[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, I called Mint to find out what the cost per line would be after the $15 a month introductory price and was told it would be $75 a month per line. Is there a way to secure the $15 a month pricing for a longer contract term?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If there is one, I'll pull that up for you on our mint, um, review. Seventy-five?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's after a three month plan, uhm, and then there's six month and twelve month plans.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So and once you're on the regular plan, if you,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Warrant in the, uhm, like the regular monthly price would be 45 and then 40.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yeaah, the most expensive monthly price if you don't have, uh, a three month deal is $40 a line.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, Kathy in Colorado says, should we respond to class action lawsuits? My family gets a lot of notices about them and we usually ignore them. We don't know


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If there's an issue and we weren't hurt by the company, are we missing out?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Any warnings or advice would be appreciated. We do get a lot of these about you especially requiring your information.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, which will prevent prices from declining dramatically such as in 2008.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All these homes per family in Wisconsin is a high property tax state. I can only imagine the number of homes families may own in states with lower property taxes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a Wyze Cam doorbell camera and watched the stated delivery time and found no package was delivered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I again contacted the seller sharing this info and received no response. I contacted eBay to ask for a refund.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They closed the case within a few hours saying the tracking information said it was delivered. Clark, what do I do now?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Clark Howard Show where our mission is to serve you and empower you so you make better financial decisions in your life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I recently read some startling stats about how much less money women are being paid than men who freelance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As some advice for you, if you do any kind of contract work especially, or freelance work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And later, you know, we become so much more transient since COVID hit. Some people are able to move.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Further because of remote work, others are moving for financial reasons. Some are even moving out of the country to save money. And I'm going to talk with you about that on today's show. So report from Bloomberg that women who freelance


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] are earning tons less than guys doing the same exact freelance job. How much less? The men are earning


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 50% more than the women. 5-0% more than the women. And these are not, this doesn't mean like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Driving an Uber or a Lyft or something like that. These are people in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, professional job categories or semi-professional job categories, that kind of thing. And so this is a significant problem for people, you know, with the gig work where


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Placing a value on your own services could be an accounting or computer science or many different fields that are professional or semi-professional fields.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Men are much better at advocating for themselves than women.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this has been a problem for a long time. Uh, some of the fields that they're talking about accounting, uh, IT, administrative design, software development, sales, marketing, writers. And so it, women have historically not been good at asking for pay raises from a traditional job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Man, you know, when you're working, uh, W-2, regular job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When it comes time for somebody to ask for a raise, guys are just more, um, assertive about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Women tend to be more passive about asking for pay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The meek do not inherit a larger paycheck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I want you to think about something I talked about. I think it was last year I talked about the thing about truck drivers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That more and more truck drivers of over the hall, over the road, long haul trucks are now being driven by women. Why are women driving them?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That may be Krista, but do you know that in truck driving, the pay is completely


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Gender neutral, race neutral, whatever, that you are paid strictly on a formula. You drive so many miles, you get so much money. Doesn't matter who you are, how tall you are, short you are, what you look like, male, female, uh, whatever. You make the same money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so that, uh, I remember reading one of the stories about the, the phenomenon of women driving the over the road trucks. And there was a woman who was working that I read about who was working at a truck stop and she was making, she'd been there years. She was making $11 an hour and the truckers


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Would come in, and it's a tough life. Let me tell you, it's not an easy life, but she, having worked in a truck stop for years, she knew what was involved.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But she knew getting the cab of the truck, she could make a lot more money and that's exactly what she did. So women,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I may really like the fact that you go drive for Lyft, you go drive for Uber, you drive a truck, you deliver food for...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, door whoever, whatever the food things are. Anyway, I've never used one of those, so I don't know how they work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, those things, you make the same money no matter who you are and that has made a difference. But there are so many jobs that you have specific training for that are professional or semi-professional.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That there's not going to be a blind system that determines your pay. So it's going to be you having to do it. You're the one who's going to have to stand up for yourself. And one way to do it, let's say you're working somewhere.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you feel like, you know, I just got this feeling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That Jim, who I'm always having to help with his work is getting more money than I'm getting, but you don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Go test the waters, see what you're worth somewhere else. Then you're going to feel more confident trying to get more money out of your employer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're working as an independent contractor, you're doing contract work. It's up to you to believe in yourself enough and your skills and your experience. Do not apologize for what you ask for.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I deal with this a lot when people will talk to me about their pay and they feel like they want to ask for a raise or whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they start defeating themselves by saying, by having self doubt. You know your skills, you know what you do. You know what you provide as a benefit, as a value to that place you're contracting for the place you work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And advocate for yourself. What's the worst they say?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lucinda, uh, you, you don't buy life insurance on a child because a child, uh, they mean everything to us, but they're a cost center. They're not an income producer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Life insurance on you to provide for the needs of your child. That would be really great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not going to be expensive. It's not going to deter you from being able to move forward ultimately with buying the home you want to buy. Because if you buy what's known as level term life insurance, it's incredibly cheap. You could buy it just to cover a period of time until your, uh, young child becomes an adult, or you could buy it to cover a meaningful cycle of your working lifetime, which would be a 30 year policy. They typically,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I've got information, a briefing at Clark.com how you go about buying level term insurance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the purpose of life insurance is to provide for replacement of income and unless your child is a true prodigy


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is generating a huge number of dollars based on who knows what business they're doing, then they do not need life insurance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. And the level term, I'm telling you, is so cheap.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To buy, we're talking just very few dollars for a meaningful about of coverage. It's stunning how cheap it is if your health is good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You probably have such a low interest rate on the mortgage. There would be no incentive to pay down on that mortgage and you setting up a Roth IRA.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which you can set up with one of the low cost companies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I talk about in my investment guide at Clark.com you hear me talk about Schwab Vanguard Fidelity. Schwab Vanguard Fidelity. And then I throw in from time to time Betterment and Wealthfront. You can


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Put money aside in that it'll grow tax free, you spend it tax free. You do have another option though as a 1099. You can do a SEP, which allows you


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To shelter more of your money from tax and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It allows you to put aside a lot more money than the 6,000 you could put in a Roth. If you're interested in saving substantially more for retirement, the SEP gives you the current deduction from income.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, grows tax-free through the years, and then everything in the account is ultimately taxed when you retire. The Roth works the opposite. There's no upfront benefit, but


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You receive it and all its earnings tax free later in retirement.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm sorry, my diction is so poor. Simplified employee pension referred to as a SEP IRA.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, Wendy, first of all, laws like that drive me crazy. Cause as a landlord, you have expenses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that somebody doesn't pay their rent and you have to a victim and then you have to give them a bonus of paying them money when you a victim. What are they thinking? I mean, my goodness, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have the ability to, uh, qualify a tenant based on their credit standing. You can run background check. You can do all these things.


