The Sun's Financial Diary

I have heard some time ago that exchange-traded funds (ETFs) will be available in 401(k) retirement accounts. Not sure whether plan participants can trade ETFs in their accounts already, but in general I think it’s a good news not only because it will gives investors more choices to save for their retirement, but also ETFs [...]

I opened a 529 college savings account for our second daughter last year four months after she was born. After some research, I decided to use Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Savings Plan because of the selections of investments (mostly Vanguard index funds) and the plan’s low cost. Since then I have been making  contributions to the [...]

We started to save for our daughter’s future education shortly after they were born (for our second daughter, we did wait nearly four months before opening a 529 plan for her ) and since then we have been making monthly contributions to their 529 accounts, currently5. Th at $14,77e reason for deciding to help our [...]

Really, I almost got a heart attack when I saw Ohio CollegeAdvantage is among the worst college savings plans published by Morningstar yesterday because that’s the one I opened for our younger daughter last year. Fortunately, what I have isn’t exactly what’s named in the Morningstar list. Anyway, Morningstar yesterday published its annual ranking of [...]

Our second daughter is more than 4 months old already, yet I waited till yesterday to set up an 529 plan account for her. I wasn’t really waiting for anything. It has been on my mind since she was born, but I kept delaying it with no good excuses. If I didn’t read Lazy Man’s [...]

I have joined both UPromise and BabyMint and have accumulated more than $400 of rebates with UPromise since 2004 when I actually started to use my Citi UPromise card regularly though I had the card and joined the program in 2002. I didn’t use BabyMint a lot, not because UPromise is better (well, in some [...]

Early last week, Morningstar released its annual evaluation of 529 college savings plans. According to Morningstar, qualities of 529 plans continued to improve in the past couple of years as plan providers reduced fees (both Fidelity and Vanguard have lowered fees of their college savings products) and eliminated high-price offerings. Good news for parents who [...]

Before I applied for the then Fidelity 529 College Rewards MasterCard (now Fidelity 529 College Rewards American Express Card) back in March, I opened a 529 plan with Fidelity in order to invest the 2% rewards I could earn from the card. The plan I chose was Fidelity UNIQUE 2024 plan (which is also Fidelity’s [...]