05.15.26 Clark Answers His Critics on Clark Stinks / Key Homeowners Insurance Rule

[Music] It's great to have you here on the Clark Power Show. You know, our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you so you make better financial decisions in your life. It's Friday! You know what that means? I'm feeling ready to learn some hard lessons in this week's Clark Stink segment. Also, in this episode, we've heard from so many Clarkies about a knock at the door. It's from a ruffer who's offering a free roof inspection. I've gotten so many of these. You have? Oh, yes. I'm going to tell you why that free roof could cost you big time. But right now, it's time to find out where I messed up big time. In this week's Clark Stink. I should have never encouraged you to speak. You must think I'm pretty stupid. You should be ashamed of yourself. Well, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're right, pal. [Music] By the way, I've gotten so many solicitations not with new race. [Laughter] Okay. Okay, I didn't take it though. I know, I just thought well. Kellyanne Wisconsin says, "I would love to say you smell like roses and petunias, but no one could be completely perfect." I know you've mentioned saving on prescriptions, but I think you've forgotten one thing. Ask the doctor or nurse about manufacturer savings programs. My doctor is able to sign me up for one that will cover up to $20,000 a year. Wow. My prescription. It is a major lifesaver. Kellyanne, thank you very much. And of course, I know about the manufacturer discount programs. I've used them before myself to neglect to mention it. Is clearly a terrible omission on my part. We've covered it. We have it on Clark.com, but I get so hyper focused talking about how to save on prescriptions routinely. I forget to mention the manufacturer programs. And thank you so much for bringing it to your fellow listener and viewers attention. Donna in Georgia says, "Not a Clark stinks, but I heard listener talking about auto-fill with her credit card online. After two incidents of fraud, I discovered that yes, every piece of info was in fact auto-filling in my browser and also was my email to use my card. I found the solution was to go into my Chrome settings and toggle off on the auto-fill for the security code. Yes, the security code was automatically filling in. I hope that helps someone." Thank you. All right. So I use auto-fill with Google for credit cards. But this is where it auto-fills the two-factor authentication as well. Not two-factor, but it will your last three digits of your card or four if it's an MX. You can choose to have that auto-fill with your card or not. Why not have that auto-fill? So then you have to write it in each time. I didn't know I could have that auto-fill. Would you? No, no, but I didn't know I could do that. Mm-hmm. Okay. Mitch in Minnesota says, "You stink worse than loot-fix in the open summer sun. You missed main reasons electric vehicles are more expensive to ensure. When an EV gets into an any accident, much greater than a fender bender, repair shops do not want to take the responsibility for the integrity of the battery system since it's difficult to determine and can cause considerable danger. So EVs get totaled. This is much different from an ice vehicle." There are so many issues when an EV is in an accident. It's crazy. I mean, because you have very few shops that want to go to the expense of being electric vehicle repair certified as body shops, because body shops are busier than they can handle anyway. And the complexity of electric vehicles and all the rest mean that it's more expensive and you did bring up a really valid point. A lot of insurers just flat out just total them out with relatively minor damage. This is a teething problem learning curve kind of thing. And what will happen is electric vehicle automakers will do what Tesla has done and they will put in their own repair shops, body shops, where they repair vehicles after an accident because they're the manufacturer. They know how the systems integrate and they know how to properly repair one or say, oops, this vehicle is done. And they work that out with the insurance company of just her. But the insurance premium difference is with some insurers unbelievably higher. And you've got to know this and factor this in for an electric vehicle versus a gas engine. Did I mention that my daughter switched to to Tesla insurance? On a recent show, USAAA Cutter Cost by more than two thirds. That's great. If you're in a state where that's a lot, right? Yeah. Where they ensure insurance. Marvin in Wisconsin says, when you talked about security cameras with no subscription fee, you told us about them, but you didn't give any names. That was a common one. Also, Scott New York says your peace on security cameras left out some really important details. Yes, many cameras come without subscription fees. These fees are almost always for cloud storage of your recordings. Some cameras do offer free cloud storage of very short clips. 