put money toward the principle anyway because we are still recovering from the hurricane that destroyed our home. We have been living from paycheck to paycheck for 3 years now, and have had so many unexpected challenges come up that we are not comfortable sending anything extra to the principle. We may need it and then not be able to eat. So what I like about the MMA concept is that I still have the money readily available in case I need it where the mortgge company won’t return the extra money.In fact I think that we will just keep a HELOC even after it is paid down just for emergencies. Absolutley no one would loan us money after the hurricane, not even the SBA, whose purpose (allegedly) is to help folks during disasters!!
Even though I have become extremly disciplined over the past 3 years with managing our money, I think I will probably invest in the MMA once my HELOC is paid down. By that time I will be able to afford one house payment for the software. In the meantime I will be checking my HELOC balance each year against the balance that was quoted to me on the MMA anaylsis. Then I will know for sure. IMO there has to be something to this if it stirs up this much controversy!

Sue, I feel for your situation, and it worries me that you will waste $3500 of your hard earned money. If you are not convinced that this program is a fraud go to http://www.scam.com and read the 3 major threads that deal with this issue. If you are honest with yourself you will see that that at best this is a motivational tool, at worse it causes people to go further into debt. No matter what, it is not defendable based on the propoganda from U1stfinancil.

United First Financial http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=23250

MMA (Money Merge Account) ALERT!!
http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=25343

Mortgage acceleration lies and misleading statements
http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=28931

Also
Clark Howard
http://clarkhoward.com/p/boards/ch/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=clarkhowardmoney&Number=739178&page=&view=&sb=&vc=1#Post739178

The lies by MMA salesman on this thread alone should scare you away.

Sue said, “Chris mentioned earlier that “of course” (or ” duh”- his expression) you saved $3,000 in interest the first few months because you injected it into your 1st.”

No, actually I did not say that at all. When you make a prepayment on any mortgage, whether it be to your first or to your second, you are lowering the principle balance. Mark’s situation is that he reduced his principle balance by $4,000 (39K-35K). I don’t know where you came up with an interest savings of $3,000, but it wasn’t from me.

Sue said, “We never dreamed we’d be able to pay down our interest only loan with our small amount of discretionary income.”

Well you better keep on dreaming then, because in your very next post, you say: “I could never put money toward the principle anyway. We have been living from paycheck to paycheck for 3 years now, and have had so many unexpected challenges come up that we are not comfortable sending anything extra to the principle.”

Sue said, “I did the analysis with borrowing the $3,500 for the software with the HELOC and not doing so. Purchasing the $3,500 with the HELOC only added one month to paying off my mortgage.”

You’re still dreaming. If you spend the $3,500, it will add a lot more than a month. They stacked the cards Sue, when they ran their analysis with more discretionary income than they listed on your report. That’s why, when you plug in the listed numbers yourself, it only appears that you can’t do any better.

Sue says, “So for those busy folks who don’t want the hassle of trying to figure out the optimal time to pay down their mortgage this seems like a good product.”

There is nothing to figure out Sue. The optimal time is as soon as you can.

Sue said, “I’ve picked it apart and it appears that I can pay off my HELOC in 7 years saving much more interest than $4-$5 per month. I’d never pay it off at that rate.”

That’s the point, your not going to pay it off any faster unless you have the discretionary income that you say you don’t have.

Sue said, “ I think I will probably invest in the MMA once my HELOC is paid down. By that time I will be able to afford one house payment for the software.”

Burning your money in a furnace would net nearly the same result. The MMA is a money loser. One house payment applied to the principle will save you more than the MMA ever will.

Fact: The interest saved by shuffling all your money through the HELOC amounts to hardly anything.

Fact: The interest saved by prepaying your mortgage has nothing to do with the MMA.

WOW, you people are out of control. Or maybe it’s just that you like to argue, I mean debate, a topic to death.
Here’s something that you “geniuses” seem to have left out when doing your calculations.
1. You are taxed on interest that is earned. So you pay roughly 33 cents on the dollar for the money you put in that interest earning checking account, depending on what tax bracket you are in. Not to mention that with all that stated interest you’re going to make, you’ll now be in a higher tax bracket and pay even more. Wow, you’re off to a great start!
2. You lose your tax deduction when you pay your
mortgage off. So you can’t deduct roughly 33 cents on the dollar after it is paid off. Oh no, there goes your tax deduction. Oh well, I guess you’ll have to come up with another tax deduction. Maybe you’ll have to buy some investment property with the money you saved in interest cancellation. BTW, the money you saved in interest cancellation isn’t taxed because it
wasn’t “earned income”.
3. Interest paid on the HELOC could be tax deductible, depending on the laws in your state.

I’ve also noticed that most of you people who have
negative comments about the MMA, haven’t really researched it and have never had an analysis done. And that the people who are using the MMA have mild to great things to say about the MMA, but nothing bad to say about it.

There will always be those who will dismiss anything outright, because they “know it all” and nothing will change their minds. If you know you are so smart that you can do it yourself, then go do it and quit trying to convince those who aren’t able to do it that the MMA is a scam. Quit telling those who are doing it that it is impossible.

I am not a UFirst Agent but, I have extensively
researched UFirst’s MMA because my sister has decided to become a Ufirst Agent. I can’t help it, she is my sister and I wanted to make sure she wasn’t being scammed. Also, my mother, two brothers, and my niece are doing it. My mother is retired and on a fixed income. She is only on track to pay her mortgage off two years earlier. But she she loves it. My one brother will pay his off in half the time and he loves it. My other brother, the only one of them who might be capable of doing his “own” calculations without the program, quit using the program. When I asked, he told me that he was on course to pay his mortgage off 11 years early but he got “tired” of updating the MMA software. I asked if it was a lot of work and he said, “not at all”. So I guess he’d get “tired” of doing the
calculations in about a week and end up in the same boat. He did say it was stupid to stop and that he’d get it going again. Now on to my niece, who is a MMA Agent. She is on track to pay her mortgage off in a couple of years. This is due to the fact that she puts any money made on the MMA towards the mortgage and that she now takes money that she used to waste and puts it toward the mortgage. Sounds to me like they really got scammed. Considering they were doing nothing to pay their mortgages off early prior to using the MMA program. And they definitely weren’t going to do it on their own. As for me, I would be using it but I don’t have a mortgage.

For those of you who “think” you can out perform the MMA, just run all your calculations to see how much money you can save yourself. Don’t forget to include all the hours you’re going to put into your calculations over the “payoff” period. Make sure you calculate those hours based on the minimum wage for your area, because you’re so smart that you’re worth at least the minimum wage. Then contact a United First Financial Agent and have them run a FREE MMA analysis.

If the MMA analysis shows that you can save more than $3,500.00, the cost of the MMA program, over what you calculated you could save yourself. Then purchase the MMA software. Otherwise, just smile to yourself and don’t purchase the MMA software. It’s that simple.
Don’t forget to post your results here.
BTW, UFirst has a money back guarantee, promising that the results will at least match those of the analysis.

I can tell you this from doing my research, which many of you obviously haven’t done, that I already know only a small percent of you will be able to beat their analysis and that an even smaller percent of you will actually be able to successfully complete your “own” plan and reach the savings you calculated.

-John
BEWARE of stupid people in large numbers, for they can do anything!

Sue
Because of your suggestion regarding doing the MMA concept and not purchasing the software right away I was motivated to speak to a close friend of mine that has had money problems for years (even though he earns a 6 figure income). I explained the concept of the MMA and encouraged him to obtain a heloc (he already has a fairly large fixed 2nd) so that he may begin paying down the current 2nd loan amount. He’s pretty excited about getting started.
Again, I’m not an independant agent as I do not believe in the MLM way of doing business but when I see what I believe to be a good thing I share it with my friends.

Chris,

If the “interest saved by prepaying your mortgage has nothing to do with the MMA” as you stated, then why are so many people that are on this program paying down their principal and reducing interest so quickly, when they never would have done so in the first place. Dont tell me it’s because they are uninformend, because I personally know the president of one of the nations largest banks that uses the program and another user that has been a financial planner for over 31 years. NEITHER of them sell the program, both of them love it.

