“Smoke and Mirrors”
http://www.theage.com.au/news/property/smoke-and-mirrors/2004/09/28/1096137225560.html

“Predators Among Us”
http://kuzenovich.com/articles/79/1/Money-Merge-Accounts-Predators-Among-Us/Page1.html

Financial ignorance is the ultimate (and perhaps easiest) weakness for scammers to exploit. It is sadly amazing to me the number of people who are so easily duped by lies and psychological manipulation into financial scams like these.

Tell them what they want to hear, make up some lies, leave out all the most important financial details, and releive them of $3,500… it’s a printing press.

It’s really quite sad… and an indictment of the general public’s financial education.

Despite copious proof from every angle that the HELOC b/s is more costly, more risky, less efficient, and in general a bad idea… despite exposure of the lies and misrepresentations, despite proof that the schemes are worthless… there are still those who want to believe and/or justify their bad actions and bad choices.

I think Penelope Hill, a lawyer at Victoria’s Credit Helpline says it best: “The way these loans are marketed is deceptive and misleading. It is a total scam. If brokers and lenders were honest about what these products do, no one would buy them. There would be no reason for anyone to be in one of these loans.”

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/324/RipOff0324581.htm

go to the FatWallet finance forum and you will find plenty of people like me proving plenty of people like you wrong. Why? BECAUSE WE HELP PEOPLE, NOT ROB THEM. I get dozens of emails a week from people asking for spreadsheets with amortization schedules, and help interpretting the information (read: garbage) from the UFF agents. The UFF system doesn’t teach people anything. If anything, it misinforms them. Are some of them better off than they were before, maybe. I don’t dispute that in some cases. However, as some who believes in helping people, I don’t think it’s right to charge $3500 while telling people it’s the space-age algorithm that’s making the improvement. It’s their money that’s making the improvement. If you help people learn, then they avoid more pitfalls instead of relying on a dishonestly marketed black box that is hiding the truth from them.

I’m not going to stop telling people the truth about this crap. And not just the UFF, but all debt accelerators that are nothing more than prepayment systems in disguise. I love the “thank you”s I get from people that tell me they learned about finances, instead of paying through the nose to still be in the dark.

Keep up your obvious deceit and lies, it only makes your crappy MLM product look worse.

You really think you are providing a noble service by making people feel stupid in comparison with your superior knowledge of finance. My experience is that “average” people are discovering for the first time in their lives a way to help them overcome the stranglehold of unmanageable debt through a money merge system concept, even if it costs them $3500 to get it. They know they’ve wasted far more money than that all of their lives and now they see a product that can guide them through a process that will build their esteem and restore lost dignity instead of giving them empty feelings for spending so much on things they don’t really need, as they have done so often in the past. So a mathematical genius like you comes along and pounces on them, deflating the esteem they have derived from this breakthrough experience in their lives, and making them feel stupid and victimized.

But you are not content to make the “average” person without your financial acumen feel stupid, you also want to make them feel like they have been taken advantage of by planting seeds of doubt in their minds bout the integrity of the company that has sold them the product - UFF - even though you have no evidence to back this up (such as pending lawsuits, customer complaints, unfavorable reports submitted to Better Business Bureaus, etc.)

Calvin, if you really want to help people leave the UFF clients alone. There may be a better way out for them, but least they are doing something and the chances of them finally succeeding are very good. So instead of going after UFF users like a Lion after a Zebra why don’t you use your superior acumen to help people like the lady you mentioned in one of your posts who sought your advice. If that’s a true story I would consider it to be a worthy gesture on your part and one that not only helped this lady but brought a sense of satisfaction to you as well. There are thousands more people like her in this nation and probably hundreds more in your neighborhood or community. Would not helping these people be a more productive usage of your time?

