Comments on: What does Dave Ramsey think about United First Financial

By: JoeTaxpayer

JoeTaxpayer — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:53:12 +0000

Tracy, buyer of MMA, can you explain the difference? Dave showed you a path to being debt free, which you made the time to attend. I understand it’s a series of classes, not a one time lecture. But after this, you ignored the advice, and lessons learned.
What exactly makes you follow MMA, and how much time do you put into it? I mean specifically, you need to enter details of your spending, how much time per day or per week does that effort take? Why is it easier for you to follow than the Dave program?

By: Tracy Coenen

Tracy Coenen — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:57:15 +0000

You don’t have to apologize to us. Apologize to yourself and your family for the fact that you had to flush $3500 down the toilet before you would pay your debts down. You don’t need MMA. It adds no value. But apparently wasting $3500 is what you needed to actually start paying down those debts. (Well actually, you wasted about $20,000 when all is said and done, but hey….. who’s counting?)

By: Tracy

Tracy — Mon, 04 May 2009 02:11:34 +0000

I sat through Financial Peace and enjoyed it thoroughly, that was about 5 years ago, and it did not get me out of debt by one dollar. I know why, I did not implement Dave’s advise and I don’t think anyone in the class did either. I purchased an MMA from U-First 14 months ago and have reduced my mortgage considerably and saved over $27,000 in future interest. You can beat up the MMA, but it’s all about what someone will do – I think we had a 100% failure rate in Financial Peace and that’s not a slam to Dave or his concepts, but about what people will or will not do. The MMA may seem odd to people, but it’s something I will do and am doing, I will be out of debt in half the time, with financial peace I wasn’t getting out of debt at all. Sorry, but that’s the truth.

By: Tracy Coenen

Tracy Coenen — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:09:46 +0000

Steve – It sounds too good to be true because it is. The only way to pay off your mortgage faster is by paying MORE to the mortgage sooner. These programs suggest you don’t have to change your spending habits, but that’s not true. The way they get you to pay off the mortgage faster is by taking all discretionary income (the money that doesn’t already go to bills) and applying it to the mortgage. If you look at the exact wording these companies use, it’s very clever… and probably doesn’t really say you don’t have to change your spending.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:59:49 +0000

Hello All-
I saw Fox and Friends the other morning and they talked about a program similar to this (but for only $1,500). It sounded interesting. Basically it said that I didn’t even have to change my cash flow habits and by making the same payments that I’m making on a 30 year mortgage (we’ve paid off 6 years in the two years we’ve been making payment) that I’d pay the loan off in 5 years. Obviously, if it sounds too good to be true…
I hate to ask others to do the work, but is there any way someone could lay out a spread sheet using the two different methods to actually show how things turn out with actual interest paid? I’d do it, but I’m terrible at math formulas and probably would compute things incorrectly. I may be where Maurice was…I’d love to see actual numbers.

Thanks for the help- I can’t wait to “Be Debt Freeee”!

By: JoeTaxpayer

JoeTaxpayer — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:44:35 +0000

Robert, I don’t have to drink poison to prove it’s bad for me, nor would anyone in their right mind ‘try’ the program (I read that as why not first throw away $3500 before criticizing) that they are intelligent enough to see as a scam. Well over 200 people have requested a copy of my spreadsheet, free for the promise that they’d tell me if they still decided to buy the MMA software. So far only 3 people still fell for it. I’ve saved people over $700,000 so far, and still counting. MMA claim of any savings are highly exaggerated, the people who use it save from their own prepayments, not from the software. I haven’t written a book yet, but if you can find me a radio gig, I’m happy to take it.

By: Robert M

Robert M — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:18:25 +0000

All the authors seem to have an agenda who attack programs that are helping and working for thousands of people to get out of debt. Maybe personal book sales and radio shows could be one reason. If you really want to help people with debt.Seek out the people and the companies along with trying the program before you give self righteous prononcements of condemnation of something you do not know what you are talking about.

By: JoeTaxpayer

JoeTaxpayer — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:34:51 +0000

Maurice – what is the point of ‘credentials’? Madoff had a great track record and ran a decades long Ponzi scheme. Many smart people were taken in by his ‘record’. My education in similar I believe to yours, my undergrad is BSEE, and I have an MBA with finance concentration. Now, with your smarts, you should be able to understand my guest post here regarding the HELOC shuffle.
Let me ask you – would you rather pay me $100 today, or pay 2% interest i.e. $2, for the next 1000 years? Geez, $2000 in interest and you still owe the $100, am I crazy? This is the point that other intelligent people are still not getting across to you. Paying 5% for 5 years is much better than paying 20% for just one, on the same sum of money.
Your examples above compare the HELOC shuffle to the original mortgage. Why not compare H-S to a regular system of prepayment? The kind one can do with my free spreadsheet, which is an amortization table showing interest saved (’canceled’ in the vernacular of the agents) based on each month’s prepayments, or any decent online mortgage calculator. You see, the agents continue to say that their product competes with what others are peddling. That’s nonsense, because I’d not have the nerve to charge for a one page spreadsheet, and most ‘nay-sayers’ here aren’t selling anything. It’s your choice in the end. You can pay $3500 and convince yourself that it was that ‘investment’ that produced the great savings, or you can do it yourself and claim an additional $20K or so in savings. MMA doesn’t save you a nickel, it costs nearly $20K. Use some common sense and you’ll see that. You can pull a copy of my sheet thru my link above. No special request or email needed.
Joe

By: Tracy Coenen

Tracy Coenen — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:35:25 +0000

Maurice – Your calculations and comparisons are wrong. I have taken into account all the things you suggested, and you actually have not. Again, you’re comparing interest savings over the life of the mortgage to one month of interest on the HELOC. That’s not a valid comparison. You’re failing to calculate the ongoing cost of using the HELOC in the way you’re planning, which will more than negate your savings on the first mortgage. I can’t force you to look at that calculation, however.

My credentials are all over this site, and I won’t hold myself responsible if you’re not able to scroll up or down on the page. Bless your little soul for thinking that you’ve done a great thing by using a HELOC in the way you suggest, but the simple math proves that you’re costing yourself money, not saving money. Good luck.

By: maurice

maurice — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:38:27 +0000

Cheers!

On a last note before I bow out/sign off.

I have acknowledged that I’m incurring additional cost by using the HELOC and I have stated that cost…it’s minuscule when at 8%, simple interet for 30 days! I have also illustrated the mortgage savings of the life of the loan and interest owed…it’s significant.

One. I have offered up my background and I have ask for background credentials of responders to better understand the perspective of responses…and have yet to receive.

Two. Just saying that you are replacing 6% with 8% without taking into account the TIME VALUE OF MONEY and the end result of using funds with DIFFERENT INTEREST RATE, DIFFERENT TIME PERIODS AND DIFFEERENT AMOUNTS is short sighted. The end result is the common denominator!

Three. My goal of this exercise is to explore ways to maximize the reduction on the life of a loan and the amount of interest paid…maximize being the operative word. The reduction of debt as quickly as possible is by the way a good thing, but at what cost!

With that said, of course, applying any additional funds to your mortgage payment will HELP reduce the life of the loan and interest paid, but are you Maximizing and can you Maximize?

Thank you, and no need to respond. I will be sitting down with a FINANCIAL PLANNER to further vet this out.