05.10.23 Pitfalls & Promises: The Modern Job Search / Can Money Buy Happiness?

This podcast is brought to you by Progressive. Are you driving your car or doing laundry right now? Podcasts go best when they're bundled with another activity. Like progressive home and auto policies, they're best when bundled too. Having these two policies together makes insurance easier and could help you save. Customers who save by switching their home and car insurance to Progressive save nearly $800 on average. Quote a home and car bundle today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12 month savings of $793 by new customers surveyed who save with Progressive between June 2021 and May 2022. Potential savings will vary. ♪♪ It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Clark Howard Show where our mission is to serve you and empower you to make better financial decisions in your life. The way we find jobs today is so different than in the past. I was laughing because somebody was talking to me about this that I had a whole section on how to find a job. In my first book, I've done 10, but in my first book published over 30 years ago, it was no internet, and it was so funny as they were relating what I said about looking for a job. I mean, it's nothing at all about how it's done today. The only thing that is the same today as it was 30 plus years ago is that people hire people and that most jobs, even in this digital era, that the people who are hired tend to be people that were wired for that job, meaning a wired job is where a company, an organization pretends they're going through a job screening process, but they already knew who they were gonna hire or who they thought they were gonna hire before they even started the process. And so that has not changed. Jobs are still found through networking, through people you know, and people who know of you, and that's how it works. And that's why what's going on right now is so important for you to be aware of is we're moving into a slower economy and more people are gonna be laid off unfortunately than have been in recent years as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer an economic slowdown to squeeze inflation out of the economy, means you gotta be more in your guard in the job market. I'm gonna tell you what you gotta be most wary of, what usually is coined, ghost jobs. Also later, I'm gonna address an old question. Can money buy happiness? Is that called existentialism? Is that what I'm doing Chris? What is existentialism? Come on Chris, to help me. How do you do this to me? Well because, oh my gosh, I know I've- I know I've- All of these concepts I have so much trouble with. I mean, I remember I studied existentialism and I thought it was like worrying about the bigger questions in life, but I will look up the exact- But when that be an existential question, does money buy happiness? Philosophical theory or approach, which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent, determining their own development through acts of the will. I guess that's not- Yeah. Let's just talk about if money buys happiness. Does money buy happiness? That's what we'll be talking about later. Kill on me lately. Thank you, well, no I love, I mean you're so much smarter than I am. That's absolutely not true. That is true. And so I throw questions like that to you because you are so much more in the intellect than I am. No way, and the Google told me that because I couldn't remember. The Google? The Google. You know the one you gotta avoid is Dr. Google. Dr. Google, yeah, Dr. Google can see. Yeah, because everybody's three clicks from cancer on Dr. Google. For sure. You're gonna read medical stuff, read medical journals, actually respected medical journals that are written to the medical industry, but avoid UFO medical information because it's even more dangerous for you than all the political stuff flying around. I think you can also look at, if you're wondering about a specific thing, the Mayo Clinic has a really thorough site and there's some other respected medical facilities and research places that do have a lot of information out there. So how did you get your first job out of college? My first job, I went actually became a temp. When I first moved to a new city, I went to a temp agency, gave them my resume and worked a bunch of different jobs for them. But I also had like three jobs at the same time, but it was, you know, traditionally you'd send out your resume in the mail with a note. And I thank you note later. Handwritten notes. I mean, it's amazing for someone who has come of age in the era of the internet. The job thing is so different now. And you post on these job sites and you look at electronic job for lack of better term bulletin boards. And we're moving into an economic cycle that's something that I talked about so much, 15 years ago to like 10 years ago, the ghost jobs, fake job listings. Now sometimes fake job listings will be from legitimate organizations that they're just trying to prospect, find good potential people out there for the future. And they'll just make up something. So they have electronic resumes on file. But most of the time it's not benign like that. It's actually crooks posting too good to be true jobs where they're trying to scam you. It can either be something where it's a get rich quick opportunity or it can be out and out identity theft. And more of us are out of practice having to scrounge for a job because we've been through an era of extremely low unemployment