How to avoid being ripped off by United First Financial

United First Financial sells a software product for the absurd price of $3,500 using the claim that it will help you pay off your mortgage early. The company is not a scam, in the sense that they do not take your money and run, but rather the company is a rip-off, because they charge you $3,500 to help you do something you could do yourself, and they lead you into a risky type of home loan. Here's how to avoid getting sucked into their sales pitch.

	Understand what their product does. The concept, despite what they tell you, is not rocket science. They want you to refinance your house, essentially, into a Home Equity Line Of Credit (aka HELOC). Then you use every bit of your paycheck to pay down the HELOC as soon as you get the paycheck, and then you borrow money against the value of your home each month to pay everything. For example, you borrow money against your house to pay your electric bill. This is a bad idea in itself, because if the HELOC provider decides that you are a credit risk, they may decide to stop lending you money suddenly, and then your entire paycheck will go to pay off the HELOC, and you will not have access to any of the paycheck.
	Don't believe the marketing pitches. The main pitch basically implies that there is something complicated or magical about the way interest is computed and that the software knows something you don't. Even if you don't personally understand financially mathematics, there is actually nothing in the computations of interest that a high school graduate couldn't understand.
	Come up with a plan to pay off your house early on your own. The single most important step is to have a written monthly budget, where you tell every single dollar where to go. If you have control over your money, then you will be able pay your house off early. (See the resources for an eHow article on writing a personal budget.)
	Before you start paying off your house early, make sure you have paid off all your non-house debt and that you have a strong cash emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses. If you have $3,500 lying around that you would have spent on software, use it instead of pay off other debts and build the emergency fund. What's left over, you can use to pay off your house early.
	Once your non-house debts are paid off and you have a strong cash position, find every dollar you can in your monthly budget and designate it to pay off the house. Send a separate check each month to the company that services your mortgage and designate the check as "principal only". Some mortgage companies will also allow you to make additional principal payments online.

• If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If it sounds too expensive to be true, hold on to your money!

• United First Financial uses a multilevel marketing system, and even your close friends may become sales people for the company. It may be hard to turn down your friend, but the money is truly wasted. If you really want to help the friend out, you can ask the friend how much his personal sales commission is, and then write him a check for that amount.