The Sun's Financial Diary

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 [...]

myFICO is having a 20% off sale of Suze Orman FICO kit from now till the end of this month. The kit includes the following features: Debt Eliminator: Learn how to get out of credit card debt with your own personalized debt analysis and repayment plan; Day-to-Pay Bill Reminders: Paying your bills on time is [...]

tax wise. Sure, we enjoy full service at the pump while paying probably the lowest gas price in the nation, but other than that, there isn’t much for us to cheer about. New Jersey is notorious for its high property taxes (see how many NJ counties are paying the highest property taxes) because, among many [...]

Discover More Card is having a promotion with $50 bonus. The More card is one of the cards that was featured in my best cash back credit cards post (check out that post for features of this card). If you apply and are approved for a new account and make $500 purchase in the first [...]

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 [...]

Don’t borrow money from your 401(k) account unless you absolutely have to. If you have to, pay it back as soon as possible. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week issued a warning on using 401(k) debit card to tap into retirement funds to pay for daily living expenses. As the slowed economy put [...]

“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 [...]