The Sun's Financial Diary

I opened an OptionsHouse brokerage account back in June (check out my OptionsHouse review and stock trading experience for details about the broker). The reason for getting yet another brokerage account, I have plenty of accounts already, was that the commission for stock trading charged by OptionsHouse is very low. At $2.95 per trade, OptionsHouse [...]

Now that we settled in Virginia, there are still many things for us to do besides getting to know this area. On top of my to-do list is update our address so mail will be delivered to our new home. With so many active accounts I have with banks, credit card issuers, mutual fund companies, [...]

Nowadays, a lot of things are becoming increasingly difficult to do without a good credit history, while at the same time, those days of easy credit has probably gone forever, thanks to the financial crisis that has put a squeeze from lenders and borrowers alike. Not only will a good credit history help get the [...]

For people with good credit, they probably won’t have any problem obtaining a regular credit card. However, for many who either don’t have a credit history at all or have a less desirable credit, the only way to build or rebuild credit is getting and using a secured credit card. Since there are occasions, such [...]

Early last month, Citibank introduced a new card, Citi Forward Card, which rewards cardholders for using the card responsibly by lowering the interest rate up to 2%. The concept of rewarding good behaviors is quite unique, especially in this environment where every major credit card issuers are raising rates, sometimes even without any reason. So [...]

for me at least. I was bothered a lot after seeing yields of my online savings accounts kept dropping like a rock since the new year began. The stock market has been a terrible place to be for investors for nearly one and a half years. Among various investment options, bonds and cash are the [...]

I bet  you have either watched the Free Credit Report commercial on TV or heard it on radio, not just once, but many times. It’s a nice commercial, but do you really get what is advertised? While it’s true that you can indeed get a free credit report, which is the center piece of this [...]

Did I mention a few days ago that I once had a “black” card? Well, if you read the post, you know that I called the Discover card I owned a while ago a “black” card only because the card was printed with black color. That’s actually the only “feature” that made the card a [...]