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[Assistant] Someone to be their representative, that you've done the paperwork like, uh, durable power of attorneys for healthcare, which are generally state specific directives, that you have visitation rights to a hospital room,


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[Assistant] In the event, uh, your partner is ill, rights that are pretty much automatic if you're married, not if you're living without benefit of marriage. Straight ahead, we're going to talk about Kia and Hyundai.


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[Assistant] Uh, Hyundai is the parent company of Kia. Many of their vehicles are common architecture.


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[Assistant] And unfortunately they've had an ugly common problem that has led to some auto insurers to dump people's cars for coverage.


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[Assistant] Because of theft. I'm going to tell you where we are on that and what Hyundai and Kia are doing to help you resolve the theft issue ahead. How'd you like to own a vehicle and get a notice from your insurer


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[Assistant] You get a notice saying your auto insurance is canceled because your car wants to run away from you and hide in the hands of a thief. Well, that became a problem for


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[Assistant] People that we kept hearing from at our uh, Team Clark Consumer Action Center.


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[Assistant] For people who were insured with State Farm and Progressive on various Hyundai and Kia models,


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[Assistant] Because, uh, social media has a lot of uses including


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[Assistant] One not so good. People were posting videos. Hey!


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[Assistant] Look how easy this circus act is. I can steal this Hyundai, this Hyundai, this Hyundai, this Kia, this one and the other one like this.


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[Assistant] There was a flaw in the security systems of four million


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[Assistant] People were able really easily to just come up and steal these vehicles. Uh, Kia cars that have been built since 2011, Hyundai's since 2015, and the Highway Law State Institute, uh,


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[Assistant] Said the vehicles were easier to steal because they didn't have what were known as electronic immobilizers to prevent thieves from taking them. And so now newer Hyundai's and Kia's have this. Older ones, they ain't got it. So now they have come up with a workaround where they will issue you


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[Assistant] A fob for your vehicle, you gotta go get it. But it's free.


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[Assistant] They'll issue it, according to USA Today, the way this works is with the fob once you lock the car,


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[Assistant] It will immobilize the vehicle so that even if somebody breaks in and tries to start it, it's basically a technology that I used to talk about years ago.


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[Assistant] When car thefts were rampant, uh, this was a long time ago, it was called a kill switch.


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[Assistant] And so it's an electronic kill switch that means that


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[Assistant] These ultra easy thefts that people have been able to do with Hyundai's and Kia's. It's over. No more. And so this is.


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[Assistant] Really great news, it'll set off an alarm.


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[Assistant] And it will activate the kill switch.


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[Assistant] That will keep the vehicles from being driven. So that's really great. Uhm, and you just got to get an appointment to get the fob for your Kia or your Hyundai. And again, these are ones made after, uh, 2011.


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[Assistant] And 2015, depending on your model.


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[Assistant] And if the vehicle cannot, if the, if the, uh, key fob will not be applicable to your model, you're not going to believe what their solution is. They're going to give you a free steering wheel lock. So you'll be able to pick those up.


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[Assistant] And put that on your steering wheel every time. What a pain. Do you remember when that was a thing? When car thefts were rampant a long time ago and you'd go by and you'd see somebody having one of these huge steering wheel locks on their vehicle?


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[Assistant] The important thing I want you to know is that if you have a Hyundai or Kia, of the affected years,


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[Assistant] You need to pay attention to this because it's not just an issue of whether your auto insurance has canceled you or not yet.


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[Assistant] It's also, do you want to deal with the hassle of going out to get in your vehicle one day and it's not there because it's been stolen. No fun at all. Fortunately, I have never had a vehicle stolen from me.


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[Assistant] I've had six break-ins of my vehicle over the years.


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[Assistant] Absolutely wait. Uhm, your vehicle, the depreciation it's had,


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[Assistant] In its first four or five years is much greater per year than it will have now. You're in the cycle of vehicle depreciation where normally it comes down.


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[Assistant] Like the tall end of a roller coaster coming down and then it starts leveling off and then eventually the value of a vehicle completely flat lines the older it gets. So


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[Assistant] I would hold onto that vehicle, especially because you want your next vehicle, potentially your last, to be electric.


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[Assistant] The uh, the market for electric vehicles is getting steadily more affordable, but it's not close to where it's going to be.


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[Assistant] There are dozens of new models of electric vehicles coming out over the course of this year. Many more in, uh, 24. It's gonna continue.


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[Assistant] There's a great advantage to you waiting because the quality of the vehicles will get better, the price points are going to get much better and so this is a, uh, an


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[Assistant] Unnecessarily early purchase for you to ditch a vehicle that's relatively new and go into a brand new one with a payment.


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[Assistant] Credit unions now operate employer based or community based. So there should be several credit unions that you can be a member of. And if you go to the Find a Credit Union tool, it's cuna.org.


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[Assistant] You'll be able to find credit unions that you're eligible for membership of in the area you're with. Uhm, the time that I would want you to be with a big traditional bank is never. I mean, I just wouldn't. And so there may be in the area,


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[Assistant] Banks that are community owned and operated and that would be the closest equivalent to a credit union. But in my mind,


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[Assistant] You were a member of that credit union with the employer you were with.


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[Assistant] You can stay in that credit union if they were treating you well and the products were good and the service was good. So you don't have to.


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[Assistant] Leave that. Once you remember, you can stay in basically for life having worked for that company before.


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[Assistant] That is such a great story. So we're talking about uh, paying for outfit and they've been very much in the news because they're having to deal with situations with retailers that fail and in your case,


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[Assistant] They did exactly what they were supposed to. I'm dealing with another one in my TV work.


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[Assistant] Which involves a uh, appliance store that had their own in-store financing.


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[Assistant] For credit initiated typically in the store, either in person or online.


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[Assistant] And then there's a failure to deliver goods or services. If you sit on your rights, you lose them.


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[Assistant] If a problem occurs, the goods are not delivered or the service is not provided, you need to dispute and you did.


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[Assistant] And your rights were preserved and that's such a great follow up for other people to know about and be aware of. And I'm sorry you didn't get


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[Assistant] You're furniture, but at least you're not paying for something.


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[Assistant] And I want to thank you so much for listening today. For deals you can actually trust that are going to show up, check out ClarkDeals.com and for money advice you can trust around the clock, Clark.com is at your service. Have a great one.


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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 going to revisit two


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[Assistant] Very popular topics on the podcast first. Series I savings bonds. Is it time to buy or time to sell? I'll tell you what I think. And later the scales are starting to tip.


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[Assistant] Ooh, bad pun. When it comes to gratuities, are you getting fed up?


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[Assistant] Or do you think those complaining about gratuities everywhere you turn need to just zip it up? So we're going to talk about that, but right now I bonds became


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[Assistant] The number one thing that people reached out for advice, help and understanding


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[Assistant] To our Team Clark Consumer Action Center, where you can for free, as we have for 30 years, get answers to questions you have about your wallet.


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[Assistant] And it's an area that confuses people, no end, but provided an eye popping return


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[Assistant] At a time that other things that you could put your money into saving CDs were paying basically nothing. Well now, the question's coming in.


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[Assistant] To both us here on the podcast and to our team Clark Consumer Action Center are, well, now


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[Assistant] The rates on iBonds apparently are headed down.


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[Assistant] And savings rates and CDs and money market fund rates have gone up. Should I sell the series I savings bonds that I just bought in the last two years?


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[Assistant] And by the way, other people are saying,


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[Assistant] Hey, is it still a good time to buy Series I savings bonds?


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[Assistant] So, first, a basic on Series I savings bonds. Series I, I stands for inflation.


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[Assistant] The idea of series eyes is they give you the rate of inflation. So normally on savings you're falling behind inflation with your savings.


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[Assistant] Because savings, that's money you put aside that there's no risk that you're going to lose any of the money you have in something.


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[Assistant] But the risk you face is the risk of purchasing power that over time the dollars you put into savings earn less than the rate of inflation.


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[Assistant] So in our Series I savings bonds, you can buy up to 10 grand of them in a year.


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[Assistant] They have been paying eye-popping rates during this inflationary cycle we've been in.


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[Assistant] And in fact, if you buy them in the next few weeks, they will pay and you got to do this in April.


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[Assistant] The rate on Series I savings bonds resets based on the rate of inflation.


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[Assistant] So before that they were paying nearly 10% when inflation was out of control.


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[Assistant] And then inflation started coming down and then the last six months cycle, uh, through the next couple of weeks, they've been paying 6.89% and then with the reset coming,


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[Assistant] For May and you can't wait till the last day of April to buy these. You got to buy them. Uh, I'd say no later than about the 25th of April to know that you have the current rate on I bonds. The rate will reset and the likeliest guess, uh, of.


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[Assistant] Economists and financial people is we're going to be somewhere around three and a half percent with the reset and


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[Assistant] So you face every six months that whatever the rate of inflation has been in the prior period, that's what you're going to earn on these going forward. Except people who buy them right now get a bonus


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[Assistant] You get for the, as long as you want to hold them from a minimum of a year to a maximum of 30 years, you get whatever the rate of inflation is each six month cycle plus a bonus of .4 of a percent.


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[Assistant] So almost a half a percent booster shot above the rate of inflation.


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[Assistant] So I see it as a pretty safe bet that you buy right now because even if you look at the best rates on savings accounts right now, the best rates on CDs, best rates on money markets, you're all right around 5%.


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[Assistant] Where the series I savings bonds, if you buy them during these next few weeks, you're going to get a rate of 6.8, 9% for the next six months. Question mark after that likely somewhere like three and a half percent. You blend those two and where are you? You're still over 5% for the year.


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[Assistant] Now this is where it gets tricky, and this is where all the questions that have been coming in to us about, hey I bought Series I savings bonds when they were paying really high rates, the rates are going down, should I bail?


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[Assistant] Uh, first year of ownership and fifth year, you forfeit the last 90 days of interest. So you don't want to sell during a time where that last 90 days would have been a really hefty rate of interest. Plus, particularly people who bought this cycle.


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[Assistant] Where you get the inflation rate plus a bonus of .4%.


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[Assistant] There's a really strong case I can make that you would want to hold these for a significant period of time unless


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[Assistant] Financial circumstances change radically because you know that you're making your savings do something really great for you.


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[Assistant] You're riding with inflation, plus getting that booster shot, that bonus of the four tenths of 1%, basically almost half a percent booster over the rate of inflation. So if you want to know how to buy these, go to savingsbonds.gov.


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[Assistant] And it'll take you to Treasury Direct. You'll see how to buy them. Really easy to buy, but remember,


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[Assistant] You wanna not procrastinate. You wanna get the current rate because you let the month flip.


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[Assistant] And the rates are going to be roughly half likely what they are right now. If you buy them now, you come in under the current rate for the next six months. And I know I just


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[Assistant] Created another 40 questions in people's minds.


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[Assistant] I guess it's the government, it has to be complicated, right Krista?


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[Assistant] So you get, you get no inflation booster shot. You don't get the point for, but you get something really.


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[Assistant] Good, which is you got the nearly 10% and now you're in the nearly 7%. So your blend is better than you could have done anywhere else. And I still own iBonds. They are only good for 30 years. I still own iBonds from way back in the way back machine, uh, more than 20 years ago.


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[Assistant] When you got the rate of inflation plus


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[Assistant] Three percentage points. Three full percentage points. So it's been...


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[Assistant] Quite a ride and I know there are so many people who are long time listeners to our show.


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[Assistant] Who bought them back a generation ago that are just sitting pretty holding those series I savings bonds. So.


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[Assistant] I've got stacks of them because they used to be paper bonds and, uh, don't worry, they're in a safe.


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[Assistant] These, these are great problems to have. That you have multiples of a quarter million.


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[Assistant] In CDs, you were fully insured for all of them.


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[Assistant] When they do, uh, when they do these CDs.


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[Assistant] For large amounts of money for wealthy individuals like yourself.


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[Assistant] Keep you below 250 at each institution.


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[Assistant] So as they do what are called broker place CDs.


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[Assistant] It's multiplying the FDIC insurance. And by the way, the FDIC is fine with this. It's not looked at as a loophole. The FDIC wants to spread out the risk because some financial institutions are solid and well run, others not so much. And so the program at Schwab and Fidelity where they do the brokerage place CDs lowers the risk for


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[Assistant] The FDIC Fund anyway. So you're safe.


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[Assistant] And it keeps the FDIC system safer. So you're good. Brokerage place CDs are great because usually you're getting a much higher interest rate


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[Assistant] Through their system than you would placing walking right into the front door of a bank branch.


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[Assistant] I'm going to give you a number of suggestions. I'm going to start with this and I'm not going to mention books because there's a lot of information available that will get you what you want


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[Assistant] And give you the understanding about what I call the houses, which is like,


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[Assistant] Roth IRA, traditional IRA, 401K, uh, for our poor suffering teachers, the vastly inferior 403B, all that. That's the house. And then you furnish the house with what you invest your money in.


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[Assistant] And so when you mentioned target this index that, um,


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[Assistant] It's actually much easier than the lingo and terminology might make you think. So where would I like you to start? I'd like you to start by subscribing to the free newsletter from Humble Dollar. It is the product edited by Jonathan Clements and Jonathan Clements is a brilliant financial writer who writes personal finance in language that we can all grasp.


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[Assistant] You'll really have a sense where you'll really be able to add understandable meat to the bones of how investing works. Also, I just mentioned,


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[Assistant] Schwab and fidelity and I'll throw in Vanguard as well. All three have education centers that explain how


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[Assistant] Various investment accounts work and how various funds work.


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[Assistant] And the information is written not, a lot of it's not investing 101, it's probably like 201, but the combination of reading the material from each and how they present it


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[Assistant] I think you'll be good. Also, if any terminology confuses you, go to investopedia.com that by the way, if you have a, uh, elementary school kid in your house, middle school or high school, investopedia now has a very good


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[Assistant] You can go read the high school material they have and it's actually very well written to explain how the fundamentals of investing work. For one thing that I know confuses people, target retirement funds. If you do a target retirement fund,


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[Assistant] In your 401k or your IRA the idea is that's where all your money goes. It's already set up


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[Assistant] For the year closest to when you expect to retire. And that's what you put all your money in. It's the easy button.


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[Assistant] This is a problem throughout the financial industry. In fact, this came up in a conversation about Charles Schwab recently, that Charles Schwab defaults to putting your money


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[Assistant] In an account that earns, I think it's .45%.


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[Assistant] But within Schwab, you can earn ten times that with one simple click of the mouse.


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[Assistant] And, or on a smartphone, one simple transaction where you can put your money into accounts that will earn ten times that that are in U.S. Treasury obligations or government obligations. And so,


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[Assistant] What, what Capital One is doing is common with so many banks, credit unions,


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[Assistant] And also with the brokerages is that if you just go with inertia.


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[Assistant] They're gonna rip you off. The biggest banks in the country right now are paying one one hundredth of one percent on savings unless you specifically do something about it. One one hundredth of one percent while other people are earning five percent.


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[Assistant] On savings or CDs simply by moving your money. So should you dump capital one over this? I'd say it's so common in the industry that I would not dump capital one because of that. I would just be aware


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[Assistant] That this is the way the industry does play dirty pool with your and my wallet.


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[Assistant] Coming up ahead, we're going to talk about something that people feel has been dirty pool. It's the iPad popping around for tips at all kinds of places. Tips were not part of the equation in the past.


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[Assistant] It seems like just breathing right now calls for a tip. Uh, Grace who works on our social media went to a self-service car wash recently and self-service and it suggested as she was checking out a 35% tip


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[Assistant] On a self-service car wash. So I was thinking.


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[Assistant] You know, if that 35% was like the Domino's thing where they were doing the thing where they tipped you if you came to pick up your own pizza, if, because it's all self-service, if you got 35% off your car wash by clicking there, that would be fine, but it wasn't. The money would go to who knows who at a self-service car wash. And so this is something that,


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[Assistant] People are really confused about and...


