Adding BigDecimals

[ShoeNinja]

I'm trying to add several BigDecimals in a for loop. For some reason, I'm getting 0 on the other end of the loop.

BigDecimal total = BigDecimal.ZERO.setScale(2);
for(Payment payment : payments) {
	BigDecimal payAmt = payment.getPaymentAmt();
	total.add(payAmt);
}

While debugging, I see that in the BigDecimal add method, I'm hitting this exit point.

boolean lhsIsZero = lhs.signum() == 0;
boolean augendIsZero = augend.signum() == 0;

if (lhsIsZero || augendIsZero) {
	int preferredScale = Math.max(lhs.scale(), augend.scale());
	BigDecimal result;

// Could use a factory for zero instead of a new object
if (lhsIsZero && augendIsZero)
        return new BigDecimal(BigInteger.ZERO, 0, preferredScale);

.sugnum() is not 0 for both the operands when I look at them just before add is called so I'm not sure why I would hit this return statement.

Any ideas?


EDIT:

BigDecimal.add() returns a BigDecimal. So it has to be something like:

BigDecimal total = BigDecimal.ZERO.setScale(2);
BigDecimal paymentAmt = Payment.getPaymentAmt();
total = total.add(paymentAmt);