Three Easy Ways to Decrease Your HELOC Payment

During this awful prime mortgage crisis, many people are looking for ways to decrease their monthly expenses. For those of us who have a HELOC (and associated HELOC payment), there are several SIMPLE (and creative) ways that most of us would never think to do. I won't go into a lot of detail here, but three of the easiest and most effective methods for decreasing your HELOC payment are as follows:

1. Turn your HELOC into your primary checking/savings account
2. Use a credit card to pay ALL your monthly expenses, thereby leaving the maximum amount of cash in your HELOC to offset interest
3. Use a credit card loop and exploit credit offers to offset even more interest in your HELOC

I realize these might not make 100% sense to you right now. They might even seem difficult. They're not. Trust me. They're dirt simple and 100% guaranteed to work (it's just simple math, that's it).

Head on over to The Payground website for details.

What Is A Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC)?

A Home Equity Line of Credit, or HELOC, is a specialized type of credit. It is similar to a credit card in that a lender agrees to provide you with credit, of which you can use as little or as much as you please. Thus, a HELOC is not really a loan, per se, but a line of credit (although I’ll generally refer to it as a loan for simplicity’s sake). The full amount of this line of credit is available to you for the full term of the loan. The “term” of the loan is the amount of time specified by the lender during which the line is active, generally 5 to 25 years. Payments (typically interest only) are made on a monthly basis and the amounts are based on two factors: the interest rate tied to your HELOC, and your average daily balance. You can learn more about the average daily balance and how to exploit it to decrease your monthly payment by reading our ebook here.

One major difference between a credit card and a HELOC is that the line of credit on a HELOC is a home equity line of credit. In other words, the collateral on the line is the borrower’s equity in his/her house. This means that, just like on a first mortgage, failure to repay the loan or meet its requirements can result in the foreclosure of the home. While this is not a frequent occurrence, it is something to keep in mind when contemplating using your HELOC to finance that new wakeboarding boat or home improvement project.

Many people use a HELOC as a second mortgage. One of the biggest distinctions between a traditional first mortgage and a HELOC is that the latter is what’s called an “open-ended” loan while the former is a “closed-ended” loan. The difference between the two is an important one:

For a closed-ended loan, the bank will ONLY apply money once a month and will only apply a FULL payment to adjust principal balance.

For an open-ended loan, the bank will apply money whenever it’s received and adjust principal balance multiple times a month.

Most people don’t realize how versatile HELOCs are. In addition to being used as second mortgages, they can be used for ALL SORTS of other things. To describe all of these uses in detail would be beyond the scope of this particular post, but here are a few to get you started:

* Debt consolidation
* Security in times of crisis or need
* Become your own bank and finance investments
* Leverage the credit in your HELOC to pay off your mortgage in 1/3 to 1/2 the time
* Earn rewards just like you would on a rewards credit card

And these are just a few. For the full spectrum of what you can really do with your HELOC, I suggest you purchase our ebook, Home Equity Secrets and start putting to work the principles therein.

The Money Merge Account – How It Works

There are 3 components to the MMA.

1. A Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC)
   
2. The Money Merge Account software
   
3. Your first mortgage

In the example on the Home page, we saw that a $200,000 loan will cost $231,676 in interest alone. However, if we were to apply a $5,000 payment on the very first day of that loan, it would actually cancel $23,304 of interest.

Don't apply $5,000	Apply $5,000
Balance: $200,000 Total Interest: $231,676	Balance: $200,000 - $5,000 = $195,000 Total Interest: $208,372
Total Savings: $0	Total Savings: $23,304

The point is this: due to the nature of home loans, any payments made towards the loan's principle balance will have exponentially large effects on the total cost of the loan. But most of us don't have $5,000 to plop down into our first mortgage. And that's where the Money Merge Account comes in.

