Is a Money Merge Account a Good Way to Pay Off Your Mortgage?
Monday, 1st October 2007 (by J.D. Roth) 
Over the past few weeks, I’ve received several questions about money merge accounts (sometimes called “Australian mortgages”). I haven’t paid much attention to these because I’m unfamiliar the products. But when Abbie wrote last week, I decided to do some research. Here’s what she said:
My financial guy handed me a DVD for United First Financial the last time I spoke with him. Apparently they are a company that uses “sophisticated algorithms” to compute how to best pay down a mortgage using a HELOC and a Money Merge Account, with the end result being that the mortgage is paid off in fewer than 30 years. (Their preferred statistic seems to be 11 years.)
I’m new to the whole homeowner thing, and know there are differing opinions regarding paying off a mortgage early, but was wondering if you’re familiar with this system. I’d appreciate any information or opinion you have regarding money merge accounts or UFF; a bit of web research comes up with inflammatory chats and the company’s own claims, but nothing from a reliable third party.
I spent three hours researching money merge accounts, and was unable to find any better information than Abbie did. From what I can gather, here’s how they work:
- The homeowner sets up a home-equity line of credit (HELOC), borrowing against the value of his property.
- Some large sum is withdrawn from the HELOC and used to pay down the primary mortgage.
- The homeowner does not deposit his paychecks, etc. into a traditional savings account, but applies them to pay down the HELOC.
- From time-to-time, another large chunk of money is taken out of the HELOC and applied to the primary mortgage.
- In case of emergency, the homeowner takes more money out of the HELOC.
- Though the HELOC will likely have a higher interest rate than the primary mortgage, it’s actually cheaper to maintain because of the way the interest is calculated.
In the case of United First Financial, all of the timing for these actions is prompted by proprietary software, for which the homeowner pays a one-time fee of $3500. These prompts are not mandatory, but if they’re not followed, it defeats the purpose of the program.
The consensus on the web seems to be: yes, these programs can help you pay down your mortgage quickly; however, they don’t do anything that you could not do yourself for free. The expense might be worthwhile if:
- You want to pay off your mortgage.
- You don’t believe you’ll have the discipline to pay down your mortgage on your own.
- You do not intend to move — you believe you’ll be in your current house for many years.
But most people with the financial resources to accelerate mortgage payments are able to do so without the assistance of a third party. The easiest (and most flexible) mortgage acceleration program is the one you control yourself: simply send extra money to your bank on a regular basis (being sure to note that the extra ought to be applied to principal). You’ll save nearly as much as you would with a money merge account. (Proponents of MMAs admit this!) If you find after a couple years that you lack the discipline to do this on your own, then you might seek a reputable source for a money merge account.
You can read other discussions of money merge accounts at these sites:
- It’s important to note that the Australian Securities and Investments Commission doesn’t like money merge accounts. “Consumer organisations … concluded years ago that there were no savings to be made, and that promoters were engaged in unlawful conduct.”
- Fat Wallet Forums: United First Financial — Looking for the truth contains 52 pages of discussion on this subject.
- Fat Wallet Forums: Mortgage accelerator/offset accounts facts and myths
- Real Estate Blog: Money merge accounts: Good fairy or demon?
- The Simple Dollar: Money merge accounts: Are they a good deal for home borrowers? (742 comments and growing!)
- Asset Builder: Accelerated home ownership thru line of credit
Before you begin a mortgage repayment program of any kind, be certain that you understand the consequences. Accelerating your mortgage payments may provide psychological comfort, but there may be smarter financial choices. Last year the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago released a study [PDF] that found:
About 38% of U.S. households that are accelerating their mortgage payments instead of saving in tax-deferred accounts are making the wrong choice. For these households, reallocating their savings can yield a mean benefit of 11 to 17 cents per dollar.
All of this discussion about money merge accounts is just theory. I’d love to hear from somebody who has first-hand experience with them. Do you love the idea? Hate it? Do you think it’s worth the cost? Let us know!
Note: Just as I was finishing this post, I recieved another e-mail about money merge accounts. They seem to have reached some sort of critical mass.
