United First Financial Made Simple
What a simple, yet eloquent explanation from one of our readers on the read deal behind UFF’s Money Merge Account (MMA).
UFF is a SCAM.
Borrowing at 8% to cover 6% loan will make you less money.
Paying down your mortgage directly (instead of using HELOC) will put you ahead.
Simple short-term interest VS compounding long-term interest: this is just a marketing lie. HELOC uses monthly compounding interest, same as your mortgage.
The only way to pay off your mortgage faster (and to save on the interest) is to increase your monthly payments. You think that you saved thousands of dollars with UFF, but this is not true. You saved thousands of dollars by increasing your monthly payments. You’d save another 10-15% by not using UFF and simply doubling your mortgage payment.
$100,000 at 6% for 25 years = approx. $640/month
$100,000 at 6% for 7 years = approx. $1460/month
WOW! I just reduced my mortgage from 25 years to 7 years and saved thousands of dollars! UFF uneducated [people] may think that this is magic, but this is actually simple mathematical computations.
Related posts:
- Misleading Consumers in the Marketing of United First Financial Money Merge Account
- I can save you $68,504 (without United First Financial)
- What Does Another Expert Say About Mortgage Acceleration Programs Like United First Financial?
- Deception In the Sale of the United First Financial Product?
- United First Financial Scam: You’re Using the Bank’s Money to Pay Down Your Mortgage
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Comments (16)
ok….where do you get the extra $800 a month? If you dont’ have that $800 a month to put extra on the loan, you can’t. If you follow the system and use the HELOC and “float” your monthly income…..you can make the additional payments towards the principal and reduce the amoutn of interest your acrruing.
Gina – Doing it your way doesn’t make you “HAVE” an extra $800 a month. What you’re talking about is a process by which you save $3 per month in interest (best case) by playing this float. MMA doesn’t create any money, although your comment suggests you think it does. The “savings” of that $3 in interest is more than offset by the cost of the MMA software itself. And you still haven’t paid off an extra $800. All you’ve really done is shuffled your money.
Bottom line? The only way you succeed in paying off your debt significantly sooner than the scheduled repayments is by PAYING EXTRA EACH MONTH. (Not by using MMA.)
“Using the banks money” – We started out by taking out a loan called a mortgage, using the bank’s money. Now that it’s time to pay the loan back, we need to get the money from somewhere. Usually, it comes out of our paycheck. But MMA claims that if we use a HELOC, we are not using our money anymore, we are using the bank’s money. But, wait, we started all this by using the bank’s money to take out a mortgage and now we have to pay it back. So that means if we use the bank’s money by taking a loan out of the HELOC, we have to pay that back, too. So all we did was postpone having to pay the bank back by using the HELOC money to pay the mortgage. We still have to pay the HELOC back. Where is that money going to come from? Out of our paycheck. So why should we spend $3500 on MMA to play a money shell game with a HELOC?
“Interest cancellation” – MMA claims that by loading up the HELOC and running our paychecks through the HELOC, we reduce the balance so much that we save lots of money that way, and that alone is worth $3500. OK, so how much can we save? Well, let’s assume our mortgage rate is 6%. That means each month, we are charged 1/2% on our mortgage balance, the whole balance. But if we are using interest cancellation, the most that we can save is whatever our monthly salary is. So, if we bring home $5,000, the largest HELOC balance we can offset is $5,000. How much will that save? $5,000 times 1/2% is $25. That’s $25 per month or $300 per year. So MMA wants you to spend $3500 upfront to save $300 per year. Do you know how much interest you would save if you just put $3500 towards your 6% mortgage? OVER $4,000.
“Factorial math” – MMA claims no one except a computer can figure out the best possible way to pay all your bills and debts because of all the possible combinations. LIES. There is only one SIMPLE BEST way to pay off all your debts. You pay off the highest interest debt first and work your way down using a DEBT SNOWBALL. It only needs addition and subtraction.
Those who know interest earn it, those who don’t pay it. Know what your talking about before you comment. I know many who save time and money with thier $3,500 investment.
Kat – The concept of saving time and money with UFF has been debunked over and over here. It is a complicated system that requires far more time than the one subtraction problem a consumer has to do each month on the do-it-yourself plan. And the numbers speak for themselves. THE MMA costs consumers money.
If United First Financial is a scam, then how did they receive the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for financial services in the Utah region in 2008? Ernst & Young is one of the most prestigious accounting firms in the country. How could they choose a company that is a scam for such an award?
For the 85th time, E&Y did not select the winners and did not investigate the candidates. They simply sponsored the awards, and have specifically disclaimed knowing anything about any of the winners.
