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.
This, to me, is one of those “can they DO that?” moments… the answer, of course, is “yes they can, if you let them.”
Money is scary, I keep tellin’ ya. *grin*
Very true. Not as scary as the lack of money, though … /wry