This article is about Choices, House and Home, News
Dave Ramsey covers this product (and it’s variations) on his program. While he likes the idea of paying off the mortgage early, he states that you don’t need these programs to accomplish the task. You can do the same thing on your own without spending $3000 for a piece of software and go through the trouble (and risk) of a setting up a HELOC. The worst part is when these programs claim that you can just follow the program and don’t have to change your spending habits – as if these programs “create” money. They most certainly can’t. The only way to get there is a budget folks.
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These sound like much more complicated versions of what in the UK are referred to as current account mortgages. I’m sure I’ve heard that they are generally considered to be worth doing only if you have a very variable or irregular income e.g. quarterly deposits of your earnings.
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I have two basic issues with programs like this.
1) The person still has to control thier expenses or they gain nothing, in fact in this case they go backwards because everything is tied to a HELOC now. Unfortuanetely it sounds like a lot of people view this as the easy way out. It isn’t.
2) If someone pays off credit card debt or other unsecured loans with this they have essentially take a bunch of unsecured debt and tied it to thier home. So if the worst case scenario happened and they lost everything including savings, or equity in the house, their debt is now tied to the home and they can be foreclosed on. If you keep unsecured debt unsecured worst case is a few bad marks on your credit report, but you maybe work enough to pay the house payment.
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I have been hit with this offer as well. It smells of multi-level marketing to me. The literature I read gives no option to get into the program without going through a referral of some sort. At the end of my research, I am with Alias (Comment 1). Save the $3500 fee and apply it as your first payment against your mortgage.
If you apply a $3500 lump sum to the principle of a $200K 30-year conventional mortgage (6% interest) in year five of the loan, you will knock a whole year off of the term saving nearly $12K in payments over the life of the loan. The only risk is the missed opportunity of risking the money elsewhere with investments.
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J.D, if you’re interested, we have a product in Canada called the Manulife One mortgage which is similar to the “merge accounts” that you mention here. From my review, it would be cheaper to get a discounted mortgage rate than to pay full price for the “merge account”.
Here is my review of the Manulife One Mortgage.
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I watched a pitch about these accounts about a month ago, and as I was listening I opened up excel and was able to recreate all of their results by using a biweekly payment structure. Only with the biweekly method you also got to keep your $3500.
I honestly don’t see a case for these products at all.
You are being sold a product, not a solution.
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can’t comment on the US situation (I’m UK/Australian-based), but certainly in the UK situation, current account mortgages aren’t worth it. You pay generally higher interest rates (1-1.5%), and there is a danger that if you aren’t disciplined, you just keep spending your mortgage, because it’s effectively just a giant overdraft.
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If followed correctly, I am sure that these programs (and other programs like bi-weekly mortgage payments) promise as delivered. However, if they work, then you can do it yourself and save on the expenses.
Essentially, you are using your average daily balance that you would have in your checking account as a way to lower your average principal and your interest payments.
The most simple solution I have found to accelerate your mortgage payments simply involved direct deposit and automatic payments. Take you mortgage payment, and divide it by twelve. Add this amount as an extra principal payment, each month, and have the mortgage company automatically deduct it from a savings account. Then, take this total payment (with the extra principal) and have half of it directly deposited into the savings account with each payment. What you get out of this gives you the bi-weekly effect, but with the extra principal applied monthly, instead of as a lump sum at the end of the year, an extra payment sitting in the savings at the end of the year, plus interest sitting around. You can then take the extra and have 14 payments.
Couple that with a $3500 initial principal payment, and you can substantially knock-down your principal and term, and save on interest without a huge difference in your realized lifestyle.
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I we paid off our mortgage on our older, smaller, house by making large payments every month–the amount we would have spent if we had moved out of our “starter” home and into the mini-mcmansion that we could “afford” according to the mortgage calculators. I don’t think we lost that much money by not investing the cash elsewhere–after all, there was very little possible downside, by paying off the mortgage as early as we did, I think we got some insurance against any future devaluation of housing stock; we literally paid less, so our house is worth more to us now, no matter what happens in the overall market. The discipline of making those payments also meant that after we paid off the house, I continued to put less, but still significant amounts into investments. And, of course, there’s nothing like not having the mortgage payement–it gives one a sense of freedom from one large bill each month, so you can absorb extra expenses, or think about working for less income…
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It’s hard for me to consider these programs to be anything more than a scam. Sure, it can work in theory, but you can make extra payments on your own. There is no way it is worth $3500. Someone simply devised a good system for taking money from people who have just enough to be dangerous, yet not enough discipline to get out of debt on their own.
