The Sun's Financial Diary

Early last month, I updated our car information with Liberty Mutual, our current auto and home insurer. The policy won't expire till the end of next January, and we have been quite happy with their rates and services for the past three years. Therefore, we aren't actively seeking any replacement, though the premiums went up [...]

My wife has been with her current company for nearly five years and her employer offers a match for the first 6% of her 401(k) contributions. The only catch is the match is given in company stocks in the form a fund. Ever since she joined the company, she maxed out every year and now [...]

Bank of America is expanding its $0 trade program to Alabama, DC, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, according to Reuters. Customers who have $25,000 or more in all asset across BoA deposit accounts, including checking, savings, and CDs, can get up to 30 free trades per month. The bank also hopes [...]

The next key for you to be successful in investing is to have a good judgment between the return you expect and the risk you are willing to take in order to reach your investment goals. In the third segment of the Kiplinger's "The Five Keys to Investing Success" series, the author made the argument [...]

An article in yesterday's USAToday prompted to check the fees I paid for those funds in my 401(k) plan. Unlike mutual funds holding in my taxable accounts, in which I have the flexibility to choose from perhaps hundreds of funds in the same category from as many companies, the number of funds in my 401(k) [...]

In my yesterday’s post, So How Many Credit Cards Can You Have and Still Get a Good Credit Score?, I said that at one time back in June I had nearly $51,000 balance on four credit cards, all due to 0% balance transfers. I LOVE (yes, LOVE) to take free loans from credit cards (new [...]

While I generally agree that too many hard inquiries (voluntary inquiries) in a short period of time (however if the inquiries span only a couple of days, they will be reported as one inquiry rather than multiple one) hurt your credit score in the short term (FICO only uses the hard inquiries in the past [...]

If it's not for your mutual fund products, I probably don't want any business with you!  Well, that was my feeling after a 30+ minutes phone conversation with Vanguard last night. I thought I already had enough trouble with Vanguard for our Roth IRA assets transfer, but it isn't over. When I got home last [...]