The Sun’s Financial Diary

Do you have old electronics, like digital cameras, camcorders, laptops, or MP3 players, that you no longer need?

If you do, you can recycle them with the Sony Trade-In program and receive a Sony Style Gift Card with the trade-in value that you can use to purchase your next Sony electronic, either online at Sony Style or [...]

Every year as Thanksgiving draws closer and closer, another holiday season begins to descend upon us. Only the season I’m referring to is the holiday SHOPPING season.
The day after Thanksgiving – traditionally known as Black Friday – is the day that unofficially kicks off the Christmas shopping season. Retail chains have worked hard [...]

According to Yahoo News yesterday, book retailer Borders will offer free Wi-Fi connection in nearly 500 stores across the nation in an effort to attract more potential customers to its stores.
Coffee shop chain Starbucks already has free wireless service for its in-store customers. However, to use their free wireless network, you have to register your [...]

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Maytag  today announced a major recall of Maytag refrigerators under under brand names Maytag, Jenn-Air, Amana, Admiral, Magic Chef, Performa by Maytag and Crosley after the manufacture received 41 reports of fire hazard on side by side and top freezer refrigerators. The recall affects 1.6 million units of [...]

Shopping for a new car? Make sure you check out the Consumer Reports 2009 Top Picks.
In the latest issue of Consumer Reports, the magazine published its annual best car list. In total more than 300 models were tested and 10 new models were chosen as the top picks in 10 categories based on road test [...]

Received these Staples coupon codes today. If you plan to shop at Staples.com, the following coupons can save you some money:

Coupon Code: 88280 $20 OFF the purchase of $120 or more
Coupon Code: 35318 $40 OFF the purchase of $190 or more
Coupon Code: 27083 $75 OFF the purchase of $290 or more

These coupons are good from [...]

Yesterday, I was ordering some diapers on Amazon.com for our younger daughter (we usually buy diapers at Costco, but we earned some free money in the summer that has to be used to buy this particular 7th Generation brand baby diapers from Amazon) and noticed something new to me:

At the bottom of the screen, there’s [...]

Circuit City finally heads to where it belongs.
The second largest consumer electronic store Circuit City (CC) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today in Virginia (Reuters).  The news didn’t really surprise me, given how much trouble the retailer has went through in recent years (here’s a timeline of Circuit City from MercuryNews.com). Early this year, Blockbuster [...]

Did you buy any HD DVD player from Best Buy before February 23, 2008? If you did, then you can get a $50 Best Buy complementary gift card from Best Buy for each HD DVD player you purchase. Since Blue Ray has won the battle between HD DVD to the standard format for high-definition DVD, [...]

According to Wall Street Journal (as well as USA Today), CompUSA will shut its door at more than 100 stores at the end of the year. Be careful when purchasing any products that carry CompUSA rebates from now on because nobody knows if it will continue to process rebate requests after closing the stores. Even [...]