Crystal Groves

I received my first tax notice for Fiscal 2009 on Friday. I wasn’t sure what it was at first and then realized that in PA you have to forward your property tax bills to your mortgage holder to pay out of your escrow account if you have one, which I do.

Right now my escrow account has like $1600 in it, and this bill is for $503.97 if paid by April 30th, which is a 2% discount. Normal price is $514.26 if you pay by June 30th, and the penalty price is $565.69 if I pay by December 2009. Naturally I want the discount so I mailed this off Monday.

I’m very very new to property taxes and escrow though, being as this is my first time owning property. I’m curious, does the $1600 currently in my escrow account mean that I have over $1,000 overpaid in it? Or should I expect another tax bill soon for some other crazy PA tax that would take over the $1,000. Or do they split property tax bills into several payments throughout the year and this is just the first quarter or something? And even so, I’m still paying into my escrow account every month, so the account is just going to keep getting bigger and bigger, so that wouldn’t make sense.

These may just be questions for my mortgage company, but if anyone has any insight, I’d be all the appreciative for it.

Silly PA taxes.

I’m going to set up a reminder on April 1st to verify the payment was received from my mortgage company because 1. I don’t trust mortgage companies to do anything right, and 2. The tax collector does not send a receipt unless you mail a stamped addressed envelop with the payment, which I can’t because I’m not sending the payment.

I sent off my first mortgage payment today, even though it’s not due till November 1st. It was actually very painless. I’ve already got two months of mortgage payments saved up in a separate savings I have for mortgage, so I just put it into my checking and had ING mail off a check for free. And I’ve already got next months mortgage payment sitting there, so that suits me just fine.

I convinced my grandfather not to charge me the full month for the storage trailer, since we only had it for 6 days in October, so that saves me some money as well.

I also paid off what was left on my credit card from house supplies because the interest on the credit card is higher than the interest on my savings account. I figured instead of making payments, it’d make sense just to get rid of the bill entirely. That also feels good.

Today was payday at work and I had an extra $55 on my paycheck due to being switched to PA taxes instead of MD. I guess they take out less taxes up here, which is fine with me. The extra money will be useful

I’m sorta anxious for tax season now, as I want to get the car paid off ASAP. That’s going to be such an amazing feeling. I can’t wait. I’ll literally have no debt except the house and what’s left of my friends loans after that. Granted I’m going to start taking on my fathers two debts after that, but they aren’t -my- debts.

My total Debt:
Car Balance: $6,923
Friends Loan: $5,775
Mortgage: $159,344 (not counting todays payment, and not really counting this towards “current debt”)

Total current Debt: $12,698

My dads total Debt:
Beneficial Loan: $5009
Medical Bills: $1300 (I don’t have the exact number, but this is around the right amount)

Total current Debt: $6309

Time to start researching 0% APR for 12 months balance transfer cards to tackle my fathers debt.