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[Assistant] But people don't have kids in the numbers they used to. And so it's just like this demographic time bomb that we have more and more people getting older and fewer and fewer young people coming up who are going to work, paying the taxes,


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[Assistant] To support people that are older. It's that simple. So that's the problem. How do you fix it?


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[Assistant] So the problem is all, all Social Security and Medicare. It's nothing else. That's where the problem is. It's not


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[Assistant] It's not waste, fraud, and abuse. It's not spending on social programs. It's not spending on the military. It's none of those things. It's all social security and Medicare.


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[Assistant] When people are asked about how they would fix social security.


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[Assistant] Which is the one most of the talk is about, although Medicare has issues that likely are bigger. There's pretty much consensus


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[Assistant] Across the country when the, when the issues are presented, what people would want to have happen. And generally they understand there would have to be a delay in benefits based on age as one possibility.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, another is higher taxes. Yuck.


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[Assistant] Or a combination of those things. And then the third thing that most Americans are in favor of regardless of where they are on the political spectrum.


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[Assistant] Is to tax higher income people more and reduce the benefits for social security to higher income people.


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[Assistant] So people think that the wealthy can really solve this for the rest of us, but the reality is all of us have to be involved.


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[Assistant] And balancing social security and the sooner we do it, the easier it is. And it's not that hard.


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[Assistant] Making changes now that would put Social Security in a good position for not just the next few years, the rest of this century. But the politicians just have to grow up.


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[Assistant] And be willing to tell us we have to have something terrible like Brussels sprouts or broccoli.


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[Assistant] Instead of just handing out ice cream and cookies and candy. I mean the truth is problems like this are solvable.


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[Assistant] If we all have adult conversations. I want to tell you how it was fixed two generations ago. The Republicans and the Democrats couldn't do it among the elected officials.


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[Assistant] So they appointed a commission that would take all the heat.


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[Assistant] And recommended the changes needed to balance the books and they did so and it's worked for the last 40 some odd years. And if we need to do that today, fine.


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[Assistant] The point, citizens that are willing to be on one of these commissions and say the things that we know need to happen, but the politicians lack the courage and guts to do, and we fix this thing. It is not fair or right to keep kicking this can down the road.


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[Assistant] There are things other countries have done, I'm not even going to get into now, where they've changed the whole way their retirement systems work for healthcare and for a social security kind of check.


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[Assistant] And that is a conversation that gets really deep, philosophical, a lot of different choices we'd have to make. I'm not getting into that.


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[Assistant] Uh, cause that could go on, that's a rabbit hole I could be in for the next two hours. But the point is,


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[Assistant] What we're doing now is the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.


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[Assistant] And we can fix these things. We just have to have some basic courage and maturity as a society to fix the problems that are leading to this ridiculous


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[Assistant] So how did I do talking about this in a way that was nonpartisan?


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[Assistant] You must be an employee that they love so much that they just want to keep hearing your voice.


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[Assistant] You can't make your old employer remove the message. I don't know why they would still have it sounds like just, uh, laziness or incompetence. The AI thing, yes, it's true. We've talked about that. Someone could take audio from me, even video of me.


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[Assistant] And make me say anything they want. And there's a lot of audio of me out there. And this is


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[Assistant] A reality today, where we're going to see it first is propaganda.


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[Assistant] And the whole political thing where, uh, people will have, um, opponents.


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[Assistant] Uhm, if you're, if you're just, uh, if you're not a public figure, at this moment, I wouldn't worry that much about, about it. Eventually, there may be concerns with voice pattern recognition, like a lot of the financial firms use, where someone would impersonate your voice and get through, uh, uh, uh, a verification system


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[Assistant] With a financial institution, that may be


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[Assistant] Uh, present problem we could see in the next year or two. But for the most part, I'd say most of us don't need to fret that much right now.


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[Assistant] Employer provided life insurance, uh, that it's a common employer benefit is a


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[Assistant] Term benefit that is an annual renewable, meaning that the premium goes up every year.


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[Assistant] And often the premiums are higher than what you can buy insurance for yourself in the marketplace. Now employer provided life insurance


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[Assistant] It comes generally in two levels. One is where you get it either free or very cheap from your employer up to a certain amount with no health screening at all. And particularly if it's free, you just take it.


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[Assistant] But the second you leave the employer, that insurance generally is over. And that's why I like for you to have your own insurance anyway. But the other thing is when you buy additional coverage through your employer,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're not buying a level term policy. You're buying again what's known as annual renewable term. So every year the premiums rise with your age.


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[Assistant] And it may not be portable. So having your own life insurance policy that you own that is a level premium.


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[Assistant] For a 20 or 30 year term, which is most often the choice people are making, although it can be shorter, uh, typically no longer than 30 years.


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[Assistant] Is a wiser choice for the long haul, particularly how most of us change jobs regularly. You don't want to be dependent on life insurance that comes through your employer.


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[Assistant] Yeaah, I love this. Both Schwab and Fidelity. This is Schwab's answer to Fidelity. Zero funds. They're saying, not only are we gonna, uh,


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[Assistant] Have something for you that's free. We're giving it to you. And they give you this as, uh, their current promotion to try to attract new accounts. It's extremely cheap advertising because it created buzz in the marketplace.


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[Assistant] And if you like the product Schwab has, I wouldn't do it if you don't really like Schwab and you think, oh well, I'm going to get $100 of stock free. I would like it for you if you like what Schwab offers and you want to use Schwab, uh, beyond this $101 of free stock.


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[Assistant] So, uh, it's, I love competition and I love what's going on with my three favorite children. They are squabbling siblings at Schwab, Vanguard, and Fidelity. They are becoming the three of them.


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[Assistant] Among the world's largest financial houses. Why? Because the offers they make are so vastly superior to what's normally available in the investment marketplace.


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[Assistant] They are my three favorite children because my actual biological children, thank you. You're worried about sensitivity with my kids?


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[Assistant] Alright. So coming up ahead, uh, shout out, in not a good way, about Amazon. But this really isn't about Amazon and your privacy. It's about your privacy in a modern digital era.


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[Assistant] Amazon is of such size, they've got an absolute target on them, uh, and


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[Assistant] This time it's actually something that's deserved and you need to be aware of.


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[Assistant] Amazon has had to pay fines and settle lawsuits, invasions of privacy. One, Alexa, uh,


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[Assistant] Keeping recordings of children's conversations in your house. Not kidding. And not when a kid is doing an inquiry.


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[Assistant] Amazon listening in on Alexa.


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[Assistant] Second thing is what's going on with the cameras. Amazon employees.


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[Assistant] Watching what's on your various Amazon. Amazon owns a bunch of brands of cameras.


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[Assistant] And Amazon employees watching without your consent. Just for fun apparently. Watching what's going on with your cameras. And


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[Assistant] But Amazon was violating them. The fines are ridiculously small. Just tens of millions of dollars. And I want you to know to be really thoughtful.


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[Assistant] About whether or not you have a Google device, you know, uhm, you know, where you say, hey Google, or, oh, I just said I'm not supposed to do it.


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[Assistant] Oh, that's so funny. Okay. Sorry if I just made your, uh, speaker.


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[Assistant] Maybe your bathroom, I mean having them in the kitchen or a family room or something like that is probably fine.


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[Assistant] But be, be thoughtful about this. The cameras.


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[Assistant] Cameras that look outside, that are outside cameras for security purposes.


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[Assistant] That's fine. When you have cameras inside that are always watching, always listening, you never know who might be seeing that stuff. It could be a hacker,


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[Assistant] But more often it's going to be a company like Amazon violating the law and employees are looking.


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[Assistant] Or us inviting spies into our lives, into our homes.


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[Assistant] And so having them that protect the security at your home is fine. Even having, dare I say, a hallway camera at an entrance to your home. That's probably okay.


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[Assistant] If you're worried, you know, if your alarm goes off and you're out of town and you want to see, is there somebody walking around in your home? But you'll probably find what you need to know with external cameras anyway.


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[Assistant] If there's, uh, some sketchy van in your driveway or whatever and your alarm's gone off, you probably have enough information.


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[Assistant] And remember, in a lot of jurisdictions, the police aren't gonna come anymore unless you have that visual verification.


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[Assistant] I know these cameras are really cheap. Like I got all excited a few weeks ago on the podcast talking about how cheap some of these wise cams are. W Y Z E cams. They're like 20 bucks or so and they work really well. But do you want them in your bedroom, in your family quarters of your home? What kind of cameras do you have? I know you've got the ring doorbell.


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[Assistant] So you have a ring doorbell from Amazon, but then you've got the Nest stuff.


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[Assistant] As of now, yes they do. Amazon could always change that.


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[Assistant] But Amazon doesn't want you as an Amazon customer to be aware.


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[Assistant] That 70% of merchandise being sold there or more is not being sold by Amazon itself.


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[Assistant] And it's part of their whole business plan. So I doubt they would differentiate and they don't as of now, you get the straight 5% cash back. And if you're a big Amazon customer, having the Amazon card is a great idea, just like for target customers.


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[Assistant] Having a red card account that also gets you 5% off is a great idea.


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[Assistant] Ten thousand sky miles wouldn't even get you one mile on Delta these days. Okay, so, uh, you should on social media start talking this up.


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[Assistant] Some of the airlines no longer pay any attention to reputational harm on social media. Delta seems to still do that. I think it's really, uh, and, and don't, I mean, you told a very short story. Keep it short.


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[Assistant] On social media, file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Transportation, uh, as well. And this is a good lesson for other people.


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[Assistant] Your wallet, that's great, but what a, what a terrible set of circumstances. And it was really hard hearted and ridiculous of Delta to say that you had to drive to Canada to pick up your own lost bag from them. I mean, man.


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[Assistant] Yeah, Delta's been doing much better. Uh, there've been some stories recently though, airlines are so overwhelmed right now. Some stories recently that are so ridiculously egregious and how


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[Assistant] Uh, airlines of all price points have been treating passengers of all classes of service. And, uh,


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[Assistant] And so this is, this is just ridiculous.


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[Assistant] I hope that, uh, that you do in fact, TB, that you, in filing that complaint at dot.gov,


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[Assistant] That Delta will have to answer that in 30 days. And I suspect that you will get something better than just the ridiculous $300 voucher and 10,000 sky miles. I mean.


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[Assistant] The reason for this one is banks that offer trust services


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[Assistant] Will really degrade the value of an estate. The fees that banks charge for trust services are so outrageous that the money that will be left for your heirs for the, who the trusts are set up for is so hurt.


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[Assistant] Bad choice and would be one that you do in a circumstance where there's not


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[Assistant] A trusted family member who could be named as trustee of an estate. So if you have, if you have a situation where you have no one with the maturity that you feel would be responsible and handle things properly,


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[Assistant] Then in that case, even as crummy a choice as a bank trustee would be, then you use the bank trustee. So it's really a choice in a situation. People are flawed. And if you have family members who you're just not that confident in, that would be the case you use.


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[Assistant] A bank based trustee, uh, trust department. Oh, it's called a bank trust department.


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[Assistant] And most people don't. I keep hearing from people who, you know, hear from a friend, uhm, who's like, they have dumped in their laps dealing with, uhm, the loss of a loved one could be a parent.


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[Assistant] And there's no instructions at all, no record of accounts or anything like that. And one thing we know is certain, none of us are immortal.


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[Assistant] And someday we're not going to be with us. And so that's why you should do exactly what you just heard from Greg and have these, uh, these lists prepared for your kids or heirs or


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[Assistant] Executor, whatever it is, so they know what you got and where it is. So good for you.


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[Assistant] I think you were paying attention in class because you did exactly what's right to do for those you leave behind. Good job. I want to thank you so much for being with us today.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And know that we serve you around the clock.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] at Clark.com and ClarkDeals.com and if you would like one-on-one advice, information, or guidance, that's been a free service we've offered since February 1st of 1993.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where you can get one on one free advice and information from our Team Clark Consumer Action Center available to you 30 hours each week and you can see full details


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] at Clark.com slash CAC or you can just call them Monday to Friday.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Eastern time zone 10 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon. It's 636-49-Clarke. Have a great day.


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


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[Assistant] In the second half of this episode, I'm going to talk about something that is really scary.


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[Assistant] Zombie mortgages that could cost you your home.


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[Assistant] I'm going to tell you what's going on, but before we get to that,


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[Assistant] I get to hear your Clark stinks and hear how I've really stunk it up this week.


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[Assistant] Steve, thank you. Alright, so this is the issue that's come up, Steve.


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[Assistant] Is that some insurers and I don't know if progressive does so, they treat a toe as a claim. It goes into the industry database.


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[Assistant] And is a real problem for you.


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[Assistant] If that does happen, ever shopping for auto insurance with another insurer.


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[Assistant] You know, a claim is a serious thing in the insurance industry for homeowners in auto.


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[Assistant] To include roadside assistance on their auto insurance. I would check Steve with your, uh, with progressive and see if you


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[Assistant] If it does register on your record as a claim and if it does, then it's a better idea for you to do something else. Now, on the issue of paying for roadside assistance,


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[Assistant] The way I look at it is that if you think back and you haven't needed roadside assistance in more years than you could account,


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[Assistant] Then you're best off in the event you need roadside assistance, just paying for it.


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[Assistant] A common occurrence in your life, you've needed roadside assistance, then it makes sense to pay for it.


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[Assistant] Linda, thank you. So both the Roth and the traditional grow tax free through the years. It's what happens at the end of those years. All the money in a traditional 401k or a traditional IRA are taxed at


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[Assistant] The highest income tax rate known as ordinary income tax. And so that's


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[Assistant] The Roth version of an IRA or a 401k.


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[Assistant] Because all that growth you have all through the years, there is no tax time bomb waiting at the end.


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[Assistant] Jack, thank you. And yes, if there is a match at the summer job.


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[Assistant] And the match is fully funded instantly that there's no.


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[Assistant] There's no suspense on it. You have to be so many years or whatever.


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[Assistant] To get that match, yes, you're completely right.


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[Assistant] My answer would lead to walking away from free money.


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[Assistant] Oh, and it really does stink. Have you been there to smell that stink?


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[Assistant] Ken, thank you. That's a very thoughtful post.


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[Assistant] Let me see if I can respond to each thing you said. It is true that Europe has a much lower incidence


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[Assistant] Uh, poverty than we have in the United States. Uh, the dispersal of income in the United States


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[Assistant] The income inequality is much larger here than it is in Europe and


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[Assistant] That obviously is a problem. There are specific reasons why. Uhm, one of them is that we had much less income inequality before unions, good or bad,


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[Assistant] We didn't have the extreme income inequality we have now. Then on the other side,


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[Assistant] Europe overall, countries have a much lower per capita income than we have in the United States. Europe is significantly falling behind, and I'm talking to Europe as a collective here, falling behind in overall national wealth versus us.


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[Assistant] Uhm, we have issues clearly.


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[Assistant] With income inequality, with money flowing overwhelmingly to executives and to stockholders to owners. The labor shortages in the United States give me hope that we're going to see some shifting in that.


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[Assistant] Walmart suffered enormous reputational harm.


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[Assistant] About the issues with their workers and I think I addressed most of those items.


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[Assistant] Stephen, thank you. You know, it's funny, I shop at Sam's so much that to me, you're right, it is very different than how I describe it. But for me, it's the same thing. Like when I was in Sam's just yesterday and I used the app,


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[Assistant] And it shows me when I go to checkout that I can use some amount of Sam's cash for the purchase. And so to me it is like,


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[Assistant] Is real cash back, but you're, you are correct that I am wrong in explaining it that way.


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[Assistant] Is that when you realized you should switch to Android? That was bad.


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[Assistant] Deanna, thank you, and I was not aware of Apple's recycling program, uhm, and I'm really glad to know about it. The thing I'll look at is, is it, is Apple only


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[Assistant] Process apple only products so that they take in and recycle those from others as well.


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[Assistant] So Jeremy, you know when I shop at Costco,


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[Assistant] I never get a cart when I come in the door.


