The Sun's Financial Diary

The current market environment has definitely not been kind to savers. The Fed has dropped interest rates to near record low levels in order to stimulate the economy. While that’s great news for anybody who may be in the market for a loan, it’s wreaking havoc on anybody looking for a halfway decent yield on [...]

In late April, SmartyPig, a social website that lets friends and family members contribute to one’s saving goals, generated quite some buzz in the PF blog community when it raised its savings account rate to 2.15% APY. The reason why the move received so much attention was that SmartyPig did that while other banks were [...]

We had a friend, who moved his family from New Hampshire to Virginia last year as we did, come over last weekend. During our chat, he mentioned that they are also looking to buy a house in this area and since they are first-time home buyer, he wanted to see if I can share my [...]

Social Security has become a bit of a buzz word in the world of finance. Individuals and lawmakers alike spend countless hours trying to figure out how long the 75 year old trust fund will stay afloat and what type of benefits, if any, future retirees can expect to see from the program. While we [...]

As I mentioned earlier, we are in the process of refinancing our mortgage to take advantage of the record low rate. We have heard back from our broker and there is good news and bad news. The good news is we have locked in a rate that’s much lower than our current rate of 4.25% [...]

Like most people nowadays, I’ve worked several different jobs over the course of my career. I’ve worked for some folks who were great managers and I’ve worked for some that were their own worst enemy. My first job out of college was working for an individual who built his own investment firm from the ground [...]

Think you’ll save more money by waiting? Want to window shop a bit more before committing? Are you considering waiting until after school starts before picking up all the necessary supplies? If so, you’ll likely lose out on tidy sum of savings. The time to stock up for school and still save money is now, [...]

My wife and I like to talk relatively frequently about the things we’d like to do and things we’d like to have later in life. In reality, with two young daughters at home our financial perspective doesn’t often drift beyond the near future but that doesn’t stop us from partaking in a little wishful thinking [...]