A few weeks ago the insurance agent left a message to the effect that my homeowners insurance was going up slightly and did I want to discuss it. I called her back and she asked a few questions such as if I had made any improvements during the past year, yada, yada.

It all seemed pretty standard, so I didn’t pay much attention to it and I didn’t ask how much the insurance was going up. Nor did she tell me. So I just assumed it was relatively minor, as it had been in the last few years.

Big mistake.

On Friday I received my new escrow statement.

It turns out my insurance is going up by $500 annually. That’s significantly more than my insurance agent led me to believe. I really should have asked her for details.

But here’s the thing.

Because of the way the escrow accounts are calculated, and the way the bills become due, my monthly escrow payment will be going up by roughly the same amount as the increase in my monthly Social Security payment.

This is because the increased insurance premium would cause a “shortage” in the escrow account at the old monthly rate, so they have to jack up the monthly payment in order to cover that “shortage”.

What will actually happen is that six months down the line they’ll discover they have a surplus, and they’ll send me a refund check and reduce the monthly payment again. This has happened before. I know how they play this game. They’re a multi-billion dollar corrupt bank so they can get away with these shenanigans. In fact it’s Wells Fargo, one of the worst of the banks. No, I didn’t take out a mortgage with Wells Fargo; my mortgage was sold to them in one of those package deals. I had no choice in the matter.

This is why I hate escrow accounts.

As I’ve said before, I have a lot in common with Toby Ziegler.