One of the sneakiest parts of early stage Alzheimer’s is how ordinary envelopes turn into panic. This week’s Letter from Tim starts with a property tax bill, a very real moment of “Did I forget something huge,” and turns into a practical guide to decoding what that bill actually means if you have a mortgage. Dementia or not, this one hits a lot of kitchen tables.

Editor’s note ( Because now I’m the editor, Tim used to be: This is Tim’s story, but I see the same confusion in my real estate clients all the time. No one ever explains the PITI and escrow part in plain English. So we did.

How I learned that “20 percent down” does not mean “you forgot to pay the taxes”

Official seal. Bold print. The sort of paper that feels like the school calling home.

Inside was our property tax bill.

My first thought was very simple.

“I forgot to pay this. We are in trouble.”

My second thought was more personal.

“How did I forget something that big.”

For context, I have early stage Alzheimer’s. Some days my brain is cooperative. Other days it feels like a crowded inbox where everything is marked “urgent” and nothing is sorted.

So a tax bill in the mail does not land as neutral information. It lands as proof that I have messed up, or proof that I am about to.

This time, that was not actually true.

The story I told myself, and the one my wife corrected

We put 20 percent down when we bought this house.
In my mind, that meant our mortgage was simple. Principal and interest only. No PITI, no escrow, just us and the bank.

Tax bill arrives.
Brain says: “You pay that directly, or the town will come for you.” So I got out our checkbook.

My wife, who lives in the real estate world all day, took one look at what I was doing, then at the bill, and then with a hugh sigh, pulled up our mortgage statement.

“There is an easier way to look at this,” she said.

This is usually the moment when I realise my brain has been confidently wrong.

PITI, explained like you are standing in the kitchen

• Principal
• Interest
• Taxes
• Insurance

Even if your statement does not spell those four letters out, the bank is always thinking about that full picture.

Principal is what actually pays down what you borrowed.
Interest is what you pay them for the privilege of borrowing it.
Taxes is your property tax.
Insurance is your homeowners policy, and sometimes mortgage insurance.

Here is the part I had wrong.

PITI is the framework for the cost.
Escrow is a separate decision about how you actually pay the tax and insurance parts.

When you put 20 percent down, many lenders let you choose whether you want an escrow account or not.

• If you say yes to escrow, your monthly payment includes extra for taxes and insurance. The bank parks that money in a little holding account with your name on it and uses it to pay the tax bill and the insurance company when they come due.
• If you say no to escrow, your monthly payment usually shows only principal and interest, and you write separate checks for taxes and insurance when those bills arrive.

In our case, we put 20 percent down, and we chose escrow, it’s easier that way.

But, I had completely forgotten that part.

So what does the tax bill actually mean for us

• Principal
• Escrow

Part of every monthly payment is already being siphoned off into that escrow account.
That is the boring little bucket the bank uses to pay our property taxes and homeowners insurance.

So when the tax bill shows up in the mail, two things are true at the same time:

• It is a real bill from the town.
• It is also a summary of something we have been paying for all year in slow motion.

In other words, I had not forgotten to pay it.
We had been paying it monthly without me really noticing, because it was tucked into that one mortgage payment.

The only thing I had “forgotten” was how the system was set up.

Why this hits harder when your memory is not what it used to be

On a day when your memory is already working hard, it feels like something else entirely.

A surprise tax bill feels like:

• Evidence that you cannot be trusted with money
• Evidence that you are dropping important balls
• Evidence that everyone should probably take over for you now

That last one is the most painful.

For anyone living with early stage Alzheimer’s or any kind of cognitive fog, there is a constant background worry.

“What am I forgetting that I do not even know I am forgetting.”

A tax bill with no explanation feeds that fear very nicely.

A simple way to decode the envelope

The next time a property tax bill arrives and your stomach falls through the floor, try this before you decide you are a failure at adulting.

1. Pull out your mortgage statement.
   Look at the breakdown of your monthly payment.
2. Look for the word “escrow.”
   Or a line that mentions “taxes and insurance” as part of the payment.
3. If you see escrow, call your lender and ask one clear question:
   “Does my escrow account pay my property taxes for me?” If they say yes, that big scary bill is mostly a record of what is about to be paid out of that account. You have not fallen behind, you have just forgotten the route the money takes to the town.
4. If you do not see escrow, and your payment is only principal and interest:
   That usually means you pay the property taxes directly. In that case, the bill really is a bill, but paying it is not a sign of failure. It is just the system working the way you and the lender agreed.

Either way, write the answer down somewhere that Future You will see.

• On the fridge
• In a MiM note
• In big letters on the file where you keep the tax bill

Because memory is not only about what you can hold in your head. It is about how kind you are willing to be to the version of yourself who opens the mail next time.

Where MiM comes in

Not just the big dramatic events.
The small, quiet shocks that come from systems that were never written with us in mind.

• Bills that never say, “If your mortgage has escrow, this may already be paid.”
• Forms that assume you remember exactly how insurance renewals work.
• Letters that treat you as a file number, not a human with a brain that gets tired.

I want MiM to be able to hold very practical notes like:

“Property taxes: we have an escrow account. Lender pays the town twice a year. Expect the scary envelope, but know you are already paying this monthly.”

And just as easily hold the opposite note for someone else:

“Property taxes: no escrow. Bill arrives in November. Put aside one twelfth of the amount each month into a separate account.”

The goal is not to turn us into children who cannot be trusted.
The goal is to help us stay in the driver’s seat of our own lives, even if we now prefer to drive with a co-pilot.

So yes, the tax bill tried to give me a heart attack.

But it also turned into a useful reminder.

When my brain hands me the worst possible story, I can stop, ask a better question, and write down the answer somewhere that the next version of me can find.

Cheers,
Tim