The Sun’s Financial Diary The Sun’s Financial Diary My personal experience of saving, investing, and living frugally. 
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Investing in My SEP-IRA Account
2009-04-28 20:37:00 Before the April 15th tax deadline, I opened and funded a SEP-IRA account with Fidelity. The reason I chose Fidelity is that it is also the custodian of my 401(k) and my daughter’s 529 account (I am using the Fidelity UNIQUE plan which is tied to the Fidelity 529 Rewards Card). In addition, I also ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Investing in My SEP-IRA Account More About: Mutual fund
Bank Bonus Offers from PNC Bank and Investors Savings Bank
2009-04-28 05:27:00 Here are a few bonuses in case you are looking for a new checking account with cash incentive. PNC Bank is offering a $75 bonus for a new personal checking account (Free Checking, Performance Checking, or Performance Select Checking) with direct deposit. In order to qualify for this bonus offer, you must open an account between ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Bank Bonus Offers from PNC Bank and Investors Savings Bank More About: Personal Finance , Banking
Ohio CollegeAdvantage Named One of the Best College Savings Plans
2009-04-27 17:02:00 Last week, Morningstar released its annual evaluation of the nation’s 529 college savings plans and named Ohio College Advantage Plan, the one we are using to save for our younger daughter, one of the 5 best college savings plans. The Morningstar report cited the following features as what makes the plan stand out from the crowd: One ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Ohio CollegeAdvantage Named One of the Best College Savings Plans More About: Personal Finance , Investing
Life Insurance May Make Better Budget Sense Than You Think
2009-04-24 16:54:00 This is a post by Chris Wilson who is an insurance editor. He writes about various insurance topics. Insurance is one of those necessary evils that people feel they must have, but resent paying for - especially during tough economic times. The law demands we have automotive insurance and most mortgages require a homeowner?s policy. With ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Life Insurance May Make Better Budget Sense Than You Think More About: Personal Finance , Life Insurance
Free Schick Quattro Razor/Trimmer
2009-04-24 16:06:00 Here’s another promotion from Schick for its Quattro Titanium Razor /Trimmer. It was almost a year ago when Schick had a similar promotion. Even though I realized that there are already a bunch of razors in my closet, I signed up to get another one anyway because it’s free and I never pass a free stuff that ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Free Schick Quattro Razor/Trimmer More About: Free Stuff
Index Mutual Funds Are Still Not Popular, But
2009-04-23 18:53:00 Are you investing in equity mutual funds? If so, are you using index funds or actively managed funds? I have mentioned a few times in the past that even though I use all index funds in my retirement savings accounts, I have nothing but actively managed funds in taxable accounts. The reason isn’t that I don’t ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Index Mutual Funds Are Still Not Popular , But More About: Investing , Mutual fund
Citi PremierPass Card 20,000 ThankYou Points Promotion
2009-04-22 16:39:00 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 Idon’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 ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Citi PremierPass Card 20,000 ThankYou Points Promotion More About: Personal Finance , Credit Card
Target-Date Funds Aren?t That Safe
2009-04-21 19:54:00 One of the main advantages of target-date funds, or lifecycle funds, is that the asset allocation of these funds is automatically adjusted as the target date approaches, going from aggressive (more stocks, less bonds) in the early stage to conservative (more bonds, less stocks). With target-date funds, investors leave the the job of adjusting and ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Target -Date Funds Aren’t That Safe More About: Investing , Mutual fund
Morningstar?s New Chart Tool Is Impressive
2009-04-21 05:33:00 Whenever I need data on mutual funds, whether it’s a fund’s expense ratio, risk measures, or return, I always go to morningstar.com. It has been my trust tool for fund research for year, not only for mutual funds, but for ETFs as well. Then yesterday when I went to Morningstar to get some data for ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Morningstar’s New Chart Tool Is Impressive More About: Tools , Investing , Mutual fund
Weekend Linkage - April 19, 2009
2009-04-20 06:12:00 It finally feels like spring. We took the kids to Branch Brook Park near Newark yesterday for the Cherry Blossom Festival, the first time in more than seven years. In the past, we usually took our children to DC in early April to see the cherry flowers, but this year we decided to stay close to ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Weekend Linkage - April 19, 2009 More About: Roundup