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[Assistant] The iPad has become this big guilt machine because you go somewhere.


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[Assistant] That is a place that, uh, that may be quick service kind of thing. Who knows what kind of place it is. And it seems that inevitably,


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[Assistant] You're gonna have the iPad flipped around and it's gonna have suggested tip amounts. And I've noticed the percentages.


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[Assistant] Seem, it may be my perception, but it seems the percentages that you're expected to tip have gone up, up, up and away, starting, uh, on the iPads many times at 25%.


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[Assistant] Uh, one of them, I think it's, uh, the one that's so popular with the restaurants. Toast I think starts at 20% and just goes up from there. And I, I know that servers at so many places


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[Assistant] That are not sit down kind of restaurants or things like that. That the people who serve you at a business.


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[Assistant] Are not being paid in many cases enough money. And so we're being expected.


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[Assistant] It places that are a step up from sit down.


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[Assistant] But, uh, step down, step down from sit down, but a step up from my fast food world. And everywhere you go, you face this dilemma.


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[Assistant] So, so I've done something in my wallet. I have increased.


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[Assistant] The amount of cash I'm carrying from normally because most people have like none and I have ones and I have fives, there's a twenty on the outside, but mostly ones and fives and I now tip and cash


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[Assistant] And say no tip on those machines because you don't know who the money actually is going to end up in the hands of anyway.


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[Assistant] When the scary iPad comes at you.


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[Assistant] I mean, who knew an iPad could be a scary device, but it's become one because of this terrible dilemma. So I know that some people are allergic to carrying any cash at all, but I recommend having


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[Assistant] Some ones and fives with you and use those as a method of tipping because then, and you can hand it right to the individual who you feel is deserving of it, who has served you instead of doing it on the mysterious iPad thing where you have no idea where that money is actually going to go. Cause we don't know where it's going to go then.


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[Assistant] So Shelly, uhm, credit card companies are getting scared.


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[Assistant] And the particular credit card company that you had both of these cards with two eggs in one basket.


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[Assistant] Uhm, is a credit card company that is very difficult to do business with. And they are, they're not one of the majors.


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[Assistant] But they do a lot of co-branded cards and private label cards and they tend to be really itchy on the trigger right now just as you discovered your credit score could be fine 787. I mean your payments always on time.


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[Assistant] And who knows what triggered their fear and look what happened. It was double trouble all at one time.


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[Assistant] We got over 40% of people running, uh, significant balances on credit cards month to month and that's making the credit card companies fearful. This particular issuer has tended to offer credit to people of lower credit scores and that's why they


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[Assistant] A time like this heading towards a possible recession, they would be closing accounts. Why they would do it to you is a complete mystery.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and you gotta know you need to replace that credit quickly or that could impact your 787. So you need to apply for something else before


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[Assistant] Their closure of those accounts reflects on your credit. The other thing I'm curious about


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[Assistant] So what happened with your points? Did they close the accounts? No notice.


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[Assistant] And just take your points away from you, or give you an opportunity to use them.


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[Assistant] Well the, the software you're looking for is very standard in radio and in the podcast environment, especially in the radio environment. And yes, you are able to take a deduction.


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[Assistant] For the money you, uh, spend as a volunteer. As long as you got documentation and all the rest, you're good to do that and something so overlooked by people who volunteer.


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[Assistant] Is the IRS also allows you at a very low rate to deduct mileage. I think it's 14 cents a mile right now. So keep track of your mileage in your volunteer capacity so that you're able to deduct that as well.


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[Assistant] And I hope that you really enjoy being in the radio world cause, uh, it's really fun.


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[Assistant] Yeah, your roof. Uhm, John, you're the, I think you're the third person to ask me about


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[Assistant] One of these programs, the other two, I don't think we're, uh, LA water and power.


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[Assistant] But the, the issue when you basically lease your roof for in this case, 20 bucks a month.


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[Assistant] If the roof is damaged in any way first, how do you prove it?


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[Assistant] And second, how do you get a municipal entity to pay for the damage done to your roof? So I know it's appealing for the $240 to come into your wallet each year.


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[Assistant] But because of the unknown question, maybe they've given you a good answer on this. Unless you have a really solid answer you're comfortable with.


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[Assistant] If the installation of and removal of the panels in either case,


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[Assistant] Causes, uh, damage to the roof. Who's gonna pay for that? Unless you've got a really rock solid answer to that.


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[Assistant] I wouldn't do it. Uhm, Solar is absolutely awesome, and it is, uh,


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[Assistant] Way underutilized thing for residential situations.


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[Assistant] But fortunately we are installing solar at a very high rate in the country and every panel


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[Assistant] That we install particularly the utility scale solar reduces the amount of energy of traditional kinds we have to use to keep the grid up and running. But in this case,


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[Assistant] It may not be the best idea for you to provide your roof. And I want to thank you so much for being with us today. Don't forget.


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[Assistant] Subscribe wherever you listen or watch because it really helps us out and hopefully will help you out and review us if you're enjoying


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[Assistant] Either the audio or video version of our podcast. If you could take a moment and review us and share us with your friends. Have a great day.


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[Assistant] I'm so glad to welcome you here 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 thing I have always despised, non-compete clauses for workers. And there's a proposal floating around to do away with them nationally. And I'm so on board getting rid of this garbage.


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[Assistant] And also, I want to make sure that you understand


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[Assistant] That you have lost yet another excuse to save more money for retirement because of the new rules in place here in 23 for 401ks and IRAs that let you contribute more money. Okay, so covenants not to compete are hideous, gross creatures.


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[Assistant] And they are mean spirited beyond measure. There are a small number of people out there who have


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[Assistant] And in fact, it's good public policy to allow companies


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[Assistant] To restrict their movement for a period of time so they can't take key inside corporate secrets and go somewhere else and give away the information to a competitor or go start a competitor with the inside information they have.


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[Assistant] But that's not how covenants are being used now.


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[Assistant] Remember the thing with the sandwich shops that were making their delivery drivers sign covenants not to compete? So if


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[Assistant] They got laid off at the sandwich shop or they quit. They couldn't go work for another sandwich shop.


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[Assistant] For a lengthy amount of time. I mean, come on.


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[Assistant] Another industry that has these mean-spirited things that are just nonsensical.


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[Assistant] Private security companies. You go to work for one and


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[Assistant] You know, what percent of workers are covered. Now in the scientific field, roughly one in three people are covered by one.


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[Assistant] Uh, finance and insurance, one in five people. Manufacturing, one in six.


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[Assistant] Retailers? Okay, you must be kidding me. A retail store saying that


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[Assistant] Somebody working on the floor can't go work for somebody else?


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[Assistant] The Federal Trade Commission, which I doubt has the authority to do this, I think it's symbolic because it's going to be challenged in court right away when it's adopted, but they are going to outlaw covenants not to compete. And so the thing is it's getting in the conversation because this is an abuse.


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[Assistant] And what happens is lobbyists go to state legislatures.


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[Assistant] And, you know, they take care of, the lobbyists take care of the members of the state house or state senate and, you know, take them on trips and buy them meals and all that and take them to big sports events and concerts. And then they do this preferential legislation for them.


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[Assistant] Incredibly awful covenants not to compete. And so it is wrong.


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[Assistant] It's not, this isn't great. This is wrong.


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[Assistant] Don't know what's going on with everyday people.


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[Assistant] That most members of state legislative bodies are people who


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[Assistant] Are generally higher income, many of them are professionals and they just don't get it or choose not to get it. And the people they hang out with are the ones that want this stuff. And it's about time


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[Assistant] That things were about what's best for the American people and not best for who has the money to buy the vote of a member of a legislative body.


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[Assistant] The covenants not to compete are so rotten terrible that I want you to know when you are looking for a job,


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[Assistant] And you're being, what's the key HR phrase now they call it onboarding?


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[Assistant] What is on boarding? It's like you're getting on a ship or something, getting on board. I mean, what a weird phrase, but anyway.


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[Assistant] You actually gotta go through that stuff they want you to sign when you're being onboarded.


