05.26.23 Clark Answers His Critics on Clark Stinks / Memorial Day Spotlight: Military Benefits

It's my pleasure to welcome you here to the Clark Howard Show where our missions deserve you and empower you so you make better financial decisions in your life. We're not going to have a podcast Monday in honor of Memorial Day. I hope that you have a wonderful Memorial Day holiday weekend and enjoy it. Let's remember for a second the brave men and women, the patriotic men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for us and that's why we have Memorial Day in the first place. For Veterans, something I do every year at Memorial Day and Veterans Day is I talk about things involving you and I'm going to do that later in this podcast. But first it's time for people's absolute favorite segment, Clark Stinks. I should have never encouraged you to speak. You much think I'm pretty stupid. You should be ashamed of yourself. Well maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm wrong. People's favorite segment are your favorite segment. Well people are polarized about Clark Stinks aren't they? I don't know, I get most people like it that write in about it. I love it. Because you know we get stuck in our ways, we get stuck in our habits, we get too narrowly focused and it's so helpful to me for people to say, Clark, you missed this, you didn't think about that. You're just wrong, whatever it is, it's helpful to me. Alright, well here we go. Let's do it. You stink like a tuna sandwich left in a car for a week in July. Well not really. When you were talking about adult kids using YNAB or Mint, you forgot to mention that if they still have a .edu email address, they can get a year of You Need a Budget, which is YNAB for free. There are also threads on Reddit and other sites that have referral codes from users to get them a month of free YNAB Trevor. Thank you very much Trevor and it's great to have a trial period with, because you need a budget, YNAB is not cheap, but it can be priceless. But if you get it and you don't really use it, then you're wasting even more money in your life. So I love the trial period and I love that people of the E.D. use get for a year. No one's ever told us that. Yeah, that's what this is all about too. Eric from Jersey City here. I love the show, but one thing I think you miss often is focusing exclusively on air and cruise travel and never talking about trains. I've taken Amtrak all over the country and it has the advantages of being a smoother ride, easier to get on board with no TSA and having stations in much better locations than airports. For example, most people visiting New York during the holidays would be better off arriving at Penn Station, a block from the famous 34th Street Macy's, than an airport's an hour long $60 cab ride from what they came to see. Well Eric, thank you and first of all, you know Jersey City's on a roll. It's really become a beautiful place. So Amtrak saved our holiday season when we were caught up in New York City with the multiple day meltdown of Southwest Airlines and if it hadn't been for Amtrak, we wouldn't have made it home in time for Lane to be with her family. So yes, Amtrak is something I don't talk a lot about because Amtrak is very effective in the Washington to Boston corridor, not so much elsewhere in the country. It saved our bacon one time too, remember? I remember we were in a massive blizzard in New York. We were meeting with my publisher. We had to get back for another event and we ended up taking Amtrak in the blizzard to Baltimore. Well also the airport, we were flying out of LaGuardia and the airport was shut down because the plane went off the runway also that day. So it was crazy. But yeah, it was. So if it had not been for Amtrak twice, I would have been stranded in New York. There are people who love New York so much they'd say worst things could happen, but we had places to go, things to do, stories, songs, fun, right? So Amtrak did make it happen for us. Thanks Clark for all your valuable information about Brokered CDs. I've been buying them from Schwab for years and I'm very happy with our performance through the good times and bad. There are a couple of things you should point out that I haven't heard mentioned. If you're not careful, you could buy a callable CD which can be terminated at any time by the issuer. A five year callable CD could be called at one year and you'd only get the interest for the first year. You're far better off buying a four and a half percent regular five year non-callable CD than a five percent callable one. Also banking credit union CDs are in compound interest whereby Brokered CDs don't. Curtis and several people wrote in about the callable CD thing. Curtis, thank you. Every time people in the banking business think that interest rates are going to decline, that's when the callables rear their ugly head again. And normally you're not even going to realize in that mice type of a CD contract that you're buying a callable which means you can be thrown out because they can now get money cheaper than what they promised to pay you. And that is a wonderful point. I had not noticed that the banks were going back to what to me is an unethical practice with the callables where they say, well, if it benefits us, you keep it for the five years. And if it doesn't benefit us, we're going to kick you to the curb when we want to. Okay. A couple about the subscription we heard from, I think his name was Tom about his subscription. Then he also wrote in again this week saying that he was able to lower his subscription price. But here are a couple of stinks about this. Clark, a listener asked about saving money at subscriptions specifically asking about the Wall Street Journal. You should have told him if they are okay with an electronic subscription that