05.22.23 Cancer Update & News On Men’s Health / ENERGY: Summer Gas And AC Prices

It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Clark Howard Show, our emissions to serve you and empower you to make better financial decisions in your life. Today I've got an update on my health and some advice for others, specifically us as guys, in terms of what we need to do to take better care of ourselves. Also, this weekend is the unofficial start of summer. I'm going to tell you how prices on gasoline, your air conditioning, what you're going to be facing this summer, what you need to know about what summer and energy costs are going to do to your wallet. So if you're not aware, long-time listeners are. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer 14 and a half years ago. I had early stage, relatively minor prostate cancer and I elected to do something at that time that was very unusual in the United States called active surveillance where instead of having surgery or radiation or anything like that, I've been in a program now for 14 and a half years called active surveillance where I have continual testing now once a year to make sure that my cancer is still doing a okay, not threatening in any way. And here I am nearly 15 years in and I was just at UCLA Medical Center where I go from my active surveillance and I had an MRI that is fairly, type of MRI that's fairly rare in the United States, very common overseas where they're able to figure out down to the individual cell essentially what cancer you have and the nature of those cells. And you spend a long time in the machine, used to be an hour and 15 minutes now, it's about 55 minutes as they've refined this and I got a clean bill of health, not that I don't have cancer but that I have no dangerous cells that are in any way a threat to my health or my life. Well when I almost 15 years ago found out that I had prostate cancer there was really no such thing in the United States as active surveillance. It was very rare at a very small number of research based medical centers. Everybody else just got treated, surgery or radiation or whatever and there are a lot of ugly side effects with it. Well now 60% of men diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer are now doing active surveillance like I'm doing. The other 40% who have early stage should consider it so that they don't have to go through radiation or surgery or whatever. You know when you are diagnosed with prostate cancer and you have a biopsy for it, the pathologist can grade and does grade the cancer. Not like you're used to where with so many cancers they grade them from stage one to stage four. There's a specialized system for prostate cancers called a Gleason score. The Gleason score is a clear indicator of whether someone has a relatively minor prostate cancer which about somewhere close to 40% of men as best can be determined will never have a need for treatment ever. It's figuring out who that 40% is and today's technologies are not clear enough at who those people are. So the Gleason score gives a very important indicator and so just because you hear you have prostate cancer it doesn't mean that you have to rush out right away and do something radical to it. It depends on what you got and the Gleason score is the greatest indicator. The prostate cancer foundation which I used to be on the board of for years PCF.org has information if a family member or you yourself or diagnosed with prostate cancer you're able to understand all the terminology and the decisions that you need to make. Remember doctors vary in opinions. It is your life. It is your body and that's why it's so important when you get any diagnosis of an illness. If it's a major one that involves choices you have to make that you read medical journals not who knows what website but medical journals you go to get second opinions maybe third opinions that you don't just take the word of whoever you're standing in front of. Yes he or she as a oncologist or urologist spent many many years studying. It's really hard to get through medical school it's really hard to get the advanced education but they're really busy and all of us as professionals we get stuck in our ways and our habits and so it's up to you to be your own advocate with any medical situation and in my life it's made an enormous difference not having to go through a treatment regimen that was not needed at least these first nearly 15 years and you know what if the time comes that it is needed I'll get the treatment that is best at that time for me if I need to. One thing don't do is what most men do is ignore their health. Gosh there was a new report recently showing the rates of the most typically most serious widespread skin cancer melanoma how it's overwhelmingly a male disease overwhelmingly because guys are like what me worry guys are not good at protecting their skin from the sun with clothing they're not good at protecting it with sunscreen and when something goes wrong there may be something suspicious on your body men don't go to the doctor in many cases till it's too late and you look at the fatality rates are so high so I want you to think about what I'm saying here on the one hand I'm talking about disease management with the second leading cause of cancer death and men prostate cancer and so I'm giving this mixed message that prostate cancer most common cancer hits men second leading cause of cancer death of men and when you find out you have it you just don't have to rush right into treatment because you got to know what you have and so that's confusing for me to say that and then with the melanoma say hey by the way men ignore it and then they die each cancer has its own thing about it the important thing is that you stay on top of it you know I would not have been a candidate for active surveillance with prostate cancer if I didn't stay on my game if I didn't follow the protocol if I didn't have the testing that I have had to have over these nearly fifteen years on a regular schedule so managing your own health and doing things that can help keep you out of trouble i.e. wearing protective clothing my oldest brother has melanoma and he believes he got it fighting in the Vietnam War who knows but he has it and so he wears protective clothing he wears these big big big hats when he's out and about to protect himself from the sun and he goes for his checkups as required and he is in active disease management of his melanoma so it's not necessarily a life sentence even in a case where you get it as long as you do what you're required to do by the dermatologist