In a nutshell, the program leverages the banks money (the HELOC) to cancel massive amounts of interest in your first mortgage. In order to do this, the software prompts the user to transfer precise amounts of money at discrete time intervals from the HELOC to the first mortgage. Think of it like using your credit card to make a payment on your mortgage. In other words, you now have a balance on your credit card (or in this case, your HELOC). This balance is quickly paid off, however, by using your HELOC as your primary checking/savings account: whenever you receive a paycheck or any other type of income, it is deposited into the HELOC account (for more detail on this, check out our Home Equity Secrets section). In this way the HELOC balance is paid down to it's initial balance, at which point the cycle repeats itself. Over time, this process rapidly reduces the balance on your first mortgage, saving you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest.

Let's take a look at how the Money Merge Account program works using something you're already familiar with: a car. More specifically, one of those nifty new cars that includes a navigation system. Using this car-analogy, we're going to take a road trip to Disneyland.

Your HELOC is the car

Your car is the vehicle that takes you from wherever you're at to Disneyland. The HELOC does the same thing: it is the tool that drives you from your current mortgage balance to a zero mortgage balance.

The MMA software is the navigation system

The car's navigation system tells you when and where to turn, allowing you to arrive at your destination as quickly as possible. Without it, no doubt you'd eventually arrive at Disneyland, but it would take you a lot longer to get there than if you had used the navigation system.

The MMA software works the same way by telling you down to the day and penny exactly what to do and when to do it.

The balance on your HELOC is the fuel in the car

For your car to be a useful tool in getting you from A to B, it needs fuel. Without gas, it might as well be a cardboard box. Obviously, you will consume gas during your trip, and when this happens you'll need to refill your tank.

As you use the MMA software you will "consume" your HELOC's available credit and your balance will rise. In order to keep the system running, you must pay that balance back down. This is quickly done by using the HELOC as your primary checking/savings account.

You are the driver

In both cases, you ultimately control the outcome. Your navigation system will tell you when and where to turn, but unless you follow those instructions you'll never reach Disneyland. Similarly, the MMA places you in the driver's seat. Follow the system and you'll reach your destination.

The purpose of driving to Disneyland is not simply to arrive at Disneyland. It's to enjoy the rides and attractions.

In much the same way, the purpose of the MMA program is not to pay off your mortgage. It's to help you achieve financial freedom.

Fill out the analysis form now to see what the program can do for you.

Money Merge Account Controversy

Before I continue with my Money Merge Account "tutorials", I want to talk about the controversy that the MMA program has motivated.

I have read many many blogs and forums in which the Money Merge Account program is vigorously discussed and debated. For the most part, these posts are skeptical if not downright attacks against the efficacy of the MMA. Here are a few examples of what critics out there are saying:

"This is clearly another MLM scam."

"I agree as several others that paying $3500 for this idea is a rip-off."

"I reviewed this product for the first time last week. Frankly I am disgusted by it. It does NOT save any money, it merely moves debt from one location to another and in fact will cost most clients more money than it will save them."

And then of course there are plenty of rebuttals to these comments, the vast majority of which come from United First agents who are trying to sell the software. The critics are resisting a paradigm shift (think of Copernicus and the Catholic church, the Wright brothers and the airplane, etc) and the agents are pushing an obvious agenda. With all the confusion, who can you believe?

Personally, I find it hard to put much credence into any arguments presented on forums or blogs as you can never know for sure whether a post is motivated by a personal agenda or altruism. Take this post that I am writing now. Although I haven't actually argued for one side or the other yet, the minute I do the question becomes, "what's motivating him to write this way or that?" That's why I am not going to argue, per say, for one side or the other. I will, however, provide a few facts. So what? There are plenty of facts online regarding the MMA. Well, most of these "facts" you'll find online are not much more than conjecture and opinion. Mine will be brief, and most importantly, VERIFIABLE by the average Joe.

Fact 1: Anyone can have done for them a FREE mortgage analysis with NO OBLIGATION. The analysis will tell you how quickly the MMA will pay off your house and how much you will save in interest.

Fact 2: If you choose to purchase the software and it does not perform as the analysis promises, you can receive a FULL REFUND of the price of the software. The following is taken directly from United First's MMA limited guarantee:

"In the event that you do not achieve the full amount of the Guaranteed Savings, notwithstanding that you have timely and exactly complied with all of the terms and conditions set forth in this Limited Guarantee, your sole remedy will consist of UFirst refunding the full amount of the MMA Program Activation Fee which you paid."