Apple News Plus has the Wall Street Journal for $10 a month. Also it's $90 a year through Costco. Aaron, Apple News Plus is. And I did confirm that it's $90 a year through Costco. So you get Wall Street Journal and then other publications as well. That's who Aaron. Do you have to be an iPhone user? I would think so. Okay. I got to figure this out because I just got my renewal recently for the Wall Street Journal. And it wasn't like I was trying to buy the Wall Street Journal. I was just trying to get my regular six day a week subscription. Okay. I'm going to work on that one. Clark, did you get newsprint on your glasses when you answered the question about constantly escalating renewal prices for newspaper subscriptions? You suggested letting the subscription lapse in order to take advantage of a new deal. But that leaves you without the publication for a time. Here's a tip. If you have another person in your household, you don't need to go without the pub at all. Just let your subscription lapse start a new one with under the second person's email. Once the year is gone, buy let that one lapse and start again on your email using the then current promo. Problem solved, Rick. You know, this has become a thing in the digital era with what happens with video streaming services. We're talking about news publication subscriptions is that the business model of offering teasers and then having them spring to higher prices doesn't work that well in this era. And publications have got to be realistic about charging the price they need to charge instead of putting people into something where you offer a low rate and then it goes way up because people are going to do exactly these kinds of things. Clark, I heard you suggest Big Box Warehouse stores is the best place to get tires. Well, they may have the cheapest tires, Big Box Warehouse Tire Centers constantly have the worst ratings of all tire shops due to customer service. I believe a lot of your listeners place a high value on their time and every single warehouse tire center in my area has a long list of complaints about people that are stuck waiting all day to get their car serviced. Please address the customer no service issues at these tire centers. David. David, thank you. All right. So what's the trade off? It is true that they're not going to have you in and out typically in an hour and it might be a long, long time. My daughter recently, her tires were from Costco, Steffi's tires were from Costco and she had, you know, you get the road hazard from them and the tire was damaged and she had to wait four and a half hours till the tire was, I forgot if they had to repair it or replace it because all I heard from her is, you know, that she lost the four and a half hours. And I said, Steffi, don't you remember? I said, take it there and Uber somewhere you need to be. And then if you need to get a ride from somebody or Uber back because the car will be there a long time. I mean, you know, when you buy tires from one of the warehouse clubs, you got to know it's not going to be the same normally quicker experience. You'll have somewhere else, but you'll have lower prices and you'll have service after the sale from them. It just may not be quick. Well, I have to agree also, like I've gotten tires at Costco and every single time for me, it's that when I go there, just even talk to someone or just say I'm there for an appointment I made, they've got one person working. They've got a big line, they're trying to handle so much and answer the phone. It just seems like they're kind of understaffed to me. Well, the volume is so high. They only have so many bays. You can only have so many people doing the tires. There's going to be this problem that we just heard about you experience, my daughter experience. And so if you know going in, that's what it is fine. But what a good point that I'm price, price, price, price, price is what my head thinks about. And you brought up a perspective that I don't really address or think about. When Clark was giving advice on managing our digital lives after our deaths, he said not to forget our frequent flyer miles. He said he wanted to make sure his family inherited all the points he has saved up when he goes to the great Costco in the sky. But yet he also advises that travel points can be devalued or canceled over time by the airlines and it's best to use them soon after we earn them. So which is it save or spend spend spend spend your points. That was from Craig. Craig, you are completely right. I mean, you look at the devaluation that several of the full fair lines just did with their miles where you had miles you thought would buy you a trip here and now they'll buy you a trip three miles away. I mean, it's brutal. It's vicious. What the airlines do in good times to their customers who are supposedly their most loyal customers. So miles do not get better with time. They deteriorate in value. And when you have miles to take a nice reward flight, use them. Don't sit on them. I take issue with your newsletter article on bundling insurance coverage of home and car. As a licensed independent home and casually agent for years, I differ with your analysis. Bundling both coverages with the same insurer saves you money only if you will be buying that insurance from that company in the first place. If you shop your insurance on the general market, you usually will find a separate company with equal substance that beats the discounted price by a significant amount. Of course, if you're too lazy to shop for the bargain, you get what you deserve. It is easier to say, just sell it to me. I noticed you made no mention of personal or corporate issues that would cause the single company to drop you personally or discontinue writing coverage in your state. I've seen both of these happen. They are real