The Sun's Financial Diary

A few years ago, I wrote a post about who offers the best deal in both the checking and savings accounts. Back then, 5+% yield on savings accounts and 3+% on interest checking accounts were very common. Now, we know things are totally different. With the Fed fund rates being held at close to zero [...]

A high interest rate savings account is an essential part of our financial system. With a large amount of money that is currently held in bank accounts, I’d love to get as much return as possible while making sure that the money will be there when we need it in the next few months. Unfortunately, [...]

If you are looking for a better place to park your hard earned cash, you will probably be disappointed when you see current savings account interest rates. Since I started tracking savings account rates early last year, the general trend is down, coming all the way from 4% APY to mostly below 2% in just [...]

I have always been on the look out for better savings accounts, which are getting harder and harder to come by these days in such a low interest rate environment.  One of those accounts that had been on my radar for a long time was EverBank High Yield Money Market Account. What makes EverBank stand [...]

InterestPlus Online Savings is an online savings account that gives you:

Get a 1.25% Annual Percentage Yield on balances of $2,500 or more.
Get a 10% bonus on your interest earned four times a year. Just open and use your Capital One credit card at least once a month or keep an average balance of $15,000 in [...]

I took advantage of an early bonus offer for ING Direct Business Savings Account last month and got an account for myself plus $50 bonus from the one-time offer What I like about the account is not only the decent yield (currently at 1.15% APY) of the Business Savings Account, but also the [...]

Since I don’t actively bank with Ally Bank any more (I still have a 9-Month No Penalty CD with them though), I don’t check my account as often as I do with other banks. When I did go to Ally Bank website the other day, I notice something that I didn’t see before, as far [...]

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 [...]

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 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 [...]