Yes, the product costs $3500. Yes, it might not be perfect for everyone. But if you spend the 5-10 minutes required to have an analysis done, and the results come back saying that your $3500 investment is going to save you 20 years and $150,000 in interest, PLUS it guarantees these results by offering a FULL REFUND, would it not be worth your time to at least have the analysis done? Duh.

Money Merge Account - No Alteration To Current Lifestyle

The Money Merge Account will allow you to pay off a mortgage faster than you could otherwise. Period. By now you may have heard radio commercials or a friend talking about a new program that allows homeowners to take control of their financial situation by rapidly accelerating the time frame in which their mortgage is paid off. The Money Merge Account, created by United First Financial, is the name of this program, ans is changing the way America eliminates debt and pays off their mortgages.

Traditionally the only way to decrease the time to pay off a mortgage was to refinance it or make extra payments. The Money Merge Account takes a radically different approach. Critics are quick to say the program doesn't work. "There are no magic secrets to paying off a mortgage. The only way to pay a mortgage off quicker is to apply more money to the balance of that mortgage." Well, they're right.

The Money Merge Account, or MMA, is typically marketed with the slogan, "pay off your mortgage in as little as 1/3 to 1/2 the time without altering you current lifestyle". Notice the slogan says "without altering your current lifestyle". Not current cashflow, but lifestyle. The truth is, your cashflow, or how and where you spend your money, will most definitely change. Because of the way the program works, however, your lifestyle WILL NOT CHANGE. In other words, if you spent $100/month eating out and $10/day buying lattes before starting the MMA program, you can still spend $100/month eating out and $/10 buying lattes after starting. In fact, the MMA takes all of these daily expenditures into account when qualifying you for the program. It knows that's how much you want to spend and won't tell you to change that. The amount of cash available to you for everyday needs WILL NOT DECREASE. What will decrease, and drastically, is the balance on your mortgage.

This may seem paradoxical. How can spend as much money as I did before but still be able to pay my mortgage of faster? The answer, I assure you, is no magic secret. It's math. That's all the Money Merge Account is when you boil it down. And it works. It worked for Einstein and it works for us today. In the next post I'll explain a little more about how this seemingly paradoxical contradiction can produce the phenomenal results so many Americans have begun to experience for themselves. Stay tuned...

Cancel Debt Using a HELOC

Are you ready for the financial equivalent of the golden rule? Here it is. Your money should always be doing one of two things: cancelling interest or earning it. Which is yours doing?

This post will be useful for a very specific group of readers: homeowners who have a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC). What do HELOCs have to do with canceling debt or interest? Quite a bit, if you use them right. In fact, there are several ways to utilize a HELOC for this purpose, some more advantageous than others. I'm going to concentrate on what in my opinion is the simplest.

Do you have a balance on your HELOC? The answer is probably yes. I certainly do. Do you have a checking/savings account? Almost definitely yes, right? And how much of a return are you getting in your checking/savings account? Not much. Probably not even enough to keep up with inflation (which, incidentally, was 2.7% over the last year). If this is the case, you have broken the golden rule. Essentially, money in a checking/savings account is stagnant. It's not doing anything for you. This is where the HELOC comes in.

Most HELOCs carry interest rates that are in the 8-10% range. Thus, every cent of your HELOC balance is costing you 8-10% in finance charges while money that could be doing you a lot of good sits idly in your checking/savings account. The solution is simple - move as much as you can of your checking/savings account funds into your HELOC. Monthly HELOC payments are calculated based on the account's average daily balance. So, by moving your funds into the HELOC account you will offset the amount of money on which the bank can apply finance charges. It can add up to a couple hundred dollars a month depending on your situation. And since HELOCs are so liquid, you can take those funds out in an instant if needs be, just as easily as you could from your checking/savings account.

Simple, right? Take as much of the checking/savings account money as you can out and let it sit in the HELOC account, canceling interest. This is just the beginning. There are a PLETHORA of other things you can do with your HELOC to make your money work more efficiently for you. These tools have many more uses than just the second mortgages most people use them for. Chances are you could be managing your HELOC more profitably...