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[Assistant] And if you see a covenant not to compete, I would jump off. I would not go on board.


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[Assistant] And they're not going to negotiate with you on it. There's a, well take it or leave it. Leave it. Get out of there. Do not work at a place that disrespects you so much.


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[Assistant] That they want to destroy your ability to have a roof over your head, feed your family, and pay your bills out of just flat out meanness. Cause that's all it is. Again.


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[Assistant] If you are one of the few people who's a key insider who has key information that could harm an existing employer, I get


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[Assistant] How is it that Massachusetts went from being the heart


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[Assistant] Of the technology industry in the United States to becoming an also ran. And California came from nothing to being so dominant in the technology field. I think the absolute key was covenants not to compete.


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[Assistant] Massachusetts had these brutal covenants not to compete. California doesn't allow them.


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[Assistant] And so people have this ability of job mobility that are really bright brainiacs in the tech field.


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[Assistant] And they don't want to work for anybody in Massachusetts who had these horrible covenants not to compete. And I think that was one of the things that led to Silicon Valley. I'm sure there are other factors, but I think one of the factors was these covenants not to compete. I think I like them. What do you think Krista?


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[Assistant] So first of all, you're not protecting the equity in your home by setting up a HELOC. And that is very misleading of the bank to use that as a strategy to try to get you to initiate a home equity line of credit.


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[Assistant] If you go back to the financial bust that took place in the housing market from, uh, seven to twelve, what happened was


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[Assistant] Uh, people who had extracted a lot of home equity from their homes, then were locked into the home and they were upside down.


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[Assistant] We heard from so many people who had done the home equity lines credit, pulled the money out and then were upside down their house by enormous amounts of money, had no way to pay it back and got foreclosed on. I mean, this is playing with fire.


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[Assistant] On the other hand, uh, having a standby home equity line of credit.


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[Assistant] You can do many of them free or ultra low cost. Having that in place is a good strategy because there can be things that happen. You could have, you know, a big repair bill suddenly or house. You don't have the reserves to pay for it.


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[Assistant] So if in fact home prices did collapse, which they're not gonna this time, they're not gonna collapse.


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[Assistant] Thing is, the lenders, when home prices collapse, immediately close people's standby lines of credit. We saw that back seven to 12. So it's a, it's a concept that is not sound that's being pitched to you.


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[Assistant] Most car rental companies will permit you to rent a car with a debit card if you go through a pre-registration with them.


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[Assistant] The reason the car rental agencies are so anti-debit card


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[Assistant] Is criminal car theft rings were using fake IDs and debit cards as the lowest risk possible way to steal cars.


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[Assistant] And these organized rings were then within hours having the cars chopped up at chop shops. If you're not familiar with chop shops, they're people, they're illegal organizations that take a car apart and sell the parts to


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[Assistant] Uh, body shops that may or may not know that stuff is going on. So that's why


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[Assistant] The car rental agencies require, if they will rent you on a debit card, they do require this advanced registration so they can verify you are who you say you are, your background and the rest. The other alternative if you cannot qualify for a credit card is get a secured credit card.


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[Assistant] If you're routinely going to rent cars and then you'd be able to present a credit card at the counter like other renters.


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[Assistant] It is bonkers and it's terrible and the employer can almost certainly compel this or a forfeiture of the money. Uh, there may be some states that would not allow that under their state wage and hour laws, but I think this would


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[Assistant] Be in most states a permissible practice, although disrespectful of you and others as employees. The way you do this and limit the risk to yourself


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[Assistant] Is open a separate account at an online bank. You pay no fees on those. Set it up for the reimbursement.


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[Assistant] Provide that money, that account information, routing number and account number to the HRA plan and then


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[Assistant] You won't have your money that you really count on at risk with somebody having that information following a hack.


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[Assistant] Or a dishonest employee potentially at the, uh, company that handles the reimbursements for your employer. But it is pretty brutal to say you either do it our way and put your personal information at risk or we're not going to give you your money.


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[Assistant] That is not a very warm, friendly employer you're working for. Doesn't sound like, does it? Coming up next.


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[Assistant] The new rules on contributions for this year for IRAs and 401ks.


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[Assistant] Mean that you can do more to create financial security in your life. I'm going to talk about that straight ahead.


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[Assistant] There are a lot of changes being phased in year by year through this decade involving retirement accounts because we've got roughly half of Americans who aren't getting there, getting enough money saved for retirement and different things are going to go into effect different years over the next several. One of them.


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[Assistant] Is the rules for you being forced to, if you've been a good saver and you have money in retirement accounts, when you're forced to take it keeps changing. So the law was 70.5 until three years ago, and then it went to 72 and then


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[Assistant] It's going to go, it's gone to 73 this year for people just going to end of that age. And then it's going to 75.


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[Assistant] In several years. So the idea is


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[Assistant] The law was set up to push people into spending their retirement money at a point where they might not really need it.


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[Assistant] And then much later in life, cause people are living longer and maybe with more complications health wise than we used to overall forgetting the decline in living lifespans during COVID.


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[Assistant] And so people were getting later in life and they didn't have any money to live on. So this change with what's known as RMDs is a significant one and a very friendly one to people.


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[Assistant] Particularly in living families where the genetics are really friendly, people tend to live a lot longer.


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[Assistant] Then like in my family where the genetics are not friendly, we don't tend to live as long.


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[Assistant] Also, if you mess up on the complicated math of doing RMDs, uh, the money that you're required to take out each year, the penalty for messing up is being cut in half and potentially to a fifth of what it was. And that's way overdue because the penalties


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[Assistant] We're punitive and mean without purpose, really. Uh, they were not designed


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[Assistant] Who didn't do what the law requires, but didn't understand how RMDs work. And now if you fix it, the penalties are relatively small and that's good. And so now the amount of money people can put in retirement accounts is going up. I mentioned that before that there's a fair amount more you can contribute. So if you're already contributing them,


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[Assistant] You were one of the few people contributing the max you could to, uh, retirement plan at work. The limits are rising.


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[Assistant] They mean that things will automatically step up like how much you can contribute to various retirement accounts. These are good changes and there's another one that is really unusual.


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[Assistant] That we've got to wait two more years for it to take effect. I just want to mention it in passing. People who asked me about the student loan thing.


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[Assistant] And I got this student loan debt. I feel like I can't say for retirement, but if I don't say for retirement, I miss the employer match. Believe it or not, starting in 25, if you


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[Assistant] You can demonstrate you're paying money that you would have put into a retirement account, instead paying it towards student loan balance.


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[Assistant] Your employer can still provide you with the match up to the max match they offer without you having to contribute money. The full regulations for that won't be clear till sometime next year. So there'll be nuts and bolts. You got to know, but it's very positive for you. Another thing also being phased in.


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[Assistant] You know how employers now are allowed to automatically enroll you? We automatically enroll people in our 401k.


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[Assistant] And then they can override it, but usually once people have that done, they contribute where otherwise they might not have. Now employers are going to be able to keep boosting the amount that they automatically take out of your paycheck year by year.


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[Assistant] And they're going to be able to do a maximum 10% of your pay.


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[Assistant] And so the 3% typically employers do now. And those amounts are going to keep rising until it could go to 15% that an employer can do. And the thing is when you make minor changes


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[Assistant] And I talk about increasing your contributions every six months. You don't really notice it, but the long-term benefit is huge.


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[Assistant] And I'm just giving you the quick windshield survey. The point is...


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[Assistant] You're going to get a lot of stuff if you work for a company that has retirement benefits.


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[Assistant] You're going to get these notices that look like the normal notices that you just throw right away when you get them or delete the email. Read them now because there may be enhanced benefits or additional money you can get through the employer provided plans as long as you act on them and don't ignore them. Krista?


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[Assistant] Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I've been saying the supply chain is healed.


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[Assistant] Okay, definitely don't do this. Don't do this. I mean, we went through this back in 20 and 21 with people that were paying the big box stores.


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[Assistant] Money up front for stuff that didn't come, didn't come, didn't come. And then they were trying to get their money back and they said, oh, too bad.


