The Sun's Financial Diary

When it comes to charitable givings, I consider myself below average, though I can’t tell what that average is. In the past five years since we started to work, we donated above 200 dollars every year to a couple of organizations such as March of Dimes, American Red Cross, and local police department. One exception [...]

Early last month, we saw an open house sign nearby. We were not really shopping for a new house back then (even now), but since it was in the area we like, we decided to take a tour. The house, built in 1998, has 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, 2 car garage, and a unfinished basement. [...]

A surprise was in the mail last night: a gift from EmigrantDirect.
Nothing big or fancy, but I take it as a gesture from EmigrantDirect of being their customer for the past year.
So what's the gift? It is a small writing pad with my name printed on every page, the kind of gift that you [...]

Three years ago, when we bought our currently, we chose a 5-year ARM over fixed rate. The mainly reason was a favorable rate the ARM offered: a percentage point lower than 30-year fixed rate. At that time 5-year seemed far away and interest rates could only go lower. We were wrong on both.
With a little [...]

I ususally don't read very carefully the newsletter Fidelity sends to me as I see it as an advertisement. But an article in today's E-News got my attention. It's about how to take advantage of the new tax law passed in August to boost savings. Below is the summary of the article, click here for [...]

When I got back home from work last night, there was a heating oil bill waiting for me. The first of this season.
However, what really surprised me wasn't the unit price at $2.459/gallon, but the volume for the latest fill-up.
27 gallons! Yes, 27 gallons!
I couldn't believe the number when I saw the bill and it [...]

When I passed by the gas station I used to fill up my car this morning (it was Mobil before, but changed owner last week and now it’s Valero), I noticed the price of one galon regular dipped below $2 for the first time in I-couldn’t-even-remember-how-many months, at $1.99/gallon. As crude oil price rebounded a [...]

According to Bloomberg.com, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (ICBC), China's largest bank which holds 17 percent of the nation's $5.2 trillion banking assets, sold 35.4 billion shares in Hong Kong and 13 billion shares in Shanghai in initial share sale. The $19.1 billion offering eclipsed the $18.4 billion NTT DoCoMo raised in 1998 [...]

This week's auction result put the interest rate of 4-week T-Bills at 5.146%, better than what EmigrantDirect and HSBC offer (5%). For second straight week, the rates are above 5%, making T-Bills more attractive now than a month ago. And I decided to jump back in again. Well, considering that I have only canceled the [...]

I became a big fan of ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) in December 2004 when I sold my Matthews China Fund (MCHFX) holdings at Scottrade after it started to charge fees for no-load mutual funds and switched to PowerShares' Golden Dragon Halter USX China (PGJ), 10 days after its inception.
Now I own seven PowerShares ETFs, [...]