The Sun’s Financial Diary

When I talked about Ally Bank Interest Checking Account in January when the product was introduced, I mentioned that I may get one for myself. What I like about the new checking account isn’t that it bears interest. With 0.50% APY for balance under $15K, there isn’t much I can earn. Rather, what attracts me [...]

Here’s another broker promotion for new IRA account.
Online broker optionsXpress is offering 5 commission free trades for a new IRA or rollover IRA account. Eligible IRA accounts include Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, Rollover IRA, and SEP-IRA. If you open an account with optionsXpress before April 15th, 2010, which is the tax deadline, with at least [...]

I am still investing in Lending Club loans as an alternative investment, but I must admit that I am a little disappointed by the performance of my investments, especially when two loans went bad after only two months since they were issued. Overall, the number loans and the number of late and charge-off all grew [...]

You may be an introvert or an extrovert. Maybe you’re highly organized or barely able to stay afloat of the clutter. Whatever your personality type, you also have a spending type. Identifying and knowing your spending type and financial habits is one of the first steps to taking control of your monetary resources. Ignore or [...]

Last week, I ran a TurboTax and H&R Block At Home giveaway. Perhaps many people have filed their taxes already, the giveaway only received moderate response as a total of 17 readers entered the contest. Still, I am glad that five of them can file their taxes, both federal and state, for free [...]

A high interest rate savings account is an essential part of our financial system. With a large amount of money that is currently held in bank accounts, I’d love to get as much return as possible while making sure that the money will be there when we need it in the next few months. Unfortunately, [...]

I have been a customer of TurboTax for a few years already. When I used the software to prepare my own taxes in the past, I always got the PC version, the software that requires installation on my own PC. I know Intuit has been offering the equivalent, online tax preparation software for sometime, but [...]

Surprisingly, many people do not realize that they can still get one last deduction out of 2009 even though their current calendar reads 2010. No, this isn’t fantasy or traffic grasping SEO hype — there really is one way for you to still get another deduction on your 2009 taxes. Ready? Here goes:
If you want [...]

Last year, President Obama finally pushed legislation through Congress that is aimed at protecting American consumers from the unscrupulous practices of credit card companies.  This week, the new credit card law finally takes effect.
On Monday, February 22nd, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act (the CARD Act, for short) begins guarding credit card users [...]

When I opened the 529 college savings plan for our first daughter in 2005, the plan offered by New Jersey was never an option to me because there is not tax benefit for using NJ 529 plan even for the state residents. But that wasn’t all. What really made me stay away from NJ college [...]