If you haven't heard about the UFirst MMA yet, you probably will soon. There's a new mortgage system out there that purports to reduce your mortgage term substantially by a complex method of using a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) to manage all your finances while advancing additional prinicipal payments to your mortgage, shaving years off the term. Due to the nature of the amortization schedule for mortgages, in fact, making additional payments above and beyond your minimum monthly payment certainly reduces the life of the loan. However, this system is completely unnecessary and uses deceptive materials to trick the consumer into believing they need this "sophisticated software system" to fulfill their real estate dreams, as I'll show you. I will also highlight how much this will ACTUALLY cost you in the long run, not to mention the other more beneficial uses of your additional funds each month.
About the Company and the System: RED FLAGS
I can't really say I know much about the UFirst Financial other than this system and its agents or "associates". I can say that they employ the usual multi-level marketing scheme that many similar companies do (remember Amway, ACN and the other organizations approaching cult-like fervor in their zeal?) to get footsoldiers to sell a service or system to friends, family and co-workers, entice them to sign on as an "associate" for an entry fee and the pyramid of promises builds from there. A friend of a friend tried to entice me into dolling out the $3,800 for the system and I politely shot holes in his presentation to the point we agreed it didn't make sense for me (that was the easiest "tough sell" I've ever encountered).
In looking for the company on the Better Business Bureau's website, I found something interesting. In sifting through the page of "United First Financial"s that came up, I found that they have duplicate websites. The one that is Satisfactory with BBB is a .net address, while if you Google "UFirst MMA", the .com site comes up. The sites are very similar save for one minor detail. On the .com site (which is the one most commonly frequented by you and I), the company's location is nowhere to be found. On the .net version, which is covered under the BBB, the location is in the upper right hand corner. What's more interesting is if you click on a link to join or learn more,
the .net site directs you to the .com site. Guess what else I found? Among the myriad companies that come up in the BBB search, I found one with the .com site listed as its website. Guess what it's rating is?
No Rating. I wonder why that is. While this is conjecture on my part, is it possible that the .net site is there to provide for a satisfactory rating with no complaints, while the .com site handles the transactions and could potentially be affected by a poor rating? I wonder.
Why wouldn't the site that handles the traffic and the transactions be listed with BBB? I can't think of another logical explanation for directing your traffic AWAY from a satisfactory site TO a site with no rating. Can you?
While perusing the site, I noticed that they make mention of their writeup in "Mortgage Planner Magazine", as if it's a resounding endorsement. What about CNN, Money Magazine and BusinessWeek? These are credentials that the
Prosper.com (a true financial innovation) was able to emphasize when it was launching; UFirst can only come up with this accolade? Essentially, there is no legitimate source (major business outlet, famed economist, not even a washed up sports star in a commercial) I could find that would endorse this system.
The UFirst MMA System - Hocus PocusNow, for the system itself: It's all based on tricking you into the fear of large numbers by showing you the future value of dollars you'll be paying in interest payments over the life of a loan. In the video example (link below), at 3:00 in to the video, they show an example. On a 200K loan at 6% interest, you pay $1199 monthly, or $431,677 over the life of the 30 year loan.