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[Assistant] And so what I do is I walk through those temptation areas first and I gather things in my arms and I can never


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[Assistant] Buy more than I can carry in my arms. And so I put things back to avoid the Costco temptation.


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[Assistant] And then I go shop the food aisle. Now that doesn't help with the bakery. Although I'm not, I never buy from Costco's bakery. Maybe I'm missing something.


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[Assistant] My wife actually feels differently. During NFL season, she would like to take a sledgehammer


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[Assistant] To every TV in our house. And she says that I get so focused on the games that she could walk through the room naked and I wouldn't even notice her. And hope she doesn't get mad at me for saying that. But it is the, it is reality that I just am hyper focused. So yes, I did spend the money for paid YouTube.


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[Assistant] Or NFL Sunday ticket for this season. And Vaughn, you stated so eloquently that the reason you're so careful with your money is when there's something you want to splurge on that you actually do.


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[Assistant] And you create the freedom in your life to make that possible.


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[Assistant] What's the derogatory term they call the Chinese dictator? I'll, I'll leave out that. Anyway, uhm,


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[Assistant] I feel terrible if I sounded like that about my family. What was going on was I was going through all the bills and there were all these streaming services and I didn't know


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[Assistant] Who was watching them? It wasn't about people being able to watch them. It was like, are we paying for things nobody actually is watching?


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[Assistant] It turned out that it had, I signed into the account, it had been canceled. So then where was the bill coming from? Do you know, I still haven't been able to figure out where that zombie bill is coming from.


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[Assistant] Lynn, thank you, thank you for posting about this.


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[Assistant] You know, as I said when I told the story about this, uh, nice woman, for those of you who did not hear that podcast, she


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[Assistant] Was having trouble with basic functioning, couldn't get the door leading into the ATM. This was in New York City where you,


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[Assistant] All the doors to ATMs are locked and you have to use your card to get in.


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[Assistant] Turned out she had more than a quarter million dollars just in her checking account and she was definitely disoriented. And I said at that time when I told the story that I'd love it if people gave suggestions


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[Assistant] And I appreciate that suggestion. That is a great idea that I could have asked her if I could talk to a family member who she trusts. And uhm, that was a missed opportunity.


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[Assistant] John, thank you. I know from talking to, uh, uh, a general who was a base commander where troops were trained that what you said about the physical, the lack of, uh, physical strength and, and, uh, fitness of a lot of recruits is a big problem for the military. And in fact,


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[Assistant] Basic training, I don't know what they call basic training now, but what we used to call basic training has had to be modified to have a lot of physical fitness as part of it prior to, it's almost like having a class 001 before 100 starts the actual traditional basic training to get people fit enough to engage as soldiers and


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[Assistant] I appreciate what you said that I did not serve prior. I was 46 when I volunteered and enlisted in my state guard. And yes, I have.


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[Assistant] In the way you put it, I have no excuse for why I never served in the military prior.


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[Assistant] A civilian employee of the Air Force during the Vietnam War, tailing the Vietnam War, but I could have put on the uniform and I did not at that time and point well taken. Coming up ahead, I want to talk about an unhappy blast of the past. 15 years ago, it's now appearing in people's lives, zombie mortgages. I want to tell you what they are and what's happening and the unpleasantness


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[Assistant] Wow. Sometimes the past reappears and it's really an ugly, ugly thing. And I want to dial back to what happened starting in year 2001, going forward in the housing market for six years, the mortgage lenders, the banks,


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[Assistant] We're involved in a variety of illegal practices and we're making loans just to anybody who is breathing. Anybody who had a pulse. People were allowed with no money down to buy


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[Assistant] Perhaps even ten houses that they never occupied. At the same time,


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[Assistant] Lenders were making what were known as 125s. So you took out a mortgage and you owed on it, but you wanted, uh, money and banks around the country and non-bank lenders, mortgage companies were making these 125s where


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[Assistant] They would still lend you another $25,000 against it. So you were upside down on your home.


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[Assistant] And the whole theory was home values were going up so the lenders wouldn't get hurt because even though they had uncovered equity, negative equity, that eventually it would be covered and everything would be fine. Well it wasn't fine because then we hit


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[Assistant] Years and years and years for us to get over basically eight years. And now the weirdest stuff is happening. A lot of people who were in those homes where they had a first mortgage


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[Assistant] Then they had one of these SCSI second mortgages or home equity lines of credit reached accommodations with the lenders and they came up with payment plans and concession plans and all this. And people who were upside down their homes and had trouble paying did not get foreclosed on. There were plenty of people who got foreclosed on, but there were people who worked things out with the, with the first mortgage lender.


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[Assistant] Second mortgage lenders, a lot of them went out of business and so those loans went quiet and people all these years later, 10, 15 years later, suddenly out of the blue are getting foreclosure notices. Imagine that. So who are they getting foreclosure notices from?


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[Assistant] Wall Street is buying up paper.


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[Assistant] Buying up these old dormant second mortgages, buying them up


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[Assistant] Where they could go after the person's home. And there are law firms now that out of the blue are going after people threatening to foreclose on them or foreclosing on them for those long ago home equity lines or second mortgages. Now, legally, they are owed.


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[Assistant] The amounts owed on them may or may not be close to accurate because they bought line items. They bought basic information on these loans and you've got to hire


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[Assistant] Because the imputed interest charges and late fees and all that can be gigantic on these old forgotten about home equity lines of credit or second mortgages. And so it is past ugly. And if you get some kind of weird letter


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[Assistant] Where you've stayed in a home and now they're demanding payment or you're going to be foreclosed on. You can't throw it away. You can't ignore it. You can't act like it's a mistake. You've got to go hire a real estate lawyer to defend you in this. And you want one who's got experience with this because the first thing will be prove it. Prove the amount you came up with. Prove all of that.


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[Assistant] And if ultimately they're able to prove it, then believe it or not, you will owe that money from so long ago. This is not a happy story, but you gotta know that is the actual thing that's happening.


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[Assistant] I'd seen some things about it and then I saw a long form story in the Wall Street Journal about people who've been current with their mortgages.


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[Assistant] They've been fined for years and years and years. They've been paying on the loans. They thought they were close to owning their homes free and clear. And now they may actually have their homes taken from them in these foreclosure actions that Wall Street decided is the next place for them to get rich.


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[Assistant] Okay, so we're talking about, first of all, the Platinum is a $695 annual fee that will suddenly hit you right in the face. And American Express has


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An entire array of non-fee credit cards. When the time comes, you call them when it's time for renewal and you say, uh, you're not going to renew the card.


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[Assistant] You'd like to switch to and have done your research on the American Express website of Amex cards that have no annual fee and you want to get one of those even potentially not get one of them and then go get another card that's no annual fee. I mean, you're, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're military, hopefully you're a Navy Federal member, uh, USAA member, uh, Pentagon Credit Union, you can get, and PenFed is what they call themselves now, you can get, uh, cards from these military-oriented


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, credit unions or USAA Federal Savings Bank replace the available credit with the really good cards that are available.


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[Assistant] From these military oriented organizations and you get this done before you retire from the military. As for the American Express Hilton card, I'd say the same thing about the Marriott.


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[Assistant] Card, who's Marriott tied in with? Bonvoy is the name of the card. Who issues the card? It's a Visa card. So I don't remember who issues it. The hotel cards are junk. Um, in a situation like yours, you're getting rid of it because of having to pay the annual fee moving forward. But the hotel programs have so devalued the points that it's basically a joke.


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[Assistant] And you recently were looking at a hotel and you were going to use the points and I almost had a stroke right on, right on sight because the value you were getting was so ridiculously poor.


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[Assistant] On using the Marriott Bonvoy points for hotel steak. The hotel programs are playing us for fools and


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[Assistant] You don't want to have the tie in with these cards. If you sign up for one for a year to get the big sign up bonus and use those points for hotel stays,


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[Assistant] The math will work in your favor, but after that first year, the math does not work.


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[Assistant] To my knowledge, Southwest is the only airline that permits a name change of a ticket.


