If you are experiencing financial difficulties, you may have decided that you can't afford to make your mortgage payment. Or you may be waiting for a loan modification from your lender. But in any event, if your checking or savings accounts are with a bank that also has your mortgage, you should move them--or you could lose them. Banks all over the country are raiding their customers' accounts if the mortgage isn't being paid.

Now, I'm not advocating that people blow off their lenders--you agreed to repay your loan when you signed those sixty pages of documents, remember? But I do believe that if life has pulled the rug out from under you, you should get to decide if you want to pay your mortgage or feed your kids. But that decision could be taken from you if your mortgage documents have a clause called a "set off." It allows the lender to take money from your accounts to cover past due payments.

They can do this without a court order or your permission. They can even do it to a joint account, even if the money in that account really belongs to a parent or someone else who doesn't live in your home and isn't on your mortgage. Does your mortgage have one of these? Do you really want to find out the hard way? Move your money away from your lender, just in case.