Ryan (6:39)

I worry about the taxes that some of these people are going to deal with too. Isn't that like a huge problem?

Clark Howard (6:45)

So I've been having that conversation with Grant.

Ryan (6:48)

Yeah.

Clark Howard (6:49)

About the rapid fire trading. And I've explained to him the difference between ordinary income tax and capital gains tax. So the tax code is designed specifically to discourage rapid fire trading because when you do a buy and sell in less than a year, you're punished by the tax code with punitive tax rates. And on the or, you can look at it in the reverse. When you hold something more than a year, you get preferential, much lower capital gains tax. So there's a lot here about what's going on and there may occasionally be a woman who's doing it, but there's something about us as guys that it just is almost like macho. Imagine hanging out with the buds. And so he's talking about, yeah, I bought this Ba Ba Ba company and I've gone up 3400% in 90 days. Wonder if I should buy more of it and say, so what are you buying? Oh, well, I buy Target retirement fund with my money. They're done with you.

Ryan (8:04)

You get kicked out.

Clark Howard (8:05)

Yeah, you're kicked out of the cool guys club.

Ryan (8:07)

Okay, we'll go to questions now. This one came in from Morgan. Morgan says I'm 13 year old entrepreneur who does pop up poetry and art on typewriters. Yes, it's as cool as it sounds.

Clark Howard (8:19)

Okay, that's really, really fun. A 13 year old entrepreneur doing unique kind of art kind of things.

Ryan (8:27)

Yep. For the past eight months my dad has been endlessly talking about your podcast. So for Christmas I got him a Clarky bestie keychain puzzle. That's interesting.

Clark Howard (8:38)

Yeah.

Ryan (8:38)

One for him, one for me because why not? Of course I made him buy it along with a few other things I in the cart. You're welcome, dad. You might think it was a waste, but it did make him laugh. And yes, I did check if he contributed to his Roth IRA this year. He has. Thank you very much. On to money stuff. I recently sold a piece of art for $550. The gallery takes 50%.

Clark Howard (9:01)

Ouch.

Ryan (9:02)

So with my 275, what's the best way to invest it? My dad set me up with a Fidelity Youth account for Christmas, so I'm ready to make some moves.

Clark Howard (9:10)

Okay, so you want to do what Your dad, did you want him to go back with you to Fidelity and open up a Roth IRA, a custodial Roth IRA. Because then that 275 is going to grow tax free. You're going to let it sit there forever. And that 275 invested in Clarkville or Dullesville in a Target retirement fund. The latest year you can buy, I don't know if it's 2070 or whatever. You put it in there and you will have incredible tax free growth over the years. You can put in every year you have earnings up to 7,000. Right now you can put in that Roth. And you, believe it or not, in your teenage years, you keep being successful with art. You could put enough money aside through your teenage years that you could be a millionaire just from that money, when it's time for you to retire. And remember, it grows tax free, you spend it tax free. But it has to be left alone till retirement age, which is a long time away for you.

Ryan (10:23)

Ryan in Georgia says I have the Capital One Venture X card. The same as Clark. I booked a hotel through the Capital One travel portal. A week after my hotel stay, I received an additional $120 bill for quote, unquote, destination fees.

Clark Howard (10:40)

Oh, man. This is their version of resort fees or whatever.

Ryan (10:44)

These fees were not made aware to me upon booking. Although Capital One reversed this charge when I called, they said the only way to prevent these fees in the future was to call the hotel after booking to ask if there were any additional fees. How else can I prevent these junk fees in the future? Thanks, Clark, for all you do. Your advice has saved me many times.

Clark Howard (11:03)

Okay, first of all, it's great Capital One reversed the charge and absorbed it themselves. Second, you were told the wrong thing. Capital One's hotel portal should disclose what the hotel fees are. There should be somewhere. I don't know if there is on the Capital One hotel portal, but most of the portals now have a box you can check that will show you the prices, including all taxes and fees. I was looking at a hotel just yesterday on Priceline and it showed the hotel base rate, showed the price with taxes and fees. And then right below it, it said an additional $11, I think it was per night will be collected by the hotel, which is for obviously the junk fees like you were billed later for. It should be easier than this. It should be something you're told just transparently up front. Those of you, Marriott being the largest hotel chain in the world, they now have a button. It's not obvious, but it's a button you can click on that shows you the hotel price not at the base rate, but with all junk fees and taxes added on. So when you're comparing one hotel to another, you can see the base rate doesn't matter. All that matters is the total fee. So this is so important that you look for this. And you know, now with Capital One, they're not being easily transparent with the hotel made up fees. So you'll have to look for that before you click to purchase a room.

