Earn money with your own escrow account
By Michael D. Larson • Bankrate.com

Does it really pay to handle escrow functions, like paying tax and insurance bills, on your own rather than let the lender do it for you? See for yourself (Chart below).

We've worked out what a sample homeowner would earn over the course of a year by saving money in an interest-bearing personal account, rather than a non-interest bearing, bank-controlled escrow account. Bottom line? A few minutes of extra effort a month translated into $78 in interest earnings. The larger your tax and insurance bills, the more you can earn by going it alone too, since you'll be earning interest off larger balances.

We assumed our sample borrower owed $3,000 in taxes and $1,000 in homeowners insurance during the sample year.

The taxes were due in two $1,500 installments -- one on May 1 and one on Nov. 1 -- while the insurance was due in a lump sum on Nov. 1.

On the first of each month, our sample consumer socked away 1/12th of the $4,000 bill, or $333.33, just like he would have had to if he went with an escrow account.

We also assumed he started the year with two months' worth of those payments on deposit since most lenders require borrowers to keep a reserve of that size in their accounts. To calculate the interest earnings, we assumed the borrower put his money into the highest-yielding MMA found by Bankrate.com researchers in early April. It had an annual percentage yield of 5.5 percent.

Here is how the borrower's balance would change over the course of the year: