The Sun’s Financial Diary

Thanks everyone for participating the 2010 Quicken Deluxe giveaway I ran last week. The contest received a total of 61 entries. Now the winners are selected by random number generator at random.org and they are:

Drew at 21 and Heather S at 38. Congrats to the two lucky winners! The Quicken software you won will be [...]

We were quite happy with the apartment we rent until last week when the neighbor upstairs started to make this huge noise, some time it didn’t stop until 1:00 in the morning. Last Wednesday, when I worked from home, the pounding noise every few minutes almost drove me crazy. So I went upstairs to see [...]

This is the first full weekend for us in our new home in northern Virginia. Last weekend was all about packing, moving, and unpacking. This weekend, as we finally settled down, we took advantage of the gorgeous September weather to explore the area a little bit more. As it turned out, we are actually located [...]

I spent most of the time last night and another two hours this morning shredding our documents as we are getting closer to moving to Virginia. Believe me, it isn’t any easy job because we have accumulate more then ten years of bank statements, credit card bills, investment records, and pay stubs. Even though [...]

Do you know exactly one year ago on this day, July 11, 2008, crude oil price climbed to its all-time high of $147 a barrel? Today you can buy a barrel of oil at less than $60, 60% lower than its peak. Oil price dropped like a rock since reaching the peak last year, bottoming [...]

We spent more than 5 hours at Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ (it’s not a place you want to live though) last Friday, even though it was the third time we have been there in 10 years. In fact, things haven’t changed a lot at the Aquarium since our first visit in 2000. Back then, [...]

It was a rare, gorgeous day yesterday, so we took the kids to a nearby farm to pick our own strawberry, the first time ever for us. Too bad that we didn’t know the hours of the farm before leaving home in the afternoon. When we arrived, we were told that we only had less [...]

Market Recap
U.S. stocks registered another weekly gain last week, despite a gloomy employment report from the government Friday which showed that the nation’s unemployment rate jumped to 8.9% in April. While the jobless rate is the highest in 25 years, the pace of job cut seemed slowed last month, fueling the speculation that the worst [...]

I hope you have bought some I-bonds before May 1, so you can still enjoy a little bit the 5.64% yield I-bond rate that was good till April 30. If you missed the deadline and bought some bonds yesterday, May 1st, then too bad because the rate for Series I Savings Bonds issued between May [...]

It finally feels like spring.
We took the kids to Branch Brook Park near Newark yesterday for the Cherry Blossom Festival, the first time in more than seven years. In the past, we usually took our children to DC in early April to see the cherry flowers, but this year we decided to stay close to [...]