Ryan (12:54)

And speaking of travel, this came in from Brad in Illinois. I'm glad I acted on your advice. Just a friendly reminder to take and keep your car rental damage photos and videos. I received a claim on January 6 for a previously existing damage to a rental from the first week in August. Luckily, my documentation was still saved five months later.

Clark Howard (13:18)

Five months later. That's like the worst I've ever heard of. You know, I've never suggested, Brad, that people keep car rental photos or videos for really more than 60, 90 days because almost always you'll hear within weeks, not months. That is horrific. So I'm gathering from what you said that when you said, hey, I got pictures, they were like, okay, everything's fine. You're good. Because they don't expect people to take those pictures or videos. I guess you're saying my old advice of two or three months is something you would not follow. You would say keep them as till you forget they're still on your phone. But I'm so glad that the pictures were your get out of jail free card. And that's why I want you to take those pictures or videos when you turn a rental car back in. Wow.

Ryan (14:20)

I have another question I'm going to ask you in the next part of the podcast that is also about rental cars and it's about the insurance you get for rental cars with different credit cards.

Clark Howard (14:30)

Yeah. The car rental car rental agencies, since they consolidated with almost all car rentals controlled by three conglomerates, they become a more unfriendly industry. You got to know that there's snakes in the grass many different ways with the car rental companies. You have another one about that. We're going to talk about something straight ahead. A lot of people reassess their lives in January and they're like, you know what? I'm not really thrilled with my paycheck. I'm going to talk about what strategies you should follow. If you kind of like your job but you don't like your pay, what should you do next? We're going to talk about that straight ahead.

Don McDonald (15:15)

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@talkingrealmoney.com.

Clark Howard (16:16)

This episode is brought to you by Amazon Business. We could all use More Time Amazon Business offers smart business buying solutions so you can spend more time growing your business and less time doing the admin. I can see why they call it smart. Learn more@amazonbusiness.com I got a question for you. Do you like what you do? Do you like where you work? You know, there are so many satisfaction surveys about jobs, but the one that I have always looked to is by the Pew Charitable Trust because they do such deep respected research and polling and testing of questions. And so they asked American workers how satisfied you are at your job. And exactly half of Americans said that they're extremely or very satisfied where they work. And I'm glad to hear that because it's really no fun at all if you go somewhere for work every day. Think how much of our week we spend at work. And you dread it. You hate it. Yuck. So listen to this. Another 38% are somewhat satisfied with where they work. Some days yeah, I'm glad to be there. Other days not. So the percent that hate where they work, that there's no wishy washy about it is only one in eight people. I don't know what it is that I thought that dissatisfaction at the workplace would be much higher. But you know what people are usually not happy about is their pay. Pay is a big dissatisfier. So you always have this thing you got to balance. And maybe the half of people who are extremely or very satisfied should ignore what I'm about to say. But it's much easier today to gauge what pay level, what you do for a job with the experience you have, what that really should be worth in the job market. And if you go back to when jobs were extremely plentiful and people were willing to just take a shot and go look somewhere else or go work somewhere else, people discovered that where you are and where you're comfortable and where you may be happy, they may also be underpaying you that the marketplace will pay you more if you seek out other employment may. But the thing that has changed gradually and now pretty widely in the country is that a lot of job postings now list a pretty narrow pay range for the job because so many states have passed statutes that require that expected pay levels are published with the job listing. So you may not really be interested and going to greener pastures somewhere else. Maybe you are, maybe you're not, but it's a good idea to go out and look and see. Don't do it from a work computer, by the way. Never prospect for another job from a computer at the workplace, on your own time, on your own computer. Tell you a story about that in a second. So anyway, you can go out there and see, hey, people with my skills are being offered jobs right now, blah, blah, blah, pay level. And you get to see I'm actually doing better than that, or I'm doing about that, or I'm being paid a lot less than that. And then you got to decide what's next. If it is where you're being underpaid versus what it appears your skills and experience are worth in the marketplace, are you willing to go out and explore other opportunities or when it comes time for your review, are you willing to say at that point, you know, I love being here. It just feels like from what I'm seeing out there that I should be making more money. You always have to worry about the. The ricochet where they say, okay, you think you're worth more money, go find it. It's not happening here. You have to gauge that. But I would say for the nearly 40% of people who are only somewhat satisfied with where you are, and of course the 12% of people who hate where they are, go out there and see what else is out there. Be willing to explore, apply, look for other opportunities, and if necessary, move on. All right. It was a story I was going to tell.

