The Sun's Financial Diary

Back in February, the U.S. Postal Service announced that the postage for one-ounce first-class mail will go up by 1 cent to 42 cents next Monday, May 12th, so does the price for a Forever stamp. When the stamp was first introduced in 2007, I didn’t buy any extra other than the booklet of 20 [...]

With the economic stimulus checks coming out earlier than originally scheduled, some may have already received their payments. Though I haven’t got my check yet (filed paper return on April 14th could mean a long delay), I did wonder whether I have to pay taxes for the “found money”. So I searched around a little [...]

If you do, then what’s the reason for you to budget? I don’t and I don’t know whether that’s a problem for me or not. There were several years in the 90s when I wrote every penny I spent in notebooks, not to better plan how to spend my money next month, but to know [...]

When the Economic Stimulus Payment schedule was initially announced on March 17, IRS said the first check will be made on May 2 to taxpayers who selected to receive the payment via direct deposit and on May 16 for those who choose to receive paper check instead. Now, the schedule has been pushed up a [...]

Really, I almost got a heart attack when I saw Ohio CollegeAdvantage is among the worst college savings plans published by Morningstar yesterday because that’s the one I opened for our younger daughter last year. Fortunately, what I have isn’t exactly what’s named in the Morningstar list. Anyway, Morningstar yesterday published its annual ranking of [...]

It seems that SmartyPig continues to improve its service to lure more customers. After reducing most of the fees they charge savers for their services shortly after launching the site, SmartyPig also eliminates the $25 fee for requesting a paper check yesterday. Previously, when account holders reach their saving goals and wish to get the [...]

There are only four days left before the April 15 tax deadline, but it isn’t too late to make 2007 IRA contribution which has a limit of $4,000 ($5,000 if 50+ years old). At this time, some brokers are offering incentives to encourage people to open IRA accounts with them. For example: Scottrade: 1-year subscription [...]

I was really impressed the other day when I found out that Provident Direct, a little known online bank, was offering 4.50% APY with their high-yield savings account, when everybody else was paying almost a full percentage point less. At that time, I was thinking of getting a new account if they won’t dramatically lower [...]