Robert. Robert, thank you. And sounds like you are. Yeah, you're an independent agent. I love independent agents. Most people don't even know they exist. Agents and auto and homeowners insurance are what are known as captive agents. They only can sell insurance coverage for that one company. A captive agent is never going to be able to offer you the lowest prices in the marketplace. Independent agents don't have the billions of marketing dollars that the big insurers have so people tend to gravitate towards those captive agents. You are much better served with an independent agent. Robert, I defer to your expertise if it is actually cheaper for people to individually shop each facet of their property and casually insurance. I take your word for that. I'm not sure if this is a stink or not. I always hear you speak about moving companies but not about self moving companies. These companies are much cheaper. Yes, you have to load them yourself. Some even offer moving help. This way, no one can hold your items hostage since you have full control over all aspects of the move. Thanks to you and your team for all you do, JL. JL, I have had the misadventures of driving my own rental moving truck. And thank goodness, I have never wrecked one. But yes, the items are in your possession. You will save a lot of money doing it. Know that the auto insurance you have usually will not cover you for use of a rental truck. You will have to buy the overpriced insurance offered by the rental truck company for the move and know that the prices vary a lot on a rental truck based on day of the month that you rent the truck. Also the direction you're moving. And that's why it's important to compare from different companies because the algorithms they use to set the cost of a truck vary so much from one company to another, one date to another, and one move if you're moving the one way rental, the one way rentals can be so different in price from one company to another. I was thinking JL might mean the pod companies too. And you said the stuff stays in your possession. So if it stays in your possession, you would have to be driving a truck. But the pod thing is very popular now where they drop the pods at your home and there are many different companies that have those. You load it, then the company comes with something that looks kind of like a commercial trash-hauling truck. It comes and it scoops it up, goes on there. And when they have enough loads going the direction you're going, it comes across to whatever one way destination you're moving to. It can also be used potentially locally for a local move. In the Clark Stinks podcast, you mentioned to a lady remodeling her in-law suite that there's no harm in waiting to buy the appliances. I agree and I have another tip. I think that if she buys them early, that's when the manufacturer's warranty starts, not when they go into use. So it's likely better that she waits to buy them. Carol. Carol, thank you. The midst of that question I talked about how appliance prices having spiked so much in the time of factory shutdowns because of COVID, supply chain disruptions, so they couldn't make appliances. The price of appliances went through the roof and they've been going down, down, down, down. That was the main reason I mentioned to delay buying them. This is another reason that the warranty clock starts ticking right away. Clark Stinks like my worn out running shoes. I've been listening to Clark since I was in college. My husband and I are debt free and try to be max savers. Now that you're doing the podcast, I've noticed that the show is getting shorter. The problem is I love to listen to Clark when I go for my daily run and I just can't run as fast as I used to. I need the podcast to be at least 35 minutes to get me to the end of my run. Lately, it's been shorter than 30 minutes and I need more Clark to get me to my fitness goals as well as my financial goals, Mary. So Mary, here's the dirty little secret. In the years I was in syndication radio, there were 18 minutes of commercials in that hour and then local cutaways at the top and the bottom for if stations ran local or syndicated network, news cast or whatever. So the minutes of the podcast average equivalent to what we did in syndication all those years, which was 33 minutes. The advantage with the podcast is some of them will be longer, some will be shorter. Do people see when they have an episode? You see how long it is? So take me back to a .9 or .8 where you listen to my slow delivery even slower and we'll get you to the 30 minutes because most podcasts are 30 minutes. It's just we had all this other stuff. Basically, when I was in syndication, you had one minute of my content for every one minute of something else. Now it's a much more favorable ratio for tuning in. Can we call it tuning in when it's a podcast? Sure. It's really more like a listening, watching. Yeah. Wherever you want to receive the content. That 30 minutes that you do is great. You keep that up. That half hour a day is going to make your life not only longer, it's going to make it healthier and allow you to stay more active much longer in your life. Moving ahead, I am so grateful to the wonderful and brave men and women who are part of our U.S. military. Here we are at Memorial Day. I want to talk about the whole idea of commitment to service and then also mention there are wonderful benefits out there that a lot of people who serve don't even know are out there. I come from a family of military tradition, even though we're an immigrant family to the U.S. All four of my grandparents were born overseas. But when our families arrived in the United States, we were so grateful to be able to live in this incredible, wonderful country of ours. And yes, we have problems. We could spend all day talking about the