Ryan (21:24)

Yes. It was about, don't do anything on your work computer.

Clark Howard (21:28)

Yeah. So I'm in a place of work and there was a very valued employee. She had left her workstation and her manager came by to find her to talk to her about something and then does what people do if there's a live computer screen. See you're looking over at my screen.

Ryan (21:46)

What are you looking at, Clark?

Clark Howard (21:48)

And sees that an email she's writing thanking someone for the interview she had for a job somewhere else. She was gone that day. They just said, you're out of here. And this was a great employee. But the manager was like, well, if you're this disloyal that you're looking for something else, you're out of here right now. And people were shocked because this was a real super achiever employee.

Ryan (22:18)

Seems sort of short sighted by the manager. Maybe an opportunity to find out what's going wrong.

Clark Howard (22:23)

But instead what it means. The lesson I want you to have as a worker. Don't ever prospect for that new job while you're at the job you're at. Period.

Ryan (22:33)

Okay. Anna in Washington says we got the new Chase Sapphire Preferred card because Clark said it would act as our primary insurance for a rental car rather than secondary insurance like most cards. I called Chase to double check on that before applying. No one in customer service seemed to know if that was correct. I was transferred to several different people. Finally to someone in their insurance claims department. She agreed that this card would act as primary insurance for a rental car. I just received my guide to benefits booklet and it says the Chase Sapphire Preferred card would act as secondary insurance. Who should I believe? Thank you for informing us all about financial and other consumer matters. I love, love, love your podcast. Could listen to you all day.

Clark Howard (23:13)

Thank you very much. And Anna, I'm impressed that you did all the single checking, double checking, triple checking. Because the truth is, customer no service workers have no idea as you discovered, even talking with someone in the insurance claims department. So my understanding with the Chase cards is the Sapphire Reserve is primary and is really rock solid rental car coverage. The Preferred, which is a 95 or $99 annual fee card, is secondary. If you rent cars repeatedly, you travel a lot. The Sapphire reserve has a huge annual fee, just under 600 bucks, but they rebate 300 of it to you each year just in travel.

Ryan (24:03)

And there are other, there are other benefits. I love that card.

Clark Howard (24:07)

But you travel a lot. And what we don't know, Anna, is how much you travel. The preferred card is looked at as a very good, maybe just about the best entry level travel credit card for people who don't travel frequently. The reserve is a whole different category and has an annual fee six times the cost, but it would come with the rental car coverage. You rent several cars a year. You've easily made up the cost because, remember, you got 300 back. So you're talking about a $300 net annual fee for the card. You don't have to rent a car many times before that. Primary coverage already covers the junk fees that the car rental company would charge you otherwise.

Ryan (24:56)

Rick in Arizona says, I've been carrying the Amex Platinum card for many years. It served me well when I was working, but now that I'm ret, I'm not sure it's worth the annual fee. I don't fly much, maybe eight or nine times a year for vacation. What is the test to see if it still makes sense to keep it?

Clark Howard (25:13)

The Amex Platinum, if you're not traveling constantly doesn't work. You'd have to be charging a huge volume on it to overcome the shortcomings. And what I've recommended to people who maybe were in a job where they traveled a lot, now they're traveling not as much as they used to or whatever the circumstance that you fit in my opinion is the one that we had the question about earlier. The Capital One Venture X is the 100% winner. It has an annual fee. Again, these are for travelers. The Capital One Venture x has a $395 annual fee, which I keep expecting them to raise. They give you $300 back in travel credit for travel. You book through them over the course of a year, so it nets $95 each year. @ renewal, they give you another equivalent hundred dollars to net out, being a minus $5 annual fee, essentially for people who travel even infrequently. All charges earned minimum 2x. So it's a 2% cash back card. Except for travel. You book through them. That I think is 10x. So it gets you lounge access in that second tier lounge route called priority pass lounges. And then Capital One in some cities has their own lounges, which are by reputation are supposed to be much nicer than the American Express lounges that you're used to, the Centurion lounges. And so I would dump the $700 annual fee Amex card, get the 395 Capital One card, and you'll never look back.