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Um, maybe I’m missing something here (and I definitely do not claim to be the most knowledgable on this subject), but if you have an extra $3500 to spend and know you don’t have the discipline to prepay your mortgage without help, why wouldn’t you just use that money to refinance to a 10 or 15 year mortgage?
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Of course this is a scam. 3500 dollars for what’s probably nothing more than an Excel template?
It’s also highly misleading about what you are actually doing with your money or how this works in reality.
If you have the discretionary income, and want to pay down your mortgage quickly, the easiest way to do it (assuming you have no discipline) is to set up an automatic payment plan directly with your mortgage company (or via bill pay on your bank’s online banking) and set the amount to be slightly above your usual monthly payment so that it adds up to the number of extra payments that you want to make over the course of a year.
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The easiest way I heard of to pay off a mortgage faster is to round the payment up to the nearest $100 to start, then add $1 or $5 or $10 a month. So a $1465 payment becomes $1500, then $1501, then $1502, et cetera.
The idea being that if you can pay $1500, then you can afford a dollar more. Or $5, or $10.
If you’re doing automatic payments, then bump it up each year. Not as gradual, but same idea.
The “Money Merge” account reminds me of insurance / property tax escrow accounts. Yes, you can pay the nice bank the extra each month so they will have money on hand to pay your property taxes & insurance – but why let the nice bank earn interest on your money? Why risk that the bank will screw up send your premium to the wrong insurer or county? Just put the money into savings each month and you’ll have it on hand when the time comes.
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As an aside, HELOC as emergency fund is better than no emergency fund – but an actual emergency fund is better
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I read all of the above comments. I just wanted to share my experience with this program. I am a user of this program and have been for over 3 years. I have also worked in finance and banking for more years than I want to admit.
For those of you who have never used this program, please keep an open mind. A little over 3 years ago, I had the same opinion. “Why would I use this program, when I could do the same thing on my own?”. At that time, I decided not to get on the program. Then 3 months later, I over heard someone I know talking about what this program was doing for them. I asked if I could take a closer look at their situation. They were well ahead of where they would have been normally, and they said they also said they could do it on their own, but decided to get on it after they found out their financial planner was on it also. They also said that while they feel that they could do something similar on their own, they never would have.
Now that I have been on this program for over 3 years, I completely agree. This is something I understand and could probably do on my own if I had a lot of extra time each month. But I have found that using this program completely changes your thinking. Sorry for the long post. I just wanted to share my personal experience. As a veteran in finance, I personally recommend this. Don’t take my word, do your homework to see if it right for you. I am not selling this program, as you can see I have not included my contact info.
-Thanks!
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This sounds like a complicated way to do it. There seems to be too much room for error too, which could land you in a load of trouble.
Like you said, there are ways to do this for free. You can do bi-monthly payments, or even get a 15yr mortgage. Or just send a lot of extra payments in to the company yourself marked with “principal payment” and do it that way.
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I’ll make a littlebusiness proposition right now: For a payment of just $2500 ($1000 off the original offer) I will call you once per month and yell at you to pay extra on your mortgage. I will throw in a monthly call to make a budget and another to stick to the budget for free!
Lol.
I’m guessing these people hope that if they HAVE to do it they’ll be more likely to do it. So I’m willing to get in on the business and intimidate with random phone calls.
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“The consensus on the web seems to be: yes, these programs can help you pay down your mortgage quickly; however, they don’t do anything that you could not do yourself for free.”
I was one of the folks sending you emails on this topic.. and the above is pretty much the conclusion that I came to as well, searching on my own. But I’m very glad to see that you & others have come to the same conclusion. Thanks for your extra effort on our behalf!
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With many thousands of satisfied homeowners on this program across the Untied States, there must be something to it. My neighbor who is the vice president of one of the nations largest banks is on this program. He has nothing but positive things to say about his experience on the program.