Kinda funny how you seem to spend so much time in here. wink-wink.

Mark, I hope you haven’t doomed your friend to future financial disaster. For the record refer, to it as a Morgage Acceleration Scheme instead of MMA concept (this is not new stuff). MMA should be saved for the brilliant minds at U1financial who have figured out how to make a profit from deceiving people.

Mark,
I think I know exactly how your friend feels. I thought there was no way out except that my husband postpone retirement.I went on and registered with the company as an agent but without intentions to sell the product,at least not in the near future.It really doesn’t cost much to do thatand now I have complete access to their website where I can do my own analysis using all kinds of scenarios. We have investment property and I wanted to know which property to pay down first.I can also do an anlysis for my family members and friends who may benefit. I really wanted to see if the numbers I came up with were the same as the analysis someone else did for me! They were. (I am comfortable with MLM as have been involved in a supplement company for years mostly as a user, so that aspect doesn’t bother me at all)The analysis shows that I wouldn’t make any extra payments to the principle until the HELOC is paid off, so I have awhile until the software would benefit. Although I am not using the software at the present time, I am “using” their idea of running all my money through the HELOC, thereby reducing the principle without changing our financial situation at all except where the money sits until I pay the bills.
I would have never thought of this idea myself, if the truth be known, neither would have any of the naysayers on this blog, nor the banks (at least they wouldn’t have shared it with their interest-paying customers. I am very grateful that I heard about this and wish like Jeremy that I I had heard of it 3 years ago!
nown neither would have any of the naysayers on this blog)

Jordan

The interest saved by prepaying your mortgage has nothing to do with the MMA, because the same thing can be accomplished without it. Spending your discretionary income is what drives it, not the MMA. It’s like what makes the engine in your car go; it’s the gas that matters, not the station you buy it at.

People pay down their mortgages because they decide to start paying extra, regardless of the program they use.

Chris,

Then why are so many people that use this program getting out of debt ahead of the track they were on. You can say “nay-nay”, but the results say differently. The people using this program are not “uninformed” as you have previously alluded to.

Last week someone in my church told me they have been on this program for over a year and has paid down a total of $18k between his first and his heloc. He is a very intelligent person and understands the system completely.

John says: “Here’s something that you “geniuses” seem to have left out when doing your calculations; taxes.”

I’m quite aware of how taxes play out mathematically, and applying them to both approaches does not make the MMA more favorable. In fact, with taxes, the approach of not accelerating the mortgage and investing the surplus instead is usually leaps and bounds ahead of mortgage prepayment, but that’s a whole different topic.

John: “I’ve also noticed that most of you people who have negative comments about the MMA, haven’t really researched it and have never had an analysis done.”

This is another one of my favorites: You have to sign up for everything before you can weigh in on it. Are you kidding me? Notice how he is not using the MMA, yet he has his own opinion. I wonder if John would be willing to jump off a cliff to see if gravity exists at that location.

John: “Quit telling those who are doing it that it is impossible.”

No one is saying it’s impossible. What we do say is, mathematically, it is a money loser.

John: “Sounds to me like they really got scammed. Considering they were doing nothing to pay their mortgages off early prior to using the MMA program.”

It may help some people to use the MMA, if they actually follow through and if they absolutely would not have done anything otherwise. It may also help to pay someone $1,000 to tell you to pay off your credit card, and then pay it off, rather than run a large balance on it forever instead. Or you could just apply the $1,000 to your debt.

John: “For those of you who “think” you can out perform the MMA, just run all your calculations to see how much money you can save yourself. Don’t forget to include all the hours you’re going to put into your calculations over the “payoff” period.”

Doing it yourself takes less time than the MMA and there are hardly any calculations. Calculations are basically only needed to show people such as yourself how inferior the MMA approach actually is.

John: “If the MMA analysis shows that you can save more than $3,500.00, the cost of the MMA program, over what you calculated you could save yourself.”

The amount of savings due to the MMA will never surpass the $3,500. All other savings are not due to the MMA, but are achieved despite the MMA by decided to spend more money on prepayment.

John: “I can tell you this from doing my research, which many of you obviously haven’t done, that I already know only a small percent of you will be able to beat their analysis and that an even smaller percent of you will actually be able to successfully complete your “own” plan and reach the savings you calculated.”

More guessing with unsubstantiated assertions.

Attn UFF agents:

Don’t you wish all the MMA opponents would away? Here’s what you need to do. Petition UFF to do the following:

Change, “with little to no change to their day-to-day spending habits” to, there will be significant changes to your spending habits. You will be spending a lot more on your mortgage, and a lot less on other things. This has already been conceded by agents.

Change, “without increasing their minimum monthly mortgage payments” to, you will be making larger or additional payments to your mortgage. This has already been conceded by agents.

Quit showing the client an inferior discretionary income number based on 48 weeks, while hiding the fact that the analysis was based on 52. The fact that this is happening has already been conceded by agents.

Make people aware that it is possible to achieve the same or better results by doing it themselves. This has already been conceded by agents.

If the program really is the great “tool” that you say it is, people should not be deterred by the facts. I really don’t care what the program costs. If they clean up the deception, then I will go away.

If the number one concern of UFF really was the client, then they would race to make the changes above. Yes, it may force them to re-evaluate and possibly reduce the cost of their program, but they would probably have a better chance of surviving as a company, and clients would be told the truth.

My friend currently holds a fixed 2nd. His plan is to secure a HELOC (unlimited check, checking account) for the amount of the fixed 2nd then he will begin depositing his full paycheck into that account. Next he will pay his monthly bills from this account, whatever is left at the end of the month will remain against his formerly fixed 2nd.

Jordan

Because they have decided to make a 180 degree turn, just like some of the people who come into your church. They are choosing to spend their money on mortgage prepayment. The 18K didn’t come out of thin air. No one is saying that you can’t pay off your house using the MMA software.

Why are so many people that decide to do it on their own getting out of debt ahead of the track they were on? Same reason, they made a 180.

All I have ever said is that the MMA is mathematically inferior and UFF uses misleading marketing.

John,
Some exellent points you make!

Hey people my theory is that ‘Chris” and “Crazy” are the same person and are working for Ufirst. They both won’t let it rest. Think about it.

Mark I would never work for a company that made it’s profits from ripping people off. You are not being honest with yourself. The MMA takes LONGER, is HARDER, cost MORE, and is RISKIER. It asstounds me that people would even consider it given the lies throughout this thread.

Mark,
I would run your friend’s plan by a knowledgeable rep before he takes out a large HELOC. I already had a large HELOC for my 2nd, just didn’t know it as that- I thought it was an interest-only loan with a 10 year baloon. I’m not sure if replacing his 2nd with a HELOC is the prudent thing to do (especially if it is large),in his situation. Perhaps he should use the MMA on his 2nd, then when it is paid down run it on his first. My situation is totally different. We chose an interest-only loan with a 6 month low teaser rate for a 2nd because we planned on selling an investment property within a couple months after buying our home and then pay it off, but Hurricane IVan changed those plans! If his 2nd isn’t too large I guess it would be OK.IT’s just that I’ve been living with this large HELOC over my head for 3 years now and wouldn’t wish it on anyone. You mentioned that your friend could use money management skills so if he can afford the MMA it could help with that.

Sue says “You mentioned that your friend could use money management skills so if he can afford the MMA it could help with that.”

I think that just says it all. Reminds me of the movie Dumb and Dumber.

Chris,

All of your concerns that you previously stated on this thread have been addressed and disclosed on the companies’ website in their FAQ section. Here is the link if you would like to read it:

http://www.u1stfinancial.com/Default.aspx?tabid=118

Please take the time to read this. It seems to disclose everything you state that it is trying to hide.

