The Sun's Financial Diary

Some how I started to feel that we need to make some overhaul of our finance to make it more efficient and easier to manage, though we haven’t reached the point that things are out of hands yet. Partly because that getting a credit card, opening a bank account, and buying a stock are so [...]

We realized last weekend after we were done with our income taxes that we, my wife and I, had made excess contributions in our Roth IRA accounts. Based on our income numbers, TurboTax said we were only eligible for $200 Roth IRA contributions in 2006, instead of the maximum $4,000 we made throughout the year. [...]

I got this email from a reader this morning regarding Chase business card: I have received multiple pre-approval letters from chase for a business credit card. 3% cash back at home improvement centers, 3% cash back at restaurants, 3% cash back at Staples and such. Being a new home owner the lure of 3% cash [...]

I know every time I apply for a credit card, buy a car, or open a bank account, I will receive a credit check from the lender. That’s understandable because the lenders need my credit history to assess my ability to pay the loan back. In these cases, I am the borrower and the banks [...]

I have been using NetworthIQ to track our net worth for several months now and find it’s a quite nice tool. However, for most of the time, I go straight to my account and update the numbers without paying much attention to what happened elsewhere. Last night, when I was broswing NetworthIQ, I noticed that [...]

If you are living in the Northeast and is affected by the weekend storm, IRS will give you two extra days to file your income tax return beyond the April 17 deadline. According to the IRS announcement, Victims of the major storm affecting several Northeastern states on Monday, April 16 will have two additional days [...]

Well, I waited till the last minute to finish our taxes (thanks for the two extra days). Actually, I started the work in February, shortly after all the forms were in, but suspended it when I noticed that we had to send back a big check. I never rush when I need to pay money [...]

Last week, I posted a piece on investing in real estate through REIT. The following guest article is on the same topic and is written by Tom Kerr from MortgageLoan.com. Savvy stock market professionals know that the best time to buy is when everyone else is selling. The same holds true for real estate investing. [...]