Fund & Grow Case Study

Fund & Grow Case Study

New York, NY · Member since 2018 · 13 posts · 33 votes

Over the past few months I've become aware of Fund & Grow as a financing option (I heard about it on the Clayton Morris podcast), and I was really intrigued by it.  

Their promise: You give us $3K up front, we'll give you access to up to $250K of unsecured business credit at 0% that doesn't impact your personal credit in any way.  You can even get cash off these credit lines to use to pay a down payment on a house (effectively giving you 100% financing on a deal).

Sounds too good to be true, right?

I figured I could turn to these forums to debunk these myths, but while there were a number of posts of people asking questions about them, I didn't find a whole lot of really concrete answers.  A few folks had gone through with it, but either 1) they didn't have great credit to start with, so they spent a lot of time repairing their credit first, or 2) they found other hard money financing methods along the way and didn't finish out the year's worth of work to get the full amount.

I was very inspired by some case studies about Morris Invest (thank you Tyler Jahnke et. all) to just go ahead and go through with this, and then write regular updates for you all so we can learn, together, once and for all, whether this method works!

My background/why I'm interested in this product: I'm a newbie investor looking to augment my nest egg so as to be able to either put in all-cash offers on properties, or be able to BRRR with 100% financing so as to repeat more often.

My stats:

  • 800 credit score
  • 110K in available personal credit lines already
  • ~1% of existing credit line utilization

The timeline:

Early January 2018: After hearing about Fund & Grow on Clayton Morris' podcast, I decided to give them an initial call.  I ask them questions about how well I'd fare under their program, why their credit wouldn't show up on my personal statement, etc.  I spoke to Cathy in their sales department; she was very helpful and assured me that I'd do very well, and was looking at receiving in the "upper end" of their $50K-$250K of promised credit in the first year.  Interestingly, she also said that if at the end of the first year I chose to re-up with them and give them another $3K, they could get me another year of 0% financing.  I asked about being able to cash out the cards to make a down payment on a house; she assured me they had a strategy to do that without a fee!  I was intrigued, but didn't make a decision right away.

January 26:  After attending a real estate meetup in my area where someone who was very successful told me to get as much credit as I could while I didn't "need it" and use it to buy houses, I decided to call them again and ask some final questions.  I again spoke to Cathy; I asked her how I could possibly get business credit when I didn't yet have a business, and that business wouldn't have any income for quite some time even once I created it.  Without giving away their strategy on this forum, she basically told me they had a method to "backdate" a business entity.  I asked her about whether a lender would be concerned when I went to do a cash-out refinancing that I had all this credit card debt; she responded that this debt wouldn't appear on my personal credit report because it was business credit.  I finally asked her about their money-back guarantee in case all of this didn't pan out; she told me I could get my money back for any reason (I believe) within 60 days.  

I decided to pull the trigger.  I decided to pay half now, half in 30 days so I could get a quick sense of how things were going.  It was $3500 with a $500 discount from Clayton Morris's ad, so this was ~$1875 with taxes per payment.  

The first step was filling out paperwork so they could run my credit.  Then I booked an appointment with a credit specialist for this coming Thursday, Feb 1, to officially kick off the process!

I'll update everyone again after my meeting on Thursday, and I'll post regular updates here as credit comes in and as I try to get cash off the cards!

20Reply
392 views

Most Popular Reply

Rental Property Investor · East Wenatchee, WA · Member since 2014 · 10k+ posts · 16k+ votes
8y

Back in my cc days, I had about $130k of available credit but not with an outfit or paying $3k for the privilege.

To convert my lines to cash, I used the free balance transfer option online.

The name and acct number I transferred to was my business name and bank acct. Worked like a charm and no cash advance fees. 

But then I stopped playing with snakes. My introductory offers of 0% started turning into penalty pricing up to 29.9% through no fault of my own.  Watch the fine print! Been consumer debt free for 5 years and will never go back.  Use these things with caution, y'all.

See this reply in the discussion

104 Replies

Jump to latestLatest
  • Investor · Top of the World · Member since 2016 · 165 posts · 40 votes
    7y

    @Maurice Colbert  If you do not mind,  What was the total cost and the total funding?

  • Queens, NY · Member since 2019 · 5 posts · 1 vote
    7y

    I personally went through Morris Invest and got a $500 discount, and in just my very 1st round I was F&G was able to get over $50k and I still got 3 more rounds of funding! Luis Luperena is taking really good care of me so far along with Jennifer Soriano. 

