January 18, 2008
U-First Financial: Is it Right for You?
You can't have your head in the sand with what's going on in not only the housing and mortgage markets but also the economy at large - and by "at large," I mean the global economy. However comfortable you may think you are, there may be something lurking just around the corner you need to be informed about and prepared for.
For example, not everyone's in trouble with their mortgage. You wouldn't know it by listening to the news. Even casinos are suggesting you tap their big payouts "for your mortgage." Though foreclosures are up anywhere from 10% to 300%, remember they used to run under 10%. So if that rate triples, 70% of homes are not in trouble.
Many homeowners are accelerating their mortgage payments to achieve early payoff. And why not, when we don't know what's around the corner. Projections are a recession will last a minimum of a year and a half. It could last longer.
I've recommended repeatedly that you own your home free and clear. I've discussed the controversy because there are proponents of never paying off your home, so I won't go into that again right now. I've written extensively on owning your home in about a third the time. But we can't let it go without saying there are 16,000 United First Financial representatives passionately persuading the public to give them $3500 each for access to a fancy piece of software (called the Money Merge Account, or MMA) that tracks a homeowner's progress in paying off their mortgage early.
Now why would anyone want to spend $3500, or $1800 (one program costs $10,000!), for visual aids to encourage them to keep paying on their home. If you want a visual aid, please save a copy of the graphic on this page to your desktop. Make it your screensaver! I'm giving it to you for free. Instead of giving it to UFirst, put your $3500 onto the principal of your mortgage! Depending upon how far along you are on your mortgage, you could save as much as $20,000 through this single technique alone. (Here is another great way to save thousands.)
As much as my evil twin would like to malign United First Financial's pricey program, or call it a scam like thousands of people do, I cannot, except to say it's damn expensive! The argument, of course, is that if it's going to save you $300,000, it's worth it! That presumes the MMA is the only way you can save $300,000 on your home. It isn't.
The brilliance of the UFirst program is not the software. It is the use of the equity in your home to rapidly reduce the amount you still owe interest on. Simply put, mortgage debt is converted to HELOC debt. Using your house to pay off your house is a technique that's been around for over 20 years. It originated in Australia. I don't know who came up with the idea, but it seems to have taken some American capitalists to figure out how to make a fortune on other people's desire to save a fortune.
For some more techniques to save on your mortgage by avoiding and resisting mortgage interest, make sure you're getting my free confidential mortgage revolt letter–nothing illegal will be presented:
To save the me-first graphic to your computer, right-click your mouse button over it and select "save image as." Save it to your desktop, so you'll know where to find it. Better yet, save it to your screensaver or make it your screen saver.
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3 Comments on U-First Financial: Is it Right for You? »
December 8, 2008
jr @ 9:05 pm:
Ihave a family member who is trying to introduce the UFIRST software.I have been reading online for days on this program.I have a problem with it the agent brought over a friend and was explaining the analysis to us .very confusing I asked where would my 3500 be going towards he said software so I asked the friend well what are you getting out of this he said $1,100 for sponsering the program so that leaves the agent with $2400 of my dollars so really how much is the software $20.00 and the rest goes to the agent and the sponserer.If you can give more more detail on this And it turns out to be more of a pyramid and some crappy disc tell me how can yours be better.
January 21, 2009
JED @ 12:05 pm:
Commissions of $2500 are paid out to the Agent and their Trainer up the line to a Branch Manager. That leaves $1000 for the company to cover overhead expenses like customer service, etc…Crunch the numbers yourself (good luck) and you'll find worse case scenerio, a person making $5000/mo, $4000 in monthly expenses with a $200K mortgage at 6% on 30 yr term, will save over $40,000.00 in mortgage interest and knock 5.5 yrs off the number of mortgage payments they will pay in the first 12 months. The company is about 5 years old and has won numerous awards, including Ernst & Young's Utah 2008 Entrepenuer of the Year Award. Don't think they did this without extensive testing and research. Believe me I used to work for one of the old Big 5 Accounting firms. So is a $3500 investment in software worth a savings of over $40,000.00 and more? I think so. I've sold high end financial software (cost over millions of dollars) to Fortune 500 companies. Believe me, commissions paid for these sales are in the millions and the top sales reps can make over 6 figures on one sale. Then the Mgr gets a peice, the Dir of Sales makes a piece, then the VP of Sales makes a piece, then the CEO gets a piece, then the balance goes to overhead and the bottom line. What U First is doing is no different, except they are saving families and getting them out of debt with a system that works. You don't even have to think about what to do, the system tells you. No different than a CFO using a million dollar piece of financial software to determine what vendors to pay or where to float the company's money to get the most return over 30 days. Your home becomes your most important enterprise and you're able to easily manage your financial affairs. Their commission plan and cost structure for the software is no different than that of Microsoft, Oracle or CA (the Big 3). Believe me I know. Been there done that for 20 years. That's what I think.
April 9, 2009
Anne Dunnburg @ 6:29 pm:
I am replying to the question you posed about where the $3,500 goes when you buy the Money Merge account program. First of all, it took GE and MIT engineers years and millions of dollars to develop thie program. There is a home office staff available to you from 8 am to midnight. The program is updated on a regular basis and it is on-line, so you don't have to worry about the amount of memory on your computer. You have the program for a lifetime. You also save thousands of dollars using it. It is well worth the money when you think about it.