Or how about the movie “The Jerk”

I just want to add my two-cents on a highly debated topic.
To everyone reading this blog. Read it again and again and again. Do not focus on the bloggers comments, but focus on Trent’s article. This is his article after all. He says “this program is not for everyone.” So just leave it at that. Some people find it hard to believe but this program really isn’t for everyone. It’s a “you cannot make a square peg fit a round hole” kind of program.
In my opinion (because I actually have this same problem), some people need the push (as in spending $3,500) to get their financial habits (or just regular life issues) in order. MMA offers them this opportunity. The MMA is a financial vehicle. If you spent $3,500 wouldn’t you want to succeed? It pushes you to control your finances and to try and make extra principle payments thus reducing the length of your mortgage because you’ve already invested $3,500.
For example Jeremy (one of the bloggers) posted, he spent 3 months not doing anything at all. This $3,500 investment made him want to do something about his mortgage as in paying it off early.
Kudos to Chris and Ted and whoever is educated, financially, savvy and disciplined enough to actually do what they recommend to other readers. Most people can’t do what they can do by themselves. Maybe you guys should hold free seminars and counseling sessions in real life so that you can help people to save their $3,500.
But in my opinion, your online blogging is real cheap because it doesn’t really provoke anyone to do something (ie. make extra principle payments, save, invest, spend less, etc.) You tell people they can do it themselve but you don’t provide the tools for them to do it.
One huge analogy I have about the cost of this MMA program (because I love tabloids) is the fact that why do people pay for rehab? We all know we can kick habits ourselves. Why pay someone to help us if we have an alcohol/drug problem? We all know we just need to stop using/abusing the drug that is causing us this problem. But not all of us have the strength and discipline to do it alone. We need tools. The price of what you are willing to pay for a service/good is how you value the specified service/good.
IMO, even if I was spending $3,500 on this program that seems like a total waste to you, It will have provoked me to start and and to continue to make me stick to a financial plan set out by this software. It’s like paying for rehab. Hypothetically, If i spent $50,000 (an exorbitant sum) for rehab I for sure would want to kick the habit. Think of all the drugs/alcohol I could have bought instead of trying to make myself better. So you get the point?
We all should eat healthy and exercise but how many of us really do it even though we know it is proven to be beneficial to our health and well being??? We all should but in reality we don’t.
It is your decision whether or not you want to spend your hard earned money on this program. We all have bought luxury goods (unnecessary is what I mean by luxury) and eat out (dine out) and pay for services (haircut). This is just another expense that some company has packaged up and provided in the hopes that you will pay off your mortgage early because you invested $3,500 in their program and in your financial future.
In closing, I applaud both sides of comments about this issue. It has been very informative and educational. But I implore anyone who chances upon this article/thread to make their own educated and informed decision on where and how to spend their hard earned money. Take care.
-Eric T. 24 y/o (works in retail & part-time student) of San Francisco and hopefully a homeowner one day!

Mark,
I am wondering if you are able to determine about how much of the money you saved since starting the MMA was interest savings alone? Can you seperate that from your discretionary? I realize this may be difficult to figure out.
Thanks.

Sue
To much math. Money has been going in and out of the account since mid June when I started the program. What I did though to keep track was that I marked the balance in my heloc just after my paycheck deposited I then rechecked the balance after my check deposited in September. The difference was to be exact $3660.00. I will admit a lot of that paydown was via overtime earned and my very focused attention to my budget. Stopped going out to eat 5 times a week stopped spending so much money on my house, cancelled the newspaper, that extra phone line to the house, cut back on my cable tv, started taking my lunch, and a few other things. Yes it’s true I could have done all this without MMA but the fact remains that I never would have, had I not experienced the power of the MMA software. Again, good tools are sometimes expensive. My tractor cost my approx 15K but it has paid for itself 2x over since I bought it.

Mark,
Wow,I’m inspired. Good for you! I’m trying to teach my kids how to manage their money before they leave home so will include your example. Presently I’m in the process of switching my bank accounts into my HELOC so pretty soon I can begin. Thanks for sharing.

Eric T and others,
Are you aware that there are credit counseling services, staffed by specifically educated, trained, and licensed individuals willing to provide assistance to you? Some of these one-on-one services and classroom financial management instructional courses are even free.

So, if you feel that the many Free self-help resources (including your local library), and low cost personal finance software such as Microsoft Money and Quicken are not enough, then below is a link to the United States Department of Justice and their Lists of Approved Personal Financial Management and Approved Nonprofit Budget and Credit Counseling Agencies (Pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 111)

Approved Personal Financial Management:
http://www.usdoj.gov/ust/eo/bapcpa/ccde/de_approved.htm

Approved Credit Counseling Agencies:
http://www.usdoj.gov/ust/eo/bapcpa/ccde/cc_approved.htm

Notice that United First Financial is NOT on any of these lists!

If anyone feels they need help with their personal finances, make sure to do your own research and find reliable help… talk to an accountant, cpa, attorney, local bank, or other trusted finance professional.

Protect yourself, Be careful, and Don’t get your most important financial advice from unlicensed salesman for a software company!

http://www.integramortgages.com/financialvoodoo

Sue,
Sorry, I have to backtrack, I had forgotten,I paid for the MMA back then by closing another account (3.5K did not come out of my heloc) I had at that time. So at this time overall I’m about 160 to the good not counting any interest I deferred.

If you are not convinced that this program is a fraud go to http://www.scam.com and read the 3 major threads that deal with this issue. If you are honest with yourself you will see that that at best this is a motivational tool, at worse it causes people to go further into debt. No matter what, it is not defendable based on the propoganda from U1stfinancil.

United First Financial http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=23250

MMA (Money Merge Account) ALERT!!
http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=25343

Mortgage acceleration lies and misleading statements
http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=28931

Also
Clark Howard
http://clarkhoward.com/p/boards/ch/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=clarkhowardmoney&Number=739178&page=&view=&sb=&vc=1#Post739178

The lies by MMA salesman on this thread alone should scare you away.

Jordan,

I read the FAQ again on the UFF site and two things are apparent to me. They modify their statements on a regular basis, and the major issues continue to be skirted. If you would like to point out the answers to my specific concerns, feel free, but at this point they remain valid.

Ron thinks you should turn to the GOVERNMENT for help on your finances?? LOL HAHAHAHAHAHA -LOSER!!

Or you could pay others FOR A FEE!! So much for your “Free Advice” .. lol

crazy is ‘tard too.. HAHAHAHA.

Protect your family.. from RON! LOL ahahahahahaha

For those of you that are thinking about using an MMA for motivational purposes. Check out these 2 sites wesabe.com and geezeo.com There IS ACTUAL research that suggest group involvement can help you with your finances. Both of these sites are free financial communities.

Don’t forget, the MMA takes LONGER, cost MORE, is RISKIER, and is HARDER.

Chris,

I dont have all the time in the world, but here are a few questions and answers that are listed on the company website at:

http://www.u1stfinancial.com/Default.aspx?tabid=118

The Q&A’s from the company website are listed below your comments in “” marks:

“I’m glad the program is going to work so well for you because you are choosing to spend all your extra money to pay off your home, even though the big claim from UFF is that you can do it with zero extra money.” -Chris

Q. If I spend more than I make, will the Money Merge Account work for me?
A. No. If you do not make more than you spend the Money Merge Account system and service is not the right option for you.

“And why are people getting analysis back that show discrepancies between their proposed monthly income(weekly times 4 equals monthly) versus what it actually is(weekly times 52 divided by 12 equals monthly)?” -Chris

Q. Does the Money Merge Account take into account if I am paid on a monthly, semi-monthly, weekly or bi-weekly basis?
A. Individual homeowners pay schedules such as monthly, semi-monthly, weekly and bi-weekly and other are taken into account. The Money Merge Account is programmed to take different pay schedules into account to operate at maximum efficiency. Weather you are paid 12, 24, 26, or 52 times a year, this system takes your specific pay schedule into account. This enables homeowners to benefit to their optimum potential under this concept while always maintaining complete and total control over their money and financial decisions.