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[Assistant] And the reality is the, uh, LA metro area is way shorter rental units. It's terrible to leave that vacant. Most people just want a decent place to live, pay their rent on time, but do the work up front.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So make sure you've income and credit qualified the individual.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have to, uh, when you do the application with the prospective tenant, uh, you can charge them an application fee that covers the cost of the checks that you run background and financial on that individual. And do not worry about the fact there are people who game the system. Most people just want a place to live. They want you to be able to make money from them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they got a place to put their head on a pillow at night. So wow. Paying somebody who didn't pay their rent as a bonus when you evict them. That can't be. Oh, that can't be. That's horrible. Okay. Speaking of housing, thinking of living where you're going to live. People have been doing things


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ever since the pandemics had so many.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Social, psychological, and every other kind of disruption to societies around the world and ourselves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's made people reassess what they want to do, where they want to be and all the rest. Well, now people are moving.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Far, far, far away from their home, wherever it is in the United States, even moving overseas. I want to talk about us having itchy feet, looking for new places to be coming up. Americans for a good while this century were staying in place. The percent of people moving had gone way down as a result of two income households. What was happening was back when


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Households relied in a married couple on one income. One would get.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The one with the one income would get an opportunity to move somewhere else for a better career path, a promotion, whatever. And the family would pick up and move. And that all ground to a halt.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When we became a society where both people in a couple worked and so it was hard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or the trailing spouse or people were living together. It's hard for the trailing partner.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To disrupt and move cause their career might go forward while the other person's career was going backward and vice versa. So people stayed in place. COVID completely blew that apart because we ended up in a situation where people could live wherever. Uh, I have a nephew who he and his wife both work and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The pandemic kept moving different places and maintained their jobs the whole time. They lived in Florida for awhile. They lived in Arizona.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And one of them works for a tech company based in Seattle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That eventually said, we want you here. We want you in the office. No more remote work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So my nephew was able to keep his job, keep doing what he was doing. And now they've picked up with their baby and they've moved to Seattle. And so, uh, they, neither of them suffered a career penalty for having to make the move. And because of the ability in so many jobs, roughly,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I thought it was a third, but what I've read lately is somewhere around 40% of people are in jobs where they can work remotely all the time or some of the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So now the penalty of making a move to a different geographic location has pretty much vanished for so many people. And so over the years, over, gosh, must be the last 20 years, I've talked about these incentives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That a city here, a city there will offer where they're suffering from depopulation and they'll offer, uh, some kind of payment if you come live there or special incentives on housing or subsidized mortgage or whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, as a result of COVID, there are now dozens and dozens and dozens of communities around the country that are offering financial incentives to attract people to move there. And if, if you are looking for


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A more affordable place to live. You're living somewhere where you've never been able to afford a house. You can go somewhere else and you can actually afford to buy a house. You don't have to long commute anymore, whatever. And you can go to one of these places and it's just a whole different life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, now people are actually doing it. Those things were all like flash in the pans. Now they're actually working.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I'll tell you, I always want you to rent when you go to one of these places first, because you may get to whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And think, oh, this is great. Look how relaxing everything is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then three months later, you're like, I am bored to death. I can't stand living here. I miss the traffic. I miss the pollution. I miss the crowds and the high prices. You don't want to be stuck with the place you bought. Give it a trial run.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Same thing I say with all these people that like the big thing now used to be big thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You move to Mexico or central America. A lot of Americans, particularly retirees have been moving to Mexico or central America.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because they weren't able through their working lifetime to save a lot of money and they move because even just their social security check allows them to live a semblance of a middle-class lifestyle living in Mexico or central America was I've always said with that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Don't buy a place, go rent, rent, rent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Make sure it fits you. And now, this movement of people going to Europe. Portugal's really in with Americans. Spain, uhm, Italy. Uh, some Americans going to Greece. Uh, Montenegro, another place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I used to be part of Yugoslavia and now it's own place, Montenegro. And Americans are going to these places and they're setting up new lives in them because the living costs are lower. They like the weather, the ambiance, whatever rent, rent, rent first, maybe long-term, maybe eventually you'll buy, but give it some time. All right. So Christa, I've just,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In your mind I've just put the whole globe in front of you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you could live anywhere, you've been, you've been to,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every continent now, right? Except Antarctica, like me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They kept traveling until it wasn't fun anymore and then they settled in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, the moving industry is very, very difficult. There are a lot of very dishonest rogue players in the moving industry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you've got to be so, so careful because there are so many dirty players in the moving industry. And I want you to know that, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even legitimate movers are having a really hard time right now with labor. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's hard to get a really solid good move done. Um, I want to send you to the website moving.org.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That has programs to help you select a real mover. Do not Google a mover unless you don't like any of your possessions and don't like your wallet. There are so many crooked, phony hoodlums


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who are, uh, they're also a lot of apparently mafia connected.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, movers that steal your possessions and hold them hostage is a terrible, terrible problem. So I hope I've made you completely paranoid, which is what I'm trying to do. So you will be extra careful and start at moving.org. Read that stuff. The insurance, a mover does not cover your possessions. You have to buy from them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, coverage for your move, I recommend you buy replacement value coverage with a deductible of a few hundred dollars so that things get lost, stolen, damaged. Uh, you will have it replaced with a new like item and not arguing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] About, well that's so depreciated, we'll give you 12 cents for it. Uhm, videotape with your phone. Videotape, that's such a... Shoot a video with your phone of all your possessions before they're packed up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you should be okay on that moving the car. There's a website called you ship.com. The letter you ship.com has a lot of these car carriers that will bid on your move. You tell them where the car is, where you want it to go, when you'd like it to go, what range of time is acceptable for you. And they come back with bids. You can read reviews,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The cheapest, maybe best, maybe not, depending on, uh, the reputation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That that mover, that vehicle mover has developed over time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they are one of the most expensive you can get drugs from ever at any time. Uhm, if you


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Refuse basically a third of prescriptions are abandoned at the pharmacy counter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And because people will find out how much they cost, they don't fill them. They don't take the drug. In this case, mailed to you, there should be a procedure


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With them to return it since you had no idea it would not be free.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is idiotic and mean spirited of this company to tell you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That they are not going to take it back and they're instead going to try to ruin your credit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What you do with this company, they are a giant bureaucratic outfit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They do not mean evil or harm to you. They're just a heartless,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, incompetent corporation, bureaucratic corporation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] File a complaint against them at BBB.org, the Better Business Bureau, and I'm betting that you will get this resolved to your satisfaction. And it's a terrible, terrible problem that goes on with pharmaceuticals if you don't know the price upfront.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And these people are saying, oh well, yeah, it's so much money, but we're going to charge you for it anyway, even though we told you it was going to be free. It's just not acceptable. And that's why you file a complaint. Now there's something else ancillary.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it does not apply in my knowledge to prescriptions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But as I've been sharing with you, there's a phase in a new rules governing medical debt and how they'll affect you on your credit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And more and more by January of next year, more and more debts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Improvement because so often medical billing is so messed up and your credit would be ruined anyway. Uh, most of the items


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That are, that are listed with debt collectors. Most in the country now are medical.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, because the medical industry is so fouled up and their billing so messed up and insurance so messed up. So that is a good improvement. And I want you to know that it doesn't mean you ignore your bills. It just means you are going to have more rights, more protection than you've had in the past.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, if you need advice, I got the vitamin for you and it is free. And that's advice from our team, Clark Consumer Action Center. Been there for 30 years, almost serving you 30 hours each week, 10 in the morning till four in the afternoon Eastern time giving you free.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One on one advice and guidance from Team Clark's Consumer Action Center.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you want to get that advice, call 636-49-CLEAR.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, Clark, you were always talking about all these great deals on stuff like clothes, TVs, and so on. I just want you to know that the best deal is not buying junk and keeping my money in my pocket. Ronald.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clark recently told a listener to buy multiple eye bonds if they intend to redeem a portion of the purchase later. This is not really necessary. The Treasury Direct allows partial redemptions of electronic eye bonds. So you can buy one $10,000 eye bond and make small redemptions as needed after one year. Rick.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't think you stink, but I wanted your listeners to know about something I learned recently about level term life insurance. My wife and I both have level term policies and we're nearing the end of the term.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We both assumed that at the end of the term the policies would simply go away, but that's not the case. For our policies at least, level term only means that our premiums remain the same for the term.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After that, the policy stays in effect, but the premiums increase dramatically. For instance, my wife pays about $60 monthly for her policy, but after the term, the rate jumps to more than $1600. I'm glad she looked at the documents. What I've heard you discuss, the need for term life, I haven't heard you mention this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We just did that and we went with a new 10 year level term, which you can get to if you need more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, it was twenty, I should have done thirty. Anyway, enough about me. You're not actually-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, it's okay. I mean, enough about me. Let's talk about what you think about me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're not actually so smelly, but made a minor mistake in your recommendation of U-mail. I used the U-mail for many years when I had AT&T service, but I switched to consumer cellular and they do not support U-mail. So consumers need to check and make sure that their care is supported.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thanks for everything else. I love listening to you when I'm out riding my bicycle in the country when it's not 100 degrees. CJ.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So what am I missing? Why don't you like them or any of the others you never mentioned? Shalom from the mountains of Virginia, Carl.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's an, it's a uhm, I think they're asking for you to reserve now. It's not, it's just in manufacturing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clark, I haven't even listened to the episode from July 15th, but I can already tell it stinks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is it really that hard for you to publish 30 minutes worth of content each day? How are we supposed to do a 30 minute workout when the podcast is only 27 minutes long? I know you're a busy man, but would it be that hard to answer three more questions? Mark in Florida.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But with your time constraints, you originally told me you could do 20 minutes a day, and so we are blowing that out, I'm sorry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clark, you don't stink, but I think you're unaware of this caveat with Google Fi. I've been a Google Fi user for over four years now and travel abroad quite frequently. You may not know it, but even when using WiFi, Google still charges the 20 cents or


