A mortgage payment is really two payments in one envelope. Part of it pays the loan; part of it goes into an escrow account that your servicer uses for property taxes and insurance. Undebt.it keeps them apart, because treating escrow as a loan payment would show your mortgage paying off years early.
Setting it up
- Add the account and set the account type to Mortgage.
- Enter the current loan balance and your interest rate.
- For the monthly payment, enter principal and interest only, the figure your statement usually labels P and I.
- In the escrow field, enter the rest of what you send each month: property taxes, homeowners insurance and PMI if you pay it.
Add the two together and you should get the payment that actually leaves your bank.
What Undebt.it does with each part
- Principal and interest pays down the balance and drives the payoff date, the interest total and the account's place in your payoff order.
- Escrow is included in your monthly budget total and shown alongside the payment on the calendar and on Plan.it, so the money is accounted for, but it never reduces the loan balance.
That split is why the projected payoff date on a mortgage entered this way matches your amortization schedule.
When escrow changes
Servicers re-run escrow once a year and the amount moves when taxes or insurance change. When you get that letter, open the Debt Details page and update the escrow field. Nothing else needs to change, and your payoff projection is unaffected because escrow was never part of it.
If you would rather leave the mortgage out
Plenty of members track only unsecured debt. You can add the mortgage and uncheck Include in payoff plan to watch the balance without letting it absorb your snowball, or leave it off the site entirely and put the payment in the bill tracker as a reminder. See Can I track my home mortgage on Undebt.it? for the wider question of whether to include it at all.