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[Assistant] Yeaah, they have, uh, they call it, uh, gotta get away plus, I think. You pay a slight additional amount to make the money transferable. Uhm, even if it had not been


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[Assistant] Uh, the ticket class you got, unless you specifically buy a refundable ticket, the money is not transferable on virtually any airline from one passenger to another. So when you change who's going on a trip, they don't let you change under any conditions normally.


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[Assistant] Who that ticket, who that money is used for. Generally the money is only usable by the individual


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[Assistant] The only exceptions I'm aware of are corporate accounts where companies that have an account with an airline have the ability to control the money rather than it being to the individual the ticket was purchased for.


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[Assistant] So Mike, what you're talking about is a tiny part of the market now where an individual trying to get from point A to point B.


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[Assistant] Is there's a massive network of car hauling services now.


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[Assistant] Is the cheapest price is not necessarily going to be your best. Read the reviews. Read how reliable they were on schedule.


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[Assistant] Uh, read how if somebody had damaged their vehicle from a car hauler, how it was handled well or poorly, uh, but


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[Assistant] I recommend that instead of putting the miles on the odometer and having a unknown driving your vehicle across the country. And the costs will vary a lot. I have, if you want to know more about you ship, I have a review of it on Clark.com and that does it for us today on Monday.


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[Assistant] We are going to have a special episode for you. You won't want to miss.


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[Assistant] Your crazy or best travel stories as we're in the heart of the travel season. Have an absolutely great weekend.


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[Assistant] Happy birthday to you, I'm not gonna sing because everybody would stop listening immediately.


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[Assistant] That's the one thing I wish that I had been blessed with as a singing voice. I would be on stage right now.


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[Assistant] Okay, well Jesse in Texas has a student loan question. I owe a large amount in student loans and will qualify for PSLF in a few years.


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[Assistant] My payments, when they resume, are about $200 per month because my husband and I chose to file our taxes as married filing separately. This cuts my student loan payment down by several hundred dollars, which seemed like a great idea.


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[Assistant] However, I recently learned that we cannot contribute to a Roth IRA if we continue to file separately. Is it better to file joint taxes and have the ability to contribute to a Roth


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[Assistant] Or keep the low student loan payments and contribute to our 401ks until my PSLF is complete. I'm also not sure we will even have the money to contribute to the Roth as my student loan payments increase by several hundred dollars.


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[Assistant] But when I log into Amex and check the spending power calculator, it gives me an available balance of $80,000. Why is this amount not reflecting my available credit and credit karma? Are there any tricks you know of that would apply this Amex available credit to my overall credit available to usage percent? It would definitely boost my score.


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[Assistant] And you know, Sean is like you, with the credit score. We need to come up with a name for people who are so obsessed with getting their credit score to the highest level. And you're one of them.


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[Assistant] Brian in Pennsylvania has a follow up for us. I thought you might enjoy a follow up to the engagement ring question I wrote a few weeks back. First, my girlfriend happened to be in the car when Krista just so happened to read my question on air.


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[Assistant] I ended up ordering a ring from Rare Carrot and couldn't be happier. The wholesaler aspect I mentioned of these sites is correct. Unfortunately, my diamond was available and I was notified overnight the order would go through. The ring arrived earlier than estimated and the diamond is incredibly stunning. I saved almost $23,000 over an identically, identical quality mined one.


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[Assistant] That they sourced it from a company that only does ring settings. The interesting thing is Rare Carat had the diamond a bit more expensive than the other site that offered it, but the setting was actually cheaper through Rare Carat than directly from the company that made it. All in all a great experience and best of all, she said yes.


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[Assistant] I find it safer for me, like if I'm making say a left turn, and I miscalculate how quickly a car is coming, or they speed up, I can quickly make that turn, you know. Because there's no hesitation. There's no hesitation at all.


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[Assistant] And what about after she gets her license? Do we need to add her as a driver on the cars? I assume this will drastically increase our yearly insurance. I don't want to ask my insurer as they may tag us for higher insurance.


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[Assistant] Q in North Carolina has not a car question. It says, should the executor of a will review the document before the death of an individual?


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[Assistant] You got a scolding. This was like 15 years ago. I do remember when you were, yea. I scolded you.


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[Assistant] I love the phrase, the saying, yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift. That's why they call it the present.


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[Assistant] I actually do, there have been some lately that I have not been able to read.


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[Assistant] This one's good. You stink like the garbage that picks up my trash on Fridays. Almost literally.


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[Assistant] Heard the garbage trucks picking up trash last Friday and excitedly said, garbage trucks! It's Friday! Can we listen to Clark Stinks?


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[Assistant] Now I can't drive to school on a Friday morning without my two kids asking me to play your podcast. I love the insight you give and it gives me more opportunities to talk about money with my five and six year old sons. It would make Joey and Jack's year if Clark read this on their favorite show instead of lip singing.


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[Assistant] My six year old even lip talks and pretends he's Clark while we listen. Keep up the stinking great work, Anthony.


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[Assistant] Clark, you don't necessarily stink like a Sasquatch in the middle of the summer in Florida. However, a few weeks ago, you mentioned several places that people should never ever not ever open an IRA. You forgot to mention one of the worst offenders, insurance companies. Insurance companies tend to have much higher fees compared to your favorite children.


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[Assistant] As well as high commissions. I thought this was something you should mention as a way to help everyone save their hard-earned money from those pesky insurance company IRA fees. Daniel.


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[Assistant] Not really. You talk about Airbnb from a guest booking perspective, suggesting they only select rentals with very lenient cancellation policies.


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[Assistant] Please remember that most hosts are mom and pop sole proprietors. We rely on rentals to supplement income for mortgage payments. If I get a cancellation a week out, my unit is likely to not get booked or I will need to drop my price to encourage last minute booking.


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[Assistant] We understand we compete with hotels that can more easily offer flexibility. Our options are flexible. One day prior cancellation.


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[Assistant] Moderate five days prior cancellation or firm no refund.


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[Assistant] When I offered moderate, I had 23% cancellations and I'm rated as a super host. 23%.


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[Assistant] Not a double booking windfall bill. And a few Airbnb hosts wrote in with the same sentiment.


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[Assistant] Clark talked about how to get payment for the purchase of a car or anything that you're selling for thousands of dollars. Last year when I sold my 2005 Neumar Dutchstar motorhome for $92,000, I didn't want to get paid in cash. What I did was go to the buyer's bank and let the teller hand me a bank check. I figured if the teller hands me the check, it's good. It's hard for me to say Clark stinks, but, respectfully Greg,


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[Assistant] And there is another Cork Stinks about this. Oh, let's hear. So can I read that too? Sure. Cork doesn't stink, but he mentioned he used a counterfeit detecting pen to check money.


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[Assistant] These pens are all but useless. They detect the fabric that money is printed on.


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[Assistant] The problem is that criminals will sometimes bleach the color out of one dollar bills then print hundreds on the washed out bills.


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[Assistant] The counterfeit pen will correctly identify that it's genuine currency


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[Assistant] But can't tell you the denomination or tell you that you're about to get ripped off.


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[Assistant] Currency currently has ultraviolet indicators of the correct denomination.


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[Assistant] Shine it on any bill and you will see the denomination light up.


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[Assistant] You can even see these yellow marks with the naked eye. Your eyes aren't as reliable as the ultraviolet light since criminals can use yellow ink too. These lights can be purchased for under $10 choc.


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[Assistant] In the US, civil asset forfeiture is when local authorities take any valuables, usually but not limited to cash, they find in your possession when they suspect those valuables are the fruit of a crime.


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[Assistant] This is typically done during a traffic stop on the side of the road


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[Assistant] For this case, a better idea is for the seller to go with the buyer to their local credit union or God forbid bank to witness them getting a cashier's check. I love your podcast and if I could, I'd like to wish my son Wiley a happy 13th birthday. Nicholas.


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[Assistant] Clark is great but he made a comment that stinks worse than the time he had water free urinals installed at the radio station.


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[Assistant] He repeated the myth that smoke detectors must be placed high in a room and carbon monoxide detectors low. This is not true. Carbon monoxide is actually less dense than air but close enough to such that it disperses evenly throughout a room.