10 seconds or so for short durations a week to 10 days. Cameras can be used for real-time monitoring with no storage or many can use SD cards for local storage of your recordings. The cloud storage is for peace of mind and retaining evidence. If your cameras damaged in something like a fire or stone during a robbery, all your recordings are gone, leaving you no evidence of what happened. Thank you both for your post. All right. So, I don't remember why I didn't talk about various brands that are sold without a security fee. And I'm not prepared to name brands right now. So I guess we can do that as an anchor. We'll put that on Clark.com. We'll be in a link to it in the show notes. So this is how I do it. I have wise cams. WYZ. WYZ, which historically were the cheapest ones, which is why I had wise cams. And I can see live what's going on in camera. But then the cameras have SD cards. So any criminal who's breaking in is going to see those cameras and they're just going to throw them away or steal the SD card. And then there's nothing there. But cloud storage is how all the camera company subscriptions work. That's how they all make their money. They sell you cloud storage at a big markup. They don't even care if they lose money on selling you the camera initially because the money is all made on the cloud storage subscriptions. Andro and Florida says I'm a long time clarky but clark omitted several things when discussing studying abroad in college. When you first brooch the topic, you sounded dismissive of American students going abroad as just another vacation or excuse for partying. But this could not be further from the truth, which was surprising coming from Mr. Travel. It's important to let the listeners know studying abroad can be much more affordable than some may think. Colleges and universities actively encourage students to do a semester abroad. There are tons of scholarships and financial aid programs available for students, even at community colleges. There also may be dedicated staff to help facilitate this. Personally studying abroad has been one of the most enriching experiences of my life. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you very much only one of my three kids did study abroad and it was fantastic for her. But I want to talk about another angle and that is American students that are going after high school to university in other countries, particularly in Germany and in Great Britain. We have friends who have one kid who's in Scotland at college and another who's in Wales. And they are paying a fraction of what a private college would cost in the United States and pretty much equivalent to about in state tuition at a state school. And so it's an opportunity to have a complete foreign cultural immersion for four years and also potentially save money. Greg in California says, Clark, Clark, Clark and the smacking my head emoji. Recently you said you pay all of your credit cards directly through the credit card company websites and not through your bank bill pay. You went on to say people should do the same and set up auto pay. Where do I begin? At first auto pay is a great idea but if done externally and you're not paying close attention and the money isn't there, you not only missed your payment. Now you pay a junk fee for overdraft. Your bill pay can be set up to avoid payment when money isn't there for people who are flush with cash. This is not a problem. People living on the edge. This could be a disaster. Second, now you've given outside entity access to your account and that may work most of the time. But when there's a problem, it's nearly impossible to turn off. I have my credit union get all my bills and it automatically sets up minimum payments. At my discretion and control, I go in and simply change the amount to the statement balance. Easy peasy. Anyway, keep up the good fight. Thank you. All right, so Greg, this is one of the most difficult areas I talk about. All right. So your point about if you set up where it's automatically at least going to take minimum payment, that's fine if it's just for flake of the way it's like me that might forget to pay something or I travel a lot, whatever. And it's not an issue of cash flow. Cash flow, you're completely right. It's the worst possible scenario when somebody sets up automatic payment with, let's say, a credit card company or some of your money too. You set up automatic payment and there's no money there. And so you get balance payment charges, insufficient funds charges and you get late fee from whoever you're paying. It is a financial nightmare. All true. Now I used to use traditional bill pay at my financial institution. My case it was Charles Schwab and paid my bills from it. And I had some problems with it. And so I chose to start paying bills directly at the websites. And like as an example, with Schwab, a tax payment went missing and I got hit with $200 and something in junk fees. And I thought I was fine with the Schwab guarantee. So I submitted and they said, no, this doesn't apply. Oh, that was out that money. That was when I've never told that. No, I didn't know that. Yeah. It's a surprise you didn't come in and pass out talking about that when it happened. That's brutal. Well, you know, I never want to settle personal things. Right. Right. But I want you know, that's what moved me to realizing even though there's some risk with how the rules are set up on ACH, when you set up to pay things directly at a credit card website or when I pay my taxes, now I go straight to the taxing authorities website and pay there and all that. That there's a layer of protection that you may be giving up paying at the vendor's site. But I've decided that that is the better way. Your point specifically Greg on the setting up where there's an automatic at least minimum payment made point well taken. If somebody lives close to the edge financially, my advice is bad advice. Jimbo in Texas says Clark has said on several occasions that Apple devices are too expensive. It's the total cost of ownership, Mr. Howard. You talk about cars, SUVs and trucks in terms of TCO, why not phones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers. Yes, I pay a little more upfront on Apple devices, but I know I'm getting a quality