Ryan (27:02)

Thomas in North Carolina says, for the last several years, I have been detailing in a spreadsheet the charity solicitations I receive and the donations I've made to various charities. For 2024, I received 395 mailings. I received 19 solicitations. From one charity specifically.

Clark Howard (27:21)

O so what's funny about this? Remember when my mom was being ripped off by the fake charities?

Ryan (27:26)

Yes.

Clark Howard (27:27)

And I would go over and divert all that mail. I would say, mom, don't open any of these. Just put them in this drawer right here. And every time I'd go see my mom, which was about every seven to 10 days, the drawer was overflowing with solicitations. I don't think of people getting that much in the mail anymore, but obviously Thomas is getting 400 mailings virtually in a year.

Ryan (27:56)

Wow. Then he says this does not include the hundreds of local and national political solicitations I receive via text, email, and mailings. I donate to many charitable organizations, always through their website. What was different this year is that several of the big. I listed them for you here. Charities, including one of your favorites, would not accept a donation of less than $10 on their respective website.

Clark Howard (28:19)

Wait, wait, wait. Charities Beggars are now being choosers. Won't accept a donation less than $10.

Ryan (28:27)

I found it both confusing and disheartening that they would not accept a $5 donation, but actively solicit donations through various means. Some charities ask you to cover the administration costs, usually between 20 cents and 90 cents when making a donation using a card. This is understandable given the credit card processing fees. I always in my donation. I did not experience this minimum donation requirement in years past. I'm sure there are many more charities that are now operating the same way and losing lots of money.

Clark Howard (28:56)

So here's the thing that's going on the way credit card fees are charged to charities because remember, card is not present when you're doing that donation. So the junk fees for accepting a card are extremely high on small amounts. So there's a base rate that the charity is having to pay plus percent. So those fees must be high enough. Now charities are like, we're not netting out any meaningful money, if any, at an amount below $10. That's all I can guess.

Ryan (29:32)

Also, maybe they probably factor in. They've got to then send you a letter for the donation at the end of the year. They have office staff. Maybe it all adds up over time.

Clark Howard (29:41)

I don't know. It just shows that a dollar is not worth very much anymore. Right?

Ryan (29:46)

Yeah.

Clark Howard (29:47)

Wow. See, I would. I would absorb that hit if I were doing fundraising for a charity. What they call development officer now, because you want to create a connection to someone that they feel connected to your organization. And maybe they're making more money next year and they give your organization more money the following year. If you're getting 400 in the mailbox solicitations a year, that means you're on what are known as sucker lists. There are some pseudo or not very legit organizations that are soliciting you. I saw in the list one that is not on the up and up and that's why I would direct you to our giving site on clark.com where you get to see how you check out a charity to see if there they are, a real charity, number one. And number two, are they spending your money wisely, efficiently? Just so you know, there's Charity Watch, there's Charity Navigator, and then give. Those are the three all dot orgs where you can check out the background on so many of the charities or pretend to be charities that might be soliciting you. But wow, you have a very generous heart, obviously that you were so much in the target for so many different organizations seeking donations from you. And with that, I hope you have had an absolutely wonderful time with us on Today's podcast and YouTube show and know what we're all about. You and your wallet. I want you in every way possible to be in control of that money that comes into your life, to live on less than what you make. This is so important because so many things open up when you're living on less than what you make. I know it's easy to say, it's hard often to do, but it's this positive event in your life where you're not wheezing financially. And I hope that over time that you hear from me enough strategies, enough techniques, and enough of a philosophical reason for you to be in control of those dollars that come into your life instead of your bills. Being in control of you. Everything here is about you learning ways to save more, spend less and avoid getting ripped off. I'll be back at your service on Friday.