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[Assistant] And all the people with the furniture where that happened too. And the furniture just never came.


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[Assistant] And they had all that money tied up. Don't do this at all. Terrible idea.


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[Assistant] Somebody wants you to pay upfront for something when they can't even tell you exactly when they're going to do it. Don't get involved and check local garage door companies and even, uh,


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[Assistant] Chain garage store, you know, the big national players that this is what they do instead of going to the big box.


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[Assistant] I agree completely, and I mentioned this recently, that Tesla's customer no service model is fully enforced.


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[Assistant] And the Tesla customer experience is fully broken. Tesla does not have its act together, attitudinally or operationally and how customers are being treated on sales and service after the sale. And this will cost them. You know, Tesla dominated electric vehicle sales in the world for a long time and now startups,


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[Assistant] And the traditional automakers all were like, huh, Musk was right. Everything's going electric. We got to get into this and they're spending untold billions of dollars converting from gas engine


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[Assistant] Companies to electric vehicle companies because the math is just going to work. So this is a, this is a thing that companies live and die by the culture they have. And that's why there's a move right now by some large Tesla stockholders to force Tesla to hire a CEO.


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[Assistant] Who will run the company day to day and let Musk be the idea guy because the idea right now operationally is broken. It's often common that the visionary, the brilliant person who starts an enterprise is not the best person to operate it nuts and bolts moving forward. And I'd say that's where Tesla is right now.


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[Assistant] Uh, so we've had, uh, engineering types tell us that it's terrible to do what I, I do, which dry with a towel.


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[Assistant] That you should actually blow dry your blade and then it will last for years.


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[Assistant] But I've been happy going a long long time on a single blade. And as I shared an update recently, Mike, I've been using


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[Assistant] An electric razor, most of the time now. How smooth do I look? Looks good.


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[Assistant] The electric razor technology has improved so much.


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[Assistant] And I find I can shave much quicker with an electric razor than with the other one. And I paid, um, $29 for my electric razor from Walmart. It's a Norelco and it seems to work really well. So I've come up with a cheap thing in addition to using a physical razor.


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[Assistant] And so now my razor lasts like forever. The longest I went on a single blade, 14 months.


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[Assistant] Which was probably four or five months longer than I should have gone with that blade. And I want to thank you for listening.


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[Assistant] We hope you'll consider signing up for our free daily newsletter.


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[Assistant] It's full of information to help you save more and spend less. Check out our newsletters at Clark.com slash newsletters.


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[Assistant] Michael in California says my credit card was compromised, though it never left my wallet. The credit card company handled it well for the most part, noticed the problem before I did, contacted me, and immediately replaced it. The concern I have is that I have a small number of bills and charitable donations that are connected to the card.


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[Assistant] I have to contact each of them and provide them with the new information.


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[Assistant] The credit card company says that anything that's been ongoing for more than six months will just transfer over, but in the past I've found that not to be the case. Many months later I learned that a bill went unpaid or a charity is no longer getting the money that I thought I was sending them. Since this seems destined to happen every year or two, is there a better way I could set things up?


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[Assistant] So they have my easy automatic payments, but avoid the hassle each time.


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[Assistant] Robert in Wisconsin says I'm 49 years old and I have 26 years left on my mortgage. The balance is $123,000 at 5.375%.


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[Assistant] Paying this mortgage off before I reach retirement age sounds pretty nice. Since I plan on living in this house forever, is there any reason why refinancing with a 15 year mortgage would be a bad idea? Should I look into it now or wait to see if rates drop over the next year or two?


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[Assistant] We use the Coverdell Education Savings Account program to fund our, save for our kids colleges. I can't find any information about the Inflation Reduction Act affecting those funds. Did you? I would love to transfer unused college funds to Roth for my kids instead of the alternative.


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[Assistant] And there's a great article on that on savingforcollege.com.


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[Assistant] Alright, we'll go to questions now. Rob in Pennsylvania says, I'm thinking of getting an electric vehicle for my next car. Do you think it's a good idea to lease one to see if we like it and if it fits our lifestyle?


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[Assistant] We usually buy used and drive it till the end. Thanks for all the wisdom.


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[Assistant] Scott and Georgia says, I have two separate credit card accounts with the same financial issuer.


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[Assistant] One of those cards I rarely use does it make sense to ask the issuer to combine the credit limit and the age of the older, less used account onto the one I use monthly. I'd rather not close out the practically dormant account for the impact on my credit score.


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[Assistant] Jonathan in Florida says I used to have 33 bag collections to include three repos. I worked with a credit counselor for over a year learning how to dispute and pay down the debt.


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[Assistant] I'm debt free now. I do have credit cards but only use them for the perks. I pay them off monthly. Maybe I missed it but I did not see anything related to disputing bag collections.


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[Assistant] I learned that after so long the debt may be sold and if they do not have the correct documentation the debt is removed from the credit report.


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[Assistant] I had at least 10 debts removed when we did this. Are there any other steps you would, or advice that you would give?


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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. Spit it out, Clark.


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[Assistant] Today we get to start out with Krista reading your latest complaints about me in our weekly Clark Stinks segment. You know what else stinks? Data breaches.


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[Assistant] There's been a lot of confusion about settlements available, money being paid out.


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[Assistant] Uh, people are particularly confused about T-Mobile, plus there's a new payout from AT&T. I'm going to try to straighten this out for you so you understand what is actually going on behind the curtain. And what you really need to worry about, which is not the money they might pay you,


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[Assistant] But what criminals might do to harm you, and I'll fill you in on that. But without further ado, it is time for Clark Steele.


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[Assistant] Wow, Jay, thank you. And it is true. I've mentioned on TV about Robin Hood.


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[Assistant] Is a company that's been going through kind of a rough patch as an organization, but I'm really, really happy that they are on the Roth IRA bandwagon since I'm the man from Roth.


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[Assistant] So Brad, thank you. So why is it I, as a public transit rider myself, and I love riding public transit, why is it that I don't talk about that when I talk about, uh, road use and how best to manage with


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[Assistant] Cost being the signal that changes behavior. So a couple of things.


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[Assistant] So much of commuting is suburb to suburb or people who work in service businesses or something like that. And public transit does not fit.


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[Assistant] Uh, the way so much of the country is developed is not truly


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[Assistant] So the idea of tolling every lane is the tolls would be much lower than you might imagine because they would suppress demand.


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[Assistant] During times that so many people could say, you know what? I think I'll go at nine 30 and do that instead of eight 45 or I'll do that at six instead of four 30 in the afternoon. So price absolutely modifies behavior.


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[Assistant] Carol, thank you, and uhm, any policy you do always has unintended consequences. The problem with the hot lanes, the, uh, the toll lanes that are built, also referred to many times as Lexus lanes in transportation planning, is that


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[Assistant] You spend a fortune, hundreds of millions of dollars or more, building these separate lanes, that then if you look over, you see how empty they are most of the time because of how high the toll goes.


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[Assistant] That's why my idea, instead of building those, you toll all lanes. You end up with a much lower toll. Traffic flows a whole lot better.


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[Assistant] And people who don't have to be on the roads then don't go at that time. So you use price as a way to manage traffic flow. And I know it seems like it would be abusive of people that are lower income, but it means they would be on the road a whole lot less time.


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[Assistant] And they would have more flexibility in their lives. Uhm, we have not tried this anywhere except two corridors in Southern California. But the tolls are much lower when the whole road is tolled that way than when you have the separate lane for the Lexus drivers.


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[Assistant] Shannon, okay, so that was old advice about not raising the flag. What I say now is don't leave outgoing mail, particularly anything that has a check in it.


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[Assistant] In your mailbox, put it in a secure box at a post office. The reason is criminals are specifically trying to get your checks because they can take your check


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[Assistant] Know that checks are not a secure form of payment because it is so easy for criminals to commit crimes that


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[Assistant] Are virtually crimes that are never caught and you're the one who's got big hassles, including the potential of being arrested because somebody's writing bad checks on your account. It's an amazing thing.


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[Assistant] I've never seen a fee for settling your bill by paying at the table. Why would somebody do that at a restaurant?


