The Sun's Financial Diary

Here’s another high-yield savings account offer, even though the rate isn’t as good as the rate from Ally Bank I mentioned last week.
The new offer is the High-Yield Savings Account from American Express. The credit card issuer received permission from the Fed to become a bank holding company last November, making it eligible to receive [...]

Are you using any free online personal finance tools such as Mint, Yodlee, Wesabe, or Quicken Online?
I am not really a big fan of online tools as I prefer to store sensitive information on my home computer instead of on a website. For example, I use Quicken Home & Business to track my investments and [...]

A couple of days ago, I read an article on the Wall Street Journal about a new credit card rewards program Chase has just launched. The new program is called Ultimate Rewards, similar to Citibank’s ThankYou Network program and American Express’s Membership Rewards program. Basically, cardholders earn rewards points when using participating Chase credit cards [...]

People always say good things will come to an end, but for Ally Bank, the good things lasted too short and the end came a little too fast.
Just two days ago, I praised Ally Bank for offering very attractive rates for its products, including savings account, money market account, and CD, when the trend for [...]

EverBank, one of the banks that I talked about quite often here, has increased its bonus rate for its Money Market Account from 2.51% to 3.01% this week. The bonus rate is good for the first three months after the account is opened and funded. The current rate after the introductory period is 1.83%.
EverBank has [...]

Do you still remember to what happened to Washington Mutual last year?
On September 22, 2008, WaMu surprised many people by offering one of the highest interest rates for its savings account. At 4.0% APY, the yield was very attractive and competitive. However, that didn’t last long. On September 25, WaMu was closed by the Fed [...]

I have heard some rumors that Chase no longer gives 3% cash back to Freedom Card holders for shopping at gas stations and grocery stores. I haven’t got the notice from Chase myself yet and my latest statement on May 13 still shows 3% cash back for every $1 of eligible purchases made at gas [...]

These $100 bills look good. You know you can get one of them by getting a bank account.
Right now, there are a couple of banks offering $100 bonus when you open open a checking account with them.
Chase Checking Account $100 Bonus
Open a Chase Checking Account before June 23rd and get $100 bonus when you set [...]

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 yesterday. The House, already passed its own version of the bill last month, also voted 361 to 64 today to wrap up the legislation. Now the bill is sent to the President for his signature to become a law, [...]