device that will last many times longer, require much less support, need fewer security tools, consolidate my ecosystem, retain more value and boost productivity. I've experienced these myself. I'm an IT professional and I saw my customers experience and I comment on this as well. If you don't believe me, check out the many studies on the subject. Forster found that Max TCO is $547 lower over five years and has a 186% ROI compared to PCs. Apple devices perform better too. For example, iOS aggressively prioritizes foreground tasks by freezing background apps, limiting background processes, controlling multitasking and preventing apps from hogging CPU and battery. Even devices with fewer CPU cores and RAM outperform competition with higher specs for those items. Apple also designs and controls the CPU and GPU, the OS, the application frameworks, power management, storage, performance and security on-clave. Apple engineers integrate all these things together so they can and do optimize these components. The end user experience reflects all of these things. Their devices just work, have less issues and are well integrated with other Apple devices. Overall, making my computer life easier. I have three iPhones, three iPads and one MacBook. I'll be adding more but not anytime soon as these keep on ticking. You've helped me in so many ways. Thank you for all you do. Please keep it up. Thank you very much and I don't know which of my three kids use Jembo as a pseudo name. Jembo, I have the MacBook Neo as I talked about, I guess two months ago, it's very impressive and I can see it being useful in my life for years to come and it was so affordable. So you know for me, you're completely right. Total cost of ownership is really, really key. With electronics because of the obsolescence built in, I have a automatic bias towards the upfront cost and Apple may well be an exception to that. I heard it. We're going to save that. All right. We're going to go to Ed and California and finish up here. Dear Clark, you don't stink. In fact, you're one of the few podcasters who don't sell out their audiences by doing commercial endorsements and that's something I really appreciate. I have what will probably be a controversial Clark stinks. You've talked many times about your charitable work for Habitat for Humanity, but are you familiar with the concept of toxic charity? I understand that you enjoy your work with them, but have you ever considered they may do more harm than good? Habitat takes jobs away from home builders and while I understand it requires sweat equity, it still relies on charity from the organization and volunteers. I bought a condo in San Francisco, not with the help of a charity, but by using your principles of saving and living below my means. It took 16 years, but now I own my own place. Clark, I love your charitable intentions, but couldn't you help many more people if you spent that time, for example, producing videos that could be shown in high schools around the country, educating people on the basics of how to manage money so they can buy a house on their own. First of all, Ed, congratulations to you. All the hard work you went through and one of the most expensive markets in the United States, maybe in the world. You're able to buy a home in California. That's fantastic. Habitat for Humanity builds homes for the part of the housing market that builders are not interested. In fact, we have a lot of volunteers that are builders because they love doing it. We love having people who work as a home builder in the construction trades because they know what they're doing more than we do is generally clueless volunteers. But Habitat is a ladder onto the American dream of home ownership and the buyers of those homes are getting the homes more affordably because of the volunteer labor, but also because that market is not one that builders are interested in serving. The cost of land, materials, and labor has forced home builders out of even building for the middle class and building for the top 30% of income earners in the US generally. Habitat serves a market that would not be served otherwise. And I am so thankful to the volunteers who come out and build an affordable home. I'm also proud of these homeowners who have to make a mortgage payment every month like anybody else. They don't pay, they don't stay. And through thick and thin and their lives getting that payment done. And ultimately having that day when they're mortgage debt free, I had a Habitat homeowner come up to me just the other day and for those of you hate how I eat, I was in a McDonald's and said, I'm a magic five. I didn't know the expression magic five. Do you know what that now? Five mortgage payments left. Oh, they were mortgage debt free. I'd never heard that called magic five. But anyway, she was just bursting with joy after decades that she was getting ready to make her final mortgage payment and would own her home 100% free and clear. That's awesome. So, by the way, yes, last night at tennis practice, one of my teammates said, oh, I met your boss at a McDonald's. It's either McDonald's or Costco every time. Go ahead, sorry, carry on. See we're going to get the Clark Snakes about that. So if you were upset about my eating habits, go to Clark.com/ClarkStakes. Speaking of which, the new McDonald's pricing went into effect and I'm having to pay more. Oh wow. Food now. Yeah. Even with the app coming up ahead, somebody promises you a free roof. Do you say, yepy? Or do you run the other way? I'll fill you in. So I mentioned at the top of this YouTube show and podcast that a knock on the door is something that maybe not the