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[Assistant] There is no harm in placing a CO detector level with where you sleep or lower, but if you have a combo smoke and carbon monoxide detector mounted up higher on a ceiling, you are fine. And that's from Sean.


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[Assistant] You far from stink, but please always make a note of the actual question the caller is asking about.


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[Assistant] A caller called in to ask if their daughter as an authorized user on their account needed to actually activate the card.


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[Assistant] Not just put it out of use. After getting sidetracked about the way Christophe pronounces Missouri, you only acknowledge what the caller said that they actually do. Leave the card in the deep freeze.


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[Assistant] Knowing if the card that won't be used actually needs to be activated is a good question that went unanswered, Greg.


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[Assistant] Clark, love your show, but you missed a big part when discussing construction costs with a caller.


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[Assistant] Lumber features, and you are right, those costs have dropped dramatically, but manufactured wood products like plywood


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[Assistant] I've not dropped and in some cases have risen due to the shortage of glue and the Ukrainian conflict impacting the cell of Baltic birch, the preferred premium plywood type. Robert.


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[Assistant] This has to do with a segment that the person says he bought a car that was too expensive for his budget and on top of that he lost his job.


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[Assistant] He asked what was more important, to pay his credit cards or pay for his car. I was surprised Clark didn't say he should sell the car that he can't afford. Clark just talked about how to try and make more money to afford these car payments that he really can't afford. Martha and a couple people wrote in.


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[Assistant] They said the insurance company changed their mind. Is this a thing? A discussion for another day perhaps?


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[Assistant] There was an article I read recently suggesting not to get involved, but in the same article the author says because he uses self-checkout he fails to scan at least one item per week as compensation for using self-checkout. I'm perplexed as I would be mortified for even thinking about cheating anyone. Thank you.


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[Assistant] Donald in Texas says, I just wanted to thank you for saving me some money. I booked an eight day car rental for a minivan in North Carolina for $1180 a month or two ago. I then remembered your advice to reshop the rates closer to my trip and I was able to score a deal for $630. Thanks for helping me save nearly half the price.


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[Assistant] It's my pleasure 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] AI is so in the news and story after story warns darkly about the disasters that will befall us from artificial intelligence. And I want to tell you that AI will have uses


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[Assistant] As any new technology does that's a game changer, it'll have uses that are good and bad. And a lot of them are going to be good. And I want to tell you something else. Best service in the world sometimes? Yourself.


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[Assistant] I want to talk about something that we got a listener said why don't you ever talk about this years ago and we talked about it and then we realized the other day we hadn't talked about


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[Assistant] This topic in so many years, instead of throwing away electronics, repairing them yourself.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I'm going to tell you how that's possible and can save you big bucks


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[Assistant] Three different things can happen from that computer voice.


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[Assistant] It will usually do an upsell on you right from the get go. Either a person then will respond to you


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[Assistant] Who's at that location where you're in the drive through or someone will respond to you who is in a far away call center or whatever you call it where the orders are being taken off site or third


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[Assistant] You're having the entire process handled by robotics.


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[Assistant] Some people really turned off by that. One chain has been very public about going to robotic order taking.


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[Assistant] Uh, known as Hardee's in the eastern part of the country and Carl's Jr. in the western part of the country. It's the same company. And they've been using this AI system to take orders from you


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[Assistant] And the big advantage has been the orders are more accurate.


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[Assistant] I want you to think about this. I don't go through drive-thrus normally. I mean it, it's almost impossible to get me to go through a drive-thru. I walk inside.


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[Assistant] And I'll watch somebody walking around with one of those headsets and they're putting together one order while they're taking somebody else's order.


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[Assistant] Because they're having to multitask so much, no wonder so many orders are wrong. Now as I've shared with you in the past,


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[Assistant] What I do is with places I frequent, I have their app and I order on the app and I can be very specific on it. And although there will be mistakes on orders, usually they're right.


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[Assistant] Now we just heard, uh, when we were talking about


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[Assistant] AI for fast food. James of our crew was sharing the story about how he wanted everything on his burger except ketchup and what he got


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[Assistant] Was nothing on his burger except ketchup, which he can't stand. And he had ordered on the app and it was wrong. And so it can go wrong no matter what. But the idea of having


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[Assistant] The apps having an artificial intelligence voice. Take your order.


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[Assistant] Is an efficiency thing, a labor thing, labor cost savings.


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[Assistant] And ultimately should lead to more accuracy in what you order. You know, there's a pizza operation from Europe.


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[Assistant] That is spreading around the United States. Don't know if you've seen these and they look like giant ATMs and you go to the machine and you order your pizza on the machine available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Uh, it's obviously very impersonal. It's not like going to your favorite pizza joint and seeing, you know, Tony behind the counter who owns it or whatever.


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[Assistant] But you go to this thing and you punch in what kind of pizza you want and it puts the ingredients on.


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[Assistant] And then flash cooks it, you know, it's thin crust and you walk away with your pizza in three minutes.


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[Assistant] I mean we are going to see so many things like this in our lives and you do trade the humanity out of it. You trade the personal, you trade that connection, one human to another. But what you do get in return is you get the availability, you get the, uh, uh, lower cost obviously.


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[Assistant] And you know, if you've listened to me for a long time, you've heard me talk about, uhm, automation and food delivery, uh, with these machines in airports where, uhm,


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[Assistant] For restaurants and the airports, plus the speed of service.


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[Assistant] I haven't seen this pizza thing in any airport. Why not? I don't know, but you're gonna see more and more automation where you can get food custom out of a robotic machine in an airport and, uh,


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[Assistant] You know, you'll see it in places where there are train stations. This is clearly.


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[Assistant] Going to be part of the future for good or bad. But I don't see it as some kind of hideous disaster.


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[Assistant] In that overall umbrella of what we refer to as AI.


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[Assistant] I think that it is a form of progress in society and its personal choice. You like having the convenience find, you don't like it, don't use it. Krista, how many Clark Stinks do you think that's going to generate? Again, Clark.com slash Clark Stinks.


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[Assistant] So the amounts you can contribute to a 529 plan will way exceed even the executive MBA type programs.


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[Assistant] are much more expensive than full time enrolled student MBA, but you'll still weigh, uh, the limits way exceed what even


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[Assistant] The executive MBA program's costing. Congratulations to you as a fellow business school grad myself, masters. So.


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[Assistant] It is a smart strategy in states that offer a state tax deduction for contributions to 529 plans.


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[Assistant] And if you go to our guide at Clark.com, you'll be able to see.


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[Assistant] Uhm, if you also are a resident of the state of South Carolina,


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[Assistant] The South Carolina 529 Plan, the direct sold one.


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[Assistant] Is one that I really like, it's on what I call my Dean's List. And you can go to our, uh, Clark.com slash 529. And you can see the plan, the rules for doing so. And then you'll see if there is in fact,


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[Assistant] A state income tax deduction in South Carolina if there is.


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[Assistant] Then it would be to your advantage for your second year of the program to contribute now, have whatever growth you can have over the next year, and get the upfront state tax deduction.


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[Assistant] From the state of South Carolina on your state income tax.


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[Assistant] Okay, State Farm is a very complicated thing. It's funny. I would have asked you who the insurer was. How did you know instinctively to name State Farm?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] State Farm is, is a complicated story because State Farm...


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[Assistant] Is like a conglomerate of a bunch of mutual entities.


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[Assistant] Are very profitable in the business they have. They return the profits to the policyholder. Years they don't.


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[Assistant] You end up with higher premiums, which by the way is happening to state farm policy holders now on auto. Uhm, state farm life insurance holders have found really nice, uh, mutual, mutual rebates, if you will, going into your life insurance policy. The auto insureds are not seeing that because state farms had trouble


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Considered to be the best auto insurer in the United States. You're with Amica Mutual. All the auto insurers are having trouble covering their costs with the premium dollars that they're collecting. Have you not gotten a mutual check in recent years?


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[Assistant] Crisis is the most overused word in modern United States life, modern American life.


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[Assistant] But both the auto and homeowners insurance markets are in a crisis. Uhm, the auto insurance market is suffering from


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause of a shortage of body shop mechanics and also during the pandemic.


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[Assistant] There were extremely long waits for parts to fix vehicles.


