The Sun's Financial Diary

I just had an argument with the bank that doesn’t make me feel very comfortable. When I opened Ally Bank accounts last week, I deposited only $1,000 in the 9-month No Penalty CD account. That’s just the initial deposit that I plan to add more to later after the account is set up (it doesn’t [...]

Well, I finally pulled the trigger to open an Ally Bank Online Savings Account and a 9-month No Penalty CD Account, after   mulling the idea for weeks but only watching the rates slipping further and further. Had I opened the account when I first discussed Ally Bank’s products at the beginning of the month, I [...]

It looks like I made a big mistake about two months ago when I moved all my money from Dollar Savings Direct to IGoBanking. I have left IGoBanking a long time ago, but moved back in April after seeing their actually increased the rate of their savings account from 1.85% APY to 2.12% APY, the [...]

Early last week, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Money Plus will no longer be available for purchase after June 30, 2009 and all purchased Money Plus products must be activated before January 31, 2011. The software maker cites the change in the market where banks, brokers, even third parties have started to offer their customers free, [...]

It never makes me feel good when receiving a letter from the IRS because most of the time, it’s not going to be a good news (luckily I haven’t got into any trouble with the IRS so far). So when I saw the letter from IRS in my mailbox today, I was first kind of [...]

Here’s another high-yield savings account offer, even though the rate isn’t as good as the rate from Ally Bank or Discover Bank I mentioned earlier. The new offer is the American Express Personal Savings Account. The credit card issuer received permission from the Fed to become a bank holding company in November 2008, making it [...]

Are you using any free online personal finance tools such as Mint, Yodlee, Wesabe, or Quicken Online? I am not really a big fan of online tools as I prefer to store sensitive information on my home computer instead of on a website. For example, I use Quicken Home & Business to track my investments [...]

A couple of days ago, I read an article on the Wall Street Journal about a new credit card rewards program Chase has just launched. The new program is called Ultimate Rewards, similar to Citibank’s ThankYou Network program and American Express’s Membership Rewards program. Basically, cardholders earn rewards points when using participating Chase credit cards [...]