TL;DR at bottom

You may or may not remember, but I had an issue with my lender claiming I have an escrow shortage.

Turns out, I do have one legitimately because of the way things are done.

So I'm still not totally convinced of the explanation I was given as the call with Chase was "lost" (which never happens to me with my phone).

But from what I understand, I was paying $1189/year for property insurance in 2013 and 2014. When I switched my property to a rental dwelling, my property insurance changed from $1189/year to $1774/year.

Because of this, there was a shortage not only with the insurance payments but also from the minimum balance Chase requires to have in the bank at all times, which is $433. So I have to make up for the $433 and some other shortage that I'm not seeing.

So somehow because of the way the schedule of payments fall, I'm going to have a shortage of $910 causing my monthly payments to go up by $75/month. But really, with the raise in insurance plus the shortage, my payments are going up $140/month.

I still don't fricking understand how this is possible. I was TOLD by my insurance agent that my property insurance would probably "go down" as I was insuring less in the house by removing my personal belongings. Turns out, he was wrong. My insurance went up as a result of the property being switched to a rental dwelling.

That's fine. I get that.

I don't know what to do though about this shortage.

To be honest, we moved and rented out our house because I had a career opportunity and we couldn't sell our house.

Our mortgage payment was $1130/month when we were moving. I asked for $1300/month, which was competitive for the area. Maybe even on the higher end. I offered to cover lawn service (had a guy I knew that did good work for $75/month. My tenant offered to do the lawn service himself for a $50 decrease.

So I'm renting my house out for $1250, and my mortgage payment is going to rise from $1130 to $1290.

That's a $40 deficit, and I'm a graduate student with a year left until I finish.

There's more if I'm able to vent here.

I decided to go to graduate school and I had $11k in the bank for savings. Everything was more expensive than I thought. Everything.

Because I was quitting a job, I moved $3k into a Roth IRA to start saving for retirement. That left me with $8k.

The movers cost more than I wanted them to. Switching utility services cost more than I wanted to. The security deposit for the house I am renting was fine, but it was still a $1k. The fees and other shite that hit me up front for going to graduate school was more than I wanted them to be. The only decent daycare in this area that we could find is about $700/month or $100 more than the one we were using before. Oh and car insurance is up because less people here are insured than where we were before.

And I'm out of savings. Outside of the security deposit, which hopefully I will get back in July of 2016 when I move out and the $3200 in my Roth IRA, I have no extra money.

Guess I'm fricked. Already living on a super tight budget so we could go on this "adventure." So I could pursue a new career.

Oh and we came here with $800 in credit card debt with 11 months left with no APR. Now because of the budget cut, we still have $600 on that card and are approaching the end of the deal of no APR. The second credit card we have for groceries and necessities that was SUPPOSED to be paid off each month is no longer being paid off each month. It now has $900 on it and the interest is going to kick my arse.

Really, this mostly stems from my (now former) insurance agent telling me that my insurance would go down and me not doing my homework.

Any suggestions?

TL;DR - Decided to pursue graduate school to hopefully go into a new career in 2016. It's cost a frickload more than I expected. My rental house is getting a $140/month increase unexpectedly starting in March. I'm out of savings and because of the month-to-month budget, I have no room to pay an extra $140/month.

This post was edited on 2/10/15 at 5:01 pm