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[Assistant] So the auto insurers were paying extremely high


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[Assistant] Um, auto rental costs much higher than normal for people who had auto rental coverage on their policy. Uh, plus the cost of when a car was totaled


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The cost the insurers were having to pay was so inflated the last few years, that thankfully is slowly fading as the cost of both new and used cars going down.


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[Assistant] Uhm, the availability of cars going up. Classic supply and demand. Dealers are fighting the trends, but you can only fight for so long. So there's a long way around the barn saying the reason rebate checks


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[Assistant] Have not been coming like they used to.


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[Assistant] Is because of the change in the economics of both homeowners and auto.


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[Assistant] In your case, you said you hadn't received a rebate check in how long?


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[Assistant] Uhm, that is news to me, as a non, I'm not insured by State Farm.


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[Assistant] I'm surprised that it is so long. So I would call your state farm agent and ask your agent what's the story with the mutual, uh, dividend checks coming back to the policyholders.


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[Assistant] Yes, well Nevada is Nevada. Okay, so anyway, uhm,


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[Assistant] The answer is you're doing it just right, having that card in the safe.


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[Assistant] And your 17 year old will benefit from this by establishing a credit identity.


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[Assistant] And if your daughter is going to college, then as a full-time college student,


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[Assistant] This is from a company nobody thinks about anymore, nobody ever talks about. The Discover student card is my favorite starter card.


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[Assistant] One of the reasons Discover people will cringe at this company, but it's not as widely accepted. It helps a student establish credit, but it's harder to go willy-nilly into debt with the Discover student card. And they offer a very good student card. So all the way around, the Discover card would be my favorite.


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[Assistant] For her if she does in fact go to college after high school. Coming up ahead. Electronics. The way we treat electronics today is this laptop I got right here. If it goes bad, what do people do with laptops? They're done. Is that a good idea? How about any electronics?


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[Assistant] I want to talk about a counter movement, a counter revolution.


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[Assistant] If you will, in the United States against disposable electronics, it can save you money. Long, long ago and far, far away, there were TV repair shops dotting every hamlet, town, city in this country. It was a big business repairing people's televisions. And then they vanished.


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[Assistant] And something broke, you went to Norman to get it fixed.


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[Assistant] Any kind of, we didn't use the word electronics then, but any household kind of item that today we would think of as electronics. And then as the decades rolled on,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People stopped repairing their items. They just replaced them.


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[Assistant] And that led to this, as I referred to it just a few minutes ago, a counter revolution of people are like, wait a minute, why would I spend all that money buying a new one? What if I could fix the one I've got for little or nothing?


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[Assistant] And that's led to an under the radar movement around not just the United States, but in much of the world called repair cafes. And that's just the generic term.


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[Assistant] Where you can see where these things are and the way they generally work and they vary and how organized they are.


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[Assistant] Uhm, how capable they are, what hours they're open, but the idea is you go to one of these repair cafes.


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[Assistant] And you may have a fee for being able to use it, but you'll have specialized tools


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[Assistant] They're available for lending like a lending library for books, but this case it's for tools to fix an item. There may be people who do this as a hobby, who help other people say, you know, you're going to do that. You need to solder this to that, whatever. And the YouTube thing. I mean, man, it's amazing. If you have basic capabilities, YouTube videos,


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[Assistant] Can be an enormous help. I mean, I watch YouTube videos how to fix something.


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[Assistant] Okay, I shouldn't do this. I'm gonna make fun of myself. Well actually, it's fine to make fun of myself.


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[Assistant] My wife has a 15 year old convertible. She loves convertibles. And it has a known defect in it where the car will hit a speed bump or something like that and


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[Assistant] There are these roll bar kind of things that come out of the back seat headrest.


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[Assistant] And they pop up and the idea is if the car's in a rollover.


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[Assistant] People in the back aren't crushed. It's like a roll bar what is a roll bar to protect you. The problem is,


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[Assistant] The defect is you'll like hit a speed bump too fast or something like that or a pothole in the road and you hear this extremely loud noise


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[Assistant] Because they just pop up into place and then you no longer have a convertible because the top will not go down.


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[Assistant] So these things are fixed. So you go on YouTube, there's video after video after video to do it. In fact, it's such a common thing that in the trunk of the car, the tool is there.


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[Assistant] To be able to pop the things back into place. So I watch these YouTube videos and I get in the backseat.


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[Assistant] And I put the tool in like all the videos show and you're supposed to press this button and then push down.


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[Assistant] On the roll bar thing and it goes back into place. You have a convertible again. Couldn't do it. I watch video after video. Couldn't do it. I mean, there are some people


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[Assistant] Who I'm, I'm pitiful. I mean, I have no survival skills in life at all. You know, I can't fix anything. I just, I'm so versatile in some ways and in others I'm useless. But Krista, if we had had running video of me trying to do this and get that roll bar back down in Lane's car and posted that


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[Assistant] Of any we'd put up, because people would just be laughing at how incompetent I am.


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[Assistant] The videos were so clear and these were from everywhere in the world. And so, and it's amazing how the accents can be pretty heavy, but how many people around the world speak such great English?


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[Assistant] I will. Not good enough for me to be able to fix the problem.


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[Assistant] Vern, it is, I wouldn't say it's common, but it's not new.


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[Assistant] What some banks do to mistreat their customers is they know there are certain times a month


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[Assistant] You're going to hit low balance. Usually it's going to be sometime


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[Assistant] After you paid rent or mortgage or car payment, that the big payments you make each month, that's when your balance is going to hit its low. You're going to go below that threshold.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they're trying to get 180 bucks a year out of you. So, you know, you've been through the, uh, classic bank abuse.


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[Assistant] Where they say, congratulations, you're now banking with blah, blah, blah bank. And we're going to be able to do so much more for you. And then they get bought out and congratulations. We're now so and so there's a bank, a block from where I live.


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[Assistant] That's on its fourth name since we moved three years ago. I mean, really?


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[Assistant] Is know that this attitude of trying to figure out how to steal 180 bucks from you.


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[Assistant] Is an indicator of what else these brainiacs running this bank may try to do to harm you as well. I would give them the boot and I would go, uh, my first choice would be if there's a,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Credit union that offers the services you want near you. I'd go to a credit union or find a local bank known as community bank to go to where they actually value people.


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[Assistant] Instead of looking at you as somebody to take advantage of.


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[Assistant] You know, that's usually a bridge too far for a lot of people, but if that's comfortable for you, yes, I love online only banks. Or if you're going to go that direction, if you have an account with Schwab or Fidelity,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do your banking with one of them. You still have offices you can go into and look somebody right in the eyes.


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[Assistant] And you have no fees on their checking accounts, no gotchas on their checking accounts, and at Fidelity,


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[Assistant] Fantastic interest rates they pay you on all the money in your checking account.


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[Assistant] So John, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to write this. Uh, first of all, you would have had 60 days


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[Assistant] To dispute the charges but because you were eagle-eyed, you were able to get this taken care of much quicker. The problem with the 60 days is most people


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Don't look at their checking account statements, their checking account statements, their credit card statements, at all.


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[Assistant] The envelope comes if they get it by physical mail. They don't open it.


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[Assistant] If they get emails only, if it's electronic statements only, they never look at their charges. And once 60 days has passed,


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[Assistant] Even if a crook is making false charges as if they're you,


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[Assistant] You've given that money away. You worked too hard for your money to do it.


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[Assistant] John, thank you for being on your game and getting the replacement card and not being out this money.


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[Assistant] So I'll tell you a funny thing. Um, we have the city double cash and when lane uses her card over and over again, she gets declined and I'll get a text that says one to approve this to, to refuse it. And so I'll, I'll call her and I say, honey, are you trying to shop at blah, blah, blah for,


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[Assistant] Yeah, it just got declined. So then I do it and then it immediately goes through.


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[Assistant] But she hates it because she's always worried I'm being judgy.


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[Assistant] Or going to Dollar Tree and spending a dollar, it needs to be called Dollar 25 Tree. I mean it's Dollar 25 now, but anyway, you know, I'll charge a few dollars at Dollar Tree. And then what's the anomaly?