“Change, “with little to no change to their day-to-day spending habits” to, there will be significant changes to your spending habits. You will be spending a lot more on your mortgage, and a lot less on other things. This has already been conceded by agents.” -Chris

Q. How can homeowners pay their mortgage off early with little to no change in lifestyle and with out increasing minimum monthly payments?
A. The Money Merge Account system and service is designed to work with a homeowners existing lifestyle. This system helps homeowners to reduce both the interest and time owing on their existing mortgage by repositioning their unused idle money which normally sits in their accounts and their regular monthly expense money until it is needed to pay expenses. When money is needed for expenses, it can be accessed through their Line of Credit. This system helps homeowners to strategically position their money where it provides much more financial benefit than “sitting stagnant” in a standard checking or savings account, until it is otherwise needed. Vast financial details programmed into the MMA software help to better educate the homeowner and assist in some of the greatest time and interest savings possible.

“Quit showing the client an inferior discretionary income number based on 48 weeks, while hiding the fact that the analysis was based on 52. The fact that this is happening has already been conceded by agents.” -Chris

Q. Does the Money Merge Account take into account if I am paid on a monthly, semi-monthly, weekly or bi-weekly basis?
A. Individual homeowners pay schedules such as monthly, semi-monthly, weekly and bi-weekly and other are taken into account. The Money Merge Account is programmed to take different pay schedules into account to operate at maximum efficiency. Weather you are paid 12, 24, 26, or 52 times a year, this system takes your specific pay schedule into account. This enables homeowners to benefit to their optimum potential under this concept while always maintaining complete and total control over their money and financial decisions.

Q. What is the secret behind the Money Merge Account?
A. There is no magic trick or secret type of loan or system that will let you own your home sooner. With the Money Merge Account, substantial savings are achieved by strategically and incrementally repositioning the unused money that you usually have “sitting stagnant” in a standard checking or savings account against the principal balance owing on your home until otherwise needed, without increasing your minimum monthly mortgage payments. When you need access to money you can draw money out through your Line Of Credit. Because much of the savings of this program come from homeowners repositioning the unused money that they normally do not spend and leave sitting in their standard checking or savings account, little to no lifestyle changes are needed. Many of the educational features in the Money Merge Account software help homeowners to better see the cause and effect of the money they spend and the money they don’t spend. Many of the features programmed into the Money Merge Account are based on what is called Behavioral Economics. The definition of Behavioral Economics is: A field of economics that studies how the actual decision making process influences the decisions that are reached.

There are many more questions and answers on the link of the company website that I have listed above.

It is clear that this company is not trying to mislead people. They have put a great tool in people’s hands to help them get out of debt, instead of just “talking about” how to get people out of debt.

Okay, I just read through a lot of these comments and I think I understand that the more often you deposit the better the outcome. What about those of us who only get paid once a month on the first and spend every dollar by the 20th of the month?

Chris’s note above is correct—I signed up as an agent, I can potentially make 6 figures plus, but unlike many of these greedy smucks, I’m not going to —-the software cannot save you money unless it creates discretionary income- and one of the ways it does this is to base everything on 48 weeks instead of 52 ( that’s why agents push this to weekly and bi-weekly customers–semimonthly and monthly customers won’t see a benefit because there is no way for the smoke and mirror mathematics to work) —Let me explain this concept and why it is disturbing as a salesman—The customer comes to me and says after all his bills and entertainment he has 0$ discretionary left over at the end of the month. So I input 0 discretionary into the MMA computer analysis program—The customer is paid weekly and makes 700 net per week. In the final analysis page of the software it indicates that the net monthly income for the customer is 2800—WRONG–3033.33 is the accurate number. So what the program is doing is pulling 233.33 out of thin air and assuming it will be placed against the balance on the HELOC every month and not spent (even though the customer says he ain’t got a dime at month end.) If the customer could also pull this magic 233.33 out of thin air and put it on his mortgage payment as extra principal,according to my financial calculator, he will beat the MMA by several months every time–in reality the customer has already said he has nothing left over-so this logic means that when he uses the program he will be negative 233.33 every month if he spends the same amount. There will even be some customers who use this product with what they think is success ( a frustration for the truthseekers on these boards) but I assure you it was nothing they couldn’t have done be paying extra on the mortgage or freeing up disposable of their own through the smart use of a heloc–the only benefit I can see about this program is that it does make people see their cash flow in greater detail- and that alone saves some people money, and maybe that’s worth $3500 to some–but to me its VOODOO / Bush economics at its best—does this country really need more ways to lose equity now???

As a follow up to the above comment- I think ethically if we have even one situation that we can point to that’s blatantly incorrect in this software-a situation that has the capacity to create a benefit where none exists in reality-( in this case mistatement of true net monthly income/disposable, on every weekly and biweekly customer) (just look at any MMA analysis) then we are already deceiving buyers to some degree and red flags should start going up. Looking in reverse, as a mortgage broker, if I state a biweekly income on every semimonthly application, how many times do you think it will be caught by underwriting—–every time!!! People on this site can talk all they want about the feel good financial tool but the bottom line is that this program assumes that people who are paid weekly or biweekly spend less that those that are paid semi-monthly or monthly—because they don’t know they have extra money—-Scary assumption customers, and scary for the salesmen that aren’t into rationalizing the monetary potential in hocking this crap

Traveler,
Would you please expound upon “smart use of a HELOC”?
Thanks,

Sue, I simply mean that if you are going to have a HELOC and you already have credit cards with high rates and payments attached, paying them off with the HELOC will create disposable income for you and give you a chance to use that balance as a tax deductible item. Once you have more disposable (because of the monthly savings from the consolidation) you can then plow that extra money into paying off your Heloc and your 1st mortgage for that matter. The bottom line is that you CAN create disposable income in many instances. Then what you do with it is up to you. Pay down a mortgage and you replicate 100% what the MMA purports, spend it on dinners and your’re not going to be in such good shape. What I don’t like, however, is the case where a customer has no other debt to create disposable with and no way of attaining it, yet through number manipulation of their pay frequency it’s being created on paper for them every day by Ufirst agents. Good Luck–don’t go out to dinner tonight!

Jordan, like I said, they are skirting the issues. If you would like me to expand on each of the answers above, I will. And keep in mind, UFF has changed/added/deleted statements on their site since the beginning of this thread.

Mari,

Then the program is certainly not for you. God help you.

Let’s look at 2 scenarios for fun: (complements of the MMA software and my trusty real estate master IIx calculator):–Uff Agents start your software

1) John just took out a 100,000 mortgage (360 payments left) at 6% interest for 30 years. His P/I payment is $599.55 a month escrow is $200/mth if that matters. He gets paid 50000 a year in weekly increments of $961.54 gross and $673.08 net. HE HAS 0 discretionary income. Using this software he spends all his free time aquiring a Heloc, buying software and then tending to all its manipulations, moving money into his HELOC from his paycheck and occasionally from his 1st into his HELOC—He pays his mortgage off in 16.6 years. Trumpets blow, angels sing and he tells all his friends this is the greatest thing since sliced bread–the MMA agent meanwhile is so fat with cash he has to buy an extra seat for his one way ticket to the carribean.

Scenario 2: Joe has all the same terms. He rolls out of bed on the day his mortgage is due and pays his mortgage payment plus an extra principal payment of 224.14. ( the same money the program tricks you into beliving is available–2916.46-his actual monthly net minus his fake monthly net of 2692.32 stated on the software–) He then goes to the bank and takes out a Roth IRA and puts in a one time contribution of 3500–the price of the software. Joe goes back to bed. Joe pays of his house in 15.61 years with 9886.68 left over (599.75×12 plus 224.14×12–12 is how many months sooner his paid system paid it than john’s MMA). With no additional yearly contributions he also now has (by 16.6 years) 22,166.10 in his roth-12% /historical average-compunded once a year–SO Joe with minimal effort pays his house off a year sooner and has 32,052.78 extra in the pocket

John’s still smarter than if he went to Vegas but considerably less smart and less manipulated by magic tools than Joe.

