The Sun’s Financial Diary

Now that we settled in Virginia, there are still many things for us to do besides getting to know this area. On top of my to-do list is update our address so mail will be delivered to our new home. With so many active accounts I have with banks, credit card issuers, mutual fund companies, [...]

Well, this really comes as a surprise because I have already gotten used to Ally Bank’s endless adjustments of the rates of their banking products. I was so pissed by the bank’s weekly rate reduction (yes, a rate change here or there every week) that I left Ally Bank only a couple of weeks after [...]

a long time ago.
When I updated our July net worth early this month, I mentioned that I opened another savings account. That’s was barely one month after I got an account from Ally Bank. The reason is that I became extremely disappointed by Ally Bank, not only because of all the troubles I had with [...]

Just got this email from ING Direct.
The online bank is currently running a promotion for its Electric Orange Checking Account. The promotion will give $25 bonus to each new customer when the following conditions are met:

Open an Electric Orange with promotion code EM298 by August 22, 2009;
Activate the Electric Orange MasterCard Debit Card;
Use the Electric [...]

I have talked about Ally Bank quite a lot recently, from my decision to open an account with the bank, to troubles when trying to get a second account, to eventually leaving the bank after only two weeks. It wasn’t a good experience for me, even though initially I thought I could use Ally Bank [...]

I decided to end my short relationship with Ally Bank, though not completely.
For the two weeks that I banked with Ally, I felt very disappointed about the bank, not only because the trouble it caused during the process when I was opening my second CD account last week, which is very discouraging, [...]

This is ugly! Actually it’s much uglier than I first thought.
Last Thursday, I opened an Ally Bank 9-month No Penalty CD account. However, due to some errors in the process, I ended up opening two accounts, not just one as I wanted, each with an initial deposit of $56,000. Since I don’t have that much [...]

WTDirect, one of the popular online banks, is running a promotion again that, for a limited time, will give up to $150 bonus for every new account.
The bank had run a few similar promotions in the past and from what I can see, the promotions were quite successful in generating interests. The yield of WTDirect [...]

Even though I am a Bank of America customer, I don’t think I got this offer myself directly from the bank. But apparently the bank is giving $25 bonus for using their online bill pay functions twice.

To get the bonus, you will need to register with the bank first. Information needed for the registration include [...]

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 make [...]