to stay on top of your health there's no reason that with a common disease like skin cancer that men die at a much higher rate than women it is the choices we make that would help prevent it and then the choices we make when we don't do the follow up when we do have it that makes the difference and men live a shorter lifespan than women even though there's not the huge difference between the work activities today that men and women do and still men have a much shorter lifespan and I would allege that overwhelmingly it's because of the things I'm talking about right now ignoring your health with what can be deadly tragic consequences and Krista that was not the happiest thing to talk about but you know men ignore their health men won't talk about it you leave behind grieving loved ones that's why you got to pay attention to this yeah we all definitely need to be on it when it comes to health care it's amazing how hard it could be to navigate and by the way I should have said and I apologize I did not say I am so grateful to all the people who have prayed for me have been thinking about me all through the years the thing that I hope that I've been able to do by being so public about my cancer over these nearly 15 years is to try to get people to be their own advocate and to pay attention totally and I think you've been nobody has to say that to women I don't know why women are like so well I think as some women now I mean women need to know too we all have to bear our own advocates it's a tough system to navigate to we've done a great job with it for sure let's go to questions this one's from Margaret in Virginia you recently discussed title insurance and title law insurance and that was very interesting but I've paid off the mortgage on my home should I get title insurance to avoid being scammed I don't think my county has a notification system for any changes to my title so we're talking about two different things here so title insurance is something that shows that you had clear rights to buy the property and the structure of the house that sits on it when you bought the house and it protects you from a claim that could come at any time but usually fairly early in ownership saying that you don't have clear and marketable title to your property if you've owned it long enough you paid off your home and all that the odds of that happening very low but when you do buy a home you're required when you have a mortgage like you had that you've now paid off you were required to have lenders title insurance it protected the mortgage company but only if it your option and you paid a little extra money would you have what's no simultaneous issue or owner's title insurance that protects your equity your money when you pay it off and full like you have the title to your property that you're good even if somebody ever successfully challenged your title saying you didn't get a clear deed you didn't get clear ownership the title insurance pays off all your money for that house very rare occurrence the other thing is title lock which is where they're trying to protect you it's almost like an alert service from somebody trying to steal your house with forged documents we're steal the value of your house now we've talked to five different real estate attorneys and got a unanimous answer from them and there was no groupthink because we talked to each of them individually they didn't know each other and we got a unanimous reading that it was not worth it to pay for a subscription for one of these policies that'll work you when somebody's trying to take out a loan against the home or something like that the times that this is happening have been pretty clear it's happening when a house is vacant when a house is owned by a quite elderly person maybe that individual has moved into assisted living the crooks that engage in this are looking for houses that are looking sad yards not taken care of gutters falling off the side that kind of thing they're not going after people that are typically actively living in their homes because you'll know pretty quickly from weird mail that will show up at the house that there's a risk to you so I would say based on having talked to these experts in industry that I would not pay for one of those subscriptions that alert you to possible criminal activity going against your title and christin george says my wife and I recently reviewed our cashback credit cards to make sure we were using them for the right categories i was surprised to see that my around 10 year old card that only pays 1% did not win out in any category including everyday spending i'd like to close this card and replace with something more productive like the amazon prime card however it being my oldest line of credit and worried what effect it would have on my credit score technically my oldest credit line is my student loans that have since been paid off congratulations for that my second oldest credit line is another card i've had for around seven years do i have enough history on this other card to be able to close the 10 year old card to not affect my credit score which is excellent okay so you didn't say this old card has any annual fee on it if it doesn't i don't want you to close it i want you to leave that line open and use it occasionally very sparingly keep that card active you want to have multiple lines of credit in your case you take a victory and you're turning it into a bit of a defeat if you can this card if it has no annual fee you want to get another card you want to get a different one uh you want to get an amazon card whatever it is get another card but don't throw the baby out with the bath water don't get rid of a card that's worked well for you over the years fits in your credit mix one of the things that's a minor factor with your credit is the age of your accounts but the bigger factor and why you would want to leave this account open is available credit the more available credit you have the better the more it boosts your credit score so get another card but if you do get that other card keep the old one the only time you even consider closing an old card there are two one is what's called a junk card which is a store only card one that's only good at one particular store no major logo on it like visa master card american express discover it's only good at a particular store those are garbage cards if you want to close one of those fine the other case is when a card has an annual fee you may want to close it but even with that here's an example so let's say you have an american express card and you can't justify