opportunity appears to be when a roofer says, you know, we drone your roof or whatever they say and there's looks like there's hail damage up there. How do I like a new roof for free? Yeah, that's the pitch and it spread like a plague and Florida till the legislature made some changes about it. And it is an abuse of your insurance, where you think you're getting one over on the insurance company by replacing an older roof for free or nearly free by claiming this damage, this mysterious damage. And there are times that people do get hit by a hail on their roof. And that's when you would contact your insurance company and say, hey, you know, we had a hail storm come through, damage our cars, damage our house, and adjuster comes out and looks at it. But the thing is you got to know that making insurance claims is pretty much a no until you're proved into being a yes. What do I mean by that? Some owner's insurance is unstable as an industry. The insurance is now an adversarial relationship with you. Insurance companies no matter what they feel good ads say on TV or the funny ads on TV, they are not behaving as your friend today. They are not necessarily your enemy at best. They're your frenemy because insurers are now in the business. They're not selling broad insurance, but they are in the business of risk management. And that's why more and more things are now excluded from your homeowners insurance. And the ugliness of it is that if you make a small claim, not saying that a roof is a small claim, but if you make a small claim, the next thing you're likely to see is a cancellation notice or what they call it in the insurance industry because why would you call something what it is? They call it a non-renewal notice. The you're out. And you're out with there's an industry database that shows a recent claim, which means that other insurers aren't really that excited about having you because you had a recent claim. So let's go back to basics. Insurers insurance claims are something that should be there for a legit, serious, significant loss. Homeowner's insurance claims should not be made for smaller things. And having said that, if you're a long time listener of you or you know what I'm going to say next, if you're like, what's he going to say next? You want to raise the deductible on your homeowner's insurance as high as you can stand or if you still have a mortgage on your home as high as your mortgage lender permits you to do. I want you to completely rethink homeowner's insurance as something for catastrophes only. As someone who owns a home in the state of Florida, I will tell you that insurance is a pain there and the deductible we have would make you pass out. But it's pretty much a requirement having a property in the Florida market. So I've gotten really used to when something happens, we just have to pay for repairing it. And this is the hard thing. So I'm telling you that with homeowner's insurance, you want to first be your own insurance company. And only if and when a claim is back breaking or clearly obvious something that you should be contacting the insurer about and having them be your partner, that friend of me years to do what they will do past your deductible, you want to think first, no, am I even going to involve insurance? Or yes, I will. But then that brings the other side. So you're going to save money by raising that deductible until something goes wrong. And when something goes wrong, if it's major, before that happens, you want to make sure that you have sufficient total coverage. So let's say you have a bigger deductible, but you don't have sufficient coverage if it was catastrophic loss to rebuild your home or replace your home. This is a gap I see again and again, where people don't have enough coverage. So make sure your home is adequately insured past your deductible. And people like me who own a home in Florida, we're just playing dumb. I do love the beach, Christopher. I know. It's an expensive adventure. I know, but you love it so much. Yeah. Okay, we'll go to questions. I'm ready. Joel in South Carolina says for online savings accounts that promise a higher interest rate than local banks or credit unions, everyone talks about who has the best current rate, but no one talks about the sustainability of these rates. I refuse to chase the interest rate of the month. So how consistent are interest rates after the introductory period? And are there any institutions you find that are reasonably steady in their long term rates? I'm currently getting around 1.5% of my money market account. Okay. This is a great question, Joel. And you already use the terminology, but different than I would use. So a money market account is an account from a bank or credit unit. A money market mutual fund is the brokerage equivalent. And their rates are very consistent based on whatever is happening with market interest rates. So if you were to go to particularly one of the discount or online brokers, you're going to earn consistently the highest rates in a money market by buying one of theirs, then you're going to earn even with an online bank. However, a lot of people feel uncomfortable doing money market mutual fund accounts because there's no FDIC insurance. The risk with these is so close to zero is not even quantifiable. But if it makes you nervous at all, take a little teening lower yield from a brokerage by going into a government obligation money market fund, money market mutual fund, there would be a US treasury fund or a government obligation fund, that kind of thing. And that's the place where you'll consistently get the best interest rates over time. And here's the