The Sun's Financial Diary

There are many different reasons that people opt to live a frugal lifestyle. The main reason, of course, is that they wish to save money. However, people also adopt frugal lifestyles because they wish to reduce waste, live more simply and pursue higher goals than consumerism (such as living a creative life or engaging in [...]

If you have a home improvement job that you are not able to do yourself, or need a fix of your car, what would you do? I would have to go through my local listings such as Yellow Page to find a qualified contractor, like I recently did when replacing our oil furnace. I guess [...]

When we bought our house five years ago, we replaced the refrigerator, the stove, and the dishwasher. The water heater and air conditioner were relatively new, so we left them as were. The only item that should have been replaced at that time but we didn’t was the furnace. From the outside, the furnace looked [...]

When you show any symptom that you may catch a flu, do yo go online to search flu-related terms, such flu symptoms, flue shots, flue vaccines, or flu activities in your area? If you do (apparently many do), then the terms you searched help Google makes its own Flu Trends, which Google claims can “estimate [...]

It’s not even November yet, but we already have our first snow of the season! I don’t remember when we had the first snow last, but sure not this early. I am staying at home today with the kids to help them recover from the heavy jet lag. It’s so cold both outside and inside [...]

Our 3-year old daughter just loves the Fruit by the Foot snack we bought her at Costco. It’s the kind of happy food that she wants to have coming back from school, before going out for a walk, or every time we take her to the playground or out for a trip. The reason the [...]

Yesterday on my way to home, I heard on radio that some Costco stores in the California’s Bay area are setting limits on how much rice and flour a customer can purchase. According to Costco’s CEO, the limits were put in place after what he saw as “unusual demands” for basic items. And Costco is [...]

Do you get a lot of junks, such as catalogs, coupon books, and pre-approved credit card offers, in the mail? According to 41pounds.org, the average adult in this country receives 41 pounds of unwanted junk mail each year. That’s a lot of junk mail! In the May issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, the magazine listed [...]