Traveler,
What if the software was free. Do you see any benefit at all, maybe money management?
Sue

All said, I do think it could be useful to focus your spending in the right place if you want to pay for it and won’t be focused otherwise. It will pay off in the time it says if you follow it -that’s what i will say-and maybe for some that’s the only way you can force yourself to get there—-most important is to do something

Traveler you have a great post, but I can’t agree with you that you should buy this software if you wouldn’t be focused otherwise. That is a huge IF the reality is that if someone couldn’t be focused otherwise this is just going to put them $3500 behind and they should not even get close to thinking that they can manage this type of money shuffle without getting themselves deaper in debt. If the argument is left with “this is a money manegment software” (because all financial/math reasons have proven it wrong) the where is the research? Many other options are available that can be defended by research.

Crazy, in retrospect you have an excellent point—there is going to be shuffling involved and that would probably be just as hard for some people to accomplish. My point to Sue, maybe not well stated, is that inaction to change negative financial behaviors and generally being paralyzed by financial fears also has a huge monetary cost over time, possibly much more even than this very substandard MMA option. Everybody should have a plan to get to a goal and unfortunately a lot of people out there like Sue just need a sound financial advisor instead of a scheme being sold by an untrained MLM ” agent “. Heck if Sue had that same 100,000 mortgage that we discussed above and had no financial savvy whatsoever but simply gave up the daily 1.79 coffee mon through fri for a monthly total of 38.75 and then cut out the HBO and went back to basic for 15.99 a month savings, she could put 54.74 to her principal every month and cut that 30 year loan down to 24.1 years for a total savings of 43,000 dollars. I really think there can be relatively simple options for everyone no matter your financial capabilities. Wish all of you the best.

Crazy,

In retrospect you make an excellent point, the shuffling involved would probably overwhelm her and many like her. There ARE easier options. I mainly wanted to impress upon her that there is also a huge monetary cost to doing nothing, not changing negative financial behaviors,and general financial paralysis due to fear. Everybody wants the best and the easiest way and I can’t see MMA being either of them. Start with a qualified financial planner who is trained and is an expert not the MLM MMA “professional” who just signed up as an agent yesterday –and while your waiting to talk to the financial planner, I’ll save you 43,000. Give up that 1.79 coffee mon through fri for 38.75 and cut back to basic cable for a monthly savings of 15.99. In the 100,000 example above, that 54.74 a month applied to your principal would already cut your mortgage down to 24 years for….drumroll 43000 of total savings. —–Best wishes to all of you-good luck!

I’ve read most of the blog and understand well how a MMA work. I am also financially displined. I have 55% equity on my house but still has a sizable mortgage at 6% 30 years fixed with 26 years left. I have a simple financial question for financial advisers and proponents of MMA on this blog. If I have the ability to pay off my primary mortgage today (selling off all equities, emptying out saving account, etc.) without incurring additional debt, should I;

1. Go ahead and pay it off and take out a HELOC on the side for emergency.
2. Keeping my current position of stocks, mutual funds, 5.4% 12 month recurring CD, and 8 month worth of yearly salary on high interst saving account.
3. Go on a MMA, set a goal of paying off mortgage in the next 6 years.

thanks a bunch!

Chris,

I know people that are on this program that do not sell it. They are very intelligent people, they know that it accounts for all of their pay periods and they were told that before they ever got on the program. Every client that is ever activated on this program is activated by a live customer service rep from the corporate office. I have personally reviewed their “client orientation” training and all of the information you claim as “misleading” is in reality spelled out in plain English to the client. Absolutely no client can get on this program until they have been given a FULL personal orientation on the function of the program and a comprehensive explanation of everything it takes into account. Thousands of homeowners across the United States are getting out of debt before they ever would have on their own. In reality, that is a good thing.

Crazy,
I would prefer to be my own financial planner. What “researched” products out there do you recommend, something user friendly?
Thanks so much.

Jeremy,Mark,Crazy and Traveler and others,
Thanks to all for your input on this thread. Some of you are obviously professionals in finance and I have benefited greatly from your knowlege. What I have taken from all this is….. we are really doing everything right-rarely go out to dinner, no fast food, and as appealing as it sounds, I don’t frequent coffee bars! We use a credit card but pay it off each month. We live quite simply. It was no fault of our own but a hurricane that got us into our current money crunch by taking all our savings to rebuild. The IRS even froze our tax return for 18 months (I guess lots of fraudulent returns are generated during disasters so they have to investigate each one!) Try taking on the IRS without a lawyer! My husband’s job is here so moving out of “hurricane alley” isn’t an option. We have assets but really don’t want to liquidate if we can help it. (Want to stay focused on the big picture)I was intriqued by the MMA concept simply because I had never thought of our large HELOC- which we just thought was an intrest-only loan- as a place to pool our money as we are beginning to save again,( albeit slowly and in small amounts.) While we are doing this the interest on our loan is less so we are gradually paying down the loan with our savings. What I also love about this concept is the money is readily available in the event of an emergency. It’s still my money should I need or want it. We learned the hard way that it is difficult to borrow money after a disater. We have always had 15 year mortgages and love seeing the balance go down so this is what was eating at us with the HELOC. The balance stayed the same month after month. I thought we would have to refinance our primary mortgage and thus incur huge closing costs in order to get rid of the 2nd, not to mention a higher interest rate than our current mortgage. So though it will take some energy,I’m thinking moving all our accounts to the HELOC and having our income deposited there is a good thing for us to do right now. I have not purchased the MMA, but heard of it from a friend who is an agent. I’m grateful he shared it with me , otherwise it is doubtful I would have learned about the flexibility of HELOC’s at all. I had even been to the bank to speak with our mortgage lender to ask for advice/options for the HELOC and was not told I could pay it down in this way, but was told I could refinance:) You all have been a great help. It is a good thing to know both sides of an issue before making a decision.

Sue,

Sue,
To make sure you actually understand the ramifications of the financial decisions you are making, and of your contemplated actions, you first need to understand a few VERY important facts that most folks are completely unaware of.

Principally, access to your HELOC (access to the un-used credit line) can be FROZEN or REVOKED at any time by your bank! The Home Equity Credit Line (HELOC) is not a FDIC insured demand / NOW / deposit account, and most importantly it is NOT Your Money!

If you ever have a problem, this reality can become particularly important. Such as:

1) In the case of a hurricane or other natural disaster, where you home MAY have been damaged or destroyed, you can easily find that you do not have immediate access to your ‘home equity’ (what’s left of it) and that the account has been frozen.

2) If the value of your property decreases as a result of a declining real estate market, neglect, or damage, again the bank may freeze all access to the ‘available’ credit line.

3) If you miss a payment or go into default, the lender can freeze or permanently revoke access to the credit line.

4) Similarly, if you have any financial or legal troubles, like bankruptcy, litigation which attaches your property, IRS or other federal or governmental liens, etc… The bank can freeze or revoke any access you may have to the line of credit that had been previously extended to you. This can include unfortunately common situations such as divorce!

5) And in some cases of so called ‘universal default’ falling credit scores or default on any credit line (particularly first mortgages) could be cause to freeze or revoke HELOC access.

6) If the Bank/Lender itself has liquidity issues, goes bankrupt, or is forced to close… e.g Net Bank, perhaps Countrywide… access may be frozen or revoked.

Don’t be misled, The equity in your home is not cash, it is not savings, it is not money, it is not guaranteed or insured, it is highly illiquid and can be entirely illiquid at the most difficult times when you may want or need to access it the most!

It is NOT usually a wise decision to invest all of your assets in any one thing, particularly a single piece of real estate, even if it is you home.

There are many very prudent reasons for the average homeowner to have actual cash and liquid cash equivalents as savings… especially in the case of emergencies!

http://www.creditbloggers.com/2007/09/heloc-warning.html

Understand that if access is ever frozen, you will still be required to make monthly payments or face foreclosure. And you may not have future access to re-borrow any re-payments you have made, even if they were in the form of ‘paychecks’.