Social Security Administration Has Answers to Your Questions on $250 One-Ti
2009-04-18 04:56:00 Two months ago, I wrote an article on when social security recipients will receive the $250 payment as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Since then some readers have left comments, mostly concerning who are eligible for the economic recovery one-time payment. While I am glad that post helped some people ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Social Security Administration Has Answers to Your Questions on $250 One-Time Payment More About: Economy , Personal Finance
Discount Broker Comparison
2009-04-17 17:50:00 When I researched a discount broker in the past, one of the most important pieces of information I was always looking for in the commission that the broker charges for buying and selling stocks. I want it be as cheap as possible. However, the problem is when I went to a certain broker and checked ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Discount Broker Comparison More About: Investing , Stock , Brokerage
PNC Bank Sucks
2009-04-17 03:50:00 This isn’t the first time I complained about PNC Bank , with which I opened a business checking account at the end of January, but I hope it’s the last. I heard some nice words about PNC before deciding to use it. However, my short relationship with the bank so far turned out to be a terrible ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus PNC Bank Sucks More About: Business , Personal Finance , Banking
Check Your Tax Refund Status Online
2009-04-15 16:10:00 Like last year, I mailed out our tax forms one day ahead of the tax deadline, which is today. In the past I usually waited till the last minute to file, and, as you can imagine, it was never a pleasant trip to the post office on April 15th. I know, I could have used ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Check Your Tax Refund Status Online More About: Personal Finance
Random News: Best Toilet Paper, Bank of America Credit Card Rate Hikes, and
2009-04-15 05:55:00 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 ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Random News : Best Toilet Paper, Bank of America Credit Card Rate Hikes, and (Vehicle) Size Does Matter More About: Personal Finance
IPOs on Deck: Rosetta Stone (RST) and Bridgepoint Education (BPI)
2009-04-14 05:10:00 The U.S. IPO market is pretty much dried up. In 2008, a total of 43 companies went public, only 8 in the second half of the year, according to a report from Renaissance Capital, as the crisis in the financial market forced companies abandon plans to go public. So far in 2009, only 2 initial ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus IPOs on Deck : Rosetta Stone (RST) and Bridgepoint Education (BPI) More About: Investing , Stock
How Long Does It Take Your Broker to Answer Your Call?
2009-04-13 17:46:00 I am sure you have called your broker on occasions when you had a problem with your account. Usually, how long did it take for your broker to answer your phone call? Were you be able to talk to a broker when you needed immediate assistance with your trades? I have a few brokerage accounts and ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus How Long Does It Take Your Broker to Answer Your Call ? More About: Investing , Brokerage
Weekend Linkage - April 12, 2009
2009-04-13 04:16:00 Market Recap U.S. stock market ended the holiday shortened trading week with gains of more than 3% for all three major indices last Thursday after Wells Fargo said it earned a record $3 billion in the first quarter. Optimism in the banking sector carried the stock market to its fifth straight weekly gain. After reaching 12-year ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Weekend Linkage - April 12, 2009 More About: Roundup
Free One Year Subscription of BusinessWeek and Forbes
2009-04-12 19:49:00 Not sure whether you will get what is promised or not, but I figure it doesn’t hurt to try this free offer. To get the free, one-year subscription of BusinessWeek, all you need to do is complete a short, one-page survey on MP3 player, costing a minute or two of your time. At the end you ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Free One Year Subscription of BusinessWeek and Forbes More About: Free Stuff
Recent Bank Findings: Darby Direct 3.00% APY, Heartland Bank Direct 2.30% A
2009-04-12 17:44:00 Good bank deals are rare these days. You are lucky if your bank pays you 3.0% or more for your money, unless you use one of those high-yield rewards checking accounts that always have a cap on how much money you can put into the account to earn the sometime 5+% yield. And, as you can ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Recent Bank Findings: Darby Direct 3.00% APY, Heartland Bank Direct 2.30% APY More About: Personal Finance , Banking
March 2009 Score Card ? Part I: Net Worth
2009-04-10 18:03:00 It seems we had a pretty good month in March. For the first time this year, our net worth actually went up by a rather significant amount with the help from the big rally in the stock market. Excluding house and cars, we had a total of $486,449.83 on March 31, an increase of $40,196.76, ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus March 2009 Score Card ? Part I: Net Worth More About: Review , Net worth