the big annual fee you're paying on that amex card there are now so many american express cards that don't have an annual fee so you can just exchange the one with an annual fee with american express for another one that doesn't have an annual fee and think those ways don't reduce the amount of available credit you have because that will hurt you so do you call in that case call amex and ask them to do it or just apply for the card and then close the other one so we'll talk about amex specifically american express even if your credit's frozen well since they have access to your credit as an active card member all the time you can go on amex and see what else is available and you can either talk to someone there or you can apply right on the website for a replacement that has no annual fee we think because the brand on that card is the brand on that card that's the only card of that brand we can have but you look at the big issuers of cards a chase city capital one and american express i think are the four giants of the credit card business i don't know if i'm missing anybody they have broad card lines they've had so many choices from cards that have potentially big annual fees to many many cards with no annual fees many with great rewards built into them so you just migrate within their system instead of dumping the card you have in their system coming up ahead what can you expect for your wallet from air conditioning this summer and gasoline for your vehicle we're going to talk about what energy is going to do to your wallet over the next three months it's time to reboot your credit card with apple card now when you get a new apple card by may 31st you can earn seventy five dollars back at nike just spend seventy five dollars or more on qualifying purchases at nike using apple card with apple pay within your first 30 days apple card gives you unlimited daily cash back that you can automatically grow at 4.15 percent annual percentage yield when you open a high yield savings account learn more about apple card in the wallet app on iphone apple card subject to credit approval savings provided by golden and sax bank usa member fdic and available to apple card owners subject to eligibility requirements 75 dollar daily cash valid only for new apple card accounts opened by may 31st 2023 qualifying purchases at nike only within the u.s additional terms and limitations apply visit apple dot co slash nike promo for important offer details the headlines you see are always scary and almost always negative news negative news is what becomes news so when something positive happens we don't pay that much attention and i wanted to tell you for this summer there's a lot of positive news for your wallet number one let's talk about gasoline because we're moving into the peak of gasoline use during the summer driving season and i'm looking at the trends and it's so fantastic the price of oil that then translates into what you pay for gasoline is so favorable and so different than it looked like it would be three months ago it's why predicting the price of energy in anything other than a relatively short period like a few months become so hazardous but you look at the price of oil over the last year and the price of oil has fallen by 40 plus percent in turn that means during the time of year when what you pay for gasoline normally goes up and up and up gasoline usually peaks the second week of july and then starts trending back down this year the prices will trend down leading into the fourth of july almost certainly almost everywhere in the united states all bets would be off if some crazy unexpected event happens in the world some war whatever or a big turn and the russian invasion of ukraine can lead to higher prices again but the trends for oil in turn what you pay for gasoline or diesel are so favorable looking through the summer and that's great news gosh you go back a year ago it's crazy the difference in the price of oil from a year ago price of a barrel of oil a year ago 122 dollars today 70 that's a huge difference and what then translates into what you'll pay per gallon of gas and the good price news has been going on for a while but accelerated recently again at a time of year it usually goes the other way and particularly the conspiring of Saudi Arabia and Russia to try to hurt much of the rest of the world by price fixing oil failed and i think that surprised people in energy markets that that conspiracy of Saudi Arabia and Russia to hurt the rest of the world did fail such good news for our wallets but wait i'm not done i got more great news after Russia invaded ukraine the cost of natural gas which is the most important source of energy for homes retail and industry the cost of natural gas went crazy high after the russian invasion of ukraine and since then the price defying all expectations of experts in the natural gas industry the price of natural gas has gone down and down and down and down in fact compared to just gosh about eight months ago natural gas was four times the price four times the price that it is now at wholesale why would you care what it is at wholesale because most electricity in the united states is generated in most places in the united states from natural gas number one source of the energy provided to us through electricity to our homes and businesses schools factories blah blah blah is natural gas number one source and so most power providers the cost of the actual energy itself is a direct pass through good or bad and in between to you and me and our electricity bills so this is wonderful news and it means that the cost of cooling your home in most states around the country and most jurisdictions within a state are going to be much more favorable for your wallet than they were a year ago there are exceptions there are states that don't allow the free market to rule in the energy markets it's a corrupt process with a monopoly power provider and the politicians bought off by those utilities come up with power prices that are really ridiculously high and it's unfortunate when the free market is not allowed to do its thing because there are times the free market will punish our wallets but allowing the free market to run ultimately leads to more efficiency and better prices for your and my wallet and for those of you who don't believe in the free market go to clark.com slash clark stinks and let me know Krista okay the first questions from Larry in Arizona clark would you please settle an argument and bet between my wife and I our son is in the Air Force in Hawaii food and shelter are covered he saves