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Again I want to re-emphasize that my husband and I had our financial challenges the first year we started using the Money Merge Account.  Remember I told you in the article “Becoming Debt Free with the Money Merge Account Part 4” about the home equity line of credit (HELOC) we had and that we weren’t too happy with the bank where we got it?

I will repeat that when we applied for the account, we signed the paperwork in which everything was correct. Then when the HELOC was funded the bank “out of the blue” put another woman’s name on our account.  This woman’s last name was not even closely similar to ours.  We not only did not know this person, the bank couldn’t figure out how she got on our account.  It took us several months to get her name removed from our account.

Even though we were not particularly happy with the bank, the Money Merge Account system from United First Financial was working even better than we had anticipated.

From August 2008 until February 2009 we paid an average of $39.00 a month for our interest only HELOC loan.  Each month we put our income into the HELOC making an additional principal payment on the HELOC and let it sit for as long as possible. When it was time to pay the bills we would take out an “advance” from the HELOC.

By depositing money into the line of credit and withdrawing money out the balance continued to fluctuate.  By February our line of credit balance was $33,487; well under the withdrawals of $49,635. We were able to reduce this loan balance $16,148 by just following the guidance of United First Financial’s Money Merge Account software.

We had also reduced our mortgages from 9 to 8 by paying off one of the 2 second loans we had when we became clients with United First Financial.  Every thing was happening just as the Money Merge Account guidance was telling us it was supposed to be happening.  And then………

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Now if you remember, I told you previously that our home equity line of credit (HELOC) balance was zero when we began using the Money Merge Account software.  The first withdrawal we made from our HELOC was $3500, the cost of the Money Merge Account.

Our first month’s interest on our HELOC was $1.72.  As I said in “Becoming Debt Free with the Money Merge Account Part 4” the interest on an open-ended HELOC is based on the daily average amount.  Because we deposited our income into the HELOC and let it sit for a time period until our bills were due the daily amount fluctuated and the amount of interest due on the HELOC is kept low.

In September 2008, the Money Merge Account software prompted us to withdraw $9200 from our HELOC and pay off one of the 2^nd mortgages of our rental properties.  That month our interest on our HELOC was $15.58.

As with other people in the past year, we have had our financial challenges.  All I can say is that we are very thankful that we had found United First Financial and were on the Money Merge Account.  Remember I told you we had rental properties? We ended up having some additional expenses that we hadn’t counted on such as installing a new roof and a major kitchen repair.

From September 2008 to February 2009 we ended up withdrawing $49,635 from our HELOC.  Only the withdrawal in September 2008 of $9200 was used to pay down the principal of our loans, the rest went to other projects and emergencies.

Here is the breakdown of our line of credit withdrawals:

With all of these withdrawals our Money Merge Account “Dashboard” kept us informed on the affect of each cost and the results are simply unbelievable.  One great feature that is part of the Money Merge Account software is the ability to know the “true cost” of expenditures.

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Back in August 2008 it took about 10 days to complete the paperwork, mail it in, and get it approved by United First Financial before we could get the Money Merge Account up and running.

We were very excited to get started so this time delay was somewhat frustrating to us. Nowadays United First Financial has made it much easier and quicker for clients to activate their Money Merge Accounts online.

Because we needed to set up our bank accounts properly with the bank that we had the HELOC with we actually didn’t get started on our quest to become debt free until September 2008.

Just a note: The United First Financial product is a financial coaching software. They do not provide any banking services so the bank comments I make are based on our experiences with well known banking establishments.

I want to digress here for a moment and tell you about a gigantic snafu that had happened when we originally got our HELOC from the bank.  This bank shall remain nameless in this article, but I want to let it be known that from the beginning we were not Read the rest of this entry