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was shocked when I got my first bill because I thought that wifi calls would be free.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Please let users know who plan on, who use Google Fi to call them from another country back to the United States on this caveat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Please let listeners who plan on using Google Fi to call from another country back to the U.S.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In on this caveat. P.S. My 9 year old daughter loves you and started listening to you when you were talking about the puppy scams. Now when we get in the car she says, get Clark on. I think she's going to greatly benefit from the years ahead of listening to you. Monica.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, I think this question's gonna wanna make everyone become a travel nurse. This is from John in North Carolina. I'm currently a new travel nurse. The money is quite lucrative, but I don't know where to store my money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm ineligible for a Roth as my take-home pay is around $200,000 yearly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There is a company sponsored 403B with no matching I have access to as well. I know 403B is typically a dirty word. I'm currently putting about 30% of each paycheck into ETFs on Robinhood.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is there a better way to save for my future? FYI, I'm 37 and only have about $100,000 toward retirement so far.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is from, I hope I'm saying it right, Rajan in Florida. I have an 8 year old son. I have $2,000 I'm trying to put into a 529 plan for him and I will be making a small contribution every month here and there. I'm 33 and I have not started a retirement account for myself yet. I've read an article about how 529 investments are shrinking in this crazy market.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And also by him having a 529 plan, will that cause him to lose on future benefits like financial aid?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And what are my options? I've been listening to your show for about four years now as I go down the road on my 18 wheeler.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And from Marla, one of your listeners was concerned about putting a sticker on his credit card to designate where he uses it. I just used a permanent marker, so no worries about inserting the card in the reader. Hope this helps other listeners.


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[Assistant] It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Clark Howard show where our mission is to serve you and empower you. So you make better financial decisions in your life. And today's show, I want to talk about how the pandemic


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[Assistant] And the aftermath of it is going to bring about very, very welcome needed changes in education, uh, way overdue, particularly for people past high school and also inflation.


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[Assistant] So, we're going to talk about how you can do things to beat inflation, at least in part, every day in your life.


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[Assistant] I'm always just at base and optimist, but this time I really believe my optimism is not misplaced.


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[Assistant] I've been frustrated for a long long long time that our post high school education system in the United States has been rigid, institutional, bureaucratic,


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[Assistant] And not been focused on the needs of the students. And I believe that economic forces unleashed by COVID


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[Assistant] Are going to absolutely change that equation because a lot of people


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[Assistant] Who in the past may have felt, okay, I gotta go off to college now, I'm done with high school, or whatever. They're like, wait a minute.


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[Assistant] Wait a minute, for that job what I really need is a certification in this computing skill.


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[Assistant] Or for that job, what I need is a certification in this. Or I need to go to a technical college and get this particular training or education. Or I need to go into this internship or apprenticeship or whatever.


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[Assistant] People now are making decisions.


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[Assistant] That don't automatically come back to the answer being I've gotta go to college, borrow all this money and all that. Now I'm saying all this being a big believer in the value of a college education, but for so many people


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[Assistant] A college education has been almost like a rote kind of thing.


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[Assistant] Rather than thinking through what it's going to lead to, what it's for, which is to create a productive member of society who can earn a decent living and have financial security through the decades. And what's happened is enrollments


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[Assistant] All but the elite colleges in the United States have been declining, in some cases precipitously.


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[Assistant] Because people are like saying, wait, wait, wait, wait.


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[Assistant] Is that really what I should be doing? And the colleges have just been doing their glossy catalogs and solicitations and the, you know, everything the way they've been doing it.


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[Assistant] And still not focusing on making college relevant for today's students.


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[Assistant] You know, the students see what's happened to their aunts and uncles and other people where they went to college, they didn't get a job that the college degree was really required for, and they still have that mountain of student loan debt that haunts them for years, decades, maybe a lifetime. So people are like,


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[Assistant] Missouri, the show me state. Show me how this is going to be useful for me. How is it going to be relevant? Why should I pay you $75,000 a year to attend your school or $50,000 or whatever it is when you look at the cost all in? What am I going to get for that? In other words,


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[Assistant] 18 year olds, 20 year olds, and their parents are learning to be educational consumers. They're not sheep anymore. And it's going to require a major adjustment in how educational institutions are run and the focus moving from the


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[Assistant] Internal, the administration, the faculty, the staff, to actually where it should be focused, the students.


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[Assistant] Now I may again be being too optimistic about this, but it's what I see happening because even a lot of states are reporting that they're state schools where costs are much lower. Let's say you move from the 50,000 level to 25,000.


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[Assistant] For an in-state student, in-state school, everything all in.


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[Assistant] Families are saying, students are saying, wait, wait, wait, I'm not going to spend all that money. And the enrollment numbers are dropping as well. Relevance is going to be key. A connection to a career is going to be key. And again,


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[Assistant] I think college is a great idea for so many people, a majority of people probably coming out of high school.


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[Assistant] College has got to be not just a check mark, it's got to lead somewhere.


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[Assistant] And I think we're going to move into an era where it is about that.


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[Assistant] And Krista, your daughter goes to one of those elite schools in the country where


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[Assistant] Like 3% of applicants get accepted or something? Is it 3?


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[Assistant] Sean, this is such a frustration for me and there's something that


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[Assistant] You need to know about, and it's a multi-state portable toll reader that I've had for, I've had it for a couple years.


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[Assistant] And it's called the UNI, the U-N-I. I bought mine on Amazon. They're sold on eBay, different places. It's something that is actually done by one of the toll authorities in the state of Florida, but it works in most states on the Eastern seaboard and some in the Midwest.


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[Assistant] There's nobody who's put together a full national


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[Assistant] And you register that rental car to it, the tag number, what kind of plate number, the kind of vehicle it is, stuff like that. And then you go through those tolls and you build only the actual toll rate. There's no monthly fee.


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[Assistant] For the uni and it has saved me so much money avoiding these absolutely extortionate ripoffs. I had the same thing happen. I got it when I was in Virginia.


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[Assistant] In the Tidewater area of Virginia and


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[Assistant] And you didn't have to hit me in the head twice. No kidding. And that's when I found the uni. But it just is crazy that we don't have a cooperative effort


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[Assistant] With a nationwide toll reader that people can have that works anywhere in the country like they do all over Asia, all over Europe. In fact, we may be the only major country in the world that doesn't have a nationwide toll reader that is a portable one that you can carry with you.


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[Assistant] Well, you know, I was just in, uh, Southwest and South Florida and what I did was I set the, uh, GPS on my phone. I was in a rental car. Set the GPS on my phone to avoid tolls.