  • Rental Property Investor · NJ/PA · Member since 2016 · 555 posts · 149 votes
    7y

    what things they do for you after you paid $3000?

    1.  get business credit card

    2. get cashout 

    what if you do it yourself??    what are the difference they make for you?    I bet you can do it yourself!!

  • Bukka LevyPro Member
    Real Estate Agent · Petaluma, CA · Member since 2017 · 63 posts · 35 votes
    7y

    Can anyone on this thread explain how they got money off their credit cards in detail, if at all? I see a few people refer to it but in a fairly vague way or mostly not at all.

    I’m not interested in the gold option, I feel it takes too much of the 0% timeline. I tried Plastiq and it was almost impossible to do even a small transfer. They act almost as a barrier and have a lengthy questioning period to avoid people taking cash.

    The one intriguing option mentioned was the PayPal transfer. Wondering just how simple that really is and what the cost ends up being if it’s still an option. 

    Any other methods would be greatly appreciated.

  • Member since 2019 · 3 posts · 1 vote
    7y

    Okay so just want to give Michael Richard with Fund & Grow a big thank you and pat on the back for a job well done these past 2 rounds of funding.

    1ST ROUND: I was approved for a $15K Capital One Sparks and a $7,500 Wells Fargo.

    2ND ROUND: I was approved for a $19K Bank of America Business and $19K Flagstar.

    TOTAL = $60,500

    Not too shaby for 2 Rounds of Funding. I'm actually very impressed with the second round of funding. Great job Michael! I look forward to the next round. Thank you!!

    Anyone have questions, or input feel free to reach out.

    - Eddie

    Las Vegas

  • Investor · Las Vegas, NV · Member since 2013 · 8k+ posts · 10k+ votes
    7y

    You joined today just to post 3 identical messages about this company?

  • Investor · Rockledge, FL · Member since 2016 · 1 post · 3 votes
    7y

    Retrena Thomas, and the Fund & Grow team, are fantastic!

    He was able to work his magic and negotiate for me $90k in unsecured business credit at 0% for my second round of funding bring my total to about $140k; this is going to be a huge help in growing my real estate business. 

    If you are starting a new business and need some funding to push forward, Fund & Grow is the real deal and will prove you with the guidance you need to secure your business credit.

    Thank you so much Retrena and the Fund & Grow team,

    Ken

  • Member since 2019 · 1 post · 2 votes
    7y

    Retrena from Fund and Grow was there to walk me through and explain every part of the process and kind and willing to answer all my questions. This was all new to me and I had lots of questions! The process was straight forward and I can recommend Fund and Grow based on my personal experience. 

  • Philadelphia, PA · Member since 2016 · 16 posts · 12 votes
    7y

    Hi All, I've used Fund and Grow twice to generate great money source options for our real estate projects and was very happy with the service received from Retrena to generate close to $100,000 in my second round of funding!

    Goldmoney took too long to create the account, over a month, so I would recommend Plastiq for leveraging the funds in the cards.

    Good luck all and this has been a great experience and low cost if you look at the fees vs what you would pay in interest.

  • Specialist · Logan, UT · Member since 2014 · 28 posts · 27 votes
    6y

    I won't be re-upping with them for a 2nd round, and will probably sever our "newsletter" relationship as soon as I finish with the rental condo I booked with them.

    They were super nice and super easy to work with. They did exactly what they said they'd do, and I don't believe I was *ever deceived*. I ended up with an additional $131K credit on a sole proprietorship (they couldn't/wouldn't/didn't work with my existing LLC) across 4 cards, all with 0% APR for between 6-12 months with a mix of balance-transfer-only and purchase-or-balance-transfer restrictions.

    That being said, the results were less than exciting. For what I'm trying to do (BRRRR), the F&G system doesn't work at all for me. It's almost impossible to get cash out *as cash*. Using plastiq.com it's super hard to impossible to pay for real estate or loans directly. The GoldMoney path is full of red-tape and speculation and fees. "Writing a cash advance check to myself and deposit it" didn't work (I got stuck with a bounced check fee) and it doesn't result in 0% on any of the cards I was given, just a 3% transaction fee and a high interest rate. The only thing I've figured out that works is to do is use the cards to "pay" my LLC at 3% on plastiq.com, but plastiq goes out of its way to try and make sure the payer and the payee aren't the same person. Since THAT involves some kind of maneuvers that look too much like money-laundering (generating fake invoices that plastiq 'needs' to see, for services not really rendered, etc), I'm not doing that. On top of that, I don't have any large debts to balance transfer, so a couple of my 0% deals on cards don't work at all.