Unexpectedly loosing a job, losing cash flow, missing a payment, and NOT having access to ‘home equity’ is not an uncommon problem.

But, it’s not doom and gloom; HELOCS are very useful and beneficial tools for financial management when used wisely! Using a HELOC to consolidate other higher rate unsecured debts ‘debt consolidation’ can be financially advantageous, but also carries greater risks. Having a Dry HELOC for convenience and financial management can be very wise. However, using a HELOC as an ‘attempted’ replacement for a demand checking or savings account (which it is NOT) is not only very bad financial advice but it can be RISKY Business!

Before getting involved with any of these types of costly and risky equity acceleration schemas, make sure you talk to educated professionals, get multiple opinions, do thorough research, and make sure you fully understand ALL of the issues and risk involved.

http://www.integramortgages.com/financiallvoodoo

Ron,
Warnings noted! The deal is I already have the HELOC for my 2nd with no way out unless I sell our home which we don’t want to do. I do not want to refinance (we have a great rate on our 1st). So for now our best bet is to pay down the HELOC as fast as we can which is what the MMA analysis showed us to do. In 5-6 years I can have it paid down, then can whittle down my 1st. It seems like a no-brainer for my situation. I do understand that HELOC’s are risky , but in my mind so is all debt.

Sue,
What you are planning to do IS a no brainer in your situation as it is in mine. I hope you hold up agaisnt all this free advice your getting and pursue your plan as you have stated it earlier. I will be doing the same as you, that is working on the heloc I ALREADY HAD prior to buying the MMA Software. In your case just work the plan. The events Ron eludes to above do occur I’m sure, but I have had three different HELOCs over the past 27 years and many friends with these types loans and no one I know of has had the bank call the note or cut the line. I’m sure it happens but I believe it is the exception when it does.

Sue,
Based on your response, I can only guess that you must be getting caught up in the misleading marketing voodoo regarding the HELOC balance transferring shuffle. Understand, there is quite little to no benefit there.

You can already pre-pay your mortgage on your own. Pay off the highest interest rate debts first! It’s no secret… it’s just simple common sense.

Unless, you were saying you didn’t understand you are allowed to pre-pay (send more than the minimum payment) on your higher interest rate HELOC, or other loans like credit cards, whenever you like.

I find it very hard to believe that could be case, especially for someone who already has a 15 year mortgage, as opposed to a 30 year loan. The very essence of a 15 year mortgage is agreeing to re-pay principal over a shorter time period than a more common 30 year loan, and having a slightly lower interest rate in exchange for the shorter term. You obviously understood and made that choice before.

It’s not by any means a secret that you can pre-pay / re-pay your HELOC faster than required, or make more than the minimum payment on any loan. But, the MMA and depositing pay checks as payments has nothing to do with that… it is simply you choosing to pay back your loan(s) with the income you earn. The more you re-pay, the faster the loan goes away.

For those who choose to invest their income or savings by pre-paying their mortgage (instead of other alternatives), there is nothing stopping them or you from doing it today… in fact, you are already doing that on your lower rate 15 year first mortgage! Though in fact, you may actually be better off ‘right now’ if you could make a lower 30 year payment on your first mortgage, instead of the higher 15 year payment… and instead apply the extra principal payment to your higher interest rate HELOC balance. Perhaps that’s what your bank officer was getting at?…you may want to talk to him/her again about your options, financial situation, and your preferences.

But, you certainly don’t need to pay anyone even one penny for advice, software, or some scheme to tell you you’ll save money and pay your loan off faster if you make larger payments!

The HELOC works the same way as your first mortgage or any other loan… to pay them off the fastest, you simply need to pay back the loans as best you can afford and are comfortable doing. You definitely don’t need to pay anyone for that little bit of information… you can always pay back your debts sooner than required (if you so choose).

So, exactly what do you think ‘your friend’ or the MMA has shown you that you didn’t already know? It seems to me… that you already understood the score a long time ago and that in fact you were already doing it…re-paying your mortgage(s) it on your own!

Sue you are not being honest with yourself. It has been proven that buying the MMA software is not the fastest way to pay down your HELOC. If you can’t realize this then I am sorry. You should make every effort possible to pay it down, but don’t waste your $3500.

As to answer your research question. Research was just published that suggested that people in groups tend to do what the group does. In other words if you group yourself up with people with your same goals you are more likely to meet those goals. 2 websites I know of are http://www.wesabe.com and http://www.geezeo.com These sites also are a complete FREE finanical managment tools.

I personally don’t need to be motivated to make correct choices, therefore I don’t know what else may be available.

Sue if you can’t accept the falts of the MMA, then you are either being duped by a MMA salesperson, or you are a salesperson yourself.

again here is a great thread at Scam.com
United First Financial http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=23250

Good luck to you.

This thread is getting pathetic.

Ron and Crazy,
I have not purchased the software,nor intend to at the moment. I had an anlysis done by a salesperson who happens to be a friend. He simply showed me that the MMA would not have me make an extra payment to the principle until the HELOC is paid down. I plan to simply use the HELOC as my checking account for the money to sit before the bills go out. We have a large sum come in and a good bit that goes out each month, so it’s the interest savings I am looking for as the savings in the HELOC grows. I am intriqued with the MMA software as a motivational tool as it has helped many people get back on track financially, but don’t have to consider it for at least 6 years until the HELOC is paid off. Thank you both for your concern.As far as group psychology goes, I think I will pair up with Mark for support since we have similar situations!

I’m sorry Sue, I thought you had said that you were going to buy the MMA to help you with your HELOC. Forgive me. Feel free to be intrigued with the MMA, just don’t waste your money.

RUN RUN RUN keep your money. I just purchased this and boy do I feel stupid. The program is nothing more then an electronic check book. $3500 for something you can do yourself. This program is sold as high tech math equations tell you when to pay. Please!! Here is the tip to save you $$$. Open a HELOC on your own but don’t use it. Take all your savings pay into the mortgage. Every month any extra money in your savings or checking pay into your mortgage. If you have an emergancy or need to make a purchase borrow money from your HELOC then pay that off first before you make anymore payments to the mortgage. It’s that simple.

Hi Folks,

Can anyone tell me how to Calculate how many years it will take to pay down my mortgage after having payed the scheduled payments now for over 4 years with a extra 80-90 dollars per month.

By placing these extra payments per month, I have reduced my mortgage balance.

So my situation is this. I have gone to “Dinkytown.com” Mortage Payoff Calculator. Every time I put in my current mortgage balance, the “scheduled payment” changes to a lower payment number. Also, I am not able to input how many years or terms I have been paying off my mortgage. Anyways, unless I am using this calculator incorrectly, I don’t think this is the right calculator for the job.

Please help!

Bill,
Now if I have the concept down, the MMA borrows from the HELOC to pay down the mortgage, thus you incur interest. But by depositing all your money into the HELOC account the interest is reduced due to the “average daily balance” unique to HELOC’s. Then you wait a few months until your HELOC is paid back with your discretionary income, then pay down the mortgage some more, etc…. This just repeats. Now your idea is to do all this yourself, applying all your extra money to the principle, not to run all your money through the HELOC but just have it available in case of emergencies? Interesting. But this way you will still owe the full interest payment on the HELOC, right?

jthorpe. Go to bankrate.com Their calculator should do everything you need. Here is the direct link to the calculator

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/mortgage-calculator.asp

No Sue, he doesn’t have an intrest payment on the HELOC because he never drew on it. He will win every time doing this. This is not the case for someone who uses the HELOC to try an get control of their debt like you. It would be better for you to pay all your extra money to your Heloc. You may save a couple of bucks if you put your whole check in and avoid a few days of interest. However, I wonder how that affects your bill payment. Do you need to mail your payments? If so any savings is lost. Free bill pay would be better.

Bill I’m sure if you’re not happy with the program you may get your money back. If you can do it yourself why did you purchase the program. Oh, well. Hey while I’m here I don’t know if anyone has seen this news report from Channel 3 out of Las Vegase. Follow this link if you have not seen it,it is very interesting.
http://www.sydneyfinancialgroup.com/articles/nbc-report.php
by the way notice this link is via Sydney Financial out of Australia not United First.

