Closing the Escrow Account

We continue to move closer to paying off our mortgage; see my post, "And Then There Were Twelve!," last week we contacted our mortgage company and closed our escrow account. We would have to do our own escrow after we kill the mortgage anyway and I wanted to take this step now. The advantage of this is that we can have the money in our account drawing interest instead of giving that interest away to the mortgage company. Granted the interest income is very small right now but I'd rather have it in my pocket than theirs!

I was surprised by the speed in which we received our escrow check, I expected it to take a couple of weeks but it was in our mailbox three days later! The next step is to open another sub-account with ING and have the money automatically drafted from our checking account each month. By doing this when taxes and insurance bills are due we'll have the funds to pay the bills and we'll have earned some interest on the money as well.