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[Assistant] The design of a well thought out, properly operated target retirement fund is the date


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your retiring is the key number, not how long your lifespan may go on for.


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[Assistant] Because the design of a target retirement fund is on that target date, it goes into the process, it's not a process, it goes into an allocation based on you not having your paycheck coming in anymore. You may have social security, you may have a pension, whatever. But it goes into this design to make the money last beyond inflation for as long as you might live.


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[Assistant] Many times in a target retirement fund, when you hit that target date, it'll be roughly 30%.


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[Assistant] Still remaining in stocks for as long as you live from that point. And then the other 70% are designed to be lower risk. But the 30% in stocks is important because your longevity risk is inflation.


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[Assistant] And so you need the booster shot that stocks offer over time to outlive the effect of inflation on your check. So it's not how long you're going to live. The target retirement plan design, target retirement fund design is designed to manage your money from that date of retirement forward, whether you live three years or 30 years.


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[Assistant] From that date you retire. So I would not do any kind of laddering of target funds. I know a lot of people do that. Uhm, but the idea of the target date fund is all your money goes into that target date of your anticipated retirement. And I want to thank you so much for joining us on today's podcast.


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[Assistant] And know that we serve you so many different ways. One of them is our free newsletters. You want to see what's available, see how often you want to get them. Uh, remember they're free.


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[Assistant] Clark.com slash newsletters. One thing I will say about our newsletters, if you subscribe and you're like, you know what?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These are a waste of my time. If that's what you feel, we make it just as easy to unsubscribe as we do to subscribe, but likely I expect and I hope you'll find what we offer to you in our newsletters really helpful to you and your wallet. Have a good day.


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[Assistant] But you can add more throughout the year and you can withdraw as long as you don't go under the $25,000. Now my credit union is offering 5% for a two year CD. Should I consider this as well? So excited to finally start earning some interest. We are hoping to buy a new house next year.


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[Assistant] Uhm, I would guess a couple of things. One would be that you're loyal to them and you want to buy more things from Amazon. And then also potentially like porch pirates and stuff. They want people to have- That's the only reason. Okay.


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[Assistant] Again, Y's is W-Y-Z-E, and we often have deals on those at ClarkDeals.com too.


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[Assistant] I want to thank Clark and the team for your help. I used to listen to your show years ago on our local radio station. After hearing repeated exhortations to purchase term life insurance, my wife and I followed through using the list of highly rated companies that we found on your website.


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[Assistant] Unfortunately, my wife passed away very unexpectedly this past winter. I'm so sorry.


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[Assistant] While we didn't have all of our affairs in order, thankfully, we did have life insurance policies in place. While nothing can replace what we have lost, as we move forward, the reality is that I will have the resources on hand to support our children and raise them in the way that we always have. I cannot thank you enough.


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[Assistant] I truly don't think that I would have followed through with purchasing life insurance had I not heard the same message over and over.


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[Assistant] And I am also thankful that I chose to work with a reputable company that process our claim quickly and fairly.


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[Assistant] Your help matters in a very tangible way and I wanted you to know that it's making a really, a very real difference in the lives of my children.


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[Assistant] Okay, Elaine in Florida says after hearing the report from another listener regarding missing items


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[Assistant] And the items were delivered to my daughter's home 40 miles away. She does not have access to my account.


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[Assistant] However, and I sometimes buy order things that are shipped to her. The order was just around $300 plus expedited delivery fee and a hefty tip for the driver. I was able to intercept the items from my daughter's home. She was out of town and returned them all to the store for a refund. The credit card was stored in my account, which I no longer do.


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[Assistant] Walmart customer service refunded the charges, the delivery fee and tip and gave me a $10 voucher for my 8 hours of work.


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[Assistant] For example, I have a Wall Street Journal subscription and I continue to get hit with the loyalty penalty over time as the subscription continues to increase. Right now it is at $40.94 per month.


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[Assistant] Do you sometimes cancel these subscriptions and wait for a low teaser rate again to rejoin? Use another tactic to save or do you just stomach the ongoing increases?


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


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[Assistant] One decision I hope you'll take is to subscribe to our podcast, our YouTube channel, or our newsletters. You know the cost of each of them? Absolutely free and at the same time priceless.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can also join our community at Clark.com slash community. Follow us on social media, submit a question on Clark stinks or get one-on-one free advice, information guidance, which we've been doing for more than 30 years.


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[Assistant] You can see how to do that at Clark.com slash CAC. So, I want to talk about trying to build up our credit.


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[Assistant] There are so many people who don't know how to get going, where to start, what to do after a rough patch.


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[Assistant] Begin this episode today about taking you on the glide path to steadily better credit. Doesn't have to be that perfect 850.


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[Assistant] And later I recently talked about free shipping.


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[Assistant] Having more and more ring fences around it.


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[Assistant] Returns have been a curse on retailers and are actually becoming more difficult for you.


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[Assistant] With more and more places, we're going to talk about that later. So, for whatever reason, you're needing to establish credit, you have had bad credit, whatever it is, and I've talked about


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[Assistant] So much and we get so many questions about...


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[Assistant] The best this card, the best that card, the best reward card, the best travel card. It's always these cards that are for people who've got really solid credit. Everything's hunky dory. Uh, you know, I love the cash back cards.


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[Assistant] And so you've got so much of the focus that you've heard from me on this and I haven't done enough to talk about what happens


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[Assistant] But for various reasons, you may be in a credit union that doesn't offer a fresh start program. You may not qualify for their fresh start program. Uhm, whatever the circumstance, the credit union angle doesn't work for you. So, what should you do? Well, we have a writeup at Clark.com.


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[Assistant] And we even did it like Olympic medals, gold, silver, bronze, and our gold medal winner remains one that I first talked about, gosh, I don't even know how many years ago, the pedal cart. And it's actually the pedal to cart number two.


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[Assistant] P-E-T-A-L. My diction is so terrible.


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[Assistant] Great, artsy, beautiful, that was, uhm, that was, what do you call that? That was symbolism. Thank you. I could never do symbolism. Uh, but that was absolutely the best.


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[Assistant] We came in silver with one that's a controversial company because people have had time to time customer, no service issues with them, but the Chime Credit Builder Card.


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[Assistant] And in third place, winning the bronze, the Discover It secured card. Uh, Discover is overlooked, but the Discover


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Discover It Secured Card is a very unique product. Each of these in their own way. Very, very unique. And I want to tell you at Clark.com


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[Assistant] If you have a family member, you yourself, a friend who's trying to establish a reestablished credit.


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[Assistant] Go read our review and you'll see why.


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[Assistant] These are our three favorite opportunities for you to establish


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[Assistant] A reestablished credit. Uhm, they don't have a lot of the gotchas. You know, if you've had a problem with credit, you're gonna get a lot of solicitations from absolute trash cards.


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[Assistant] I mean just, there are some despicable characters out there.


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[Assistant] That are pushing really, really substandard products, taking advantage of people's desperation. And that really upsets me.


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[Assistant] So these three are when play show, if you like horse racing, these three all


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[Assistant] Do good jobs and you can go through and read the explanations and they'll help you with the possibility of you


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[Assistant] And the greatest cards, the ones that throw all kinds of candy at you, all kinds of rewards that come your way. Krista?


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[Assistant] And particularly if this is the Vantage scoring model.


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[Assistant] That, uh, Equifax TransUnion and Experian have a joint venture company.


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[Assistant] Trying to compete with, uh, Fair Isaac with FICO, the FICO score, which is the one most often recognized as like the gold standard of credit scores. The credit bureaus came up with their own called Vantage and Vantage scores move


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[Assistant] Your, uh, your ratio, the amount of your available credit you're using,


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[Assistant] Accounts for a big chunk of your credit score and more volatile for some reason with the Vantage model than Fair Isaac. And most of us are FICO. Most of us, if we have access to our scores, they're gonna be Vantage scores. So, uh, if you're not signed up yet, go set up a Credit Karma account.


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[Assistant] And you'll be able to see the factors. And the likeliest cause is in fact what I'm talking about. How much you charge in a prior cycle. Again, regardless if you paid the balance in full.