problems. And I'm dismayed and distressed about the angry divisions we have in our country right now because we only stay strong when we're united. You're the United States of America. One thing I ask of you, this Memorial Day, when you think about the sacrifice of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, you and I could be free. However, united creates strength, division creates weakness in any society. And we're in a time where we've decided we don't like each other much as Americans anymore. And that really, really hurts me to my core. A lot of the things we've gotten all fired up about with each other, we've been manipulated on that. And I ask you something to think about as we appreciate what others have done, giving up their lives so we could have the freedoms we enjoy in this great country. Think about what these divisions are doing to the strength of our nation, particularly at a time, there are a lot of people out there in other countries that wish us harm. And we're doing harm to ourselves. And I know enough about that because this is not a political podcast. That's not what we're about. Some of you know many don't that after the terrorist attacks on September 11 of 01, I wanted to join the military. I was too old, but I was able to join my state guard and enlisted in my state guard in November of 01. Even no one existed, about half the state's have state guards. I served for 21 years. And it was something that was great for me to do, particularly since in addition to the prior generation, everyone serving in the military. I have cousins who served. Both my brothers served in the military. My father was a captain in the army during World War II. My brother was his rank in the Navy. I got promoted several times as an officer. I think he was an 03 or 04. My other brother was a sergeant in the Air Force Reserves. It's just part of our tradition. I did not serve till after September 11 and was a state guardsman for all those years. So many, it was such a privilege to meet so many people that were in every branch of the military, including regular military and the state and federal combined forces of the National Guard, Army and Air Guard. This is something in an all volunteer era that is so fantastic, the people who serve. And that's why we put so much effort and have just updated our guide to benefits available and deals available to military personnel, veterans and their families and our military guide at Clark.com. We've gotten a little stale. We wanted to do an update and we've done it. And it is there for you and anyone you know, family member, friend who serves or has served, you have rights and you have privileges and benefits as well from serving. And I want to make sure you get all of those. And it goes beyond just getting a discount of 10% at some restaurant or something. There's so many things out there for you. And I want you to have the advantage of them. I know we don't have a culture today where today's teenagers overwhelmingly, they don't even think about serving in the military. And I've long had this belief that we should have two years of national service in the United States that you go into after high school, whether it be for the military or some other cause that would serve the country. And I've talked about that from time to time, we've gotten very hard pushback from people who think that that is not a good thing at all. I really think that we, part of that division I talked about earlier is because we don't know each other like we used to. We don't have that common purpose that we need. And the common purpose so often comes from a foreign enemy. I would rather as short of wartime be able to have that sense of national purpose. If you do serve, thank you so much. If you did serve, thank you very much and know that we got a lot of info for you on our military guide at Clark.com. And with that having been said, Krista, it's now time for questions on today's podcast. All right. Matt and Georgia says first you are a beast. I love that. You often mention your dislike of debit cards. The credit union I'm a member of requires me to use the debit card at least 15 times a month and spend at least $500, 500 clamps over the course of a month. That's especially don't hear much anymore over the course of a month with our debit card in order to qualify for high interest rates in my checking account. What are the best and safest charges you recommend in order to accrue these 15 transactions totaling $500 every month? So the debit card has some dangers to it where if you buy something in advance, you buy something online, the way I look at it with any of these plans that you only get the interest on the money you have with the bank or credit union. If you do the trigger transactions, which usually is 12, 15 or 20 you have to do in a month is that just the ones you avoid is what counts. Everything you're buying now that you'll receive later and nothing you buy online. But other things, particularly you don't have to do any large purchases on it. I'd keep the threshold below $50 for a transaction because you have to do 15 anyway and get those done and you're good. The thing about the debit card being an inferior way to buy things is because you don't have protections you do if you use a credit card. So there's a risk to you using the debit card, but that's a possibility. The certainty is if you jump through the hoops your credit union wants you to do, you're going to earn good money. So in that case, the tradeoff is worth it. Just remember the don'ts of where you don't use it and the purchase amounts you don't use it for. You'll be fine. I'm surprised at your answer to that one. You always surprised me. Well, but the thing is anything that has risk, you can overcome that with the rewards. It's like when people kept asking me about the