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[Assistant] And one of the drives from southwest Florida to over to Fort Waterdale, it showed me that the drive would be an extra 44 minutes long.


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[Assistant] Uh, that I would not do, Wesley. First of all, the owner of this property is a lawyer. That would be a terrible idea to do something where you got a lawyer fired up who might come and sue.


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[Assistant] Many of you individually and collectively as an HOA.


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[Assistant] I'm gathering from what you've said that your HOA is a voluntary HOA not a mandatory HOA. If it's a mandatory HOA, you have covenants, the board


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[Assistant] You have the ability and a mandatory HOA to issue fines.


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[Assistant] If you are a voluntary HOA, you don't have those kind of things you can do. What you should do is see if the parish


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[Assistant] You live in Louisiana can cite the property owner for any property violations. Almost certainly there could be things that are health or safety related if this property is really being maintained very, very poorly. Uhm, the other thing is if you are a traditional mandatory association


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[Assistant] You almost certainly have a property manager who has access to a lawyer you can consult with and see if there's any particular action


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[Assistant] You can take against this errant homeowner, absentee homeowner, but this is even though I love in certain situations, the informational picket in front of a business, that's one step too far removed to do it in this case.


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[Assistant] Well, William, it's your choice if you use what this really terrible behavior of Verizon as cynical behavior of Verizon.


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[Assistant] I'm sorry, AT&T and Verizon are taking advantage of the fact that there's currently only three major providers instead of four in the countries we had before.


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[Assistant] And they're pushing up rates all different kinds of ways. AT&T just more directly saying, Hey, that rate plan you have, we're just going to charge you more. And Verizon coming up with the junk fees, they've made it clear at Verizon in their conversations and with the financial community.


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[Assistant] Is you have many, many competitors you can go to, or even if you want to stay on Verizon's network, there are a lot of choices with that, that Verizon may be doing you a favor, William, by doing this new junkie junk fee because


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[Assistant] If you get out there and shop, even staying on Verizon's network, you could see your way potentially to cutting the cost of your cell service by half to two thirds. It's amazing if you look at


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[Assistant] Our cell phone shopping guide, our plan shopping guide at Clark.com or anybody's shopping guide like that, you'll see how much cheaper other providers are than Verizon, which is by far and away the most expensive company to have your cell phone service with. Or AT&T or even T-Mobile.


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[Assistant] Compared to any of the big three brand names, much much cheaper choices exist in the marketplace.


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[Assistant] Oh yeaah, absolutely. And so, the, the thing with the junk fees


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[Assistant] A lot of companies are doing the junk fees. Even restaurants are putting at the bottom of a bill more and more reports restaurants being squeezed by inflation. In their case, they have actual higher costs where the cell phone carriers have lower costs now.


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[Assistant] So they're just taking advantage, but the restaurateurs are like, what do I do? I keep raising my menu prices. I'm gonna scare people away, but they don't seem to notice when I have some kind of extra cost at the end of the bill. Have you seen any of those eating out?


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[Assistant] Oh the hotel ones? Oh my gosh. Daily amenities fee, resort fee, urban. One of them I saw recently was an urban facilities fee.


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[Assistant] What's an urban facilities fee? So it's all about playing tricks on our mind about what the real cost is. So Verizon say, oh, we didn't raise your rates. So why is my bill higher?


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[Assistant] And I want you to be aware anytime.


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[Assistant] A company does that particularly cynically like Verizon and AT&T are doing in an industry with falling costs, raising prices. It's all about just trying to squeeze your wallet. And if it triggers you to shop and find a better deal, then you're doing what you should be doing. And by the way,


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[Assistant] Verizon AT&T, you're welcome to come on the podcast and tell me why I'm wrong about why it's so much cheaper for you now to deliver service because uh,


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[Assistant] All the 5G you've been building out and try with a straight face to tell me that your costs did not collapse. There's so much cheaper deliver service to people because of the new 5G technology.


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[Assistant] Versus 4G LTE. I mean, if you want to try to say that with a straight face, you're welcome to do so on our podcast.


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[Assistant] Speaking of which, coming up next, we're going to talk about inflation and what you can do about it. What are the things happening with inflation that


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[Assistant] Are tricks of the trade that you can, you can't defeat inflation, but you can manage it at least in part.


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[Assistant] Inflation is testing all of us and.


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[Assistant] This inflationary era is something that has so many causes. You can't blame any one thing, any one person, but it is a collection


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[Assistant] Of things that all really got kicked off obviously by the pandemic.


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[Assistant] Has been impacted by, uh, mistakes that the Congress and, uh, the President made.


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[Assistant] Chip shortages, we have various supply chain disruptions, we got the problems in China.


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[Assistant] And all these different things happen.


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[Assistant] Workplaces having to shut down because of an outbreak of COVID.


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[Assistant] We've got, uh, Putin invading Ukraine and the massive impact that was like piling on everything else that happened. And so it's not any one thing.


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[Assistant] That will get inflation under control, but we, I want to make it clear.


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[Assistant] We can and we will get inflation under control.


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[Assistant] It's just a matter of how much pain it is along the way and how long it takes, and that's unclear. Inflation should be


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[Assistant] Easier to tackle this time than old timers like me remember in the 70s and into the early 80s when


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[Assistant] It seemed like it was out of control when we were moving towards galloping inflation late in that era. And I believe that we will


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[Assistant] Have a less painful time getting inflation under control than the last big wave, but we will have pain getting there.


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[Assistant] And it's like, what do you do about that pain?


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[Assistant] In the midst of it, there's so many economic dislocations that there's a lot of areas of the economy where things are actually going down in price while most things are going up.


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[Assistant] Anything for the house. You think about, uh, mattresses. A lot of these mattress companies are gonna go bust.


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[Assistant] Because they've scaled up to manufacture. There's now far more, uh, mattresses available than there are people who need beds to sleep on.


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[Assistant] And we're going to see, as we already have, unbelievable deals.


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[Assistant] On mattresses. You've got an old one you're sleeping on. This is your summer to replace that mattress. Mattress prices are going down, down, down for very high quality mattresses. Uhm, clothing, way in overstock.


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[Assistant] Patio furniture, way overstocked. Inside the house furniture, way overstocked after being in such shortage for so long. And sector after sector, which was part of us nesting during COVID. And now we're out and about doing things.


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[Assistant] Those companies that could not get enough goods made no matter what now have caught up and run past and now manufacturers, distributors, and retailers have too much, too much, um, clothing.


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[Assistant] Man, you look at what Target's going through. They got way too many TVs, uh, way too many items of clothing of like every kind and they've got to get rid of it. And this is happening at retailer after retailer that


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[Assistant] What they had in shortage, they now have an extreme surplus and they got to get rid of it.


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[Assistant] For people that are in really great shape financially,


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[Assistant] There are so many categories where the deals are really almost to the point of being unprecedented.


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[Assistant] But what about the things that you can't do much about? We talked about gasoline at the margins, you can make a difference. Different parts of where your wallet is being pinched, you can make marginal differences.


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[Assistant] We posted on social media to ask you what you were doing in your own life to just take a hammer to your expenses.


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[Assistant] And people are doing a variety of things. Charles in California says, my wife and I quit buying Starbucks coffee and Pete's coffee completely.


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[Assistant] I don't know what pizza is. I don't drink coffee. Kristo, what is pizza?


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[Assistant] So, I mean, that's something that they've done over and over again, like Margaret in Michigan.


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[Assistant] Maryann in Rhode Island. Uh, Debbie in Georgia.


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[Assistant] Merritt in Washington, uh, has been able to cut, uhm, his or her grocery bill, because Merritt could be either right man or woman, has cut, uh, his or her grocery bill in half. And you can do that. I mean, you can.


