How 5 Mortgage Guys Won Ernst And Young's Award For Their Software That's Saved Client's Millions

Ben Thimas Jr.
Nov 16, 2018
4 min read

The History of the Worth Account

Mortgages are being offered with interest rates as high as .05% above the market rate. Given today's unpredictable economy, and this mortgage practice, it's costing consumers way more than a mortgage should and is terribly risky. Not much has changed since the 2007 real estate market crash. Borrowers are still over-paying banks. Hence why Mortgage Free Fast was founded. To educate his clients about the money and time saving and wealth building value of Worth Account.

In 2008, co-founders Skyler Whittman and John Washenko were awarded the prestigious Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” Award in Financial Services in the Utah region for their work developing the #1 mortgage acceleration software called The Money Merge Account, now called “The Worth Account.”

Friends since childhood, they learned what debt can do to a family when both their families lost their homes to foreclosure and they had to move. That helped the two to develop a tremendous dislike of debt and a passion for helping others to avoid it.

As young adults, the two friends went into business together, opening a mortgage company with the vision of helping young families, like each of theirs, get a start in life.

Within three years, their mortgage company “Accelerated Equity” had distinguished itself as one of the fastest growing mortgage companies in Utah. However, Skyler and John were not achieving the complete vision they had hoped for. Despite coaching clients with financial strategies to help their clients get out of debt and pay off their homes early, they watched in dismay as clients came back to them to refinance over, and over again – generally to cover expanding consumer and credit card debt. Additionally Skyler and John watched in dismay as the national trends toward ever expanding personal debt meant that more and more people were living paycheck to paycheck, less American's had any personal savings or retirement plan and more and more families were facing financial challenges. With average personal debt exceeding over $43,874 per person, and with financial stress quoted as being one of the leading causes of divorce, Skyler and John saw this as being the single greatest threat to the American family. And the numbers are even worse since then.

~~ They knew there had to be a BETTER way.

More than just a financial one, this became a moral mission. They went on a quest to find a way to help clients to be more successful with managing their finances, looking for financial tools that could help as well. With mortgages being the single biggest debt most of us will ever have, they focused their research there. In doing so they learned about the “offset mortgages” being used in Australia and the U.K. (now, offset mortgages make up the majority of mortgages in those countries), and they recognized that – mathematically at least – the offset mortgage was vastly superior to the amortized mortgages we have here in the United States. They also could see there were two problems to be faced. One was… we didn’t HAVE those mortgages here in the U.S. and the second, biggest problem, even if we did, without good financial discipline, an offset mortgage loses it’s financial advantage.

But John, being a self-professed “math geek” (he also shares credit with Skyler’s wife), went about designing a software program that would allow the user to mimic the mathematical advantages of the offset mortgage, but with psychological intuitive tools built into it that make it easy for clients to be more financially disciplined and motivated.

~~ GREAT RESULTS!

Thus, what was then called, “The Money Merge Account” was born in 2004. Marketing it under the name United First Financial, the company did a “test run” with 400 clients in the Colorado and Utah area and discovered amazing results. Not only were clients “sticking to” the program (over 95% still were using the program regularly 4 years out), but the average client was achieving 20% BETTER savings than was projected for them (with their free Mortgage Savings Analysis) when they got on the program!

~~ Results for the average client include:

Savings of over $120,23230 year mortgages paid off in 7-11 years.
All debt paid off, credit cards, car loans, student debt, etc. Amortized, that's over $900 in interest savings for each month of program use.
Ninety-five percent of clients "stick to" the program.
The average client gets 20% better savings than projected.
Seventy-thousand clients as of 2012 had "A+" rating in the Better Business Bureau with (both UFirst AND Worth).

The great results achieved by the software program brought the company a lot of notoriety that has received little support from the banking industry for obvious reasons. They received the Ernst & Young award and the “Editors Choice Award” from Personal Real Estate Investor magazine, are just two examples.

Additionally, the company was featured on the covers of several national financial and real estate related magazines, even attracting the attention of noted “gurus” like Mark Victor Hansen, “One Minute Millionaire” & “Chicken Soup for the Soul” and T.Harv Eker, “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.”

United First Financial's Money Merge Account program is a better, wiser, nobler, and more intelligent way to get people to save and become both debt free and stress free.

- Mark Victor Hansen