    Essentially I'm sitting on a pile of credit that I can't do anything *I need to do* with except maybe pay a contractor that accepts credit cards like Home Depot. (for a house I can't buy with cash, so I have nothing for the contractor to fix...)

    Do I regret doing it? Yeah. Would I do it again? No. Am I warning other people away? Maybe, if your plans and situation are like mine. Are they crooks? No. Is it too good to be true? It was for me.

    It was $3000 that I paid for a lesson in letting down my guard against slick advertisements.

  • Specialist · Logan, UT · Member since 2014 · 28 posts · 27 votes
    6y
    Originally posted by @Nate Pomeroy:

     The only thing I've figured out that works is to do is use the cards to "pay" my LLC at 3% on plastiq.com, but plastiq goes out of its way to try and make sure the payer and the payee aren't the same person. Since THAT involves some kind of maneuvers that look too much like money-laundering (generating fake invoices that plastiq 'needs' to see, for services not really rendered, etc), I'm not doing that. 

    For what it's worth, I tried to use plastiq.com to pay my wife's company (a business consulting company not associated with my real estate LLC, that I don't work in at all), and plastiq.com thinks/claims that's a prohibited transaction because I'm "paying myself". It was a legit, straight-up transaction, listed as a sale by her accountant, generating paperwork like an invoice, time tracking etc. I thought using my CC to pay an invoice from another company I don't own (in a another field of business) was arms-length enough for Plastiq.com, but I guess it's not.

    So this isn't strictly about F&G, except that one of F&G's paperwork flyers they sent me talked up how using Plastiq was a great way to get cash and purchase things for my business.
    If F&G is continuing to tell you they can get *cash* by using Plastiq.com (like they did with me), you will be sorely disappointed.  

    Oh, and F&G monitors this thread and called me because of my response. I'll call them back when I have some time and see what they have to say.
    They also keep emailing me and texting me asking for a testimonial, and I haven't because I'm certain they don't want to publish what I have to say.

  • Member since 2018 · 15 posts · 1 vote
    6y

    @Nate Pomeroy  

    any updates did you ever speak with F&G about your experience with Plastiq and the challenges you had extracting the cash from the credit line?

  • Specialist · Logan, UT · Member since 2014 · 28 posts · 27 votes
    6y

    @Jamen Armendariz

    It's super low on my priority list (talking to them about Plastiq, etc); I feel like all the other time I spent trying to make it work for me already was a waste of time, and I'm not anxious to let them suck more time away from me for nothing. they sent me all kinds of emails about how to do it, and none of it worked like the emails said it would, so I'm not sure what they'd tell me now that's different. Just more BS or promises that "this time, it'll work I PROMISE", probably.
    I have 1 or 2 RE deals I'm dealing with right now that are taking my time, and I'm moving forward without their "help" or "financing" BS. 
    Just today I got an email from F&G saying my point of contact has changed to some other person. The new person asked how I was doing removing bad entries from my credit report (which is what their CRM says I was doing) which has never been true. I've never tried to do that; never thought I'd have to because I have nothing bad on any of my reports as far as I know; I've never had any sort of discussion with them about what to do for my credit reports. They seriously can't tell their arse from their elbow over there; it's like they don't even know me or my situation, but they have access to my credit reports. (I've got to change that ASAP.)

  • Specialist · Logan, UT · Member since 2014 · 28 posts · 27 votes
    6y

    ...and I think it's scammy and dishonest that they either spam these threads with their own sock-puppets, or encourage thread responses from single-post-obviously-signed-up-only-to-post-about-F&G-on-this-thread-people (is it in exchange for something? We'll never know.)

  • Chula Vista, CA · Member since 2015 · 2 posts · 0 votes
    6y

    @ Joshua Mayo

    How much funding did you get for yourself in total?

    I heard F&G mention that you can actually apply for these credit cards Yourself.. the difference is the credit limit they can "negotiate" on your behalf using their relationships with credit card companies 

    I'm trying to research as much information as I can before signing up with F&G

    Any feedback will help 

    Thank you 🙏

  • Chula Vista, CA · Member since 2015 · 2 posts · 0 votes
    6y

    @ Joshua Mayo

    How much funding did you get for yourself in total?