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I have not heard of or used such a product, but it sounds to me like the “software” is actually a mask for getting people to use the HELOC trick and increase their principal payments. I know that 11 years is doable, especially if you start paying down the principle in your first year. I played a game with myself on our mortgage: I would pay double the principle amount every month. In the first months it was just an extra $5 or $10, but it rose each month by just a little. Also, when there was “extra” money, like a bonus, tax refund, or Christmas gift, I applied as much of it as I could to the principle. Using this “system” it took almost exactly 11 years to pay off the house and it did not require a HELOC or a $3500 piece of software.
It does interest me to know if the claim is true that HELOC interest calculations are more favorable to the home owner. It makes sense that they would be (since these are not fixed length mortgages and therefore interest cannot be calculated and frontloaded as it is on traditional mortgages). Were I just starting to pay a mortgage I would be now be furiously investigating the claim to see if it would help our financial situation.
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Wishing you a prosperous future,
Daiko
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One thing to bear in mind is that mortgages (and the laws that govern them) vary widely from country to country. A MMA is very much a variation on the “one account” mortgage that’s used in Australia and the UK; similar mortgages are available in Canada as well.
Personally, I am more in favour of simply paying down a mortgage by sending in extra payments on a regular basis, but I don’t need somebody else to impose that discipline on me; I can do it on my own.
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If I am not mistaken, there are 2 MMA offers in Canada now
Manulife One – $14/month fee
Canadian Tire – no fee
In short, one big HELOC that you use as primary account, and pool every penny possible to pay the mortgage down faster, even at prime rate – Instead of paying fixed mortgage, and save at 4+% at the high savings account
Note: you need strong principle to NOT withdraw from HELOC easily!
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I have one of these mortgages (although there was no $3500 “software fee”. maybe that is new.
Yes, you can pay off a standard fixed rate mortgage early by paying extra against principle, but how much over do you pay? You need to be conservative in those extra payments, because they’re gone (unless you get some home equity loan…). You have to guess “how much will my upcoming emergency cost?” and keep that money aside.
With these loans, you can put it all against the house, paying it off as early as possible barring emergencies, yet having they money available if you do need it.
It is dangerous – if you’re not disciplined you can spend too much of the money in your account since there is no mortgage payment, and you end up in the hole. That’s why you usually need pretty good credit to get into it in the first place.
You can probably do better by investing the money and managing it, but that’s too much work for me. This is easy, it lets me pay off the house as quickly as possible, and I still have emergency access to the funds.
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I have a friend who was refinancing and without ever discussing it with her, the mortgage broker was setting her up with this sort of deal. She figured it out in time and changed plans to a normal 30-year fixed-rate, but I personally would have walked completely out of the office when I found out I was being railroaded into something I didn’t understand and that we’d never discussed.
If the situation really happened like she described, it’s probably happening to lots of people, and that may explain the upswing in questions about it.
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Like many other commentors on this article, this seems like a product with no value add. I smell a SCAM.
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Not sure why you’d want to increase your illiquid, high transaction cost, low return savings (your house) instead of your fully liquid, low transaction cost, historically higher return savings (stocks/bonds/savings accounts).
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Is anyone here open-minded? I don’t have an MMA, and I’m not selling them, but I have a friend who has one and absolutely loves it. Also, I have looked around and all the negative comments always come from people who are simply making assumptions and people who don’t have a Money Merge Account and never plan on getting one.
Is this a scam? I don’t believe so. Is it for everyone? Absolutely not. If you can do this on your own, then go ahead and do it. I wish you luck no matter what decision you make, because in the end everyone wants the same thing . . . their house paid off. (And if you don’t want your house paid off, I still wish you luck.
TTFN – Ta Ta For Now)
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You do not need to buy a product for something you can do yourself
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As of October 15th 2007, the only information available to be put on web sites will have to be identical to what is on our home page violators will be suspended for 30 days with out pay. You may create your own skin, look & feel but the content MUST be identical to our home office retail site.
This site is not in compliance and you must contact me to obtain the most recent copy of the agent guidelines.
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Thank you
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Yes, it is a scam if they are charging you big bucks for the service. And I wouldn’t be shocked some of those promoting it in comments are those being paid a commission to sell it.
I’m sorry, but break it down: All you are doing is spending all of your discretionary income on paying off your mortgage. To say, “With these loans, you can put it all against the house, paying it off as early as possible barring emergencies, yet having they money available if you do need it,” is to say that you can always borrow money if you screwed up and needed that discretionary income. At interest of course.