Bill I’m sure you can get your money back. Why would you sign up for this program if you can do it yourself.

Hey while I’m here folks take a look at this news report out of channel 3 in Las Vegas.
http://www.sydneyfinancialgroup.com/articles/nbc-report.php
By the way this link is sponsored by another company called Sydney Financial and not the dreaded Unitied First Financial.

Crazy,
Thanks for the clarification. Very interesting…I had no idea the bank would loan you money for free just to have money sitting around as a back up. What is in it for them other than hoping you have an emergency or an impulsive shopping spree? Since you obviously are in or have been in the loan business I have yet another question. What if I took out a HELOC for 100.000 but only used 50,000. Would I only be charged interest on the 50,000 since that is all I’ve used? Thanks again.

Bill is NOT a customer.. a liar

Sue, I am not in the loan business, but I do pay really close attention to my money. I am an avid listener of Clark Howard. Anyway, if you got a HELOC (line of credit) then you “line” is for $100 grand. If you use $50 grand of it you start paying interest and principle on the $50 grand. What is in this for the banks? Well, a HELOC is a variable APR, and when people see that they have access to a large sum of money then (in my opionion) they tend to use it. Therefore, the banks get to loan you money that is at a variable rate (this reduces their lending risk). Often a HELOC has a yearly fee as well. HELOCs are great at reducing you interest rates, but they are horrible for shifting risk.

Mark since you brought up sidney financial group. Here is a link to a thread discussing them at scam.com

http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=29542

Bill,

If you purchased this product and are unhappy, please leave your contact information here and I will be sure to get with the company and get you a refund. This company is not looking to take money from anyone that does not benefit from it’s services. Again, if you have actually purchased this product, I will follow up on this for you.

Thanks!

Jordan stated “This company is not looking to take money from anyone that does not benefit from it’s services”

To be accurate he should have said this company is not looking to take money from anyone who THINKS they are not benefiting from it’s services.

If they truly didn’t want to take money from people who don’t benefit from their services they would have no customers, becuase there is no identifiable benefit that out ways the fact that the MMA is MORE expensive, HARDER to implement, taks MORE time and is RISKIER.

I was going to purchase the MMA software until I crunched some numbers. I was also interested in becoming an agent. It is a good tool only to discipline your spending (which I do not beleive is worth $3500.00). I looked at there 40 minute video which gives you an example of someone who has a $200,000 mortgage and $1,000 of discretionary income. At the end of your mortgage payments you would only pay $70,422 in interest and finish paying off your mortgage in 10.4 years. I put that $1,000 of discretionary income in a amortization calculater and it showed that I would pay only $67,408 in interest and still have the $3,500 extra in my pocket. I would also finish paying the mortgage in 10.2 years. I do not see the sense of paying $3500 for software that tells me to send in extra money to my mortgage. I can do that on my own and still beat the MMA software in savings. They just make it look like a better product than it really is. They almost had me. I already had talked to 4 people in buying the software before I realized what it really was. I am an honest God loving man. God Bless you all. I was going to purchase the MMA software until I crunched some numbers. I was also interested in becoming an agent. It is a good tool only to discipline your spending (which I do not believe is worth $3500.00). I looked at there 40 minute video which gives you an example of someone who has a $200,000 mortgage and $1,000 of discretionary income. At the end of your mortgage payments you would only pay $70,422 in interest and finish paying off your mortgage in 10.4 years. I put that $1,000 of discretionary income in a amortization calculator and it showed that I would pay only $67,408 in interest and still have the $3,500 extra in my pocket. I would also finish paying the mortgage in 10.2 years. I do not see the sense of paying $3500 for software that tells me to send in extra money to my mortgage. I can do that on my own and still beat the MMA software in savings. They just make it look like a better product than it really is. They almost had me. I already had talked to 4 people in buying the software before I realized what it really was. I am an honest God loving man. God Bless you all.

Kudos Sal,
It’s helpful to see comments from honest folks like Sal who are willing to admit and own up to their mistakes.

To error is human and all too easy… but admitting you were wrong and that you un-intentionally led astray trusted family, friends, and loved ones is definitely not an easy thing to do!

I hope Sal’s mistakes, but more importantly his ethics, Honesty, responsibility to correct them will be an example to anyone reading this that was similarly taken-in and deceived.

Don’t let yourself be deceived, and don’t get tricked. Educate yourself…Find out all the facts and understand the risks of any investment, before you spend your hard earned money.

http://www.integramortgages.com/financialvoodoo

Sal,

Keep in mind that the analysis software and the actual user software are two separate programs. The analysis software is geared to under promise because it can not take into account any of the float savings, which the actual user software does track. In order for the analysis software to be able to predict the float savings it would basically have to be psychic. The reason why, is the “Analysis Software” can not predict how long the homeowner will actually leave their money against the heloc balance. For example, homeowner “A” could deposit their paycheck against their heloc balance on day 1, and then pay out all of their monthly expenses on day 2. Then homeowner “B” could deposit their paycheck against their heloc on day 1, then pay out an expense on day 5, then day 10, then day 17 and so on, slowly increasing their balance throughout the month. Another homeowner, homeowner “C” could deposit their paycheck against their heloc balance on day 1, and then use their 0% interest credit card to pay all of their bills throughout the month and then simply write one check from their heloc at the end of the month to pay off their credit card before it has a chance to charge any interest.

These different scenarios will affect the outcome differently. For this reason, the “Analysis Software” scenario that you have mentioned does not take into account any float savings. The “Analysis software” also does not take into account any of the “real life” scenarios that happen in all of our lives. The actual user software takes much more into account than someone simply saying they are going to “try and pay extra” to their mortgage.

Shelly,
Based on this video that agents are showing prospects: http://www.mortgagefreefinancial.com/shortvid.asp

They say at the end of your mortgage payments you would only pay $70,422 in interest and finish paying off your mortgage in 10.4 years.

If I send the $1000 of discretionary income to my mortgage I would pay only $67,408 in interest and finish paying it off in 10.2 years. I amalready ahead over $3,000 in interest plus the $3,500 for not buying the software. I understand how a money merger account works. I could also beat the interest on the heloc by transferring the payments to differnet credit cards while lowering the balance monthly with my discretionary funds. I would love for someone to show me how the software can help me pay off my mortgage faster. Obviously the video did not help. I am not bashing the software. It does help people discipline there spending . I just would like to help people with finances and so far I do not see the benefit of the software. I have a excel spread sheet that can show me the loan amortization with the day of final payment and how much I save in interest which is free.
God bless

Clark Howard talked about the program again on 10/8/07 during his second hour. You can download the podcast. He reafirmed that this is not a scam, just a bad idea.

I personally don’t think he has been subjected to all the lies. If he had, he’d probably start calling it a scam.

Crazy,
That is so funny that Clark Howard does not believe this is a scam. In fact it seems that none of the 20,000 people who are on the program believe it is a scam or even a bad idea because there is not one complaint with the Better Business Bureau regarding United First Financial.

Just a note: I remember when 401Ks first hit the street just how negative the reactions were. I remember the word scam being used.

I just cannot help but to think because you Crazy did not think of the mortgage exceleration concept it must be a scam.

Sorry, Crazy but I’m not in to your negativity.

By the way my calculations regarding my effective interest rate is if I follow this program

Come on you UFF agents out there join this fray. I’m just a client not even an Agent. Fight this fight cause its the good fight.

My effective interest rate is

2 percent

Sal,

I have watched the video you are talking about several times. The figures given in that video are based on the “Analysis Software” not on the actual “User Software”. Again, the numbers relayed from the Analysis Software are geared low. In reality, if you followed the software, you would come out ahead of the numbers displayed on the video from the “Analysis Software”. This is one reason that so many users are so happy with this system.

