The Sun's Financial Diary

Airline tickets are getting more and more expensive these days. A few years ago, I could a round-trip to China in September for something like $800. But now, the cost is 50% more for flying even in the off-peak season and more than doubled in the summer. And this doesn’t just happen to international flights. [...]

In the past, when it was time to enroll our medical insurance plan, we always selected the option with the least amount of premium and usually it was the HMO plan. For us, the decision was rather easy to make: Both of us are in good health and the only time of the year that [...]

You may soon see a new fee on your credit card purchase receipt, if haven’t seen already, thanks to a $6 billion settlement reached last July between major credit card issuers and merchants. The proposed settlement was the result of an antitrust lawsuit filed against credit card transaction processors Visa, MasterCard, and other nine major [...]

A few years ago, my wife’s employer started to offer Roth 401(K) together with the traditional, pre-tax 401(K) plan. At that time we decided to continue funding the pre-tax 401(K) account and not contribute to the Roth account for the same reason I used to not covert existing Traditional IRA accounts into Roth. As you [...]

I mentioned in my previous post that I have made some changes to how we invest our money this year and one of them was starting to contribute to Roth IRA accounts again, though we don’t qualify to make direct contributions. The advantage of Roth IRA over Traditional IRA has been discussed extensively, such as tax [...]

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the recent rate increase at Ally Bank which brought the yield of Ally Bank Online Savings Account from 0.89% to 0.95% APY. In that post, I also mentioned that these days, accounts with 1% APY or higher are hard to come by in this low-rate environment that [...]

Discover recently launched a new credit card called Discover It Card, a card that the bank says will change the way people think about credit card. Speaking of the way we think about credit cards, I think I am qualified to contribute to the conversation because I am a die-hard credit card user. For me, [...]

Citibank is now offering 0% Intro APR balance transfer or purchase for 18 months for new cardholders of its Citi® Diamond Preferred® Card. If you are looking for a credit card with low interest rate to transfer balance accumulated during the holiday shopping period, this card may be exactly what you need. The Citi Diamond Preferred® [...]