The Sun’s Financial Diary

Yesterday, an article on CNBC On The Money mentioned three credit cards that you need to have when the credit card industry is undergoing dramatic changes due to the credit crisis. Of the three cards mentioned, one, the Discover Card, is a everyday card for everybody with good credit; one, the American Express Platinum Card, [...]

Starwood Preferred Guest Card from American Express is having a promotion that will give new cardholder up to 25,000 Starpoints in bonus. Of those bonus points, 10,000 points (enough for up to 3 free nights at a Category 1 or 2 hotel) will be credited after the first purchase within the first year. The additional [...]

Early last month, Citibank introduced a new card, Citi Forward Card, which rewards cardholders for using the card responsibly by lowering the interest rate up to 2%. The concept of rewarding good behaviors is quite unique, especially in this environment where every major credit card issuers are raising rates, sometimes even without any reason. So [...]

Over the past several years, I have acquired a couple of travel rewards credit cards, including AMEX Delta SkyMiles Card, Discover Miles Card, and Citi PremierPass Card. Though I don’t travel a lot, I’d like to have a card that gives better rewards for travel than a everyday card like the Fidelity 529 Card I am [...]

There’s an article on Consumer Reports website last week with the organization’s latest test results on toilet papers (which will also appear in the May issue of Consumer Report magazine). The article has some interesting findings that could affect which brand we will buy in the future.
We have been using Scott 1000-sheet single ply paper [...]

Did I mention a few days ago that I once had a “black” card?
Well, if you read the post, you know that I called the Discover card I owned a while ago a “black” card only because the card was printed with black color. That’s actually the only “feature” that made the card a “black” [...]

The answer is Yes.
The question isn’t really whether you can use plastics to pay taxes or not, but rather whether paying taxes with credit cards is worth it or not.
How Much Does It Cost to Pay Taxes by Credit Cards?
The IRS has two authorized partners which provide the convenience service of letting taxpayers pay taxes [...]

After having been mostly in the credit card accumulation mode for years, it seems that the time to cut down my “holdings” has finally come. The main reason that I probably will never use some of the cards again because they don’t offer any reward that’s better than those cards I am actively using now. [...]

Whenever you receive a replacement credit card, the issuer always asks you to destroy the old card, like cut it in half, so the old card can no longer be used. Do you always follow what you are told to do?

I don’t know about you, but I never destroyed a single card and never thrown [...]

Early last week, I received my brand new UPromise Credit Card from Bank of America. The look, however, isn’t the only change that was made after UPromise switched the card’s association from Citibank to BofA. The rewards program itself also got an upgrade.
I have been a UPromise credit card member since 2002, using it to [...]