I don't think it has stopped raining in about 12 hours. It is a constant fall with a few rolls of thunder every now and then.
So, we got home yesterday after having a pretty good day at work until we opened our mailbox. Inside of it was a letter from Franklin-American Mortgage. Not the bank we applied for a mortgage with but bought our mortgage from our previous bank. Inside of the envelope read that we were short on our escrow and they bank did not anticipate our increased taxes and hazard insurance year-over-year. They said our new mortgage payment would be $2,120, which is almost $400 more than what we currently pay which is $1,754. Ridiculous! I called them and they apologized for making a mistake on the calculations and not charging us a balanced amount each month to cover the escrow's expenses. Ugh! How can they anticipate an average family can afford to spend an additional $400 month?! Not too many people can do that, including us.
We are drafting a letter to send to them to close our escrow and release the balance to us. I thought an escrow was a good idea when we bought the house, but it turns out it is not. I would like to have control over our payments and savings so that we can accrue interest and pay the bills ourselves. Our financial planner warned us about this, but we did not listen. Sorry if you are reading this! Should have listened to you!
Hopefully this will be taken care of by the end of the month. If not, we will have to pay that ridiculous high mortgage payment. I will not look forward to that. More importantly, we will not be able to pay much extra on our loans.
Hope you all are having a good weekend!
I was told escrow was required for "prepayment" items such as taxes, but this may vary from state to state (or perhaps its different with a conventional mortgage, no PMI etc.)
ReplyDeleteOn a more positive note, you and your wife may be pleased to know your blog inspired me to aggressively attack one of my sub $2500 loans and pay it off... well nearly I still owe $0.01 because that whore Sallie Mae neglected to apply my additional payment of 5/3 until 5/8, and the $150ish on the account generated a cent in interest. I know your 9 cent pain now friend.
You would think it was a "prepayment", but apparently our mortgage company did not get that message.
ReplyDeleteI am so excited for you paying off your $2500 loan! That is fantastic! I am very proud of you for breaking yourself free of that small nagging debt. Now you can move on and not look back! .01 cent! Come on Sallie?! That is ridiculous! You just paid them $2500!! Why can't they negate the penny!? Ugh! Anyway, congratulations! You are motivation for us!