elife financial, scam?

mike_sofi · Joined: 10 Jan 2008 Posts: 1 2.15 Dollars($)

I recently heard of elife financial and went to one of their presentations. Is this for real? Im trying to wrap my brain around it and find the scam. Does anyone have experience with this program/company and care to comment?

Guest 0.10 Dollars($)

Hi Mike,

Even I have heard about this comany but I do not have any experience with them. Let's see what the others have to say about this.

ckalvesmaki · Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 5:09 am Post subject:

Mike....can you give some info as to the program they are offering.

Guest 0.10 Dollars($)

They offer a way to pay off a 30 year mortgage in 10 years WITHOUT making extra payments or increasing payment amounts. They consolidate all of your bank accounts and debt into one account they call the Accelerator. They refi mortgage into an interest only loan to free up cash during the month. Somehow the accelerator account begins to grow, and grow, and grow. With each month you are saving more and more money until you hit the target amount (the example they used was 40k) at which point you dump that into the mortgage. I wish I knew exactly how it worked. It made sense during the seminar, but I've lost some bits and pieces.

lisascherzer · Joined: 04 Jan 2008 Posts: 749 0.10 Dollars($)

Hi Mike,

I am familiar with this type of mortgage. It is a monthly adjustable rate mortgage that only pays off quicker if you are applying all of your savings to the principle every month. During the seminar they use examples and the one they used probably was based on left over income of 500 to 1000 per montb and is actually put towards principle. If they stated that you are not making extra principle payments then that is incorrect. They probably thought they could say that since the left over savings for that month is applied to your balance without physically writing a check towards the principle balance.

Here are the benefits of this type of mortgage:

You always have access to the money that has been applied to your principle balance since it is effectively a line of credit, unlike a conventional mortgage that you cannot draw from again. So money that would be sitting in your checking and/or savings is actually reducing your average daily balance.

You are able to borrow back money you have paid on your mortgage at anytime for improvements or hardships that may come up in the future.

The negatives of this type of mortgage:
The rate is higher than a fixed rate mortgage. So unless you need the flexibility to be able to draw from this mortgage or are self employed, I don't think paying a 7 to 8% rate is worth it.

Overview:
A fixed rate 30 year mortgage is about 5.50 to 5.75 right now. If you are not self employed or have a large savings, I would not recommend this type of mortgage for you. It's just not worth paying the higher rate of interest to have what is a really just a glorified line of credit.

adonis · Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 6:14 am Post subject:

Welcome back Mike,

Ok so it's the Homeownership accelerator program. Mike, there are diverse opinions about this program, so I suggest that you take a look at the discussions on accelerator program.

Guest 0.10 Dollars($)

Thanks for all the info. This is exactly what I was hoping to find!

adonis · Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:08 am Post subject:

Mike,

It's good to know that I could be of some help. Smile

Guest 0.10 Dollars($)

Ive done some research and actually made some phone calls directly in to elife and I got them to tell me exactly what types of loans they are bundling together to run their accelerator elife program and to my surprise it actually makes good sense. The 1st mortgage is a 30 year fixed with an interest only option and the 2nd is a HELOC so you still have access to your money.

lisascherzer · Joined: 04 Jan 2008 Posts: 749 0.10 Dollars($)

Yes, but they are charging you too much to do this for you. You can take out a line of credit yourself and deposit your entire paycheck and just write checks to pay your bills. This is what they are doing for you but you can do it yourself for free.

Guest 0.10 Dollars($)

I am actually an insider with this company. Elife bought my mortgage company and is forcing us to come under their umbrella. Their main program, Equitystar, is works just like the description above, with an interest-only 1st and a HELOC 2nd. What they sell you is software (online login) to manage your account. Problem is that the price tag is a minimum of 2% of your loan amount. Ranges from $3950 - $20,000. There's several other similar management systems on the market for $3500 or less, regardless of your loan amount.

I would run far from this company. Young management and they are training their people to sell this through very slick salesman techniques, and manipulate the facts. It won't last.

adonis · Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 4:42 am Post subject:

Ok guest, so you mean Elite Financial won't last long or is it the Equitystar program that you are talking about?

livinginnky · Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 11:51 am Post subject:

Hopefully none of these slime will last. Check the many other threads on this subject. Flat out it just does not make sense in any way shape or form. Haven't seen a realistic example yet to date. Do a search for mortgage accelerators.

..... da da da daaaaaaaaa...... enter the salespeople. If you sit really quite you can actually hear them coming.

Very soon many "guests" will begin posting here with comments like my rocket scientist MD brother checked this out and you will die if you don't use it. It is proven that without this program you will get some type of disease and die. If you do use it all your dreams will be yours.

Seriously, it is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. It ends up costing you more than if you just used a checking account and used all your "extra" money for mortgage payoff. Other than that you just pay bills as usual.

livinginnky · Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 12:06 pm Post subject:

This is a snippet from a BBB article on avoiding investment scams. 'http://www.bbbmoneynow.org/?lid=1&page=avoidingscams'

7. If the promoter says it's practically a "sure thing" - don't buy it. All investments carry some level of risk. Don't buy into any product if the salesperson says there is no risk to it, even if you like and trust that person. A salesperson can be the victim of a scam, too.

I mainly bring it up not to add to the redundancy of my dislike of these programs. But to point out the last sentence. Sometimes the salespeople who so adamantly promote these systems, are unaware of what exactly they are selling.

Guest 0.10 Dollars($)

I actually believe the "acceleration" concept is a good thing, although it does take effort on the part of the homeowner to use it properly. This is where the software comes in. There are several companies with good mangement programs for a very fair price.

I don't believe elife financial will last under their current management. Too much is put into slick sales techniques and overpricing of their products, like equitystar. They claim it's selling like crazy, but only have a couple hundred sales in almost two years time. That's not much with hundreds of agents. It's like selling a hamburger for $10 when everyone else sells the same thing for $1.

They are paying their agents like an MLM scheme, where the only way you can earn top dollars is by recruiting. We all know how well that works. Plus, I know of many legal violations and issues that may bring this company down long before the competition does.

Bottom line ... thumbs up to acceleration ... thumbs down to elife.

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