Your comments in this blog remind of the time I went to an auto parts store with my son to purchase a particular item for his vehicle. Because neither my son, nor I could speak the language or knew the nuances and subtleties of the type of part we needed, the man behind the counter felt (I guess) that he needed to build his own esteem by letting us know how stupid we were. His incredulous looks, rolling of the eyes, and frequent turn to his colleague with the look of unbelief, made my son and I feel pretty small. We didn’t tell this man that my son was about to complete his medical residency and soon would be a doctor of internal medicine. Neither did we let him know about my advanced degrees in areas not related to automobile science. As we were leaving my son turned to me and said something like this. “I wonder if I should act like him if he got cancer or something and I wound up being the physician treating him and had to explain to him his condition.”

Why is it that some people can only feel good about themselves by making other people feel stupid?

You are entering a phD program in finance and didn’t know sending more money to your mortgage will pay it down faster and save interest? You think knowledge of the HELOC shuffle, a system that pays down your mortgage slower than simple prepayments, is worth $3500?

A phD student in finance….???

Much like UFF agents claims…..something isn’t adding up.

calvin

ps. MLM/pyramid scheme. People doing MLMs get money for recruiting people, or at least a commission on their recruit’s sales. That’s actually the very definition of MLM. The government draws the line (IIRC) between a pyramid scheme and a “legit” MLM at 70% of revenues coming from recruitment activities versus sales of product/services to end users not in the company (actual customers, not people in the MLM structure buying the product/service).

I am no attorney myself but I believe there can be some pretty severe penalties for misleading / false advertising. If UFF is still in business, they can’t be “lying” all that much, or am I missing something here?

By the way, I believe the difference between a pyramid and an MLM structure is that in a pyramid you only receive compensation for recruiting and there is no product or service being offered, this is illegal. In MLM there is no compensation for recruiting and a product or service offered, this is not illegal.

One extremely tangible benefit of having been exposed to MMA is that my level of awareness is such that I now know “I can do this myself.” Before MMA I didn’t know I could do this myself because I didn’t know about the HELOC strategy (irrespective of the prepayment method). For that knowledge alone I would have paid $3,500.

So to all those UFF agents out there, thank you for making me aware that “I could do this myself.”

To those of you who have decided to engage a more philanthropic demeanor by actively contacting as many as your friends as possible, and their friends as well, to freely show them how they can do this themselves thank you for helping make America more financially savvy as well as more debt free.

To those of you who have seen the MMA presentation and decided to do it yourself, send that UFF agent a thank you card for making you aware of said fact thereby enabling you to save thousands upon thousands of dollars in interest payments.

To those UFF agents who are out there showing the MMA program, thank you for making so many consumers aware of the fact that there is a better way; especially those consumers who would not otherwise have ever had the opportunity to see an incremental yet significant acceleration in their net worth due to MMA.

To Calvin, thank you for helping to stimulate so much discussion on this subject and for your very many insightful observations. My only recommendation is to adopt a kindler and gentler disposition. Calvin, this is not an attack, but rather, constructive criticism.

To those of you who are paying financial advisors and/or passively investing in mutual funds in your retirement accounts, do your self a huge favor and learn how to actively manage your money yourself. I bet you knew you could do it yourself, right? So why aren’t you? Because you probably didn’t know that you could make money in an up, down, or sideways trending market. Also, and more importantly, because I most cases it is extremely difficult and virtually impossible to do it successfully without the proper investment in time to educate yourself in order to gain the expertise and discipline to do it right. However, the education and rewards can potentially make you financially independent for generations upon generations. By the way, I have nothing against financial advisors as I myself will soon be enrolling in a PhD program in finance.

For every product, service, concept, system, philosophy, etc. there will always be individuals on either side of the fence. This includes whether or not one should payoff their mortgage, or whether or not one should learn to manage their own money / invest in the stock market.

Which side of the fence are you on? It is up to you to do the research enabling you to make an intelligent and informed decision. Even so, some of you will select one side, and some of you will select the other side. That is the beauty of having freedom of choice.

Charles