Personal Finance Blog

Tips And Stories To Help You With Managing Money

Treasure Hunting Pays Off For Amateur Metal Detector

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Dave Crisp, an amateur metal detector from Britain uncovered 52,500 Roman coins, in Frome, Somerset England. This was one of the largest Roman coin hoards ever  found in England. The coins, now in the British Museum, date back to the time of Emperor  Carausius, who died in 293 AD.

Roman Coins Found By Dave Crisp

In April of 2010, Dave Crisp was allowed to use his metal detector to search for metal on a neighbors land.  He started to hear some odd noises from his metal detector and began digging in that area.  As he dug down about a foot, he started to find small coins about the size of a dime.

“I put my hand in, pulled out a bit of clay and there was a little Radial, a little bronze Roman coin. Very, very small, about the size of my fingernail,” said Dave Crisp.  “I’ve been detecting for twenty two years and I’ve never had a hoard before this weekend.” A hoard is two or more coins that are over 300 years old at the time of their discovery.

When he continued digging he could see some sort of pot and more coins. At this point that he made a critical decision to stop digging and notify professional excavators.  He called archaeologists from the Somerset County Council to come out and take a look.  Historians will be able to learn more because these coins were excavated by archaeologists. They were able to photograph and document the process of excavating these coins.  When excavating was completed, they found approximately 350 pounds of Roman coins in a large clay pot.

Roman Coins Found In England

So who owns the find? The land owner or Dave Crisp or England?

Generally, the landowner and the finder come to some sort of agreement as to what they will do with anything that is found before any metal detecting begins. The country’s laws need to be considered as well. England’s Treasure Act of 1996, states that anything found in the earth that is considered an artifact belongs  to both the land owner and the finder.  They must, however, offer the find for sale to the British Museum at a price determined by the Treasure Valuation Committee.  The value of this particular find has been estimated at around $5 million. The proceeds will be shared by the land owner and Dave Crisp.

Worldwide interest in the historical find has inspired the creation of a documentary. The BBC TV is creating a movie called, “Digging for Britain,” which will be released in August of 2010.

Before you go out and buy yourself a metal detector, be sure to study the laws regulating your finds. There are Federal and State laws that help protect and preserve artifacts. You don’t want to find yourself in jail because you found something and inadvertently broke the law.

30-Year Fixed-Rate Mortgage Falls

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Mortgage rates have fallen again to a near record low. You would think that people would be rushing out to refinance their mortgages and to some extent they have been. Applications for refinancing grew by 9.2 percent last week.

The dilemma is that people who would benefit by these lower rates are not the ones that are getting the new loans. With record unemployment rates, people have gotten into the situation where they now don’t qualify for these loans. Even if they have managed somehow to keep  current on all payments due to lenders and credit card companies, their employment history knocks them out of the game.

If you have changed professions, which many people have been forced to do, you need a two year record of proven income to be considered for refinancing. Even with record-low mortgage rates, there just aren’t a lot of qualified borrowers.

Rates From Mortgage Bankers Association

In California, one homeowner has not made a mortgage payment for seven months and has not been subject to foreclosure yet. “We have 19 million vacant housing units in the United States, and I’m afraid it’s going to put some more of them on the market,” says Ted C. Jones, chief economist for Houston-based Stewart Title.

Financial analysts predict that mortgage rates will rise soon over the next week. Mostly because they feel it really can’t go much lower.

Discover Card Review

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Four Major Credit Card Stock Prices

The last five days of growth for Discover Financial Services (DSF), located in Riverwood, Illinois has been well above their credit card competitors, Visa, American Express and Mastercard. Why has this happened? David Nelms, CEO of Discover since 2004 says, “Our very strong results this quarter were driven by a significant improvement in the credit performance of our loyal customer base along with continued solid growth in cardmember spending.”

During the fiscal second quarter, Discover reported a record sales volume at $23 billion. Discover topped their prior year statistics by 6%. Where are the profits coming from?

Discover has three payment services Pulse, an ATM/debit network, Affiliate Banking and Diners Club. Together these services process billions of financial transactions a year.

PULSE is one of the nation’s leading ATM/debit networks, currently serving more than 4,500 banks, credit unions and savings institutions across the country and they have just partnered with MoneyPass which offers thousands of surcharge-free ATMs. It is now the company’s biggest money maker.

Diners Club International was acquired by Discover in July of 2008. Diners Club card entitles consumers to exclusive savings on travel, dining, and entertainment.

Struggling with the new banking rules which prohibit charging late fees over $25, Discover will be loosing between $80 to $90 million a year. To help make up for that they will be focusing on their consumer banking division to make up for lost profits. They have two bank affiliates, Discover Bank and Bank of New Castle. In addition to the credit card division, they also offer personal and student loans, online savings accounts, certificates of deposit and money market accounts.

