The Sun’s Financial Diary The Sun’s Financial Diary My personal experience of saving, investing, and living frugally. Articles
TradeKing Review: A Discount Broker with Loads of Features
2008-06-26 09:16:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary TradeKing Review : A Discount Broker with Loads of Features I have wanted to write a review of TradeKing for very long, but kept postponing it. One of the reasons is that I don’t use TradeKing as often as I do with Scottrade or Zecco. I opened a TradeKing account last December ... More About: Brokerage
Early Termination Fees Slashed at T-Mobile
2008-06-24 12:37:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Early Termination Fees Slashed at T-Mobile Early this month when I called T-Mobile to complain the 15 cents they charged me for sending me a text reminder, I also asked their early termination policy and was told that if I want to get out my contract before it expires, ... More About: T Mobile
Bank Dividend Yield Revisited
2008-06-24 10:13:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Bank Dividend Yield Revisited Last November, shortly after the Dow peaked at 14,280 points, I had a post on dividend yields of the largest banks in the country. At that time, I thought that, with many bank stocks yielding 6.0% or more, buying banks make some sense if the banks ... More About: Stock
Free iPod Nano for Opening KeyBank Student Checking Account
2008-06-23 22:00:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Free iPod Nano for Opening KeyBank Student Checking Account Still don’t have a free iPod Nano? KeyBank is offering a free 4GB iPod Nano when opening a free Student Checking Account. Key features of the checking account include: No monthly maintenance fee or minimum balance requirement No per-check fees or limits Free ... More About: Ipod , Ipod nano
Monday Deal: Western Digital 500GB External Hard Drive at $89.99
2008-06-23 10:57:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Monday Deal : Western Digital 500GB External Hard Drive at $89.99 Got a lot of photos/musics/videos but run out of space to store them? Buy.com is currently having a hard drive blowout sale with a few interesting items. One deal that I found pretty good is Western Digital Elements 500GB ...
Weekend Linkage - June 22, 2008
2008-06-22 09:01:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Weekend Linkage - June 22, 2008 Check out these excellent readings from The Money Writers and elsewhere around the PF blogosphere. ETFs vs. Mutual Funds: Which One is Right for You? “There is no right or wrong answer, and there is no single product that fits all scenarios. In fact, there ...
So This is What Happened to Our Stimulus Payment
2008-06-21 16:03:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary So This is What Happened to Our Stimulus Payment When we received our economic stimulus payment of $201.10 last Friday, we didn’t know what went wrong because the note from IRS said we should get $383.95, and I was actually expecting another check. Now, a week later, I guess I can ... More About: Tax
WT Direct Increases Interest Rate to 3.26% APY
2008-06-19 21:30:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary WT Direct Increases Interest Rate to 3.26% APY WT Direct became the latest online bank to increase the interest rate of its online savings, following similar move early from E-Trade, HSBC Direct, and FNBO Direct. The increase is 0.10%, from 3.16% to 3.26% APY with a minimum requirement of $1o,000. After ... More About: Banking , Interest Rate
Using Old Extensions (Add-ons) in Firefox 3
2008-06-19 09:21:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Using Old Extensions (Add-ons) in Firefox 3 Did you download Firefox 3 already? Yesterday, the Download Day, was a big day for Firefox as it released its latest version 3.0. When the Download Day was first announced last month, I pledged to download the free browser within 24 hours after it’s ... More About: Tech
International ETFs Suffer as US Stocks Plunge
2008-06-17 23:04:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary International ETFs Suffer as US Stocks Plunge International ETFs, especially emerging market ETFs, have been generous to investors in the past couple of years (remember the good “old” days of high-flying Chinese stocks?). However, things turned a little bit sour since the financial crisis triggered by subprime mortgage in the ... More About: Investing
Got Our Economic Stimulus Payment, but
2008-06-16 21:03:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Got Our Economic Stimulus Payment , but There are apparently some discrepancies among what we think we should get, what we were told we will get, and what we actually got! Last Friday, when I checked our checking account balance, I noticed a payment of $201.10 from the Treasury Department as tax ...
Weekend Linkage - June 15, 2008
2008-06-15 21:18:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Weekend Linkage - June 15, 2008 Check out these excellent readings from The Money Writers and elsewhere around the PF blogosphere. “If you want to be around people who inspire you to wealth, who is better? Someone who is just starting out in life, with few assets - a horrible apartment, ...
ShareBuilder Starts to Offer ING Funds
2008-06-13 16:23:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary ShareBuilder Starts to Offer ING Funds ShareBuilder continues to make changes after being acquired by ING. ShareBuilder today announced that it now allows investors to buy mutual funds through it’s automatic investment plans. ShareBuilder is one of the popular discount brokers which offers investors to buy stocks at dollar amount rather ... More About: Investing , Mutual fund , Sharebuilder
Poll: Who?s Your Favorite Broker?
2008-06-13 09:46:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Poll : Who’s Your Favorite Broker ? If you have read this blog long enough, you know that I have multiple brokerage accounts. If I have to count, then I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Yes, a total of seven brokers. Of them, Firstrade, ShareBuilder and optionXpress have been ...
Economic Stimulus Payment Directly Deposited into IRA Accounts?