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[Assistant] The robotics that are coming into industry, that are coming into retail, that are coming into restaurants are coming because we are an aging population.


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[Assistant] And I think about the robots that are coming to assist the elderly.


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[Assistant] Because we have such a shortage of home health aids and people who can.


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[Assistant] or choose to work in assisted living or nursing homes. This is only coming about


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[Assistant] Because if you look at the graying of the US population, we have a severe shortage


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[Assistant] Of younger workers who normally fill all these jobs. So if I'm a business owner, and I want to provide service to people,


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[Assistant] I, I have to look at automation as a way to provide


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[Assistant] Service to people, and I know you love the human, the human touch, the high touch kind of experience of interacting with the human, so do I. I'm very much a people person. But I understand in business,


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[Assistant] Connected to providing care to the elderly because if we don't do it, we're going to have tragic occurrences.


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[Assistant] With, uh, older people who are infirm that can be avoided, prevented,


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[Assistant] You know, five years, uh, zero percent interest, it's really hard to argue with that. So if that's worked for you, you're not worried about going through a period of months where you're going to be upside down on the loan.


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[Assistant] I can't believe I'm going to say it. What you're doing is okay. I just said a 60 month loan and that situation was green lighted. I can't believe that.


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[Assistant] Sean, thank you, and I would say you gotta follow my two steps. One is you, uh, find out first if you're covered for temporary use of a rental car by your own auto insurance. Most of us are.


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[Assistant] And then the second thing is I want you to rent that car with a credit card that provides coverage.


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[Assistant] That layers on top of your auto insurance. There are, there are a handful of credit cards that provide primary coverage, which means situation you're talking about with a dent in the vehicle.


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[Assistant] You never involve your own automobile insurance. It is your credit card as primary that steps in and takes care of that. That is much cheaper to have one of those cards that provide primary coverage. Not secondary, but primary.


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[Assistant] Layered on top of your own insurance instead of paying the ripoff daily fees to the car rental company for their pseudo semi insurance.


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[Assistant] Alright, so this is something Krista and I have talked about a lot, and that is,


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[Assistant] What disservice are you doing to people that are new in the workforce that are young in their twenties when they work only from home? And there is a loss to them


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[Assistant] Losing the ability to learn from other people who they're with day to day in person.


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[Assistant] So a lot of employers are going to the hybridization where you're in the office, uh, three days a week, two days a week, you can work from home. And I think there is virtue in that.


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[Assistant] We've decided in our company to allow people to continue to work 100% work from home.


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[Assistant] And we may find down the road that was a mistake.


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[Assistant] But to this point, it feels right, doesn't it?


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[Assistant] Nate, thank you. Right now though, you can earn more than 4% on simple savings, making it a less efficient thing to do. But again, paying off a house,


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[Assistant] has enormous psychological benefits for people. It may not be the absolute, uh, optimal thing to do with your money.


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[Assistant] But the value of being able to be in the one third roughly of Americans who own their homes free and clear is really great.


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[Assistant] Tim and many others, thank you very much was not aware you could do that. Uh, the big thing that's been going on with this is people stealing money from your bank account when they're temporarily in possession of your phone.


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[Assistant] Right. So this is a, a wonderful way to protect yourself with your phone and Google challenges up for you to make this kind of feature available on Android as well. And then we'll hear from Android people when it already exists.


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[Assistant] But not that I know of. I'll check it out. Right. Speaking of cell phones, straight ahead.


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[Assistant] Data breaches involving AT&T and T-Mobile and a lot of questions about money that may or may not be available to you. We're going to talk about that plus what my real worry is for you from the problems that AT&T and T-Mobile have had.


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[Assistant] So people are getting confused about the settlements that have been offered


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[Assistant] Uhm, a lot of confusion about seeking claim money. The original one's over. If you didn't claim money, then the T-Mobile thing, it's done. The AT&T thing, uhm, I misspoke, it's not about, I knew it wasn't about data breach. It's about ripping you off on supposed unlimited data plans.


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[Assistant] And uh, AT&T reached a settlement.


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[Assistant] Where they are paying people back money. Most people eligible for reimbursement have already gotten it.


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[Assistant] You had to be on an unlimited plan. You have to have been a long, long, long term AT&T customer, 2011 to 2015.


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[Assistant] If you are still an AT&T customer and you were one of the people who they, uh, misled on unlimited data,


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[Assistant] You automatically should have by now received a UFO credit on your AT&T bill. And you're wondering why did I get this money? You got it because they had promised you something they didn't give you back last decade. If you were with AT&T, 2011 to 2015,


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[Assistant] You are eligible for reimbursement because you gotta ask for it and there's a simple form that you fill out and you have until May of this year to file a claim at ftc.gov slash atnt. Now the most recent data breach affecting T-Mobile plus the prior one means that your account


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[Assistant] Is it serious risk of takeover?


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[Assistant] Your sim, your entire account, by a crook.


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[Assistant] Because enough information is floating out there, particularly on T-Mobile customers.


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[Assistant] That, uh, Crook can pretty easily trick T-Mobile into allowing them to hijack your service, which is the key step


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[Assistant] To a criminal who has a, who has key personal information of yours, being able to empty out your bank account, your retirement account, your brokerage account, your mutual fund account, whatever, because they all rely on the crutch of two factor authentication, usually with the text coming from your phone.


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[Assistant] So that's why what seems like just noise actually matters a lot. And T-Mobile, if you sign into your account,


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[Assistant] They have a thing you can click on for account takeover protection.


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[Assistant] It's a pretty quick process to set it up. And it puts additional steps in place.


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[Assistant] To prevent one of these hackers, one of these criminals from being able to kidnap, hijack your cell phone service for their ultimate purpose, which is to steal all your hard earned money that you've worked hard to save over the years and


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[Assistant] This is a process you should do. It's really, really easy.


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[Assistant] At T-Mobile's website, if you find it difficult, you can go into a T-Mobile store and they can set up these protections for you on your account. Krista, time for questions. What you got for me?


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[Assistant] Megan, I'm a parent of three children. Two daughters and what I have to say.


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[Assistant] I'm going to be very careful how I say this. I don't want you and your husband to


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[Assistant] Borrow spend, borrow spend on the wedding. There's too much.


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[Assistant] That the bride's parents pay for a wedding.


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[Assistant] But it's actually much more common today.


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[Assistant] That the bride and groom pay for their own wedding and there is not any requirement that you have to put on a expensive wedding that would for those hours of that wedding


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[Assistant] You'd feel great, but you'd have a financial hangover for years. I would prefer for you and your husband to have a chat first and then


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[Assistant] If you're willing to do so, sit down with your daughter and her intended.


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[Assistant] And just be honest that you don't have the money to fund the wedding. And, uh, you know, I don't know the reaction of your daughter and her intended if they will be, um,


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[Assistant] Uh, supportive of that if they will be upset. But the reality is I don't want you to bury yourself


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[Assistant] Into a mountain of debt. When you tell me you're trying to figure out where do you borrow in a slowing economy.


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[Assistant] Or should your husband take out a loan from a 401k?


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[Assistant] Yeah, or wipe out the emergency fund. All of that just, uhm, I'm not comfortable with it. So, I think it's reasonable.


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[Assistant] To have a conversation with both of them, your future son in law and your daughter about the financial reality.


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[Assistant] And what matters is that the two of them love each other and that they get to have a great life together. The rest is just details.


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[Assistant] And know this, that actually apparently there's data backing it. The fancier the wedding, the shorter the marriage. So...


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[Assistant] It really is all about the genuineness of the love one has for the other.


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[Assistant] Was, I gave Rebecca and my future son-in-law, Travis, I said, here's an amount of money. You do with it what you want.


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[Assistant] And they chose to have a very, very low budget wedding.


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[Assistant] Oh man, I, when it's around December 20th and it's the shortest days of the year, I can't stand the darkness. Anyway.


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[Assistant] We digress. So hotels, historically, I've had a huge bias for Priceline. I have an entire guide to how to use Priceline to save the most on hotels.