for the last eight years. And even now as the Federal Reserve has been trying to slow down hiring activity, what a weird concept. What a weird concept. Trying to slow down the job market to reduce the bargaining power you and I have to get raises to make us feel more insecure about employment so that inflation can be driven out of the economy. Weird, right? There has real life consequences. There will be people who will be laid off and will be out looking for new jobs in numbers larger than we've seen in a long time other than that weird blip from the COVID back in March of 20. The point is if you are finding yourself suddenly unemployed and you're desperately looking for a new job, please be very, very cautious and careful. When you give personal information, if you give personal information and background whatever the supposed organization is. I mean, there are so many tip-offs with companies that you can't find anything about them online. There are listings that will say fast growing ground floor opportunity. Boy, that's a tip-off that something bad is gonna happen to your wallet. Be very, very wary, skeptical, not cynical. You'll hear me say that a lot is the economy slows. The is kept it, not a cynic, because we are moving into a time that people are going to be a little more on edge financially and a little more desperate financially. And that leaves you vulnerable to people that would take advantage of you. And that's clearly coming in the job market. If anything, I'm trying to plan a seed in your head that if you are a family member or friend loses his or her job, that the warning sticks with you to be really, really careful with the job hunt because of all the ghost jobs that are going to be posted, jobs that are either not legit or don't actually exist. Krista? Jim in Wisconsin, since I recently was informed of a new way to make some side cash donating my plasma. In my city, this can get you up to $800 for your first month. Wow. However, when you sign up, they want proof of your social security number. I know how you feel about giving this to medical facilities. How do you feel about giving it out here? I think they probably report your income to the IRS. Well, just to answer the question for me, it is income coming to you, it has to be reported, and that's why they've got to have a valid social security number. And that would be what's known as a legitimate business purpose for having the social security number. And I appreciate that you have registered in your brain to be extra careful anytime a medical office asks for your social security number. I went to a new doctor just recently, not once, not twice, but three times on the initial forms for that doctor, it asks for social security number. And I left it blank all three times. Bo in Florida says my 15 year old son was driving to school with my wife on a four lane highway at another car going the opposite way, ran a flashing arrow and turned directly into their path. Oh. Our Volvo had pretty major front damage and the other driver had damaged on the passenger side of minor injuries. I'm glad that everybody was okay and was just minor injuries for the at fault driver. For sure. The other driver was cited by the police for violation of right of way and her insurance company said that we were 20% at fault. We would only accept 80% responsibility. We then reported to our insurance who went into arbitration with the other insurance company and found us 10% at fault and their driver 90%. Our car repairs were $30,000 and this was taken care of, but our insurance company said we had to go after the other one to pay our $2,000 car rental as we didn't have rental replacement on our policy. The insurance company said they paid out the maximum on their customers policy. So we were on our own for the $2,000 car rental. Should we try to appeal this with either of these major insurance companies or chalk this up as an expensive lesson to have the car rental coverage on our policy, which I have since added. All right, so Bo, the individual who caused this accident, first I wanna go back before we talk about the rental car. I wanna go back this whole segregation thing. Auto insurers have become really adept at finding the non-at fault party in some way partially at fault because this makes both insurance companies more money because now both drivers have an at fault claim on their insurance. The 10%, I mean, what garbage? 90, 10, really, that's just silliness. So what happens when an insurer won't take full responsibility and you go to your insurance and the other party goes to their insurance is you end up in this system that, as I recall, is in all 50 states. Insurance is regulated by the states and it's called Sepurgations. These industry internal agreements where they decide among themselves, okay, we're allocating 70, 30 or 50, 50 or whatever. It's almost never that Sepurgation will find 100 zero. So they're winking and nodding and finding each party at least some percent responsible so everybody who's an insured loses. So you don't want to go to your own insurer on a claim. You wanna only go to the responsible party, the person who took the illegal left turn. Once you involve your own insurer, you're gonna end up in a circumstance like this through Subrogation that no matter what, you could be sitting still and somebody runs into you, they're still gonna find you 10% liable through Subrogation. What can you do about the $2,000? If the individual who made the illegal left is employed at a traditional