The Sun's Financial Diary

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 [...]

Do you still remember Revolution Money Exchange? It has been a while since I mentioned it here last time. Actually, it probably has been even a longer time since I last used the service, which was renamed to Serve from American Express after American Express purchased Revolution Money, the online payment service provider similar to [...]

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 [...]

In recent years, debit card transactions have soared as more and more consumers switched from traditional credit cards to debit cards after the financial crisis that started in late 2007, which eventually led to the recession. In addition to the fact that credit has become harder and harder to obtain since then, many people were [...]

We don’t get a lot of mail from the government. The one that we did get in the past were our Social Security benefit statement that arrived at our house every year. Since the statements were only issued on an annual basis, we didn’t pay any attention to them until they were in our hands, [...]

Last week, I shared the first 4 steps to taking control of your finances. This week my article continues with 2 more steps: 5. Take stock and move money around.  Target the expenses you can have an immediate effect on. These likely include the monthly grocery bill, eating out, and – believe it or not – your tax [...]

Here’s another choice if you are looking for a business credit card with rewards. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a business card offering from Citibank, the CitiBusiness ThankYou Card, that allows new card members to earn $150 as a bonus after meeting the spending requirement. It’s quite common these days for card [...]

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that bringing more money in will solve your financial struggles, but it’s important to remember that those supposed “added” funds come with their own price tag. Make more money, you’ll pay more in taxes. Work more hours to bring in more pay, you lose valuable time [...]