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[Assistant] Coming out of the pandemic, Priceline no longer has an exclusive in my mind on the best deals. I still find most of the best deals on Priceline, but not always. Uh, one thing I want to make sure you're aware, there are a lot of really sketchy hotel sites out there now.


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[Assistant] If it's not a well known and recognized hotel booking site, do not use it because the


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[Assistant] The problems people have had when they get to hotels, they're like, we don't know who you are and all that.


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[Assistant] They're just a lot of thieves out there pretending to be hotel booking services.


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[Assistant] I think that uh, hotels.com is a good outlet. I like what I do is I open them in two different windows and I look at both hotels.com and Priceline. If you're going outside the United States, bring in a third player that is the parent company of Priceline.


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[Assistant] Booking.com and you compare side by side by side. Hotels.com, Booking.com and Priceline.com.


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[Assistant] To see what is going to be your best deal. The worst deal, about 100% of the time, maybe 99.8% of the time, is going to a hotel's own booking site.


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[Assistant] And there you're gonna pay what they'll call a discount, but is actually full retail. You get the discounts from the third party booking sites.


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[Assistant] So, uh, they will also take a debit card, piece of trash, fake Visa or fake MasterCard. Uhm, why does Costco only take Visa and BJ's Wholesale and Sam's Club take a variety of cards?


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[Assistant] Costco has such a large and affluent member base that they were able to go to first for years American Express and then in recent years Citibank.


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[Assistant] And they were able to hold them over a barrel and they said, hey, you want our customer base? You're going to have to really treat them well and treat us well. And so they pay big money at Citibank and Visa


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[Assistant] You know, now you can shop as a Costco member at any Costco anywhere in the world. You go to another country, and they only take MasterCard. And you go to another country, they only take American Express. It's just whoever they are able to negotiate the best deal with. Uhm, while we're at it,


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[Assistant] The Costco Visa card is a really good card to carry.


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[Assistant] And, uh, any Costco member applying for that Costco City Visa card, you get 3% cash back on all restaurant meals, 3% on virtually all travel, 2% in Costco, 2% at Costco.com, 4% on gasoline,


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[Assistant] And a measly 1% anywhere else.


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[Assistant] I'm up for the challenge. Okay. You think I, Lane's not gonna be into that.


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[Assistant] Oh man, I want to thank you so much for being with us today and don't forget


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[Assistant] The sun never sets on Clark.com or ClarkDeals.com. We serve you around the clock. Winter, spring, summer, fall, 365 days this year.


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[Assistant] We are at your service. Next year though, we're working overtime. 366 days with advice you can trust. Have a great day.


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[Assistant] Today, freelancing and side gigs are becoming the norm for so many of us as Americans who are adding it on to the work we already do or it's like a, kind of like a halfway house from the job we had to the job we're gonna get.


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[Assistant] So I want to tell you, you got to be careful because a lot of the things being posted is gig work or scams. You got to make sure that whatever you're doing is a side business is straight out legit.


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[Assistant] There are banks now with a straight face thinking they're doing you a favor by lending you money at 200%. No lie. I'm gonna fill you in.


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[Assistant] Let's talk about the freelancing thing and first things first.


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[Assistant] The IRS has delayed for a year the thing so many people were asking me about in the fall.


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[Assistant] About the reporting that was gonna happen with Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, and the ugly Zelle. And so, it's delayed.


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[Assistant] Till further notice, which means at least a tax year, because


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[Assistant] There's no system yet to differentiate between money you get from work you're doing versus friends sending money to friends or whatever. What this is about just briefly is there was a lot of, uh, a lot of not reporting income from people doing something on the side.


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[Assistant] That prior to these apps was always just people getting money in cash.


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[Assistant] Well, now there's billions of unreported income dollars that people are getting paid through these apps, and so the Congress in its wisdom came up with a new reporting requirement, but no way really to do this that would not mess up


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[Assistant] People doing their tax returns who were just paying money to friends or family or whatever using the app. So don't worry about that.


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[Assistant] It's uh, cans kicked down the road and it'll never be implemented.


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[Assistant] The way Congress originally passed that statute. No chance. Because the complexity in doing it in a way that doesn't cause problems for people not trying to earn income.


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[Assistant] Through using any of these payment apps as a way to receive that income. Uh, I hope I just didn't confuse you more.


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[Assistant] But the latest estimate I saw is that somewhere around 75 million Americans, more or less,


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[Assistant] And there could be some inflation in those numbers, but somewhere around that number, do some kind of side thing.


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[Assistant] Whether you drive for Uber or Lyft or deliver food for a food delivery service or, uh, whatever it is.


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[Assistant] That you do as what some people refer to as a side hustle. Once you be really, really careful.


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[Assistant] As you look at these, and you know, people in the tech field are seeing really heavy layoffs right now.


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[Assistant] And so there's a tendency to say, hey, I gotta find something right now. And it's so common in the tech field to do, uhm, contract work for someone.


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[Assistant] That you can end up being scammed, so you gotta be really, really careful to vet.


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[Assistant] Who it is, who supposedly is offering you employment.


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[Assistant] You gotta be very cautious before you give anybody your social security number. And never in any circumstance are you paying money to then go to work for somebody. So, when you're looking for work though, the other thing


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[Assistant] Is come up in the past is that a lot of gig work you're gonna find isn't gonna be worth your time. That the money you're gonna make is not enough to be valuable. And wanted to tell you that


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[Assistant] That there are job opportunities right now.


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[Assistant] If you're laid off from something that may be places you haven't entered into your brain is places to look for employment.


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[Assistant] But a lot of state and local governments have a huge number of job vacancies right now.


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[Assistant] And they need people of all different kinds of skills in these jobs with state and local government.


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[Assistant] And you may not decide to make local or state government a career.


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[Assistant] But it could be something that helps you pay the bills for a while is something to do.


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[Assistant] Another thing, there may be, uh, causes you really care about.


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[Assistant] Well, almost always there's a non-profit that does something in that cause, a charity or non-profit.


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[Assistant] And non-profits generally have faced a lot of turnover in employment. And so there may be opportunity there for you.


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[Assistant] In a job, and these are not gigs, these would be regular, full-time jobs with a local government, a state government, a charity, or a non-profit.


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[Assistant] They may not pay as much money as you made before, but you may find the work more fulfilling.


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[Assistant] And it may again for you be a way station like a gig job. But if you are looking


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[Assistant] To pick up extra money, my favorite place I like to direct you to is a website called SideHustle.com, spelled really funny.


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[Assistant] A woman who was a financial writer extraordinaire for years called Kathy Kristoff.


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[Assistant] Worked for the LA Times newspaper syndicate for a long time. And it does a really good job taking you through the various, uh, work opportunities


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[Assistant] And evaluating what's good, what's not, what's real, what's not.


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[Assistant] So that when you're looking for extra income, you don't end up being ripped off or taken advantage of. You're actually benefiting from the extra income you were seeking. And grace is here


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[Assistant] One more day in place of Krista as Krista makes a full recovery from her minor cold.


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[Assistant] So there's, I don't see any advantage paying property taxes by debit card or credit card, uh, because it's a negative in either case. One percent down with the debit card, you're still half a point down with the credit card.


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[Assistant] Just send them a check or this is a case we're paying by ACH where you pay electronically is just fine for property tax, but


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[Assistant] Uh, property tax is already enough without having to add another two and a half percent to it.


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[Assistant] Okay, so the eSIMs, the electronic SIMs, have been available in the rest of the world for years and years and years.


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[Assistant] And our major cell phone carriers in their infinite wisdom fought eSIM because they thought it would be too easy for people to see an offer from one company and switch to another because then you don't have to get a physical SIM card to put in your phone.


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[Assistant] So in terms of the, uh, sim swapping that people do to then steal your money from your bank account, brokerage account, retirement account, blah blah blah account, uh, there's been no evidence that eSIM


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[Assistant] has led to more, uh, sim swapping.


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[Assistant] The important thing though is, as I talked about, T-Mobile has a very clear procedure. Hopefully AT&T and Verizon will follow.