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[Assistant] If you're somebody who's not eating out a lot and you depend on the grocery store, we've talked about all the strategy.


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[Assistant] With groceries to reduce the cost from where you shop to what you buy to when you buy those items. Uhm, Frank and uh, where is Frank?


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[Assistant] Florida is doing more streaming and less time out of the house.


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[Assistant] What I, I hate that you're, if it takes you from socializing with other people, which can be free.


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[Assistant] I'm too dull to go to a theater. Uhm. It was expensive.


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[Assistant] But over and over again, person after person talks about how they're not driving anymore. They're driving less than they were before. Uh, one person, Joseph in Virginia says he's buying E85 gasoline.


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[Assistant] That can be cheaper depending on where you live in the country.


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[Assistant] Fuel economy with E85, but net, you'll probably save money doing that.


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[Assistant] That, that is a lot of things. And, and so each of us will adjust in our own way with, with expenses. And one thing we saw back in 20,


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[Assistant] Was, it was shocking to people how much of the money they normally spent in a month was actually money that was discretionary.


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[Assistant] And so some of those things you learned two years ago, you can use now with inflation.


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[Assistant] Because you and I cannot single-handedly get rid of the inflation we're having in different sectors. But you can control what happens with your own wallet. And those were just a small sampling


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[Assistant] Of the things that people posted on our request on social media of what they're doing to reduce costs in their own lives.


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[Assistant] Now, uh, one thing that for a lot of people is like a line they won't cross, they won't buy upholstered furniture that's used.


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[Assistant] And uhm, the upholstered stuff, we did have deep cleaned.


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[Assistant] So Matt, it's funny you say that because I use this carry-on suitcase that has a middle, uh,


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[Assistant] It's like a middle pocket and in there I put


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[Assistant] Inexpensive, uh, only semi-perishable, not, I guess they're not non-perishable snacks in there so that I'm not


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[Assistant] Uh, using the app, I get free food, all that. Uhm, but it is a, a real hard thing. I'll tell you though, when I'm in a really expensive country,


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[Assistant] What I do when I'm away from home, uh, like anywhere in Europe I think of immediately, we go to a supermarket and we will get like


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[Assistant] Well, I drink tap water unless it's not safe in our country.


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[Assistant] Anyway, in short, there are strategies you can use even when you're away from home. And the supermarket is my favorite one when you're away from home to save money on food when you are on a road trip or you've gone somewhere else.


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[Assistant] So Wendy, unless the person at the front desk made a mistake, they don't actually charge your card the 200. They put a hold. They get an authorization for that amount of money.


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[Assistant] And that authorization vanishes in a few days. That's why it can be brutal.


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[Assistant] For someone with a debit card, using a debit card at a hotel front desk, because if they put a $200 or $500 hold on the card, it means that amount of money that you would normally have available to use from your checking account is blocked for several days till that hold is lifted. But it would be very rare.


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[Assistant] That a hotel would go past that and do a charge because then they've got to refund it later. They have to pay merchant fees.


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[Assistant] That is a big cost to them. That's why usually all they're doing is getting an authorization.


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[Assistant] Yeah, but $200 isn't going to be enough if somebody really trashes a room.


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[Assistant] Yeah, Patrick, uhm, if you can wait just a little while.


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[Assistant] To do the Hardyplank installation, you should benefit from stalling here. Procrastination will actually benefit you, pay for you.


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[Assistant] Because the housing market with the much higher mortgage rates that the Federal Reserve is indirectly creating right now.


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[Assistant] That is putting a real slowdown on home construction and that will in turn


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[Assistant] I've done it many times as a habitat volunteer.


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[Assistant] Uh, your arm will be really sore installing the Hardy Plank. The painting is easy on Hardy Plank, but the actual installation of Hardy Plank is, uh, it's not one of my favorite jobs at a build site, but it's very durable, it looks great,


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[Assistant] And it will truly stand the test of time. And as for time, just give it a little more time.


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[Assistant] And you will be rewarded with lower prices almost certainly. Now I want to thank you so much for listening to our podcast today. If you're not signed up for our free newsletters, you heard that word, free, please get on the list at Clark.com slash newsletters.


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[Assistant] It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Clark Howard Show. Our mission is to serve you and empower you so you make better financial decisions in your life. Today, I'm talking car insurance. If you haven't seen an increase in your rate,


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[Assistant] You gotta be ready for one coming. And later, there's been a lot of news about


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[Assistant] Some companies requiring workers to come back to the office.


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[Assistant] Always seems to create waves and he really did about coming back to the office. Well, that's generally not working out so well for the employers that have been ordering people back. The landscape I believe has changed for probably a generation or more. Let's talk car insurance.


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[Assistant] So if you needed one other thing to be a problem in the vehicle market with trying to buy a newer used vehicle and the prices being so inflated and


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[Assistant] Going to fill up that vehicle and it being so expensive to fill it up. You can add to the list what's happening with car insurance. So auto insurers are not the bad guy here.


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[Assistant] I know it'd be great to just say, hey, auto insurers are just ripping everybody off. That's not what's going on when you get your notice of pretty hefty


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[Assistant] Multiple things all at once. One, we seem to have collectively all lost our minds on the road. Who has not seen


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[Assistant] That people are driving significantly worse. They just are.


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[Assistant] A lot more, uh, aggressiveness, recklessness behind the wheel. Uh, one thing I've noticed, a lot more red light running and it, it's just an accident waiting to happen.


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[Assistant] Injury accidents, the number of fatalities going up, ironically enough at a time that road design is the safest it's ever been and vehicles are designed with more accident avoidance technology than they've ever had.


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[Assistant] More stuff to try to keep you safe, uh, you know, uninjured.


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[Assistant] Or reduce the severity of injuries in an accident and still.


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[Assistant] The injury and accident rate and fatality rates going up on the road. And that is all about you and me and how we're driving. And it's something that happened, it came about so ironically from


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[Assistant] The early phase of the pandemic when people were not on the road.


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[Assistant] And traffic counts reduced quite a bit and people suddenly had these wide open spaces to just drive like they were a NASCAR driver.


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[Assistant] And people developed new bad habits that they've continued with even though traffic is back.


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[Assistant] And so I don't know how that changes, how we get people back to driving more reasonably, responsibly, and less aggressively. But a consequence of that is the absolute number of claims up a lot.


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[Assistant] Then you add the cost of repairing the vehicles up a lot because of the part shortages that have affected


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[Assistant] The automobile manufacturers, which has been the third factor when a vehicle is total.


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[Assistant] What the insurers having to pay for that total vehicle is way way way way up because the average cost of a used vehicle went up 70% because of the shortage of new vehicles


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[Assistant] Because of the manufacturing disruptions and the chip shortages. So...


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[Assistant] Pile on pile on pile on all these things came together to create a perfect storm


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[Assistant] Of costs for auto insurers and then in turn ultimately for you and me. So what do you do about it?


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[Assistant] I've always talked about the advantage of shopping your auto insurance. Make sure you're getting quotes.


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[Assistant] For the same coverages as you have now, if those coverages make sense, and


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[Assistant] Seeing what other insurers feel you should cost and


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[Assistant] Even in a situation of rising prices for auto insurance, there are enormous differences in how various insurers treat


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[Assistant] Different driver profiles. So that's why you shop. The other thing is that you may have your insurance coverage is wrong. You may not have high enough deductibles.


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[Assistant] Having higher deductibles means you become the partner of the auto insurer and when you're a partner with them, you're less likely to file claims.


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[Assistant] They then in turn calculate the risk is lower of you being a claimant. Your premiums overall go down. Now if you have an auto loan, your lender may require a certain level of deductible and you gotta make sure you don't violate that.


