It Pays To Read The Fine Print

This is embarrassing. I'm supposed to be experiencing a mid-life crisis, not suffering from Alzheimer's.

The mortgage loan we used to finance our home is from Bank Of China (Hong Kong) Limited. BOCHK required that we make the mortgage payments from an account held with them as a condition of granting the mortgage loan. So we duly opened an account and arranged for an automatic transfer from an account at our main relationship bank to the BOCHK account to meet the mortgage payments each month. The only two transaction that go through the BOCHK account are the transfer payment in and mortgage payment out. Simple. So simple I never look at the statements and just file them when they arrive each month.

Of course when interest rates were cut last year, you would think that I would reduce the transfer payments to match the reduced mortgage payments. Of course......er....no....actually it completely slipped my mind. So small amounts of money have been building up the BOCHK account since August last year and just sitting there.

I only picked up on this when I actually read the fine print on a bank statement....the bit that actually states how much money is in the account.

Anyway, a small amount of money that I should have known about has now been used to make a small addition to my investment in silver.