Don’t worry if you’ve never been able to lose weight, this machine will actually do the work for you; and with our video series, we’ll even tell you exactly when and how to exercise. And, if you’re concerned that you might feel hungry while losing weight, it even has a built in snack bar.

Willpower is willpower – can’t buy it.

(Remember how the old undisciplined you would have been tempted to use a new line of credit for a car and a vacation? Well, now you won’t – because the new you is going to treat money differently. All you have to do is make this one $3,500 impulse buy and your whole world will change!)

Sal, you’ve bolstered my faith in humanity! I started looking in to this scheme about an hour ago, when I received an email from a local agent. Here is my response:

Remember how upset and embarrassed people became when they realized that some annuity products were just big rip-offs?

It won’t be long before your customers realize that a software program can’t insure financial discipline, that their additional savings would have grown faster in a retirement account, that in real times of emergency an equity line of credit is not the same as a cash account, and that $3,500 added to long term debt can eventually become another $20,000 of additional debt.

Your letter asked me to tell you what I think: I think you’ve found a way to pay off -your- mortgage quickly, at the expense of your clients.

Mark you are lieing to yourself. If you can’t see that from reading this thread, the threads at clark howard and the threads at scam.com then I don’t know what else to say to you. Every MMA agent that supports this program is left defending it solely on the basis as a motivational tool. The math compeltely proves the concept wrong. The MMA takes LONGER, is RISKIER, is HARDER, and cost MORE.

Sal your calculations are off @ 200,000 balance at 6% and adding $1,000 amonth to your principal you would pay it off in 10.7 years
Your principal balance to start would have to be at 187,000 That means 13,000 from day 1 to get to 10.2 years.

Shelly,
I would also come out ahead because I would have salery increases, etc…. I would than be able to send more and decrease the years off my mortgage. The software is gerat for people who do not have the discipline they need to do it on there own. If you can do it on your own than there is no benefit for the software. I do not beieve the software is worth $3,500. If I added the $3,500 to my mortgage I would even knock off more months. Before you decide to buy or not buy do your research. God Bless Everyone.

Sal,

Salary increases would accelerate under this program also. I respect if this program is not for you. I am just saying that you can not make a true comparison between an initial static pre-analysis, and the actual program used in real life which takes into account all float savings. They are two different systems.

I personally know many people using this program, they have read every bit of what the nay sayers have been saying, and the only response they have is that it is clear that none of you have actually used this service.

The simple fact is that Its canceling mortgage interest!

I have one client with a mortgage balance of $124.643.00 the mortgage payment is $778 with 357 months remaining @ 6.25% interest.

MMA software will have this customer paying off her home in 19.4 years and that is borrowing the $3500 fee, with only $25 month discretionary income to apply towards principal. Saving $56,792.37

If she had $3500 cash to apply to her mortgage today (Where she would borrow this from her HELOC in with the MMA) and the same $25 a month to apply for the remaining term she would pay it off in 27.2 years. Saving $16,595

The MMA in This instance pays down 7.8 years faster! Thats 3.42 times fatser! Saving $40,197.37 More than the accelerated principal method, At only $25 a month, Now that’s amazing!

It amazes me that it would cost United First Financial over 2 million dollars to have a mathmatical software system created to do this and you guys can do these equations in minutes to post on a blog.

It will beat it every time!

Ask an agent to run an analysis and I chalange you to compare! And dont forget a U1st Agent gives a 100% money back garantee!

Its undeniable!

“I personally know many people using this program, they have read every bit of what the nay sayers have been saying, and the only response they have is that it is clear that none of you have actually used this service.”

You should point out that they don’t understand math, and are easily duped by propoganda.

This is easy, prove that the MMA is better. Create a fictional best case scenario. Don’t provide deceptive numbers. Provide the numbers and then we can compare. Every comparison that has been done loses handidly.

Kevin, if your senerio is proven wrong, will you concede that an MMA is a bad choice? This is a yes or no question. Can you stand by your statements or not?

Kevin,
Is that counting the extra 2 weeks a year that are not included in the monthly calculations? I am asking because I want to know the benefit of the software.

To all,
Without all the numbers it is hard to see if the software works. If we want to continue down this road we should have numbers that we all can use and see if the software really works. Evryones situation is different. In Kevins example, the question is , Is she freeing up any other fixed monthly bills? Are we taking the extra 2 weeks into account? etc…. We can not see unless we all have the same numbers to work with. God Bless all

Kevin,

Yawn……I have all the software at my disposal (unfortunately). In order for you to have gotten to 19.4 at all, 1 of 2 things or both happened—either the customer is paid weekly or biweekly or you consolidated debts to create disposable, period—-rest assured that the end result is that $25 is not what the program assumes her disposable will be going forward. Sure you may have entered that but the software is calculating something far different. According to MY calculator ( which i might add doesn’t try to deceive unless it doesn’t get enough sunlight) the analysis software intends her to pay what will HAVE to eventually average @173.25 extra a month…( if she has no current balance on a second or consolidation)—just math, sorry. Instead of the MMA, she could put only $147 extra on the mortgage and do nothing else and still be paid off in 19.4—so the end result is that the MMA just cost her $6000.00–Congratulations Mr Customer- sorry you had to shell out $3500, send in 10 docs, talk to customer service reps, and endure 19 years of worthless financial masturbation so that an upline created 2 months ago could grow fat on your stripped equity.

PS –on above comment I forgot to mention that I am an MMA agent-because I also was once willing to overlook math and I must admit the program does make a person want to believe. Even some seasoned mortgage and financial professionals sincerely believe this is the best alternative—I CAN say it will pay off the mortgage in the time it says -but its much like using a rolex to pound in a nail-sure it will work but it’s also going to cost more and take longer–good luck to all

Here is another great thread. No debate, just numbers. The Fatwallet http://www.fatwallet.com/t/52/767134
Kevin you you have the guts to stand by your statments, post.

How long does MMA say it will take until your mortgage is paid off?
What was the amount you owed on your mortgage when you began this program?
What is the total amount of interest you will pay by using this program? (This number should be in the total interest paid column on your analysis)
What is the interest rate of your mortgage?

Wow! I posted here a few months ago and thought id come back and see how it was going.

I bought the MMA and it has been awesome for us. As I posted previously we have paid off a large chunk of our mtg that I would not have otherwise. We make ok money and have some discretionary but what the software did was show us the power of our money.Maybe I can do this on my own ( maybe )Do I want to take the time to figure it out? NO!

Our site has a feature that allows us to plug in numbers to see how they effect our situation. Me and my wife wanted to take a trip to europe ( we have always wanted to do that ) when we pluged in the amount we wanted to spend on the trip the software told us that this one week trip would cost us an extra 7 months to pay off our mtg. We decided to hold off and go after our home is paid for. I thought it was great that we could actually see the real cost in terms of our goal. It has been a great tool for us. We want to own our home, then we can do anything we want with our money.

I personaly take offence to people like Ron and Chris saying us people who bought it are dumb or that we have been duped. For our situation and the way we were before we learned about this it has been great.

Chirs, Ron do you walk to work or do you have a car? Do you use a lawn mower or do you gnaw the grass in your lawn to your prefered length? Did you build your own home? I bet the guys who built your house are laughing at you for not knowing how to do it yourself and not wanting to spend the time doing it.

I tell you that whole building homes for people thing is a huge scam…Ill just live in a cave.

There is an old saying “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” in this case I would say Value is in the eye of the beholder. I am glad you guys can do this on your own, In cant and never would have untill I saw the power my money has on my mortgage. I even quit eating out all the time because it motivated me.

I dont care one whit wether you buy the program or nor I dont sell it. Everything about the program was laid out to me by my agent before I bought it. I was told I was getting better results because I am paid weekly. I know the difference between being baid 12 times 24 times 26 times and 52 times per year. This has just been a great tool for us. If its not for you dont buy it. As far as other things being easier than this……I spend about half an hour a month updating my site so if other things are easier…well do that I dont care but im pleased with MMA for our situation.

Jay

Good for you Jay. I just hope others don’t spend there hard earned money for a product that doesn’t do anything.