The Sun's Financial Diary

Using it wisely, you can make hundreds or even thousands of dollars from credit card arbitrage. Here’s how you can profit from free loans from credit card companies.
A couple of days ago, I received an email from Mike regarding my credit card arbitrage:
I was just wondering how you were able to get 100 K onto [...]

Yesterday, I posted an entry on credit score with a couple of items that I feel are important in getting a good score from my own experience. Last night at home, I went through several credit reports with credit score I obtained in the past few years, trying to find out what I have done [...]

A year ago, when I opened a Discover Miles card to use their 12-month 0% balance transfer, I thought I also get 12,000 bonus miles, except that that bonus never came.
As the promotion period is expiring, I called them last week to confirm the exact date that I will have to pay off the balance [...]

The terms “hard pull” and “soft pull” or “hard credit check” and “soft credit check” often pop up when people talk about credit report, credit history, or credit inquiries. So what exactly are they and how do they affect credit scores?
What Are Hard Pull and Soft Pull?
“Hard pull” usually refers to credit inquiries that are [...]

Since last December, I kept getting a $37.90 charge on my American Express TrueEarnings card. The charge was from an internet payment company in Netherlands for a monthly subscription fee. After I noticed it in February, I called AMEX immediately to report the unauthorized use of my card and was told there will be an [...]

I got two new credit cards , but I really didn’t apply for any of them .
Last night I received two new credit cards in the mail. One is from Bank of America and the other one is from Lowe’s. They are both replacements of the cards I already own. However, [...]

A couple of days ago CNNMoney has an article with a list of seven credit cards that give cardholders generous rewards (well, that’s just relative to the 1% reward that I can pretty much get from any card). Out of the seven cards mentioned in the article, I own two of them, Discover Miles card [...]

A couple of days ago, American Express announced a program that will allow qualified cardmembers to pay mortgages with their AMEX credit cards. From comments left at my post, I can see opinions on this issue is as polarized as using credit cards itself: there are people like me who use credit cards all the [...]

News is out this morning that American Express (announcement from AMEX) will soon allow its card members to pay monthly mortgage with AMEX cards and earn rewards at the same time.
According to MarketWatch,
American Home Mortgage Corp. will be the first lender to offer the Express Rewards Mortgage program for eligible prime loans. American Express Cardmembers [...]

Last night when I was checking my Discover card statement, I browsed their site and found a new card they are offering: the Discover Motiva Card. I don’t know exactly when this card was first available, but since I didn’t notice it last time I checked my account early this month, I guess it’s fairly [...]