The Sun's Financial Diary

Hope you got it when it was there. If you didn’t, then it’s too late already. Just received an email from WTDirect that it has terminated the promotion of up to $250 sign-on bonus immediately. The promotion was wildly successful, more so than we could have forecasted. Unfortunately, we need to end the promotion early. [...]

I am not a fan of Certificate of Deposit (CD). In fact, the only CD I ever had was a 1-year $5,000 CD about 10 years ago with my local Summit Bank (which later became Fleet Bank, then Bank of America). Back then, there was no high-yield online savings accounts as we have now. So [...]

I first talked about IGoChecking, the interest checking account from IGoBanking, a couple of weeks ago (check out that post for details). Now IGoChecking is giving a free $50 gas card for the first 400 applicants when opening a new account: Open an iGOchecking account, use our free Bill Pay and Presentment service to pay [...]

“Regardless of the health of your bank or condition of the overall economy … returns are never high enough to justify the exposure of uninsured deposits.” This is a quote from an article appeared on The Wall Street Journal online yesterday. Very true, isn’t it? As more and more banks failed amid this sub-prime mortgage [...]

Just a quick update. Two more banks raised their rates today. Emigrant Direct American Dream Savings Account is now at 3.00% APY with no fees and no minimum. I used to use Emigrant Direct when they were among a few banks that paid highest interest rate. Not any more. Even at 3.00%, they are still [...]

Washington Mutual now pays 3.75% APY for their online savings account. Banks are competing for our money. Looks like the competition is heating up. I just got an email from Washington Mutual with the latest change to the interest rate of WaMu online savings account. The new rate, effective immediately, is 3.75% APY, up 0.45% [...]

EverBank offers 4.00% 3-month bonus rate for its Yield Pledge Money Market Account as well as FreeNet Checking Account. In this interview, EverBank Direct President Frank Trotter introduces the bank’s products and assures customers that EverBank has no business in the sub-prime market. I didn’t pay attention to EverBank (though it was included in my [...]

IGoBanking is one of the online banks that I used quite often in the past, until recently I switched to Capital One/FNBO Direct because IGoBanking’s rate, at 3.28% APY, is no longer attractive comparing to others. Early this week, I received an email from IGoBanking, introducing me their IGoChecking checking account. Key features of the [...]