    I heard F&G mention that you can actually apply for these credit cards Yourself.. the difference is the credit limit they can "negotiate" on your behalf using their relationships with credit card companies 

    I'm trying to research as much information as I can before signing up with F&G

    Any feedback will help 

    Thank you 🙏

  • Rental Property Investor · Blacklick, OH · Member since 2015 · 111 posts · 80 votes
    6y

    @Nate Pomeroy sorry man you had trouble getting what you needed from the cards, I was able to all my rehabs and get cash off the cards and fund a entire house with the cards. Just because you didn't get what you needed, I dont think you should say that the company is scamy, just my thoughts 

  • Specialist · Logan, UT · Member since 2014 · 28 posts · 27 votes
    6y

    @Maurice Colbert how did you get *cash*?
    I could totally spend the credit on things like contractors or Home Depot. But how did you get *cash* or how did you pay for the real estate with it? Like, what buyer accepted a charge to your your credit card number as payment for real estate? I haven’t found a way, or a title company, that accepted payment with a card.

    Re:”scammy” I think flooding a message boards with sock puppets and either paid-for or fake reviews to be “scammy.” I have gone to great pains to say they provide exactly what they say they will. It just didn’t work for my situation, and I wasn’t aware that it wouldn’t. In that sense, they are NOT a scam. They do what you pay them for. I think marketing with fake or paid reviews is dishonest, so their marketing department is scammy, then.

  • Rental Property Investor · Blacklick, OH · Member since 2015 · 111 posts · 80 votes
    6y

    @Nate Pomeroy I have funded a house with the cards, through my title company, i can walk you through if you want me to. 

  • Member since 2019 · 3 posts · 4 votes
    6y
    Originally posted by @Account Closed:

    I was on the fence but decided to joined. That's the only way for me to see what they are all about.

    My rep is Michael and played devil's advocate and questioned him thoroughly. He answered all my questions well and guided me through each process.

    I went through the whole process with Plastiq and experimented getting my latest rental property. Process work better than expected.

    I was really happy with the outcome. They helped me obtained over $130,000.00 on my first round. I already have a solid plan to use the funds as well as to pay it off. So I am very happy with their services.



    This is a follow up of a post I made 8 months ago.  So I have utilized both Plastiq and Venmo in order to get cash out of the cards.  

    -Plastiq allowed me to send money to to make a down payment on a investment property.  Chase cards and Bank of America cards worked really well in this avenue.  Good luck with AMEX as they are virtually impossible to use either than credit card purchases.  

    -Venmo is an app you can use to send cash to individuals using credit cards.  They are not as tight handed as Plastiq and I was able to send my wife cash from CC using the app.  So far all the cards I received from F&G were successful.  The only draw back is that it has a limit of $3000.00 per week, so it's super slow if you need to make a down payment for a house.  The fee i believe was 3% per transaction so when I send my wife $3000.00, the would withdraw $3090.00.

    Here is where my enthusiasm wanes.  After 8 months I only went through 1 out of the 4 rounds.  After my 1st round, F&G advises you to remove the inquiries that they made.  Rather than do it myself I agreed to the services of F&G Credit Repair Services (Kaydem Credit Help).  

    Kaydem started off good in removing the inquiries on Experian but we have been stuck on Transunion and Equifax for the last 6 months.  No explanation on why it's taking so long.   I can't move forward until inquiries are removed.  It cost about $800.00 for Kaydem for the entire year or 4 rounds with F&G inquiry removals.  Add another $12.95/month for Credit Monitoring which they require for their services, I use Score Sense.  Score Sense initially cost $25.00/month but after calling them and requesting to cancel services, they lowered it for me to $12.95.

    I am stuck in Kaydem Purgatory, F&G will not move onto the next round until inquiries are removed.  Kaydem can't even do their jobs as a Credit Repair Specialist to remove the inquiries.  There is nothing I can do at this time but just to wait.  

    Asking me now, No I do not regret using F&G.  I have established a good relationship with one of the CC providers and they have given me extended 0% interest frequently, initially it was 1/30/2020, then 12/31/2020, July 2021, Sept 2020, now it is 12/31/2021.  I have been paying the card off which frees up my Credit Line, in turn they send me balance transfer checks every month.  I simply write a check for myself and deposit.  

    At this point I do not care for F&G and probably will not use them for another year. I created my own system with this one CC to fund investments.  However I do care for getting services I paid for and agreed to, such as my 4 rounds and credit repair.  However at this rate, not sure when that will be.

  • Investor · Ottawa, Ontario · Member since 2016 · 225 posts · 46 votes
    6y

    This all looks too good to be true . 3% interest rate & there are many products that can give you much better returns. Any idea if lenders have tighten up the screws in current situation or they're more relaxed to stimulate the economy specially since they have absolutely no requirement for reserves. 

Join the conversationCreate a free account to reply, vote on answers and follow this thread.