about 25% of his income monthly the rest he spends albeit not always on the wisest purchases such as eating out a lot when his food is already covered I say this is enough and he should use the rest to use as he pleases my wife says it's not enough given that he could easily save more who is right clark there is a shoulder massage on the line so your wife is always right except in this case she's uh I respectfully disagree with her and support your position if a young person is living his life saving 25% of his pay that's fantastic he's building a lifelong habit now one thing I'd like for both of you to encourage your son to do is to participate in the thrift savings plan the TSP is available to him as a brave person who has chosen to serve our nation in the us Air Force and thank him for that for me and one of the benefits you get is you get access to the TSP thrift savings plan is a incredibly superior savings plan compared to what the rest of us have available to us and the rules have changed for military TSPs there's now a match for what your son puts in it I'd want your son to go in the lifecycle fund available to him through the TSP go in the Roth version of the TSP and that's where I want him shoving a lot of money into and the fact that he's choosing to eat out even though he's got free food on base I've had a lot of free food on base and uh the eating out sounds like a really good idea that's something I really enjoy is eating out so I get it I'm still showing why the food's so good and ridiculously expensive except at oh Costco Costco same dollar 50 our dog is is in the lower 48 I wasn't talking about hot dogs the fish there okay Greg in Florida says my mother-in-law moved in with us about 10 years ago and is now 90 she's still mobile with a walker and a pleasure to have in the house oh we set up a joint bank account when she moved in that her social security goes into and we transferred $300 a month for expenses out of her $1,100 in monthly income we pretty much pay for everything else except for her life insurance policy and lifeline necklace and she'll buy takeout a couple of nights a month she had a bad fall last year and became 100 dependent but we were able to get her independence back after about six months of home care which siblings helped to cover the cost we are considering raising the amount she pays us we don't know what's fair she has no assets and just what she's been able to save up since living with us which is now about $8,000 in the bank any guidance would be greatly appreciated so first of all how wonderful Greg and this is a pattern across the United States I talked recently about what percent of American households are now multi-generational against like what's old is become new again and most care to older loved ones is being provided by younger loved ones that's who's filling the gap is caregivers also providing financial support I would recommend Greg just so there's no misunderstanding is your mother-in-law your wife should have a conversation with her siblings and talk through with them what is fair and you just want their buy-in you never want there to be any feeling that the two of you are in any way taking advantage you two are are doing a labor of love providing a place and care in your home or your mother-in-law at 90 years old and the siblings your wife's siblings should be very supportive it's just that's a conversation she should have with them about how you're handling the social security money and as long as they're aware they should be completely supportive and it's what people don't know what's not communicated to them that causes distrust later Todd and Texas as my wife and I are both 39 years old we have three sons 14 11 and 9 and are debt-free except for our home we max out our IRAs in my 401k every year oh wait wait wait wait can you stop right there for a second please stopped all right you know I hear from people over and over again that we would be able to save money if we didn't have young kids here we've got a couple that has three young kids 14 11 9 is that what you said yep and they're maxing out saving for retirement yep okay that's incredible that's great we have a hundred and eighty eight thousand in our traditional IRAs and 460 and Roth IRAs we've also saved two hundred and thirty four thousand and our kids 529s and don't plan on funding them further we want to get into real estate for retirement and have heard about using a self-directed IRA to buy real estate we'd like to do this with the cash we have in the IRAs rather than getting a mortgage if possible what does Clark think of this approach should we use the money from our Roth or traditional IRAs so I'm going to surprise you I hate these self-directed IRAs I can't stand them they have very very high costs they're an area that's been abused by a lot of people and so you're more subject to oversight from the IRS potentially them disallowing what you've done and real estate has its own embedded tremendous tax benefits having it as a regular taxable investment so there's clear benefits without all the crazy rules and overhead costs of doing this with IRA money I'd rather you build up enough money so you can make a down payment on an investment property and you own it as a personal investment rather than inside an IRA or you know a Roth IRA already has the benefit of being tax-free money tax-free growth tax-free spending you lose the tax advantage of owning real estate as an investment when you hold it inside a Roth IRA holding it which most people do inside a traditional IRA remember every dollar you end up making in a traditional IRA is taxed at ordinary income tax rates real estate owned outside as an investment not inside a retirement account is subject to very favorable tax rules and so you are potentially creating a tax time bomb owning it inside a traditional IRA so you never want to own it inside a Roth and you've got lots of problems owning it inside a traditional so I know there are pitches everywhere everywhere online on social media websites advertising online telling you that this is nirvana to own real estate through an IRA and I think it stinks don't do it that way anytime I say that oh man or people get mad at me but anyway it's what I believe in my heart and my head or my head in my heart so I want to tell you we had a Clark Stinks recently saying that you miss me saying save more spend less and avoid getting ripped off so here it is there it is because that's what we're about is you taking control of your wallet each and every day and remember we serve you around the clock at clark.com