other thing, would you rather have FDIC insurance or would you rather own a direct obligation to the federal government like a US treasury? I would say that if people are worried about, well, that doesn't have FDIC insurance, having a US treasury money market fund is maybe a whisker more secure than FDIC insurance. Wayne in New York says, I'm not sure if you've mentioned this on the podcast, but I've been noticing a new scam lately. Scammers will add an event to your Google calendar containing links or a phone number for you to renew, react, etc. Please let your listeners know not to click links or contact these fraudulent sites. Thanks for all you do. Keep up the good work. And I recently was, look, I use a Google calendar. My work calendar had an invitation on there that just automatically showed up because somebody, and I think the invitation, I don't know, I missed it somehow in my email, but I'm sure it must have come. And yeah, links and everything in there. So I deleted it. Well, several of us in the company had this happen to us. So I think we've, somebody's been hacked. Oh, I don't know. I think they can just, they just have to invite your email address. There's no hacking. It's just use your, you don't think that it happened to so many of us. No. Right. So it's very, very common now. And what you said that so important, Wayne, is what we've been saying over and over again, do not click on links and things you receive. Even if you think you know the sender, you don't want to click on links. Or links you see in your calendar now, they're going to, an invitation automatically shows up. We talked about the invitation issue with the fake e-vites and punch bowls and stuff. Got another one yesterday. Oh my gosh. I got one right after you talked about it too. Yeah. So for those of you who missed that on our podcast and YouTube show, there's a scam now where people are downloading very dangerous spyware viruses onto your phone or your laptop by sending you a party invitation. And you click on the link for details and what you're getting instead is you're getting this deadly virus. You put on your device that basically bricks your computer. It doesn't brick it, but you need to. You need to totally factory reset after you get one of these phony party invitations. Here we're talking about the Google calendar same risk. So know that opening up links has become an entry way for criminals hackers to cause real havoc in your life. And if you get an e-viter invitation, even if it looks like it's from someone you know, email them separately and ask if they set you an invitation before you open it. Charlie in Washington says, "Is scam insurance worth it?" Suzy Orman recently started a scam insurance offer. It seems like it goes beyond ideas. identity theft insurance. - Okay, this is a great question. I adore Susie. She is such a fun person, you know, when we've seen each other in the past. But this is not her product. Susie Orman does endorsements, which is something I don't do. And so this is a product of one of the security companies is hers, Nord. So she's just doing an endorsement. And this product promises in return for paying annual fees or subscriptions that up to $10,000 in expenses from money stolen from you in a scam, you know, if you get conned and it's geared towards people trying to protect their parents, grandparents, that kind of thing. That up to $10,000 will be reimbursed. The terms and conditions on it go on page after page, after page after page. And the problem is there's so many legal requirements, so many contractual requirements that until we have any real track record hearing from people and this is not the only product that's emerged in the last year that is supposed reimbursement for people who get scammed out of money. Until we see any track record, this is something I cannot recommend because you just don't know if it's real protection or pretends to be real protection. And I know Susie really well, she would not unknowingly recommend something that would not be good for you. She would not knowingly, I said that backwards, but from looking at the terms and conditions, I am a bit of a skeptic about this at this point. This is going to be one that I'm going to have to see real results from before it would be something. I'd say, yeah, that would be worth doing. The most important thing, the best insurance policy you can have as an adult child watching out for a parent and uncle, grandparent, older family friend is for you to stay involved, be involved, be nosy. Just talk about things, hey, gosh, you're not going to believe what happened the other day to so and so. And you're almost like gossip your way into the conversation, Susie. Now you need to be really careful about these people. You tell an example of can you believe that? You keep those lines of communication open. At some point, if you have a parent who is starting to have some decline along the way, you're going to have to really aggressively get involved to protect them and protect their money. More important than whether you want to buy a scam insurance policy. But thank you for bringing it up, Charlie. And it is something that we are actually watching. And thank you so much for joining us on today's podcast. I hope that this weekend is a fantastic weekend for you. As we move closer and closer to the longest day of the year for daylight, next month, 'cause, you know, I love daylight. And winter, those short days, I just don't get that thing. But know what we're all about for this weekend and every day, you being empowered with knowledge so you can save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off.