job, not self-employed or whatever, you can sue the individual in small claims court for the $2,000. If you in fact win a judgment, that doesn't mean they're just gonna write you a check in court, but you'd have the ability with that judgment to go after their wages to recover the $2,000. The problem across the 50 states, there may be a few exceptions, is that the state required minimums for insurance are never enough to cover the consequences of even a relatively minor accident. In this case, it was past minor, as someone was injured, and that's how you would recover the $2,000. It doesn't mean that individual is absolved from the consequences of the cost, but it means that their insurer washes their hands of it because of the amount they've already paid out is the policy coverage that's available. That's a lot to say. Yes, I do have a quick follow-up question. So when is it appropriate to subrogate because their insurance company was able to get it down to 10% from 20% or if someone, you're being mistreated, you just go straight to the insurance commissioner in that state. You could file a complaint with the insurance commissioner, you could sue the individual involved, again, depending on the amount in small claims court. You want to in all circumstances that it's practical, you wanna avoid the segregation process because the insurer is not representing you really. Technically, they are, but they're trying to cut the best deal for them, and believe it or not, taking 10% responsibility ultimately benefits them because then they can surcharge you for several years to come. And that's why you wanna avoid ending up in segregation if at all possible. Okay, and Shalina and Texas, as I recently installed Solar Roofing, I've been very happy with it so far. I'd like to install an energy backup system. Who did they buy it from? GAF. GAF is a huge player in roofing shingles. That's interesting because that's the first person we've had. That's a newer product for GAF. Tesla's been talking about Solar Roofs for what, 10 years? And I think they've installed 12 across America or something. So it's great that GAF is doing this. I'd like to install an energy backup system. Do you recommend a generator or solar batteries? If it makes a difference, the generator I'm considering is a generator with 22 to 26 kilowatts. The only two solar battery backups that are compatible with my roof are the Tesla Powerwall. And I'm not sure how to say it's Sonn and Eco. I would appreciate your recommendations. So this one is not gonna have an automatic answer. This one's tough because the battery wall is gonna be cheaper than putting in the generator probably. But the amount of power it may provide you and the length of time it may provide you power may be less than the generator if it's natural gas generator is just gonna run and run and run till the power outage is over. So as a long-term play, I think you're better off with the battery walls. They're gonna get cheaper over time and you can even add to it later. And there are all kinds of advantages to the battery wall because in a situation where, the solar is producing power during the day, the battery wall can provide you power once the sun goes down and help you with your bills day in and day out and be there for backup when there is an outage. The advantage of the generator obviously, you have one of these, Krista. It's been great when there have been storms, right? It just runs and runs and runs and then you got that bill for the natural gas. But it means that you have uninterrupted power. If you put in the power walls, you're gonna have to select what things in your home, probably the most important to be running during an outage from the power company. But my preference is for the power walls. And again, it's not a slam dunk case. I wanna go to this one that people have argued about for a long, for centuries, does money buy happiness? Well, a lot of intellectuals, philosophers, and even studies disagree on this. I'm gonna give you my two cents, bad pun, straight ahead. Hey there, Don McDonald from the Talking Real Money podcast, looking for a source of honest, consumer-centric financial help? While obviously biased, I think you'll find that talking real money is what you're looking for. My co-host, Tom, and I have spent most of our careers helping people like you manage their money on radio, TV, and podcasts. Joe from Stacking Benjamin's and Paul Merriman from Sound Investing both love Talking Real Money, and I'm pretty sure you will too. Why? Because we tell the truth about saving and investing based on decades of academic research, not a bunch of dubious hunches or mysterious premonitions. Talking Real Money is both a valuable education and a lot of fun. Plus, we answer your questions on almost every episode. So if you're looking for a better way to manage money and build wealth, look up Talking Real Money on your favorite podcast service, like this one. Ask your smart speaker to play Talking Real Money or go visit us online at talkingrealmoney.com. A lot of people think that if they won the lottery, the power ball, the big gamey thing, whatever, and they daydream about winning this big, big lottery prize that all their troubles are gonna be over and their life is gonna just be perfect moving forward. And it's a common refrain whenever the power ball or I think it is power ball and big game. I think that's what the two big multi-states are called. A little one mega millions, mega millions. Mega millions, I don't