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[Assistant] But otherwise, that is one way you can lower the cost of your insurance, because you should never be making


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[Assistant] Small auto claims anyway, because that puts a really ugly mark there.


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[Assistant] That follows you for a number of years, typically depending on the state you live in three to five years. And Krista, you have been how long without any claim in your family for auto?


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[Assistant] Yeah, my daughter, uh, ran into, uh, uh, one of those posts. Those posts don't move.


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[Assistant] So I was going to pay for it out of my pocket because the original estimate from the body shop, I was like, yeah, I'll pay for it. And so it's not a reported thing.


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[Assistant] And then it became an insurance claim, so I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop on that.


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[Assistant] So let's deal with the second thing first. If you own your home free and clear, you have other assets in your life, it's like you've got a bullseye target on you for a lawyer to come after you.


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[Assistant] And, you know, for something that they claim you did, your fault, whatever. And so when you


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[Assistant] When you develop a lot of what are referred to as uncovered assets, meaning there's no debt against them, you've had good fortune or good habits to be able to save.


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[Assistant] Uhm, the two highest rated auto insurers in the United States for how they treat


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[Assistant] Claims and non-claim events. And so it's really hard.


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[Assistant] To follow the advice I give about shopping your auto insurance every three years, because it will generate lower premiums, but you'd be giving up the safe harbor


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[Assistant] I think you stay with USAA because you are with the best. It's a great safe harbor for you to be with for your auto insurance.


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[Assistant] Pretty much all the apps, the state provided ones, the local ones, the third party ones, uh, all require


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The driver's license, I think universally they require the driver's license because of the fact people, uhm, willing to verify that the card they're seeing is for the person they're looking at. And if it's on your phone,


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[Assistant] Hopefully your phone is password protected or protected by your face or your fingerprint. So I'm not that worried about.


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[Assistant] Somebody snatching your driver's license information that way.


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[Assistant] In the United States, we made a decision not to have a national.


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[Assistant] Recognize vaccine card, which is something virtually everywhere else in the world did.


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[Assistant] We went a different route in the U.S. Some states have their own vax card app.


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[Assistant] And then there are various private ones. The one you mentioned, GoGetTalk, is one that's been very popular. Uh, people who have clear,


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[Assistant] For airport security, Clear has won.


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[Assistant] Trying to think who else, there are a number of these out there and using one of them I think is great. If you used CVS or Walgreens to get your vaccines, they have a digital record


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[Assistant] Overpriced drugstore chains. You have the ability to have, to the source, proof


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[Assistant] In the case of CVS, there's one of those QR codes that opens up the information to fully verify that you are fully vaxxed.


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[Assistant] Brad, that is abnormal. Your, your existing prior credit history, even though it no longer ages, no longer current credit,


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[Assistant] Generally would reflect on a credit report.


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[Assistant] Very curious about that. I don't know if you've set up a credit karma account, but I'd love for you to look and see what it shows as your average age of accounts on that will be your trans union and Equifax that you'll be able to see. Uh, but that is distressing to me. Now, even though you only have the two years, use credit cards and you're paying them as agreed. I'm gathering.


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[Assistant] You should still have a really solid, decent credit score.


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[Assistant] Particularly if you keep your credit card utilization below 10%, that will give a significant booster shot.


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[Assistant] To your credit score. That doesn't mean that you pay your balances in full. That doesn't take your utilization to zero. It's based on what your billing statement shows.


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[Assistant] Is the amount you owe for that monthly cycle.


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[Assistant] Uhm, one of the ways you can manipulate your score higher


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[Assistant] Is to monitor your charges online, pay your bill before the closing date.


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[Assistant] And then that drives your utilization rate even lower.


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[Assistant] At the others, see if this is a problem with whichever credit bureau.


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[Assistant] You would do in that case. But Brad, if you find


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[Assistant] The aging of your accounts, and so I'm really puzzled.


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[Assistant] Are you in a job that you have been working at home?


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[Assistant] And there's this dance going on with employers trying to get you back to the office. How's that going? We're going to talk about that. At our company, we used to have a system where people worked in person Monday through Thursday and worked from home on Friday. And it was something that we've done for years and years and years. And so then when the pandemic happened,


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[Assistant] We went to all remote work and it wasn't a heavy lift because people were already used to 20% of the time collaborating with each other


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[Assistant] Each from their own home or if they were on a trip somewhere doing that. And it was a very simple process for us.


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[Assistant] There are a lot of people working jobs that if you're not at the workplace,


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[Assistant] You're not working. You think about anybody who works in construction or manufacturing or uhm,


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[Assistant] Delivery or anything like that. You have been out and about doing your job on location just like before.


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[Assistant] But people who work in office type environments have had this privilege.


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[Assistant] That came about because of the tragic circumstances of COVID that it was a full reset and a lot of employers hate people working remotely and couldn't wait till they could order people back to the office.


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[Assistant] And even just in the last couple of weeks, as I mentioned earlier, Elon Musk.


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[Assistant] Did his thing where he said, everybody's got to come back to the office at space X and at Tesla or you're fired. You're going to be there full time.


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[Assistant] And full time in our company is not the number of hours you work, but 40 of those hours, you're going to be in that office. Now the other hours past 40, you can be anywhere you want, but those 40 hours minimum, you're going to be at the office or else you're out.


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[Assistant] And the truth is employers overwhelmingly thought


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[Assistant] Even you go back to last year, surveys showed, they thought, okay, now we're going to order everybody back to the office in September.


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[Assistant] I remember last summer, September was when they were going to do it and then.


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[Assistant] I think it was the Delta variant that happened of COVID.


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[Assistant] And so that scrubbed all the back to office things. And now we're more than two years out from when people who could and had that privilege of being able to work remotely went home. Lives have changed. They're not coming back. I mean, there's, there's a lot of good and bad.


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[Assistant] And not being in the office, the bad is that I believe in my heart and soul that if there's people in the office


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[Assistant] And you're not required to be in your home. You'll ultimately get passed over for promotion that people tend to get.


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[Assistant] Promoted people that are visible in person will tend to be valued more at a workplace.


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[Assistant] And people who work remotely just because we're human beings.


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[Assistant] And even if we don't mean to, that's how we process things. It takes real thought to make sure you don't do that. But the advantages people have had working from home, enormous. There's also a generation gap here, older, more authoritarian minded management types.


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[Assistant] Authoritarian, mostly executive, sweet kind of people who are the older types. They just hate this work at home thing. Uhm, but they're gonna have to adjust. Because if you wanna keep people and keep them happy, you've gotta be flexible.


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[Assistant] I think the core idea is fine, that you have


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[Assistant] Uh, core days that people need to be together, but no way.


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[Assistant] Is there any need or reason for it to be five days a week? Five days a week in an office kind of environment.


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[Assistant] To me, just seems like, again, that's being inflexible and not responding to the wants of the workers that have mobility now. They don't have to be under your thumb.


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[Assistant] They can say I'm going somewhere else where they actually let me work how I want in the schedule I want. And I think this is like a generational kind of thing. It's going to go on for a good while. And I think about, uh, my nephew who works for a company in Arizona used to live in central Florida now lives north of Seattle.


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[Assistant] And he's had the same job all the time and when he needs to come for a meeting, he goes to Arizona for a meeting and then he goes back to where he lives.


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[Assistant] To me that if a job lends itself to it, people should be able to do that.


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[Assistant] Now we ended up in my company giving up our office space at the end of 20. And we kept thinking, oh well soon we'll all be back together. And then we did an employee survey.


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[Assistant] How many people wanted to come back to the office full time?


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[Assistant] And who wanted to come back and we surveyed that and I was like, that's it. We're giving notice to our landlord because we were at that point on a 90 day rotating thing instead of a long lease anymore.


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[Assistant] And so we gave him the notice and we've never looked back. What have we lost?