The notion of taking advantage of the average daily balance to save on the interest just doesn’t compute into big savings. First, you have to have interest parity between the mortgage and the HELOC, at a minimum (and preferably a HELOC that has a lower interest rate). Look around. If you have low, fixed mortgages, I’m gessing you won’t find one. The HELOC at my local banks is already 3% higher than my mortgage! It isn’t rocket science that borrowing money at a higher interest rate to pay off a loan that is at a lower rate isn’t the way to successfully play the interest arbitrage. But assume there is an interest rate arbitrage to take advantage of, calculate it out and I think you will find that the amount of interest you earn on the float is modest at best. And then compare that to the fees they intend to charge you for the software/service and I suspect you will be in the hole every time.
The only way this works is because of the power of making higher payments. It has nothing to do with the float, really. If you are worried about “emergencies” as those promoting thse try to suggest will solve, set up an emergency fund or set up a traditional HELOC and not use it until the emergency happens.
Just make sure you don’t go with one of these and find yourself paying 3500 for what amounts to maybe 500 bucks of interest savings based on the float.
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wow,
I’m Australian, and I think I have what you’re talking about (our jargon is a bit different).
We call them offset accounts – any money you have in the linked account ‘offsets’ the interest on the mortgage. so if your mortgage is $100k and you have $60k in the account, you only pay interest on $40k.
thats it. no swanky software. you still have repayments into the mortgage, and while it’s possible for us to redraw from the mortgage, it’s still a separate account.
anyway. there are three situations my friends are in where this sort of account is a good thing:
- my friend Pete is part of a farming family. they get a bulk payment for their wheat at the end of the year, and a portion of it sits in his offset account until needed – effectively knocking out 80% of the interest on his loan.
- we are planning an ‘income-free’ period for 3-6 months next year. we are madly paying into our offset account at double our minimum repayments. it’s saving us interest in the short term, but will also be the fund that all the repayments go from next year.
- if you have a rental property in Australia, the interest on the loan is a tax write off. And it’s calculated on the balance of the loan, not the interest repayments. If you have the money in the offset account, instead of the mortgage, you’ll be able to write off more interest than you pay. (or so an account friend assures me)
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I just ran into this posting. I use this product and it works better for me than any previous attempts I have made to pay my mortgage off early.
Just the educational features in this program were worth it. This product goes beyond banking tools. It incorporates educational tools which follows the individual changes in your day to day finances. Type in the words “behavioral economics” in Google and you will get a better understanding behind this. Just my 2 cents.
Thanks,
Casey
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Wow, I’ve never heard someone suggest this is an example of behavioral economics. As someone who studied the discipline, I have to say that’s a stretch.
Look, here’s the simple thing to ask any promoter of one of these products: How much will you save if you assume that you have no discretionary income at all?
That’s the bottom line question. Because the answer to that will give you the true value of the program from a savings perspective. And it is that that you should compare the costs of it against. Not how much you will save because you are pre-paying your mortgage. Notice most of these programs simulations refuse to let you enter that math (they require you to be a saver) so they can hide the ball on that.
If you need the help disciplining yourself to pre-pay, fine, pay for what you think is valuable. But with the plethora of free tools, automatic bill pay through banks, etc., I don’t see why 99% of people would go for this except because they are fooled into thinking theirs some magical gimmick out there that can reduce their mortgage without actually using their dollars.
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I think the Australian poster explained it best.
This mortgage allows you to put cash into an affiliated account that offsets your outstanding mortgage balance and you are not charged interest on the equivalent amount in your mortgage. The twist is that you can pull that cash out if you need it, effectively ‘reborrowing’ the money. This makes more sense than letting cash sit in a savings or checking account with a lower interest rate.
If you have a HELOC, you can start prepaying your mortgage with a lump sum from your emergency fund since you can borrow that sum back from the HELOC. You then rebuild the emergency fund with the money you would have used to prepay the mortgage. Each following year, you use that rebuilt emergency fund to prepay the mortgage for the next year, and so on.
Paying $3500 for this setup is theft.
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I don’t understand why you say I should specify that extra payments must be applied on the principal. On what else could it be applied to ?
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Wow, sure are a lot of comments from people who apparently have not personally checked out the MMA. Pontificating about sending in money you cannot afford to send (and what amount would you send in each time?) is ludicrous. So many people wish to sound smart…look into it and get educated.
