The Sun's Financial Diary

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 [...]

In case you are shopping for a checking account, Citibank is currently running a promotion for Citibank Checking Account that comes with a promotional bonus up to $100. The promotion runs for a full year, from now to February 28, 2013. During the promotion period, if you open a Citibank checking account, you could receive up [...]

I didn’t write anything about Ally Bank for some time because I haven’t actively used the bank for about two year. But in March this year, I returned to Ally and have stayed since as a happy customer. I left Ally for Sallie Mae in 2010 shortly after Sallie Mae Savings Account was launched because [...]

When I wrote about the promotional offer from USAA brokerage last week, I also mentioned in the post a few other products from USAA, one of them being the no-fee checking account, which is the favorite of many USAA customers. So what exactly makes it special? We have discussed quite a few times in the past [...]

For a third year in a row, ING Direct is running a 4-day (June 30th and July 3rd) promotion for its popular products to celebrate the coming Independence Day holiday. What are being offered in the latest promotion are ING Direct Electric Orange Checking Account, Orange Savings Account, Orange Mortgage, and ShareBuilder Investment Account. Earn $152 bonus [...]

Every time I login to my Bank of America account online, I see two service offers for the check card, or debit card, I have from BofA. One is Keep the Change, which allows you to keep the change every time you pay your purchase the debit card. The other one is Overdraft Project. Since [...]

Well, almost. A while ago, shortly after we moved from New Jersey to Virginia, I wrote a post on why we still bank with Bank of America. In that article, I listed a few reasons for staying with the bank when there were a lot of talks about moving away from big banks such as [...]

There’s a long tradition in China during the Lunar New Year celebration that, in addition to eating dumplings and getting new clothes, parents, grandparents, or even relatives give children red envelopes containing a small amount of money. The money is for the whole year since parents usually don’t give kids any extra allowance during the [...]