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Current Bank & Broker Promotion Bonuses

Posted by Sun

If you are looking for a little incentive to open a bank or brokerage account, there are a few promotions currently running which will give you as much as $50 bonus for a single new account. Check them out. Maybe there’s something you need

TradeKing $50 bonus for a new account: Open an account [...]

We Sold Our House!

Posted by Sun on August 23, 2009

That’s the good news . The bad news is the final price, after all the costs and cashback (no including the upgrade we did), is likely to be lower than the price we paid 5 years ago when we bought the house . But in this environment, we are still happy [...]

Chase Amazon Visa Card Is Getting Better

Posted by Sun on August 22, 2009

I just received a letter from Amazon.com which informs me that my Amazon.com Rewards Visa Card is being upgraded to Amazon.com Rewards Visa Signature Card with Signature benefits.
I got the card in 2006 when I started to make more and more purchases at Amazon.com. I thought getting the card makes sense for the 3% cashback [...]

EverBank Money Market Account Opened

Posted by Sun on August 20, 2009

a long time ago.
When I updated our July net worth early this month, I mentioned that I opened another savings account. That’s was barely one month after I got an account from Ally Bank. The reason is that I became extremely disappointed by Ally Bank, not only because of all the troubles I had with [...]

AMEX To Raise Late Fee and Rates on My Cards

Posted by Sun on August 17, 2009

I usually don’t pay too much attention to mails credit card companies send to me because, being very careful with my credit, I have largely stayed out of trouble with credit card companies. Most of the time, I don’t even read those letters that come with account policy or agreement changes. They just don’t concern [...]

OptionsHouse Dropped $100 Cash Reserve Requirement for Making a Trade

Posted by Sun on August 15, 2009

I am not sure what role, if any, I had in this, but I was just informed by Shannon Paul, the Communications Manager of PEAK6 Online, the parent company of OptionsHouse, that the discount online broker has dropped the $100 cash reserve requirement (that’s different than account minimum, which is $1,000 to open an account) [...]

Do I Need a Credit Monitoring Service?

Posted by Sun on August 14, 2009

I always consider myself pretty good at managing my own credit. Then last week, I had this idea of getting a credit monitoring service. The reason is because of some recent activities in my credit that could have a negative impact on my score.
First in June, when I got my current job, I signed an [...]

Two of My Lending Club Loans Are 30 Days Late

Posted by Sun on August 12, 2009

Apparently, I was a little overstated the status of my Lending Club loans when I updated my loan portfolio and stated that there was no late or default. Somehow, I skipped one page where there are two $50 loans that are already more than 30 days late when I checked last night, both from the [...]

Morningstar’s New Mutual Fund Quote Looks Good

Posted by Sun on August 10, 2009

I have mentioned a few time in the past that Morningstar is my primary tool when it comes to mutual fund research because, as far as I can tell, it has the broad coverage or mutual funds with the most comprehensive data of a fund. I even wrote about how to use Morningstar to research [...]

Free Credit Score for American Express Card Members

Posted by Sun on August 8, 2009

The free credit score offer seems to be back again.
I got my free Experian PLUS score back in April when AMEX offered the deal to cardholders. Though it’s not the most widely used FICO score, it should still give you an idea of your credit worthiness if you haven’t checked your score recently. And it’s [...]

July 2009 Score Card — Part II: Investment Portfolio

Posted by Sun on August 7, 2009

I should have done this last month for the mid-year checkup, but didn’t get time to record all the data and I had to delay the update to this month.
In the past, I have reviewed our investments, mainly taxable stock and mutual fund investment. The reason I skipped retirement investments before is that some of [...]

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