know. What, you buy these tickets. I haven't bought one of these tickets in years. Oh really? I used to get in pool at work for like a dollar, but yeah. Can you imagine the fight later? You didn't pay your share. You're not getting any of the zillion dollars. Anyway, every time one of these jackpots gets to be huge, it's standard operating procedure that every local television station in America is out there asking people who are in line to buy the tickets as the frenzy gets larger and larger and the lottery pool tops a billion dollars or whatever. What would you do with the money? And you hear people's stories what they do with the money and they're kinda daydreaming, looking off into space while they answer. And there's this thought that money conquers all and solves all. So there've been many studies that have found that there are diminishing returns. Yes, there's great value in having enough money to meet life's necessities to create a baseline of happiness. That when you have no more worries about where's the money gonna come for the rent? Being able to afford the food, pay for life's necessities that that creates a baseline of happiness. But someone who starts getting into more and more money, does that make them happier? I'm not sure. There's a lot of disagreement in surveys. For a long time, inflation adjusted, was said that about 75,000 a year was the point at which people would not be happier above that. Now new studies say, no, no, no, it's more like you get to a certain level and after that, the benefit of additional income trails off. I support that. I can tell you, I have lived in an area that has been going through gentrification and what's funny is as the neighborhood turns over, people aren't as friendly as they were when the neighborhood was not as fancy. I mean, it's weird in its anecdotal to say this, but I've really felt this that people are not as joyous and happy necessarily as the number of zeros of wealth added to their income have gone up in my experience interacting with people. And that's just, I mean, there's no science to what I just said at all. But I believe that money should not be the end all be all. Having enough to get by in life plus a little more seems to be the maximum, if you will, excuse the expression, bang for the buck for happiness. But once you start getting into higher and higher and higher incomes, it does not necessarily make you a happier person. When I think about people who have made a lot of money, have a lot of money, get a lot of money and they decide their bagging work that a lot of times they just can't get out of their own way. There's just like no joy in simple pleasures in everyday life because they don't have a goal anymore. They don't have a purpose. They don't have their thing anymore. So I think about those people who are daydreaming of winning the lottery and never having to go to work again, there's a distinction there with a really important difference. When you reach a point financially that you don't have to and instead you want to, that to me is the key thing that unlocks more potential in life. And that's why I've talked about through the years what became a coin phrase, financial independence. But there was something else that went with it that was really hot for about five or six years. They added two other things to it, fire. Financial independence retire early. Retiring early for what and what purpose is it? So you can then do other things you want to do or do work that you enjoy? Yeah, but just being out there and doing, oh, I'm going to go sail today, I'm going to go play golf. You'd be amazed how often that becomes rudderless and the joy isn't there anymore. I mean, the greatest joy, I hear you talk about it, Krista, all the charitable things you're involved in in addition to raising your kids and living your life with your pets and your husband. How many animals do you have these days in your house? We like to have four, two cats and two dogs, it seems. Oh, that's a lot. And you get so much joy out of all the habitat homes you're building and all of the things you do, a million things. I think that it's what you do with the freedom you get in your life that ultimately leads to even more happiness, but money alone is a target and an end goal doesn't work. Yeah, I mean, I think also certainly it depends on where you're living, right? And how much to putting a number on it is tough. And then the idea that like, there's that, like you want to keep attaining more and more and more of the keeping up with the Jones's stuff. And if you're doing that, you never find that happiness because you're always looking for the next thing. You know, I've been guilty of that in my life too. And I found now like just more simplicity and experiences are what matter to me too more than anything. So where you spend your money. What you just said though, a minute ago about the cost of living where you move to, talking to a friend who is moving from a low cost area to the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay area. Wow. And he was talking to me yesterday about how they're getting outbid on these very simple, small, older homes. And that the figures are all seven figures to buy a home that most of the country would maybe be, you know, 200,000, you know, half of what the median home price is in the United States. I mean, that is a factor. I mean, you move to an ultra high cost housing market. And life is tougher. For sure. All right, we'll go to questions. Michael in California says in an