Impugning the credibility of some postings that are positive about the MMA is silly. Get your free analysis and see what the numbers come back with. THEN, see if you can match that pay off date and interest savings. If you can’t then cease with the uniformed blather until then.
As for the person who stated that he designed an Excel spreadsheet that did the same thing as the MMA: get real. I’ve heard that so many times but each time I’ve examined them they were miserable failures.
Is it for everyone? No, of course not. Is it for most people? Clearly yes. Is it about discipline? Not really. All the people who are prone to blowing a HELOC to the wind with wanton spending habits have already done so. This is for people serious about getting 100% out of debt—note that the MMA pays off the mortgage last of all. To all the nay sayers: stop yammering and get educated.
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I don’t understand how this sort of thing could help, since mortgage interest is calculated and compounded monthly, not daily. It’s not like paying off a car or a credit card, where the average daily balance really does come into play.
Or maybe I’m wrong.
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Daniel,
You just nailed it, learn more about the product and it will all make sense. Before purchasing the product consult a financial planner, run the numbers.
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Jason, that’s just it. I’ve looked into them. Perhaps I’m just too much of a skeptic, but it doesn’t make sense to me.
Also, maybe it’s just that I’m paid monthly, so all of the gimmicks would not work for me that would work for those who are paid weekly or bi-weekly.
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The comments made are nothing new, nor will these points of view stop from those unwilling to do some deep thinking here.
The methods for paying off mortgages have always been around. So why haven’t the majority of homeowners done so? Why all the mortgage problems and consistent debt and negative savings in the country?
Because we simply point a finger with one hand and say it’s one way, while our other hand does the exact opposite.
Consider something:
Billions of dollars in profit are made on all of us each year. The mortgage industry is based not just on math—but on HABIT.
We know for a fact that we, as homeowners, refinance every 5-7 years. The industry accurately banks on it. That’s not math–it’s a character flaw in people, worth billions of dollars.
So while posters are saying the same old ‘I can do this on my own’, know that IF you can, you are NOT the rule—you, in fact, are the exception.
Try throwing the ‘Habit Factor’ and the ‘Life Happens’ factor into the mix then see if you can actually do this on your own–at least as well as my clients do on a program with all the support.
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I see a lot of opinions but have you who have left opinions either way, actually viewed or listened to how this is done?
I have nothing to gain or lose but I’m considering this. I’ve been talking/listening about it with United First Fed and, after listening to exactly how it works it appears to me that nobody on here has actually learned more about this than just having heard what the general gist is. There is so much more detail. I’d be interested in seeing opinions from people who have actually done this or have been thoroughly educated in the process, not just knowing the basic idea of it.
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I was very skeptical as many of you are. I took a chance because I am one of the multitudes that could not get my financial stuff together. I’ve tried for nearly 30 yrs. For me this program is a god send. It has enabled me to focus like I have never been able to focus on my finances not just my mortgages. In short, we’ve stopped the financial leaking/flooding.
No, MMA is certainly not for everyone but it was perfect for us and our life situation.
It was my wife that first saw the possiblities, I just scoffed and was uspset that she had gotten us involved in what I to considered a scam. That was until I decided to take a good hard look at the program. It is NOT a scam for people like myself but rather a very good tool that has given me a target date. We have been in the program for more than three months and we love it.
Our situation is such that we have 6 years and 3 months to payoff the 1st and the 2nd mortgages. When we realized both of us could retire after the above time, it was a very emotional moment.
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Check out this Channel 3 in Las Vegas news report. http://www.sydneyfinancialgroup.com/articles/nbc-report.php
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The funny part about that video Mark—is that it’s on Sydney Financial, and yet it has nothing to do with them—except showing that these principles work.
Sydney Financial tries so very hard, if you watch Google and paid adverts–to ride on the coat tails of United First Financial, and they are not the same program.
Watch that video closely, watch the screen, and you will see the tab saying “Money merge Account”. Thats UFF’s actual software–though it’s an older version.
Again–funny that Sydney has it on their own site. The story was not about the concept–it was about our specific program, but the News Station could not/would not promote a specific program.
Keep all this in mind when watching the video, and who’s promoting the video.