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[Assistant] It's how much of the credit available to you you used in a cycle.


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[Assistant] If you, like, I'll get these notices based on Vantage. And I got one the other day and it was like this exclamation point about my score had gone up like 63 points or something. It was simply because I had very low utilization of credit cards that month and the month before because of travel.


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[Assistant] I had a much higher utilization rate and they just clobbered me with it. But it's a good idea with uhm, since Credit Karma is free, you'll be able to track your scores, uh, with a good reasonable sense of how you're doing and what things you can do to improve by using the free Credit Karma tools.


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[Assistant] And it's funny because some of the credit cards use FICO and some use Vantage. And I'll get a notice in the same day from one saying my score went down and the other says my score went up because their algorithms are different.


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[Assistant] I wish I'd been able to answer your question before you cancelled the card because


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[Assistant] The quote unquote upgrade or approval to this that's, uh, instead of being a monoline only in a coals.


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[Assistant] But one that had a Visa or MasterCard logo on it.


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[Assistant] Your overall credit picture could actually harm your credit having a store only card. So your situation is kind of a wash. The interest rate on


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[Assistant] Store branded or co-branded cards, as you have so wonderfully pointed out is outrageous. In this case, 31%.


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[Assistant] Many of the co-branded store cards that are tied in with a Visa or MasterCard issuer are now at 36%. Store credit is junk credit.


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[Assistant] Whether it's got the logo or not, the interest rates charged are so bad ugly that the only reason ever to use store credit is as you were at Kohl's for the 7.5% discount and as you are at Target for the 5% discount.


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[Assistant] A third of loans are ultra, ultra long term.


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[Assistant] This is a recipe for disasters I addressed the other day, you mentioned, and this is a huge


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[Assistant] Problem for consumers because they're upside down in vehicles, meaning you owe more than what the vehicle's worth for years and years to come. The answer


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[Assistant] Is not disrespectful and I'm not being disrespectful to you John or to anyone else. And sometimes people take it this way. The reality is if you cannot afford the purchase of a vehicle at 42 months or less, you cannot afford that vehicle.


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[Assistant] You have to buy a cheaper vehicle if you need to replace the one you have. If your vehicle is still driving fine, you need to keep it on the road because the thing is over time you want to create financial security in your life, not


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Voluntarily create financial insecurity in your life.


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[Assistant] Uh, something that is changing as well, I mean, your example of the ultra long car loans being a third of the market, horrific to me. We've gotten so spoiled by something I talked about the other day, free shipping and the other half of that free returns.


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[Assistant] Both sides are changing. The fastest change is free returns. I'm going to fill you in.


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[Assistant] So free returns, I mean, what a great country. You buy something, you decide it's not


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[Assistant] Right for you or you don't like it and you return it. We've gotten so conditioned to that that now


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[Assistant] Return rates have just gone through the roof. So online sellers are cracking down. Amazon itself.


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[Assistant] Is starting to charge, you may have heard this already, starting to charge returns on certain items in certain situations and you have to pay the return fees


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[Assistant] Go to like UPS or whatever, you have to pay the UPS shipping charge, send the stuff back to Amazon.


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[Assistant] Even things that are just, uh, have a problem with them. You're having to pay to send them back to Amazon. Uhm, and this,


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[Assistant] Is part of a move I speculated on recently about Amazon that Amazon is going to different levels of service for different people based on likely how profitable you are for them or to them.


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[Assistant] And these are called profitability index scores. This is coming alive in industries all over. And if you are very heavy in return rate,


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[Assistant] Your profitability index score for any retailers going down, down, down, down. And you're going to find that people will be part of whatever club they call it. And those are people that will get free shipping and free returns.


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[Assistant] Whether it's uh, not a membership or is a membership.


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[Assistant] We're gonna be more and more put into a box.


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[Assistant] And you got to know before you buy, I don't care if they got free shipping.


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[Assistant] You gotta know what's the policy on returns, refunds, and exchanges.


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[Assistant] And know that before you buy because we become so conditioned to free shipping and free returns that you can get caught not realizing even with a retailer you frequented that the policies have changed. Now this is going to give a direct advantage to clicks and bricks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Those are retailers that both sell online and have physical stores because with the physical stores, you will still have the ability typically to return the item where you towed it to them and return it at the physical store. You'll avoid the return charge. You're also going to find more and more with clicks and bricks that you'll pay a shipping charge potentially if something is shipped to you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it'll be free if it's from the dot com to the store for pickup. And it all makes sense to me because if you don't have


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[Assistant] A system, we've been trained that free, free, free, free, without consequences.


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[Assistant] And we need retailers to survive and putting up those barriers.


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[Assistant] I think is, is necessary, but it's up to us, unfortunately, to know when we're gonna be burned and when we're not.


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[Assistant] You might not be eligible for free returns when you buy something. Alright, cause it says in, you know, little type, it'll say free returns. They need to put in bigger type when it's not free returns.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kevin, thank you for that, and that fits right with what we're talking about. Another thing, if you're buying from a new website to you,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Check out their reputation first online.


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[Assistant] There are a lot of times I'll consider ordering from a UFO I haven't ordered from before.


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[Assistant] And I'll go read reviews and after reading reviews, ain't no way I'm ordering from them.


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[Assistant] Harry, thank you. Uh, this is something we have addressed in the past. The other thing that consumers should know


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is that many times when you go to a big box to buy something that, uh, just to buy, it doesn't even have to have free labor or whatever.


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[Assistant] When there's a problem with the installer or whatever, the big box retailer is like, huh? What? Us? Huh? Where, where, where do we fit in this?


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[Assistant] And so it's their name on the deal. They mark it up because the, whatever company it is behind the scenes is getting the referral business from them that they might not have otherwise. And when there's a problem, often the big box is like, I don't know why you're looking at us. I mean, we didn't do any of the work.


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[Assistant] And so know that that extra markup sometimes comes


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[Assistant] With worse customer no service than even normal.


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[Assistant] So, uh, gosh Dave, you are so on the right wavelength. You must document that the tree is dead or diseased, either condition, because the way it works, uh, I think everywhere in America,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is that if a tree appears to be healthy or is healthy, so on your neighbor's property, storm knocks that tree down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The neighbor is responsible for whatever damage on their side of the property line. On the other hand, if a tree is clearly, visibly, uh, diseased or dead, then the neighbor is liable because they've been negligent


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For the damage that occurs to your house that normally, and your property, that would normally be your problem. The key you've already stated is you've got to document that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yes, you take pictures. They will be automatically time stamped on your phone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, you send the certified letter to the, to the address you think


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Check with neighbors. You may have a neighbor near you who knows this individual. They may be a very nice honorable person. You may be able to, with the neighbors help, reach this individual because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Certified letter by its nature is never a friendly thing. It is an unfriendly communication. If you're going to engage,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An unfriendly communication, that should be after you have tried the other route. Failing to be able to contact this person.


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[Assistant] You absolutely send the certified letter because then not only do you have proof of the problem,


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[Assistant] You are proof that you have properly notified this individual.


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[Assistant] And then it's up to them if they're going to leave you in harm's way, uhm, in your life and your safety and harm their wallet in the future because you will have given proper notice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Under enormous financial pressure in the state of Florida, you have no idea what kind of coverage this individual has next door. They may not be carrying insurance on the property if they own it mortgage free. So everything you can do upfront is really important to protect yourself, your family and your wallet. And your mindset is right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To take these steps and document now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I hope you have an absolutely great day. That's it for us today. And I hope the rest of your day is perfect. Way beyond fantastic. Perfect.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I don't feel comfortable connecting my bank account to their systems, but I know their charge fees when I donate this way. Do you have a recommendation on the best way to donate?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Patrick in New York says, Clark, I could use some help. My wife and I are devout members of the Church of Roth, but through a recent promotion we are now fortunate enough to exceed the limit for a married couple.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have about $3000 in both my wife and my own Roth IRA respectively.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My question is, do we transfer that amount immediately into the traditional IRA and start filling that up or do we continue to fill up the Roth and do the backdoor Roth all at once, once it's full? Any help is appreciated. Thank you for all you do.