The Sun’s Financial Diary

Well, this really comes as a surprise because I have already gotten used to Ally Bank’s endless adjustments of the rates of their banking products. I was so pissed by the bank’s weekly rate reduction (yes, a rate change here or there every week) that I left Ally Bank only a couple of weeks after [...]

I think this describes the best how we feel right now, but it’s all good.
Our agent says “Things are heating up!” and they really are.
This time last week, we were worried that we may have to leave our house on the market, hoping either to sell it if we are lucky or rent it out [...]

Popular online discount broker Zecco Trading is running a promotion which offers 20 commission free stock trades, a $90 value, to all new brokerage customers!
Zecco is one of the brokers which I have an account with and I have written about it quite frequently here (read my Zecco review and first trading experience for more [...]

That’s the good news . The bad news is the final price, after all the costs and cashback (no including the upgrade we did), is likely to be lower than the price we paid 5 years ago when we bought the house . But in this environment, we are still happy [...]

I just received a letter from Amazon.com which informs me that my Amazon.com Rewards Visa Card is being upgraded to Amazon.com Rewards Visa Signature Card with Signature benefits.
I got the card in 2006 when I started to make more and more purchases at Amazon.com. I thought getting the card makes sense for the 3% cashback [...]

a long time ago.
When I updated our July net worth early this month, I mentioned that I opened another savings account. That’s was barely one month after I got an account from Ally Bank. The reason is that I became extremely disappointed by Ally Bank, not only because of all the troubles I had with [...]

I usually don’t pay too much attention to mails credit card companies send to me because, being very careful with my credit, I have largely stayed out of trouble with credit card companies. Most of the time, I don’t even read those letters that come with account policy or agreement changes. They just don’t concern [...]

I am not sure what role, if any, I had in this, but I was just informed by Shannon Paul, the Communications Manager of PEAK6 Online, the parent company of OptionsHouse, that the discount online broker has dropped the $100 cash reserve requirement (that’s different than account minimum, which is $1,000 to open an account) [...]

I always consider myself pretty good at managing my own credit. Then last week, I had this idea of getting a credit monitoring service. The reason is because of some recent activities in my credit that could have a negative impact on my score.
First in June, when I got my current job, I signed an [...]

Apparently, I was a little overstated the status of my Lending Club loans when I updated my loan portfolio and stated that there was no late or default. Somehow, I skipped one page where there are two $50 loans that are already more than 30 days late when I checked last night, both from the [...]