Unexpected blessings

We moved into our house just over 12 years ago.

We got a 30-year mortgage.

Rates dropped a couple years later, so we refinanced to a 20-year.

Then they dropped some more. Significantly enough that we went through the whole refinancing rigamaroll again. This time a 15-year.

I'm not even sure anymore exactly how many years we have left, but we'll be done before Jacob finishes high school.

We got our mortgage statement in the mail yesterday. {I love getting the mail anyway, you know. It's one of the highlights of my day. Yup, I know. I'm a geek!} I know our mortgage is our biggest bill, and it probably should bum me out to see it in my mailbox, but instead, I find it fun to get it each month.

I love to see how quickly our mortgage balance drops {the portion of our payment that goes to principle is about 2.5 times more than the portion that goes to interest!} each month. Well, today when it came it was extra fun!

And completely unexpected, which is always great!

When you add to that the fact that it was very well-timed {with 5 more days 'til payday, a measly little checking account balance and some stuff that needs to be paid this week} it equals a really big blessing.

You're not following, right? Mortgage statements don't usually come with money. Quite the opposite, in fact. Well, I'll explain: we got our annual escrow review statement in the envelope today. Usually this statement ends by telling us how they underestimated our escrow again and we owed them a lump sum of money {not usually TOO much, but still . . .} and that in the year to come our payment would have a slight increase. Today was the complete opposite {one of the very few perks to our country's economy possibly?}. We got a refund check for more than $250 for the overage of the balance in our escrow account, along with word that our payments would be roughly $70 less in the coming year. Praise God!! I plan to still pay the same amount I've been paying each month {which already was over the payment amount}, but now that extra $70 each month will chip away at that balance even quicker! I know enough to realize that if I lowered my payment by that $70 it wouldn't work out that we would have $70 extra a month of cushion in our budget anyway. It always finds a way to get absorbed. Does that happen to you too, or is it just us?

Anyway, that was my unexpected blessing for the day. Any unexpected blessings for you lately?