Daniel,
Talk to an agent who has substantial experience with the program. Though there are many UFF agents out there—the majority of them simply cannot correctly teach you why it works. You can talk to any of our staff here at The Jubilee Project, and we can do so–without the pressure to purchase the program.
We want to educate first.
http://www.thejubileeproject.com
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Mark, let me echo the previous statement about the NBC Channel 3 news clip: it is about UFF’s MMA, not Sydney’s product. You can tell by looking at the screen shots of the software. CMG and Sydney both use that in their presentations–but they both differ significantly from the MMA. Another example of the confusion out there.
My experience is that most UFF Agents can properly explain the program and why it works…sad to see the the in-house parsing by Jubilee.
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Steve, just offering help.
If someone is needing information, how to you suggest they get it?
Wish for it, perhaps?
I suggest you go from site to site anywhere on the web, and see how much information you will find in detail.
We have no problem, nor feel any shame in offering help in sharing what we know about the program. People matter to us, and if you don’t want our information, simply don’t click on the link.
Easy enough.
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Jamie,
Jamie, no one said there was a problem with you giving information; the issue is with your comment:
“Though there are many UFF agents out there—the majority of them simply cannot correctly teach you why it works. You can talk to any of our staff here at The Jubilee Project, and we can do so–without the pressure to purchase the program.”
You are stating that other UFF agents are ignorant and your team is not. How can you know that about the first? It causes me to doubt the second. Please do not disparage other agents you cannot have knowledge about. We’re a team, remember?
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Ahh, Steve, you mistake my intent and I did not phrase myself well.
I apologize.
Can I say I know these people? No.
Can I say I name them all? Of course not.
Can I watch trends, watch what policies and procedures are enacted by corporate? Yes, I can.
Is your drive to protect the agent—or to protect the client and and program?
Mine is the latter.
I believe you will find that is the stand of UFF as well.
Daniel said he has looked into the program, he has looked into it…and it doesn’t make sense. What happened to the ‘pro’ who showed him? Do I take that Daniel is ignorant, or the agent?
I naturally assume he needs someone with more experience to explain it until he DOES understand it. Is that a slam? I certainly don’t think so Steve.
It really has nothing to do with UFF, this program or it’s validity. You are right to call me to smooth my words out. I am known for bluntness in an arena where many desire a soft touch.
However Steve, I did NOT say my ‘Team’ is not ignorant. My team reaches through all 50 states and that was never implied. I stated my “staff”, which I have trained personally,can teach you correctly why the Money Merge Account works. A handful of people who all sell this and teach it, every day…full-time.
They know this program inside and out. They are not ignorant.
Everyone has a learning curve. I had it–you had it, everyone does. However, not everyone is equally qualified to answer questions right out of the gate, and some I know personally still cannot explain all the aspects of the program after 6 months to as year.
It sounds like Daniel needs more than a DVD to explain it. If you have that knowledge—by all means, you explain it. I certainly wouldn’t mind.
Be careful in judging me as well Steve–Jubilee promotes other agents all the time, including from our site–even agents NOT on our team. Because, as you properly said: we area team.
If you want to discuss this issue further, I suggest you contact me personally, or even call me if you like.
To all the readers, I hope that clarifies my intent.
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I suspect it might be more effective to employ early in a fixed interest rate period. Once they have you trained, they have your money even as the trick becomes less useful…
I would also be concerned about any fine print that allowed the bank to reduce the credit limit allowed on the HELOC at their discretion. If you happened to have 10-20,000 dollars available (in an emergency fund, say) and used that to pay down your mortgage because you had the line of credit to fall back on if you needed it and the bank later decided you were a risk and unilaterally reduced your credit line, or you missed a payment somewhere and they then were allowed to RAISE the HELOC interest rate…
In the US, most first mortgage loans are non-recourse – if you go through foreclosure, you walk away and the bank takes the house and tries to get their money back. For a recourse loan (like most REFINANCE and also HELOCs ?) they can continue to hound you if there is any shortfall in the banks recovery of the loan after the house sells.
Might also be differences in the new bank-friendly bankruptcy laws between home loans and HELOCs.
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All I understand the link is from Sydney Financial the reason I put that link on this thread is cause it cannot be accessed through UFF any longer. The idea is for people to see that this sort of concept works.
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