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[Assistant] As a company, Chris is the COO of Clark Howard Inc. What have we lost in your mind, if anything, not having people face to face?


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[Assistant] But I'd say we've gained something as well because one of the things that's happened, we now have employees or contractors in states all over the country. I don't even know how many states we have people working in now.


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[Assistant] That was funny when we, we did our, um, staff trip, uh, into January, early February, and


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[Assistant] All these people who had known each other just over Google Meets or Zoom.


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[Assistant] Suddenly they were like a real human being. They weren't a disembodied digital image.


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[Assistant] I know you're a brilliant, uh, guy, you're a visionary guy, you're smarter than all the rest of us put together, but on this one, you're being really thick headed.


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[Assistant] What are those tubes called? He does tunnels and he can hyperloop.


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[Assistant] You just put them in the hyperloop and they'll be across the country in four seconds or whatever.


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[Assistant] So you don't need it in a Roth IRA. A Roth IRA is completely tax free.


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[Assistant] So the, the gains, losses, you don't have to worry about any of them.


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[Assistant] Uhm, if you're talking about rebalancing, automatic rebalancing, that's a different thing.


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[Assistant] Is that if the, with the robo, what they're doing is they're automatically saying, okay, your target is really to have this much in big company stocks and this much in small company stocks, this much in domestic bonds, this much in international blah, blah, blah. And they automatically rebalance.


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[Assistant] That is a whole different purpose to make sure that you're staying into the mix of investments you should have. But with Fidelity, if you were to go into their index version of the target retirement fund,


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[Assistant] The target retirement fund by its nature automatically is doing continual rebalancing.


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[Assistant] Since you don't have to worry about, uh, tax loss harvesting at all anyway, since it is a Roth IRA and you're happy with the idea of


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[Assistant] I think you're fine moving the Roth IRA to fidelity. On the other hand, with an investment account


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[Assistant] The, you know, one that's a taxable and regular investment account.


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[Assistant] Having the tax loss harvesting automatically done for you is really a wonderful thing.


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[Assistant] Not in your case, Catherine, because the ring is invaluable, right? It's got sentimental value and the diamond has a value that puts it roughly at 9,000.


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[Assistant] But you live your life where you can self-insure for something at your home up to 15,000. The cost of the ring.


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[Assistant] Is just a little more than half of what you have your home deductible set at. So you just self insure for that ring and know that


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[Assistant] It's going to be not only the sentimental loss, but the dollar loss, but the dollar loss is much less than what you're already willing to accept as a deductible on your home.


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[Assistant] Thank you for that and Nathan, since we talked about it, I've had two people stop me and say, hey, I have the same birthday as you do. So, uh, I,


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[Assistant] I'm so lucky, Nathan's so lucky, all of us who have June 20th as our birthday, uh, we are so lucky because it's like the day of the year with the greatest amount of daylight in the northern hemisphere.


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[Assistant] And some years it might be the 21st, but I'm always claiming it on the 20th. And I just love daylight and I go into full gloom and doom.


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[Assistant] Six months from now when it's deep dark winter, ugh, I don't get the whole winter thing. So it is a double gift that my mom gave me.


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[Assistant] Giving me life and giving me the longest day of the year. And I hope that we gave you a gift of some great knowledge today on our podcast. If you ever have something that, uh, is a problem you don't know how to solve, you have a question about something, you don't know where to get an answer you can trust.


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[Assistant] Know that for just short of 30 years, we've offered one-on-one free


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[Assistant] Advice. And all you do to see how to get that free advice, how to contact us, go to Clark.com slash CAC.


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[Assistant] Alright, we'll go to some questions. This is from Janet. I just switched to a credit union and the checking account pays 1% interest if I fulfill certain requirements including making 15 plus debit card purchases a month.


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[Assistant] I know you hate debit cards. However, isn't the small amount of interest worth it?


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[Assistant] Can I pay bills not automated online safely with a debit card? Will adding the debit card to Apple Pay make it safer from fraud?


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[Assistant] I'm shocked at that. I think you can find other savings accounts and every other day making a transaction, I'm surprised at that answer, but okay.


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[Assistant] This one's from Whitney. Can a pool company charge a residential community HOA a fuel surcharge without warning?


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[Assistant] Our community has a contract for pool maintenance and we unexpectedly received an invoice for fuel surcharges of $30 in May and $30 in June.


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[Assistant] I called to confirm and they state they will charge this every month. They didn't even service the pool until the end of May and they only come to our community two days per week. Seems dishonest.


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[Assistant] While my kids, nieces and nephews all espouse the virtues of their Spotify subscriptions, I happily listen to my free Pandora and ads despite them calling me all manner of unflattering names. The value proposition of the paid version is just not there for me. However, I do have a serious XM subscription and have found that if I let the subscription


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[Assistant] Expire and then the comeback offers are quite attractive. For example, I'm now in one of those comeback offers where I paid $5.95 for five months with two extra months thrown in for free.


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[Assistant] And that's even a deal that Clark can smile about. Thanks for all you do to help us keep money in our wallets and smiles on our faces.


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[Assistant] I haven't checked it in so long, I was like, it's been a few years, so.


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[Assistant] Okay, we'll go to some questions. Sandra in Florida says, recently read that Clark does not advise using a bank financial advisor. I haven't used a bank since the early 80s. My question is, does the same advice go for using credit union financial advisors?


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[Assistant] And they like to advertise, like they're going to say it on their website if they're fiduciary, um, cause they work hard for that. I use one and I, you know, I know that you don't need that or use that, but I have used one.


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[Assistant] Katie in Louisiana says, my husband and I recently bought a property and moved my parents onto the land. They sold their home and moved onto the land with us with the promise of giving us $80,000 towards the cost. How can they gift us this amount without either of us having to pay an outrageous amount of taxes? Is there a way to do this?


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[Assistant] Sometimes they even want to scan the license into their computer.


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[Assistant] Are you aware of any requirements for me to give this, this information or any protection that I have?


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[Assistant] Handing over my full name, address, and date of birth to so many people is concerning. My driver's license number is also my known traveler number with the TSA since I have a hazardous material endorsement.


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[Assistant] It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Clark Howard show where our mission is to serve you and empower you. So you make better financial decisions in your life.


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[Assistant] One way you can connect with your fellow listeners is through our newly relaunched community on Clark.com. I hope you'll pay it a visit.


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[Assistant] There's news from Airbnb that could affect your summer vacation plans, and there's been a lot of talk lately about student loans, cost to college,


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[Assistant] There are certain degrees that have slam dunk much bigger immediate paybacks. I'm going to tell you what they are.


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[Assistant] All around the country, I read news sources from all over America and over and over and over again, I see stories about the party houses involving Airbnb and it's become a huge issue for Airbnb and causing great reputational harm. It is a platform where someone will rent


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[Assistant] From an Airbnb property owner, uh, property for a night or two.


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[Assistant] And they pretend it's just for a normal visit, but what it's really about


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[Assistant] Is typically selling tickets to an all night crazy party. And let me tell you, neighbors aren't so fond of that. And so Airbnb is supposedly launching an anti-party crackdown.


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[Assistant] If you're asked more questions when you're booking an Airbnb,


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[Assistant] About your intentions, trying to size you up and all that because the hosts don't want to end up being a block property.


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[Assistant] And more and more communities around the country.


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[Assistant] Are reacting to the severe problems that have occurred.


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[Assistant] In a small number of Airbnb rentals by attacking not with a scalpel, but with an axe and restricting or outlawing short-term rentals. And so this brings me to something I want you to think about.


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[Assistant] If you are considering being an Airbnb host.


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[Assistant] And you're looking at buying real estate at a time that prices are inflated.


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[Assistant] The numbers need to work on that property for long term rentals.