David Nelms, CEO of Discover Financial Services

With David Nelms as the CEO, this company seems to be doing better and better. In fact, the earnings statement for Mr. Nelms is staggering. For 2009, his salary was $1 Million dollars, restricted stock awards $4,627,613.00, other compensations at $17,150.00 and pension valued at $39,750.00 for a grand total of $5,684,513.00 – over 5 1/2 million dollars a year. Looks like his MBA from Harvard Business school served him well.

The two most significant reasons he gives for the recent improvements have to do with how you and I have improved our credit reliability and continued to use Discover Card for purchases. Some employees from Discover have even suggested ways of making money through the significant rewards program they offer. If you are dedicated to watching your spending and able to actually pay off the monthly balance, you can earn money on what you spend. But that is only for the very self-disciplined spenders. This practice could leave you with nothing more than a huge credit card bill so be wary.

The Ripple Effect of The Gulf Oil Spill

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Gulf shores of Alabama

The catastrophic nature of the Gulf spill has affected 14 million residents of the Gulf Coast and could ultimately affect nearby Latin American and Caribbean shores.  Predictions have been made that the spill could reach the Mexican coast by December, followed by Cuba, the Bahamas and The Turks and Caicos Islands.  The Gulf oil spill has far reaching effects beyond the U.S. borders.

Such a huge disaster has everyone wondering why it happened and how we can prevent it from ever happening again.  There are numerous liability issues surrounding the spill. BP’s oil spill cleanup response costs have hit $2.35 billion. It has been speculated that BP could eventually be fined $258 million a day. This would be in addition to payments for cleanup costs and economic damages to businesses.

There is no doubt that the regulatory systems in place for overseeing  offshore oil and drilling failed.  That system is controlled by an agency called the Minerals Management Service (MMS).  It has been reported that they allowed BP to run the oil rig without demonstrating the ability to shut off the flow of gas and oil.

With fingers pointing to the MMS and pressure mounting, the head of the MMS,  Elizabeth Birnbaum, resigned from her position.  Michael R. Bromwich, a former Justice Department prosecutor and inspector general, has been appointed by the President  to  restructure the agency to make it a more effective regulator. There is now an independent commission investigating the Gulf oil spill that has been given subpoena power so that better regulating systems can be developed.

Is the United States accepting help from other nations?  There may be offers made that haven’t been accepted however there are skimming systems and other assets accepted from Mexico, Norway, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands. The President has also authorized the use of 17,000 National Guard members to help with the clean up.

Massive efforts by various non-government organizations have been taken to clean birds  drenched in oil. Some question the wisdom in this.  According to German biologist Silvia Gaus, it would have been better if they put the birds to sleep instead of cleaning them since most aren’t likely to survive long term. Experts from other countries also say that this is a better way to treat the animals since they will be suffering liver and kidney failure after ingesting oil.

The economic impact of the oil spill in the Gulf is devastating. The fisheries in the area have been declared as a disaster zone making the seafood-producing states lose money with many businesses failing. Louisiana’s seafood industry supplies up to 40% of the United States’ seafood supply and the price of seafood has risen. Apart from this, wildlife in the area have suffered. Tourism is affected as well since many hotels have reported cancellations in reservations.The toll on a wide variety of human health issues has not even begun to be studied.

Many scientists are hopeful something good will come from this oil catastrophe.  Americans have gained a better appreciation for their environment. We have turned to scientists to help answer the questions of why this even happened and how to prevent it in the future. People  recognize the importance of  a healthy marine ecosystem to our economy, culture and way of life in the Gulf Coast.

Getting Out of Debt

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Debt is the single largest self induced headache one can have. We do it to ourselves and we don’t realize the consequences we will pay. When we justify spending money that we don’t currently have, it is like taking a shovel and digging a deep debt hole for ourselves.

Credit card debt is like a cancer. At first you don’t even notice how far down the hole you are going. It starts of small and over time it creeps up on you and before you know it you are thousands of dollars in debt. There are a myriad of excuses that we use to tell ourselves that just this one time, it won’t hurt or I’ll have money next week, the week after that or next month or the next raise. Many of these projections into the future never come true.

The truth is, there are times that using our line of credit is necessary but the problem is, those times aren’t clearly understood by a lot of people. If you don’t understand the difference between needs and desires, you may throw caution to the wind and start digging your debt hole bigger. True emergencies can arise where using our line of credit is our only choice. If that is the case, then the need should truly be necessary for our physical survival and not our mental health survival.

It has often been said that all people are one illness away from bankruptcy. Medical emergencies constitute many of life’s unplanned expenditures. Make sure you have insurance to prevent this from destroying your financial stability.