Transcript
Ad Sponsor (0:01)
Want a website with unmatched power, speed and control? Try Bluehost Cloud, the new web hosting plan from Bluehost, built for WordPress creators by WordPress experts. With 100% uptime, incredible load times and 24,7 WordPress priority support, your sites will be lightning fast with global reach. And with bluehost Cloud, your sites can handle surges in traffic no matter how big. Plus you automatically get daily backups and world class security. Get started now@bluehost.com this episode is brought to you by Atlassian. Atlassian makes the team collaboration software that powers enterprise businesses around the world, including over 80% of the Fortune 500. With Atlassian's AI powered software like Jira, Confluence and Loom, you'll have more time to do the work that matters. In fact, Atlassian customers experience a 25% reduction in project duration per year. Unleash the potential of your team@atlassian.com Atlassian.
Clark Howard (0:59)
Foreign it's my pleasure to welcome you here to the Clark Howard 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. And if you're a regular around here, you're probably familiar with how obsessed I am with unit pricing, how I use it all the time to decide what's a better deal and what's not. And you know, historically you think something that is a bigger quantity, a bigger bag, would be the smaller unit price. But there's a lot of weirdness going on right now with the price of goods. And you need to know in a time that retailers and manufacturers are scared what you need to be doing to protect yourself. And also I talked about saving money on airfare in yesterday's show. But do you know we're just weeks away from where you won't be able to travel unless you have an updated id. I'll fill you in on that. So retailers and manufacturers are having a rough, rough time right now. Not to negate what a hard time. So many of us as Americans, so many consumers are having such a rough time. So there's a game going on right now with a lot of manufacturers having softer sales, maybe even declining sales. A lot of retailers reporting things are really hard for them right now. They're all trying games and gimmicks with pricing. And this is an old one. It's still true behind our backs. The snack food companies refer to what they call heavy eaters. Heavy eaters is not a literal thing. That means that people that buy their product are overweight A heavy eater is somebody who is really devoted to a particular snack, whether it's Doritos or who knows what. And when they go into the store, they buy the biggest bag of them. They can get the family size bag or whatever. Well, if you take a moment to look at the unit pricing, the odd thing is the most expensive bag to buy often of a snack item will be the smallest one, followed by the biggest one and the best deal will be on the mid size. That's just one example at how pricing can be really odd. Because you think if you got the biggest bag of something or the biggest version of something that you'd be getting the lowest price. But you're not necessarily going to get the lowest price. Often it'll be the highest price, particularly with anything that's a snack kind of item or cookies or anything like that. And now this kind of thing with unusual pricing is spreading throughout manufacturing, retailing and it already was in the supermarkets. So know that when you see something that says it's special, it may not be special at all. Maybe special for the manufacturer retailer where they're getting a higher price per ounce or per whatever unit of measurement it is. So you and I have got to be aware of that. That because we're in such a difficult economic cycle now in the tariff era, there's going to be a lot of experimentation about how to get you get in our heads and get us to buy something that we think is a better deal, that's actually a worse one. So don't just see sale or special or anything like that and grab that item without comparing the prices on those items. And with manufactured goods and retailers, when you see limited time item or something like that, that is a call to purchase, right? But that limited time item may be more expensive than the regular version of whatever item you'd be buying. I'm talking non food items that you would be buying. Be aware, be wary, be careful with your wallet. Speaking of which, this is going to be a time with such enormous economic uncertainty that being careful with spending and being very, very cautious with optional spending, unless you're just loaded with money, this is going to be a time that hoarding cash a little bit is going to be a good idea because we're going to potentially see if the tariff thing is not just a flash in the pan and it's a long term thing, you're going to really need to be prepared for the possibility of layoffs, rising unemployment in the United States and slowing economic activity. And that means being prepared for a more Likely rainy day in your own life. On that happy note, what you got, Krista?