Wow! Tracy, it’s been too long proven… There have been too many reports of GREAT results. I just saw the testimony from one co-author of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series… I didn’t know about that one. Most of the people I know who bought the system are BANKERS–using the United First Financial MMA system to pay their homes off in 2-7 years (these are actually numbers that include the $3,500 fee by-the-way). All you seem to be doing here is selling your books, unfortunately, probably to people who are innocently skeptical and are looking for something negative to feed their fear. Simply put, “it works”. The proof’s in the pudding and in this case the pudding is very old. I also believe you know it works but perhaps your morels aren’t yet high enough to risk stopping the sale of your books to the fearful. Your posts are cleverly worded and it almost appears that you know what you are talking about… But then there’s the math, the facts, you know… THE TRUTH. Your comment about Ernst & Young was really funny and was actually why I had to say “enough is enough” and address you and your antics. If you’re feeling like “I wish I would have come up with the MMA idea myself”, hey! Me too! But I can’t just go nuts with it and deceive a bunch of people to try and punish these guys for their success. I would love to see you take your writing ability and start writing the truth about things. Your change of heart would probably be news enough that people would want to read it. Really, give it try.
Tracy, thanks for clarifying my question about the Ernst & Young award, even if it was the 85th time! I just discovered your website/blog. Fascinating.
About a year ago I joined UFF as an agent, then purchased the MMA Express Program ($1,750) to pay off my assorted consumer debts (credit card, dental bill, 2 lines of credit, and medical bill). Even though the program looks simple to use, I could never get it to work for me. When I had to move back home from Virginia to California and in with my parents because of the stress of living under $29,000 of debt, I still could not get it to work! Because I was in a very low risk situation living with them, and working full time, I wanted to put every last cent toward my debt. But, the software would not let me. It kept telling me to transfer money into my savings account! Why would I want to have ANY money in a 1% – 2% savings account when I can channel it to pay off debts ranging from 8% – 22% interest?? When I asked two UFF customer support staff this question they both had the same answer: “the software knows best.” I was VERY frustrated and ended up not using the program.
With the help of my parents, plus them paying off one medical bill with zero interest at $100 per month, I have just $5,000 debt remaining!! If you subtract the $1,750 I spent to purchase the MMA Express Program, going to the Washington DC UFF conference, the moderate cost to become a distributor, plus the time I put in “trying” to work the business, I would be totally out of debt by now. I never made a dime being a UFF agent, but then I didn’t succeed with a few MLMs either. Have I FINALLY learned my lesson?
Actually Gary, it doesn’t work. At least not better than a do-it-yourself system which is free and quite easy. No, I don’t wish I had thought of MMA, because I’m not interested in swindling consumers. The $3500 spent on MMA is simply wasted money that consumers are much better off putting directly toward their debt. It’s sad that people like you are pushing this product which fails every time when compared side-by-side with a do-it-yourself method. Check out this page to see just how badly MMA fails:
http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=46373
Well this works for those of us who just don’t have time. I can do my own mechanical repairs But I don’t have the time nor the equipment. Thank you MMA. We strategically placed $10,000 plus over time, into a savings and eventually paid it into my mortgage— Shazam!!!
Don’t have time? Don’t have time??? MMA wastes tons of time. The method we’ve proposed here over and over again takes zero time.
And here’s a newsflash… If you had $10,000 to “strategically place” into savings with MMA… I can show you how you could have had over $13,500 to “unstrategically place” into savings… and you’d have more of your mortgage paid off.
UFF charged me $ 3500 for none benefit seen.I asked the refund after few days signed up with them,But they refuse to refund.IS anyway I can get my money back? even 2000 out of 3500?
Mandy, I’m really sorry you fell for the sales pitch. After 3 days, getting your money out of UFirst is probably impossible. They may not even be around much longer.
I think your best bet is to go after the agent who sold it to you. I keep hoping someone will take their agent to small claims court. UFirst themselves are very careful to keep their agents independent of the main company. You can’t touch UFirst, but someone should start going after the agents.
To anyone considering buying this program: DON’T DO IT!!! I applaud Tracy for giving us the chance to speak out on this blog. The “program” is crap and this company really needs to be shut down. Seems like the only ones defending UFirst and MMA are agents. Just don’t do it.
Thank you! My husband and I were just about to sign up with them today. Something just seemed a bit fishy to me so I told my husband I wanted to do some google-ing first. I am SO glad I did! Thank you Tracy and everyone else for the insight. We will be putting our $3,500 and $100 extra a month to our mortgage OURSELVES.