pocketmint

Put that money where it belongs, dammit

Here’s yet another reason why checking online account information regularly is a good idea:

My regular monthly electronic payment on our second mortgage went out to Bank of America on June 3. On June 4 I manually sent an extra $2000 against the principal.

On June 7 I checked our mortgage accounts online. Turns out that they split the $2000 and used part to make July’s payment a whole month early, leaving only about $1240 toward principal.

Grrrr. Sneaky bastards.

I was able to call this morning and get this corrected with minimal hassle. However, if I hadn’t checked the allocations, they would have just applied July’s payment against August, and so on, and we’d never have gotten the interest reduction from prepayment.

That $750 paid against principal today saves us over $6100 in interest over the life of the loan (2.5 years into a 30-year amortization). Of course the bank would rather have that $6K in interest and a month’s cushion against late payment, but I’m not going to give it to them.