Wells Fargo 2% credit card with all the things I've said about Wells Fargo, how could I recommend the card? Because it's a really good card. I wouldn't carry it because I've heard all the nightmares from people, but it's a good card and the risk is that Wells Fargo in there for you if you have a problem with it, but it's a really good card. I mean, I'm thinking I would want to put my money in a savings account. A high interest savings account and just keep enough of my checking to use because my credit card rewards are good. You could do that, but you know, these checking account offers have been so good because in the reason they do this with using, you have to clear the debit card as if it's a credit card, you know, they'll ask you debit or credit. The merchant fees that the credit union charges is so high or the bank offering one of these accounts, they're so high that that subsidizes the high rate of interest they pay you on the account. Brian in Pennsylvania says I'm currently looking for engagement rings and my girlfriend has given me some guidance on what she likes. She told me she's fine with a lab grown diamond and because of that, I can get her a much larger and better quality diamond than she mentioned within my budget. She's brilliant, by the way. She's obviously brilliant. There are a myriad of online retailers to choose such as Rare Care at Brilliant Earth and With Clarity. I found one ring setting I particularly like from With Clarity, but doing some research I also found they changed names a few years back because of some bad reviews. I also hear that a lot of these sites are using the same diamond wholesalers. So I've seen stories of people ordering a diamond only to be told later the diamond was already sold. I was wondering if you have any tips or recommendations to give or should I avoid these sites altogether? So I must tell you the lab created diamonds have become such a big part of the diamond market and usually will hear patterns and you found things online that people were complaining about a particular one, the name and change lot. To my knowledge, we have not had a single customer service complaint about people buying a lab created diamond. Am I right about that? I haven't seen one come through, but I could ask our consumer action center too if they've had it. So I've not heard that, but there are many of these companies out there and any time you have so many, you're going to have some that turn out not to be running a stable business or they may not have their act together or they may not be run by the nicest people. But so far we have not heard complaints. I've not heard this thing about the broker aspect that's never come up in any of my reading because I've read a lot on this area. I've done a lot of stories on this on television and so I've not heard of problems. The biggest player I think in the market now is the one to be your zones, which is light box and they may not, I don't know what size diamond you're intended once, but they're biggest stones or two carrots and these diamonds that these companies sell, they're just ridiculously nice. Now, there are more and more sellers of lab created diamonds where you can go to actual retail stores and you'd be able to see the stones in person that they have an inventory at a retail store and that would be another way to approach this and more and more traditional diamond selling jewelers are now stocking both lab created and dug out of the earth diamond. So you have alternatives other than just looking at online sellers. And Erica Florida says, my son who recently turned 18 is scheduled to start college this fall semester. We anticipate that he'll live in a dorm at least during the first year. What preparations should we make for his transition, power of attorney, access to medical records, etc. Also, should he carry renters insurance if he lives in a dorm? So renters insurance for a dorm is something that is not a high priority unless your son has a lot of very expensive possessions. Most often the time that renters insurance becomes very important is when your son Eric moves into off-campus housing, moves into an apartment or a private provider kind of dorm apartment kind of hybrid which are more and more common near large state university campuses. So the renters insurance day certainly comes. I'm not sure that the dorm is a high priority for that. Having power of attorney, particularly healthcare directive would be really good. Each state typically has its own statutory durable power of attorney for healthcare. Everybody in your family should have one of these, not just your 18-year-old son. It's one of the most overlooked documents that in the event someone cannot communicate for themselves, you need somebody who has power and the clear instructions that each family member would like. And so with most state statute powers of attorney for healthcare, it names the messenger and the message and they're really easy to do. A general power of attorney, it would need to be a fairly unusual situation for that. But again, if you have the durable power of attorney for healthcare, it deals with a variety of health issues that may arise while your son is at college. The good news is that most teenagers where they go to college, school or go straight into work, they're usually incredibly healthy and there won't be a concern with that. Now I hope that freshman year of college is fantastic for your son. And I want to thank you so much for being with us today on today's podcast and I appreciate so much those of you take time to improve what we offer and what I say by your very, very thoughtful posts on Clark Stinks. I appreciate them so very much. I hope that you have a wonderful holiday weekend and that this unofficial kickoff this summer presents you with the best summer of your life. ♪♪♪♪