We are in the red

E and I set up our mortgage payment to be automatically deducted from one of our bank accounts. Well, the stupid Bank of America took more money than they should have and we now have a negative balance. That's right, we are broke.

E doesn't understand why our mortgage would suddenly go up when we have a fixed interest rate. The only reason I could think of is that they have to replenish our escrow account. The escrow account is what pays our property tax and home insurance and all that good stuff. The bank has to keep it at a certain amount each year by law. Since California's housing market soared and home values increased, our property tax also went up. I think that after a few years of paying a higher than expected property tax, our escrow account is now below the minimum. In order to bring it back up, the bank would have to raise our mortgage payment.

Whatever the reason is, it still would have fine if we were only informed ahead of time. But NO, we didn't get any notification at all. In the past, B of A has been very good to us. We have a Premier Account with them which gives us a lot of extra services for free and the people at our local branch are very friendly. The thing is, I don't really care for all these little perks they give us if they are going to mess with our hard earned money. They better reverse the fines they tacked on to our account or I'm taking our business somewhere else. Come to think of it, maybe it's time to look at those refinance offers I get in the mail.