Money Merge Accounts

Another trend I have been thinking about this week is in the world of personal finance. Dave and I are budget coaches with Crown Financial and this week we got a call from a couple we coached a while back. The told us about a new program that helps people pay down their mortgage faster. Although I had heard of it before I never had a reason to look into it. Since I was being asked my opinion I thought I first to formulate one so I did a little research. It is called MMA (Money Merge Account) and is a software program that, after you enter your financial information, gives you prompts as to when to pay your bills. It requires that you open line of credit, preferably a HELOC and everything gets paid out of that account. Surprisingly, I could not find one negative thing about it on the internet. Here is what I found:

• Money Merge Accounts do work to help pay off your mortgage faster.
  
• It is not a scam
• No where did I see anything that said a Money Merge Account can help you avoid foreclosure or pay down debt other than a mortgage.
  
• You do indeed use a HELOC or Home Equity Line of Credit which is different from refinancing your mortgage
  
• You need to have a fixed rate first mortgage in order to use the system
• It seems you need to actually have equity in your home
• You need to get the HELOC yourself from your bank.
  
• The product is sold via multi-level marketing like, Tupperware, Pampered Chef, Mary Kay, etc.
  
• The representative profits about $1000 per sale, yes, that is one thousand dollars
• You are paying for the use of the software, you don't actually own the software.
  
• The benefit of the software is the prompts it gives you to pay certain things at certain times of the month
• The representative will be vague about how the software works, which I assume is because of the proprietary nature of the software not because they want to hide something
  
• For Money Merge to work properly you need to cut your monthly expenses by 20-25%
• The program does not do the work for you. You need to be disciplined to pay everything and pay on time
• Since your paycheck is deposited directly into the HELOC you must be 100% disciplined to record in the software every penny you spend.
  
• This is a system which you can do on your own without the $3500 expense if you are technically and financially savvy.

So for what it is worth I think this program could work- only if you are an extremely discipline person. As far as the cost goes, it is cheaper than going to a bank and refinancing to a 15 year fixed mortgage and you will get it paid off in less time.