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[Assistant] As well as your intended business plan of short-term Airbnb or VRBO kind of things. Here's why. You could end up in a situation that's happened in more and more communities around the country.


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[Assistant] Where short term rentals have just flat out been banned. I used to own a condo in a building that went to a rule that the minimum rental period


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[Assistant] From being no rule at all went to seven months simply to eliminate


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[Assistant] Any possibility of Airbnb or VRBO occurring and it changed the character of the development. It became actually a nicer place to be at because it eliminated the transient nature of it. But if


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[Assistant] I was someone who had bought a place specifically with the purpose of trying to make money from it as an Airbnb rental.


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[Assistant] Suddenly I've got a place that's an anchor for me.


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[Assistant] You know, it's just, uh, drawing money out of my pocket and


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[Assistant] People were not able to make effectively the kind of net income from it.


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[Assistant] Banning the short-term rentals has been a development by development fight across the Hawaiian Islands as people ended up gravitating towards


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[Assistant] The beauty of so many of these properties in Hawaii.


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[Assistant] And the unit owners were like, who's that person?


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[Assistant] Why are they taking all the pool chairs and all that? And so it led to this backlash in the Hawaiian Islands and


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[Assistant] More and more properties, no longer are you allowed to do any short term rentals.


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[Assistant] Know that if you're buying a single family home and thinking you solved the problem that way,


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[Assistant] Well you have two potential gotchas there. One.


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[Assistant] If it's in a mandatory homeowners association community, they just by a vote of the board can ban short term rentals. But let's say you buy a property not


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[Assistant] In a mandatory homeowner association community and you feel you're safe. Then you have the concern. Does the local government Institute legislation.


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[Assistant] Several major cities are in the process around the country of doing it, but it's happened much more already implemented in suburban ring communities of many of the major metro areas in the country.


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[Assistant] So Airbnb is only feeling this backlash because it has been so successful and it's created an opportunity for a lot of people.


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[Assistant] Goals are a little different, the process is different. Obviously you start getting to where you're owning dozens of rental properties, you own small apartment complexes, that sort of thing. That becomes a full-time job.


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[Assistant] The difference with a 401k, I mean, we're not even talking about apples and oranges. We're talking about apples and ground beef. I mean, like maybe food groups, but completely different ones. So with


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[Assistant] Your 401k, the idea is you put the money in.


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[Assistant] And it's managed for you, you know, whatever, if you go in target retirement fund, that's all you have to do is you fund it. It is a form of a passive.


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[Assistant] You don't have your normal career anymore.


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[Assistant] Real estate, rental properties becomes your career.


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[Assistant] Of the 401k, particularly if your employer where you work in Ohio offers you a Roth option is the 401k grows tax free.


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[Assistant] Retirement shelter but has its own tax advantages. So this is something that I would say is


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[Assistant] Not an all or nothing. I like for you to continue to contribute to your 401k.


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[Assistant] Because it's important for you to be diversified if it means you accumulate.


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[Assistant] Rental properties at a slower rate than you would otherwise. I think that's fine because then you've got the diverse types of investing I want you to have. The other thing is right now


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not the greatest time ever for you to be buying rental properties.


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[Assistant] Because we've had so much price inflation on the housing front.


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[Assistant] And that is a rather temporary phenomenon. I know it doesn't feel like that could be possible to anybody.


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[Assistant] But I can tell you, having watched the cycles with real estate,


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[Assistant] For the last 50 years, I can tell you that


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[Assistant] What we've had recently with these big run-ups is not sustainable. Doesn't mean we're gonna have a collapse.


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[Assistant] But the relative affordability of buying rental properties will improve over time moving forward.


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[Assistant] There's no reason specifically to wait. I mean, you've shown.


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[Assistant] The value of, for teenagers.


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[Assistant] Adding them as authorized users because it means that when, if they do go to college,


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[Assistant] If they don't go to college, they still have help from the pre-existing


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[Assistant] Credit score that they would have to get a first credit card in their own name, not as easy when you don't go the college path, but still much easier because you've added them


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[Assistant] To the authorized user status is a great way for a parent


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[Assistant] To help a kid establish a credit identity, just don't give them the plastic.


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[Assistant] I don't know how you handled that.


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[Assistant] Well, you need to get 3% back at whole paycheck because you're paying 4 times the price for the food. But anyway, uhm, so.


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[Assistant] It's a shocking experience for me when I go inside Whole Foods. Because I get to find out what groceries are going to cost in about 2050, right here in 2022.


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[Assistant] Wow. Okay. So then you're still paying many times too much.


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[Assistant] The cash back versus airline. So the airline thing really works if you have high volume charging. I mean high volume charging, especially like a small business owner who runs a lot of expenses through a company card.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then it can work fine having an airline card.


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[Assistant] The other thing is that it really works if you're doing the charge volume and flying that specific airline twice a month or more.


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[Assistant] Otherwise, with how, how the airlines, you talk about inflation, you want to see inflation, look at the reward charts for redeeming


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Free tickets from the nation's airlines. The rewards used to be pretty standardized and now they are based on dynamic demand pricing and the miles required can be crazy.


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[Assistant] I think I shared with you a story not too long ago.


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[Assistant] About a guy who'd been accumulating miles for years for this dream trip to England.


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[Assistant] And he wanted to go front of the plane and all that. And he went to redeem.


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[Assistant] And the mileage required was 600,000 points each ticket. I'll give you a comparison.


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[Assistant] Used to be 100,000 points for that front of the plane ticket, and now 600,000.


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[Assistant] The airline thing is a bit of a game bait and switch, plus you have usually very high fees on those cards. So you gotta find out, figure out how it works for you. For example, Krista's husband always checks a bag.


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[Assistant] I mean, he could be taking something the size of this mouse and that's all he's taking. He would check it, right?


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[Assistant] So flying on a full fare airline where you have to pay 30 or 40 dollars


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[Assistant] One way to check a bag, that easily makes it worth it to have an airline card that would have a hundred dollar annual fee, let's say, just to get the free bags.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But in terms of, that's just a tactic there, and that would be a card not to accumulate stuff, points, dollars. For the typical person, cash back is king. So, coming up,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I want to talk about with the high cost of college. What are the degree programs?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That will absolutely have almost immediate payback and big paychecks.


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[Assistant] There are certain college majors that


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[Assistant] Give you such a leg up on...


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[Assistant] Instantly making your college degree work for you.


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[Assistant] And the issue is, are these things you'd want to do? Are they things you want to study? But if they are,


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[Assistant] Then the question that so many people have now about college, is it even worth it? I mean, why would I go to college? There are certain fields of study.


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[Assistant] That establish you so well for the future, for the present and the future that it's just


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[Assistant] Average starting salaries, I'm doing some rounding. This was a list I saw on Forbes. Top of the heap, petroleum engineer. They're in great shortage and they start average.


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[Assistant] $88,000 a year. And all these jobs I'm going to talk about not only come


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[Assistant] With a headline salary, they come with really good sets of benefits.


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[Assistant] Second, being a computer programmer, 86,000. Computer science.


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[Assistant] Computer engineering, 86. Computer science, 86. All three of those


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[Assistant] Are things that are very similar related fields and all have virtually identical, just dollars apart on an average of starting salary.


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[Assistant] Electrical electronics and communications engineering, 81,000. Operations research, I don't actually know what that is. 80 grand.


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[Assistant] Computer and information science as a general degree rather than the ones I talked about


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[Assistant] Uhm, just getting a computer, an I.S. degree. Seventy-nine thousand. Statistics. Oh man. One of my college roommates is one of the smartest people I've ever known. And the course that


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[Assistant] Was the hardest for him to take through undergraduate and graduate school was statistics. That would never be what David does for a life. It's 76 grand. Applied mathematics. 73 grand.