I know some people really like mortgage escrow accounts because it offloads the burden of managing taxes/insurance. That's now how I feel about it though. For me the burden is minimal: writing a check 2x a year for taxes, and making sure money is in the checking account when the insurance debit goes through once a year.
More importantly though, I prefer actually paying my taxes in a lump sum. Writing a check for thousands of dollars causes me to reflect on personal finances (the amount itself and how that relates to our overall yearly expenses as we approach FI), and civic matters (how the town is spending my money). When the taxes are averaged out per month as part of our mortgage escrow, I tend not to think about it at all. Similarly, paying the insurance at once will prompt me to investigate whether I can get the same coverage for cheaper elsewhere. Greater intentionality == greater badassity, IMO.
We only have ~4 months of payments remaining on the mortgage. Rather than waiting for the mortgage company to eventually refund any escrow $$ some weeks or months after closing (I've heard it can take up to 3 months), we'll be getting the current escrow balance of $2,100+ a couple months before we pay off the mortgage. We can invest that, use it to just kill off the mortgage earlier, put it toward our taxes due in June, etc. The bottom line is we will have a much more productive use for the money than the mortgage company did. They kept a ~$2,000 buffer in a non-interest bearing account. We can definitely do better than that.