The Sun's Financial Diary

Recently, I wrote about that in general mutual fund management fees have been falling in the past two decades. The management fee, in terms of expense ratio (ER), is the fee that mutual fund companies charge their customers for owning the fund. This is significant because, as I mentioned in the article, management fees are paid by investors [...]

Last week, I shared the first 4 steps to taking control of your finances. This week my article continues with 2 more steps: 5. Take stock and move money around.  Target the expenses you can have an immediate effect on. These likely include the monthly grocery bill, eating out, and – believe it or not – your tax [...]

Here’s another choice if you are looking for a business credit card with rewards. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a business card offering from Citibank, the CitiBusiness ThankYou Card, that allows new card members to earn $150 as a bonus after meeting the spending requirement. It’s quite common these days for card [...]

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that bringing more money in will solve your financial struggles, but it’s important to remember that those supposed “added” funds come with their own price tag. Make more money, you’ll pay more in taxes. Work more hours to bring in more pay, you lose valuable time [...]

Look at that! Yesterday, hours after I wrote an article on SmartMoney’s 2012 Best Brokers Survey, in which I wondered how come Zecco and TradeKing were ranked next to each other in the magazine’s annual rating, an email from Zecco arrived, with the subject line “Zecco and TradeKing Are Merging”. I have to say that [...]

I have followed SmartMoney Maganize’s annual survey of online discount stock brokers for some time, writing the first post about the survey in 2009. In the past, when I looked at the ranking of best and worst brokers, there were always some surprises, especially when brokers I have never heard of were thrown in the [...]

With the economy the way it is, stress for all of us is at an all-time high while the money in our bank accounts may be struggling at an all-time low. Don’t neglect your sanity (or your blood pressure), though. Fortunately there are plenty of ways to de-stress at a discounted price. So the next time [...]

Well, almost. A while ago, shortly after we moved from New Jersey to Virginia, I wrote a post on why we still bank with Bank of America. In that article, I listed a few reasons for staying with the bank when there were a lot of talks about moving away from big banks such as [...]