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FIB - Scams 101
It is not just about making extra payments
Posted By: Bill, the Roadie In Response To: Re: NOT a scam... simply software that calculates math (stevek)
Date: Friday, October 26, 2007, at 10:21 a.m.(pst)
>> Even MS Office has a template under Excel that will help you pay off
>> your mortgage early.Reading the more detailed explanation of the product's tactics shows that it really isn't just a simple "make extra payments if you have the spare cash" program. I still claim the $3500 price is in no way related to the cost of developing the software, which makes it a rip-off in one sense. The entire Excel feature set can be had for free in Open Office, and even Microsoft Office Suite can be had for $200-300, and those have hundreds of person-years invested in development. So charging $3500 for some macros that took somebody a few months max to develop takes big brass ones.
But a lot of products aren't priced according to what they cost to develop. They can be priced on how much the customer perceives the value to be. If they can be fooled into thinking they're saving $100,000, they would actually be foolish to ignore the possibility, even if the software cost $90,000.
I think one major fallacy (but I can't prove it without a lot more work than I can spend now) is that the full savings from the program are in the far-off years. Getting rid of a mortgage in 10-15 years is nice, but many folks move in fewer years, so the benefit isn't entire realized. Almost nobody stays in a house without refinancing or moving, until their original mortgage is paid off. Our parents or grandparents might have done that, but they had houses that originally cost only $10-30K to buy.
If you've managed to read this far, the detail many folks might be missing is that the program's concept isn't making extra payments if you don't have extra money. It's in taking short-term loans from the Home Equity Line of Credit, early in a month or year, and applying it to the mortgage. If the HELOC is simple interest, and the mortgage is compound, you can win. And your income has to go into the HELOC, not your free checking account, so the unused money (until you spend it all each month) has a benefit. This what Mel was talking about the "sweeps" account.
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