Fees Charged for Using Credit Cards to Pay Taxes are Deductible
2009-04-09 21:59:00 Yesterday, I wrote a post on why it may not be a good idea to pay your federal taxes with credit cards. The reason is that fees charged by service providers (at 2.49% of the amount paid) cannot make cardholders benefit from the transaction, unless the card has a rewards program that can compensate the ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Fees Charged for Using Credit Cards to Pay Tax es are Deductible More About: Personal Finance
Vanguard Launched FTSE All-World ex-US Small-Cap ETF
2009-04-09 17:43:00 Mutual fund giant Vanguard Group launched a new exchanged-traded fund (ETF) last week. The Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Small -Cap ETF (VSS), incepted on April 2, tracks the performance of the FTSE Global Small-Cap ex-US Index. According to FTSE, the Global Small-Cap ex-US Index is a freefloat-adjusted, market-capitalization-weighted index that covers more than 3,300 small-cap stocks ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Vanguard Launched FTSE All-World ex-US Small-Cap ETF More About: Investing , Mutual fund
Can You Pay Federal Taxes with Credit Cards?
2009-04-08 17:18:00 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 by credit cards. One is Official Payments and the other is Link2Gov. You can a major credit card, such as MasterCard, Visa, Discover, and American Express, to pay federal and state income taxes (Link2Gov only allows you to pay New York, North Dakota, Kentucky, Alabama, Kansas state taxes while Official Payments have all states available). However, as you can imagine, the service is not free. Both of them charge a convenient fee of 2.49% of the total payment with the minimum of $1. Unlike other retailers who pay the credit card transaction fees when customers use credit cards to make a payment, the government will not pay the fee, so eventually it comes down to ...
File Tax Extension Electronically for Free
2009-04-08 03:37:00 As always, I am still working on our 2008 tax returns even as the deadline to file 2008 income taxes, which is April 15th, 2009, is just a week away. Despite the delay, we already have all the files and documents we need, therefore, we won’t seek an extension to our filings. In our case, ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus File Tax Extension Electronically for Free More About: Personal Finance
Is USPS Tracking Useless?
2009-04-07 21:52:00 Back in March, I ordered an Abraham Lincoln Commemorative Silver Dollar from U.S. Mint. After some lengthy delays (the product was on back order), the coin was finally shipped out on April 2 and a USPS tracking number was provided. As I usually do with all the packages sending to me, I went to USPS ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Is USPS Tracking Useless ? More About: Personal Finance
Rate of Our Adjustable Rate Mortgage Will be Adjusted Next Month
2009-04-07 17:44:00 When we bought our house nearly five years ago, we chose a 5-year ARM (from Countrywide BTW) over a fixed rate because we didn’t plan to stay in this 3-bedroom townhouse for 5 years. So it made more sense to get an ARM, which was about 1% than fixed 30-year mortgage, to save some money. ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Rate of Our Adjustable Rate Mortgage Will be Adjusted Next Month More About: Personal Finance , Real Estate , Adjustable Rate Mortgage
Zecco Introduced New Services
2009-04-06 21:08:00 I haven’t used Zecco for a long time, especially after they introduced the new pricing structure , which requires $25,000 account minimum or 25 trades every month in order to get 10 commission free trades per month, early this year. All my recent trades were done with Scottrade, using free trades I neared from the ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Zecco Introduced New Services More About: Investing , Stock , Brokerage
Closed a Bunch of Credit Cards
2009-04-06 18:04:00 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. ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Closed a Bunch of Credit Cards More About: Personal Finance
Free Experian PLUS Score for American Express Cardholders
More articles from this author:2009-04-06 04:57:00 If you are an American Express cardholder, you can view your Experian credit score and credit report for free. This isn’t the FICO credit score that’s widely used by lenders which you can purchase from myFICO.com. It’s in fact the PLUS Score developed by Experian. In February, Experian decided to end its 6-year relationship with FICO. ...Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary Special bonus offers Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan $25 Bonus Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus Free Experian PLUS Score for American Express Cardholders More About: Credit report 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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