article about owner's title insurance, Clark mentioned that owner's title insurance only covers past events and offers no protection against future claims. We hear more and more about crooks changing the names on titles to become a new owner. How can we protect ourselves against future claims against our property by these kinds of events? Yeah, this is a great question. Michael, this is a failure of the local governments all over the country that more and more are addressing that there needs to be, as many counties have now done, a title registry system where you are recorded as owner, you have on file with the county, your current contact information, and they notify you anytime there's any action against the title of your home. It's almost like a monitoring system for your home ownership. And even though there have been these spectacular and ghastly incidents with criminals figuring out how to exploit title on a property and attempt to steal ownership or do a borrowing against that title, it's fortunately a very rare crime. Usually happens against a vacant home. It'll happen most often when, let's say, someone has gone to an assisted living and the home is now empty and sitting there, older individual homes likely own free and clear. That's what criminals are attacking. There's been a lot of advertising promoting services that will notify you whenever there's an action against the title on your property. Those are pretty expensive ongoing subscription services. Generally, this is a rare enough crime, I don't recommend it. But the big thing is the counties need to get on this and provide if they're not yet in the county where you are living, you need to keep talking to the county about setting up a title registry system. Okay, and this is from Christopher in Washington. For the last 16 years, I've had only the Chase Freedom Card and I just recently switched it to the unlimited for the 1.5% benefit. I also opened a Chase Sapphire preferred in the hopes I couldn't would travel more with my wife as our career stabilized. After reading an article about banks shutting down credit cards and debit cards unexpectedly and your podcast on the same topic, I've been considering diversifying my credit cards with a non-chase card. My wife and I both have 800 plus point credit scores and primarily bank through Schwab, but I don't want to use my Schwab debit card. I was thinking about the Capital One Venture. Do you think this would be a good move? Okay, so a couple of things here. Schwab offers a reasonably good American Express card. They're doing as a tie-in with your Schwab relationship, your Schwab accounts. And that would be an alternative. You'd have the Chase card, then you'd have an American Express card. It's my Noah's Ark rule. You always want to have at least two different credit cards from two different issuers because if Chase decides they don't want you anymore and they close both of your accounts all in the same day, you got no credit anymore. You mentioned the venture card. The Capital One Venture card is a very highly rated card that is like a travel light card. If you're at a point in your life, you want to travel three or more times a year, I would recommend that you open up the wallet and you're going to have Swallow Heart on this. Pay $395 a year for the Capital One Venture X. Reason I say that one is it has far better benefits than you get with the venture and you get $300 worth of the 395 back in free travel if you booked through their travel portal for airlines, hotels, other stuff. So it nets out the same annual fee as you'd have with the venture becomes with a whole host of wonderful benefits netting out again at the 95 bucks. So I would look at that one if travel is a meaningful part of what you'd like to do. Greg in Kentucky says, Clark, you mentioned that the government and treasury money market funds are safe, but what about a prime fund? And they mentioned one that includes corporations and financial institutions. The rate is higher. So I assume more risk is involved. So the prime money funds are the only ones that had liquidity issues back during the banking scandals than the great recession that followed 15 years ago. And the prime money funds are, they have had to meet a number of new regulations that were adopted after the liquidity problems that the prime money market funds had back during the financial crisis, the great recession, the banking scandals. So they are generally what you'd call safe. They are not as safe a place to put your money as in a treasury or government money market fund. So if you goose your yield a little bit going in the prime money market, I don't do it myself. When I have money in money market funds, I usually use a treasury money market fund, but a government money market fund, they'll get you a little better return and a treasury is absolutely fine. If you're not familiar with the difference, treasury fund is the obligations directly to the US treasury. A government fund will be other government types of obligations in addition to or instead of federal government obligations, instead of US treasuries. And those are both a safer choice at lower return on your money than you'd have in the prime fund. So it is your choice, just know you're taking going a little further out on the risk meter in a prime money market fund. And that's it for this episode. I hope that the rest of your day is absolutely fantastic. Now, something you've heard today is something that will help you protect your wallet or grow it. ♪ ♪