
The amount of escrow may adjust yearly as taxes and insurance costs change. Your lender collects money for these each month and then pays those bills for you as they come due.

EscrowĪmounts labeled “escrow” may be held in a special account used to pay other costs related to homeownership such as property taxes or homeowner’s insurance. On your mortgage statement, the part labeled “principal” in each payment is the amount that’s actually reducing your loan balance. Items like interest, insurance, taxes, and fees may be included in your monthly payments, but those amounts don’t help you pay down your loan balance. The principal balance is what you still have left to pay on your loan. If you didn’t pay closing costs at the time of the closing, those costs are probably included in the loan principal too. If the bank loaned you $400,000 to buy your house, for example, that amount is the principal. The principal is the loan amount borrowed on the mortgage. You should receive a statement each year that shows the mortgage interest you paid during that 12-month period. That’s just how most mortgages are structured. You’ll pay more interest at the beginning of your loan term and less as you pay down the loan. With a variable-rate mortgage, the interest rate changes periodically in response to changes in the mortgage market.Įven if your total monthly payment never changes, the amount of interest that’s included in each payment probably will. A fixed-rate mortgage is very straightforward - the interest rate doesn’t change throughout the loan term. Whether you have a fixed-rate mortgage or a variable-rate mortgage, the interest you pay is based on your mortgage interest rate. If you want to understand your loan statement breakdown, here are some of the line items homeowners might run into.

It just depends on your personal budgeting method and preferences.Ī mortgage tracker like the one built into Quicken can help you keep track of interest rates, loan amortization, and monthly mortgage payments with as much or as little detail as you’d like. Some people like to categorize those amounts separately, but you don’t have to. When you look at your monthly mortgage statement, you’ll see that your payments are broken down into several categories - things like interest, principal, insurance, and taxes.