2008-06-12 21:35:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Economic Stimulus Payment Directly Deposited into IRA Accounts? Then, are you going to use it? I didn’t know until yesterday after reading an article on MarketWatch that IRS can actually deposit the economic stimulus payment directly into tax-sheltered accounts such as IRA and Roth IRA (well, we are still waiting for ... More About: Retirement
ShareBuilder Promotion Codes for up to $90 Bonus for Costco Members
2008-06-11 20:50:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary ShareBuilder Promotion Codes for up to $90 Bonus for Costco Members Are you a Costco member? If you are, you can get up to $90 bonus from ShareBuilder if you open an account with the discount broker through Costco using this link. In addition to the bonus, Executive Members can also ...
?Museums on Us.? But not Totally
2008-06-10 22:10:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary “Museums on Us.” But not Totally Since I learned at the end of April that Bank of American is offering free museum admission in the first weekend of every month throughout the year, we were looking for a time to take the kids to a museum in our area. There ... More About: Free Stuff
IRA Guide: You Don?t Have to Know Everything to Have an IRA Account
2008-06-10 09:06:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary IRA Guide : You Don’t Have to Know Everything to Have an IRA Account My answer is: No, nobody needs to be an expert in order to open and invest in an IRA account. The biggest obstacle from I can see is not whether you know investing or not, but whether you ... More About: Retirement
FNBO Direct Followed Suit, UP Interest Rate
2008-06-10 05:38:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary FNBO Direct Followed Suit, UP Interest Rate After having been cut rates continuously since last September when the Federal Reserve began the current rate reduction campaign, some banks seem to start to reverse course in order to compete for our money even when the Fed is idle. Since April, E-Trade Financial ... More About: Articles , Banking
FNBO Direct Followed Suit, Up Interest Rate
2008-06-09 22:38:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary FNBO Direct Followed Suit, Up Interest Rate After having been cut rates continuously since last September when the Federal Reserve began the current rate reduction campaign, some banks seem to start to reverse course in order to compete for our money even when the Fed is idle. Since April, E-Trade Financial ... More About: Banking , Interest Rate
Weekend Linkage - June 8, 2008
2008-06-08 17:14:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Weekend Linkage - June 8, 2008 The following articles are from The Money Writers and elsewhere around the PF blogosphere. Make Money Now Versus Make Money Later My choice is always to make money whenever I can. It’s not that I don’t like the 50% chance of making twice as much ...
Get $10 for Paying Your Mobile Phone Bill with AMEX TrueEarnings Card
2008-06-08 02:53:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Get $10 for Paying Your Mobile Phone Bill with AMEX TrueEarnings Card Are you am AMEX Costco TrueEarnings card member? If you are, then you can get a $10 Costco cash card by using your card to pay your mobile phone bill automatically. When the same deal was offer last August, ... More About: Mobile Phone , Bonus
The Worst ?Timing? Ever
2008-06-07 05:39:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary The Worst “Timing ” Ever I have been using automatic purchases plans to buy most of my mutual funds for years. The date that I chose for making the monthly purchase is the 5th of the month. The reasons for selecting this date are: I don’t want to buy funds at the ... More About: Stock
Vanguard to Split Three ETFs
2008-06-06 04:52:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Vanguard to Split Three ETFs I often heard of stock splits, but this is the first time I learned splits of shares of exchanged-traded funds (anybody else has done that already?). Of course, since ETFs are traded just like stocks, the split shouldn’t be a surprise at all. Mutual fund giant ... More About: Investing
HSBC Direct Bumps Up Rate, Temporarily
2008-06-05 04:33:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary HSBC Direct Bumps Up Rate , Temporarily I almost forgot I still have a HSBC Direct account until I received an email notice this Monday from HSBC regarding the change of their HSBC Direct Online Savings Account rate. The new rate, effective June 2, is 3.50% APY with no minimum ... More About: Banking
State Street Launched Global Real Estate ETF (RWO)
2008-06-04 16:47:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Investing in global real estate just got a little easier. Early last month, State Street Global Advisors launched yet another global real estate ETF. The SPDR DJ Wilshire Global Real Estate ETF (RWO) is the third REIT exchange-traded fund introduced by SSgA (the other two are DJ Wilshire REIT ETF ... More About: Real Estate
Chinese ADRs Monthly Update - May 2008
2008-06-03 15:29:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary After rebounding sharply in April, major U.S. stock indices ended May mixed. The Dow lost 181.81 points, or 1.42%, the NASDAQ rose 109.86 points, or 4.55%, and the broader S&P 500 added 14.79 points, about 1.07%. Chinese stocks listed on U.S. exchanges also had a mixed month. Among the 82 ... More About: China , Update , 2008
Google Followed Yahoo in Offering Real-Time Stock Quotes
2008-06-03 04:32:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary Not that it’s significant, but in case you haven’t noticed, Google Finance starts to offer real-time stock quotes for securities listed on the NASDAQ. What it means is that from now on, when you type in a ticker symbol in your Google toolbar, the quote you see will be ... More About: Tools , Yahoo , Time , Quotes
T-Mobile Insists on Charging me 15 Cents for Going Paperless
2008-06-02 21:35:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary and I told them screw it. As I mentioned when I switched to electronic trade notification and statement with Zecco early last month, I want to get rid of all the paper statements before I have no use of them. Since most services I am using, whether it’s a bank, ... More About: Mobile , T-Mobile , Cents , Charging , T Mobile
May 2008 Score Card ? Part I: Net Worth
More articles from this author:2008-06-02 16:55:00 Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary It’s that time of the month again to see how we did in May. After seeing a robust 9.25% growth in April, our net worth changed modestly last month, gaining 2.11%. That’s the second consecutive monthly increase. As of May 31, our net worth is at $605,520.98, up $12,489.11 from ... More About: Card , Net worth , Worth , Part , Score 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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