http://www.myfrugallife.com/blog_suremajic.html I love to talk about butterfly's and gardening. I love to take pictures of nature and flowers in my city garden. I like to make yard art of all kinds for my garden and for others who enjoy them. I collect seeds every fall and give to my friends in the spring for their own garden. en-us Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:26:30 GMT http://www.myfrugallife.com/post70155146_suremajic.html <p>When you are getting close to paying your morgage off, be sure to keep an eye on the balance. Look at your escrow balance that is sent during income tax time or you can call the lender periodicly and get a current payoff balance. The reason why is that when I thought I owed the lender a payoff balance of about $2000.00 and received my new payment book, the payment had went up about $40.00 to cover the costs of property taxes and insurance that had went up for the comming year. When I went into the lender to pay this balance off, I actually only owed $67 and some odd cents. I asked why they sent me a new book with higher monthly payments instead of just sending a notice that I owed less than $100.00 could pay it off and could have saved them money on printing up a new payment book. They could not answer me, but I figured they would make as much money as they could if I would not have noticed this and just kept making payments until I had gotten down to the last one. So check your balance periodicly.</p>