The Sun's Financial Diary

Got some unwanted stuff to sell? Now you can list them on eBay for only 15 cents. But you have to hurry up since the rate is good for today only and it can be applied to both fixed-pricing items and auction-style listings. 
I am considering to list a couple of items that I wasn't able [...]

Last Friday, I received my last paycheck of 2006. The statement shows that for 2006, I have

Contributed $12,600.12 in the 401(k) plan
Paid $14,128.85 of federal taxes
Paid $7,363.68 of Social Security taxes
Paid $2,570.03 of NJ state taxes

In addition, my employer has matched $1,930.77 in my 401(k) plan (the free money). 2006 is the first full year [...]

We usually didn't spend much money in holidays like Christmas and New Year, mainly because there were only two of us and we don't have the tradition of giving gifts in Christmas. In fact, we don't celebrate Christmas. To us, it's just a day off with nowhere to go (pretty much everywhere is closed at [...]

The latest Census Bureau statistics shows there are 3,510,000 millionaires in US based on a sample of federal estate tax returns (Form 706). Millionaire is defined as "those adults with net worth (assets minus liabilities) of $1 million or more." Here's a state-by-state break down of where those millionaires are.

State
No. ofmillionaires
State
No. ofmillionaires

Alabama
35K
Missouri
58K

Alaska
6K
Montana
11

Arizona
45
Nebraska
14K

Arkansas
22K
Nevada
26K

California
572K
New Hampshire
17K

Colorado
59K
New Jersey
178K

Connecticut
83K
New [...]

Last Friday, The Census Bureau released 2007 Statistical Abstract. In the Income, Expenditures, and Wealth part, I found some interesting numbers that show how much (on average) we make and the mean household net worth for the past decade (from 1995 to 2004).
The first table is the mean family net worth for different age [...]

Thinking about asset allocation, what comes to my mind is the distribution of different asset classes in my portfolio: large-cap, small-cap, mid-cap, bonds, real estate, commodity, international, ect. There's hardly any doubt about the importance of asset allocation in investing. However, there's one more factor that we may have omitted so far: the taxes.
When [...]

Since most of the cheap stuff I bought in the past two months were from Buy.com and some items are still on sale over there, I initially wanted to wait a while before listing them on Amazon.com. Well, since Amazon offers free listing (which is one feature I like), I didn't really wait too much [...]

As 2006 comes to the end, one year-end move suggested by many personal finance articles is to spend whatever you still have in your flexible spending account (FSA) before December 31st due to the use-it-or-lose-it rule. However, IRS allows up to two and a half months of grace period into the new year for the [...]

Spirit Airlines is having what it calls "The Mother of All Spirit Sales" today. For some routes, the air fare can be as low as 99 cents (yes, 99 cents). For example,

From Atlanta to Orlando, $0.99 each way, available on 2/10/07, 2/22/07, 2/28/07, 3/3/07
From Boston to Detroit, $0.99 each way, available on 1/8/07, 2/27/07, [...]

According to Reuters, China Life Insurance (LFC) has won approval to sell its class-A shares in Shanghai, which could raise $3.2 billion or 25 billion yuan, making the offering the second largest in the history of Chinese domestic public offering. Encouraged by the news, LFC is now trading above $105 in NYSE, more than $3 [...]