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[Assistant] Where you make it tougher for a criminal to steal your cell phone service.


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[Assistant] And so that's the important thing to do. And I'm waiting for the day I can announce that AT&T and Verizon have come up with a really clear, robust procedure to put in place like T-Mobile has. You can sign in to your T-Mobile account if you're a T-Mobile subscriber.


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[Assistant] And put the tougher SEM procedure in place if you go to the security section. Or you can call them and put it in place. And AT&T and Verizon, are you listening?


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[Assistant] The reason people sim swap is so many financial institutions use two factor authentication, sending a code to your cell phone. So a criminal will steal your cell phone service usually overnight. They will replace it. And then the two factor comes to them.


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[Assistant] And then when you wake up, they have already tried to loot your bank account, brokerage account, retirement account, whatever account.


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[Assistant] So don't pay for ID theft insurance. That was a really hot thing that was heavily promoted.


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[Assistant] So what happened to you with the checking account having the credit freeze may or may not help you depending on what service a bank uses to run background check on you.


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[Assistant] Uhm, but you've done the right thing. I would also set up at Credit Karma free credit monitoring. If you don't have a Credit Karma dashboard, you'll have to temporarily thaw your credit.


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[Assistant] With the two bureaus that Credit Karma uses and let it freeze back, which is very easy to do. Won't take you too much effort. And Credit Karma offers the free credit monitoring. Free is better. Also, uh, you may have a credit card


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[Assistant] That just for being a holder of that credit card offers free ID theft insurance included as one of the benefits with the credit card. This is something that has faded though, because it has not proven in practice to be a valuable insurance product because demonstrating the actual


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[Assistant] Losses are more your time typically with identity theft more than it is your money.


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[Assistant] So I wouldn't make that a high priority. You already did the high priority thing.


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[Assistant] With putting the credit freezes in place with the three major bureaus.


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[Assistant] Coming up next, speaking of banks, we're going to talk about banks that


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[Assistant] Think it's a great idea to charge people hundreds of percent interest on a regular loan. I'm not kidding.


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[Assistant] A problem that I talked about starting about two years ago has amplified.


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[Assistant] And it shows a complete lack of morality and ethics on the part of some banks in the United States.


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[Assistant] And this is what I talked about. The first time I talked about this was many years ago called the Utah Problem.


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[Assistant] Utah, to try when it was a less robust state, uh, Utah now is one of the hottest economies in the United States, tried to attract new industry by passing any consumer laws.


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[Assistant] And Utah passed one at the behest of the banks that allows a bank to set up a charter in Utah.


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[Assistant] And then engage in banking practices that may be illegal in the other 49 states.


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[Assistant] And still do business in the other 49 states from Utah.


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[Assistant] So there are a number of unethical, uh, players that own banks in Utah.


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[Assistant] That then turn around and lend money to consumers elsewhere in the United States.


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[Assistant] And interest rates that are in hundreds of percent. And these loans target


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[Assistant] Consumers who are looking for ready access to cash and they make these loans painlessly.


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[Assistant] They will make them, it's almost like the payday lenders that you see the storefronts in states where payday lenders are legal.


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[Assistant] And they'll lend you money typically at 300 to 800 percent.


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[Assistant] And nobody's talking about the interest rate. They just lend you the money and they're very friendly and they're happy to lend you the money, but then they expect it back.


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[Assistant] And you very quickly owe far more than what you borrowed. What used to be referred to as loan sharking. Well now we have banks hiding behind this obscure Utah statute.


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[Assistant] And loopholes in federal law that are allowing them to export


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[Assistant] These ultra high interest rates all over America. And the main target of a lot of these unscrupulous loans


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[Assistant] Are coming through fentex to small businesses.


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[Assistant] Not to consumers, because that's where the real money is to be made.


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[Assistant] Federal law provides virtually no protections from


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[Assistant] And I want you, particularly, the main warning is for you as a small business owner.


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[Assistant] Throughout the year you may have certain times that cash flow becomes a problem for you. And you'll get mailings at a small business offering you access to cash


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[Assistant] Within typically the same day or within 48 hours. And these cash loans, they approve almost everybody.


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[Assistant] Because they carry such outrageous interest rates that if you at your business can't pay the loan, they're like, ah, well, we ripped off all these other people too. And they'll just put you out of business or force you into bankruptcy or sue you against the loan.


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[Assistant] What you need to know before you electronically sign, because these are electronic signature documents you're doing and there's pages of them.


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[Assistant] If you can't find disclosure of fees and interest rates, I promise you, you're gonna get ripped off.


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[Assistant] If you are a consumer and you are offered.


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[Assistant] Instant access to funds from a UFO lender, even if they got bank in their name, it's one of these Utah banks, even if they are a bank, know that they are trying to cheat you


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[Assistant] With a massive rate of interest, it can be hundreds of percent.


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[Assistant] Know that nobody woke up today and said, hey!


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[Assistant] We're feeling really nice and charitable. We're going to just hand out instant money to people. No, it is a diabolical effort to rip you off and don't let it happen to you.


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[Assistant] Yeah, uh, VSP is a big... VSP is a big provider.


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[Assistant] Uh, vision coverage at a lot of big employers.


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[Assistant] And so this thing with the online ordering of contact lenses has been a problem for years with a lot of, uh,


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[Assistant] And so the, the junk fee problem where they tease you with a very low price and then they junk it up and make it outrageously expensive. This has been around, I don't even know for how long.


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[Assistant] You gotta know this is a problem in the contact lens industry.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and buying from a discount or like Costco, obviously.


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[Assistant] Is a wonderful idea. Costco also has made multiple efforts to get around the uhm,


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[Assistant] The cartel that controls so much of the dispensing of glasses and contact lenses. They have their own private label Kirkland Signature contact lenses.


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[Assistant] And getting your contact lenses from a in-person discount or a real one.


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[Assistant] And in the last several years, she didn't even think about going anywhere else. She goes only to Costco to get her contact lenses.


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[Assistant] But these fake texts and emails from all major retailers are a plague on our wallets. This is not Walmart's fault even though they were, uh, disrespectful to you about it.


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[Assistant] Uhm, criminals are duplicating the logos of major retailers, sending these things out, saying you've qualified for a gift card, you've qualified for this promotion, that promotion, whatever, but you have to pay the money.


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[Assistant] And that's just the scam. So anything you get like that during the month of December, I must have deleted 150 of these from my email. I don't know if you got them. Best bye.


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[Assistant] Oh yeah, that's right. A lot of them for Best Buy. And so this is not the fault of any of these retailers. This is a fall of crooks, fault of crooks.


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[Assistant] And I'm really sorry you have done a favor to other people that we've had an opportunity to alert again about this, but your $50 sadly has taken a one-way trip. Remember, any time you use a piece of trash, fake Visa or fake MasterCard, i.e. a debit card,


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[Assistant] You have no consumer protections like you do with a credit card.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you're talking about SIPC, Security Investors, Protection Corporation, which is not a federal agency. People think that brokerage houses have a protection like banks do with FDIC or credit unions do with NCUA. No, they don't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You do not have a risk. The only risk you would face is if there was internal theft.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In a brokerage where somebody stole money out of your account but a failure of a brokerage would not put invested assets at risk


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fantastic. You have a million dollars that you have invested. That's great for you. Great news for your present and your future and your money does not face risk from going beyond


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The typical 500,000 that you hear about with SIPC and having your money in ETFs


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Means or you have it in mutual funds or index funds or individual stocks, even in the failure of a brokerage, what happens is your accounts, your holdings are moved to another brokerage firm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And again, the only time that your money is at risk is with flat out theft that would be internal to the brokerage. And so I would not worry about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I want to thank you so much for being with us today. Remember, we are here to serve you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As we have for 30 years with one on one free advice. It is available to you 30 hours each week from our Team Clark Consumer Action Center.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fiona in Texas says I have twin 17 year old boys and a 20 year old daughter in college. I would like to put dash cams in all three of their cars.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is there an affordable and reliable one that you can recommend with front and rear cameras and hopefully a wide angle to catch side swipes? And then can I add as well