04.07.25 On Car Tariffs / 23andMe - Privacy Action Required

Summary

The Clark Howard Podcast: April 7, 2025 Episode Summary

Host: Clark Howard
Co-Host: Krista
Episode Title: On Car Tariffs / 23andMe - Privacy Action Required
Release Date: April 7, 2025

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Introduction

In the April 7th episode of The Clark Howard Podcast, Clark Howard delves into two pressing topics affecting consumers today: the ongoing impact of car tariffs and urgent privacy actions required for users of the genetic testing service, 23andMe. Alongside his co-host Krista, Clark provides insightful analysis, actionable advice, and addresses listener questions to empower individuals in making informed financial and personal decisions.

Discussing Car Tariffs

Clark Howard opens the discussion by expressing his deep-seated opposition to tariffs, particularly those imposed on the automotive industry. He shares his historical perspective, emphasizing the detrimental effects tariffs have had on the U.S. economy in the past.

“I hate tariffs. I've always hated tariffs. In history, when America imposed tariffs in the past, both led to depressions. Tariffs have a lot of negative effects.” [00:56]

Clark highlights the President's support for tariffs as part of his economic strategy, contrasting his own stance and distancing the conversation from political biases.

“This is not a political show. This is about your wallet.” [03:47]

Economic Impacts of Tariffs:

Clark explains that tariffs lead to reduced innovation by isolating the U.S. market, making it less attractive for global automakers to invest and innovate within the country. He cites the example of Hyundai's highly automated plant in Georgia, illustrating the future of automotive manufacturing as increasingly robotic and less labor-intensive.

“With tariffs, we become an island market. The auto market's a worldwide thing, and automakers will treat us as a backwater.” [04:23]

He further elaborates on the limited job creation in the automotive sector due to automation, noting that while the industry remains robust, the nature of employment has shifted dramatically.

“We have the largest number of people working in automotive manufacturing in the United States we've had in two generations right now.” [04:50]

Impact on Consumers:

Clark breaks down how tariffs translate to higher vehicle prices, even affecting models with minimal tariffs due to increased overall costs. He categorizes automakers based on their domestic manufacturing presence, explaining which brands will bear the brunt of the tariffs.

“Volkswagen, Mazda, and Volvo will have by far the largest impact due to tariffs.” [06:15]

He advises consumers on strategic purchasing decisions, emphasizing the benefits of buying vehicles from inventory before new tariffs take full effect to avoid price hikes.

“If you need a car right now, buying from inventory before tariff vehicles hit our shores is advantageous.” [08:00]

Used vs. New Market:

Clark discusses the ripple effect of tariffs on the used car market, predicting a rise in used vehicle prices as new cars become more expensive and demand shifts.

“Used vehicle prices will rise because new vehicles become more expensive, generating more demand for used cars.” [09:30]

Conclusion on Tariffs:

Reiterating his stance, Clark maintains that tariffs offer no benefits and only cause disruptions, except in cases of unfair trade practices like dumping.

“I don't like tariffs. There is no gray. The only time I think tariffs are appropriate is when a country is dumping.” [11:00]

Privacy Concerns with 23andMe

Transitioning to a personal data issue, Clark shifts focus to the implications of 23andMe's bankruptcy on users' genetic information privacy.

“With 23andMe bankrupt, the data is going to be sold to whoever the highest bidder is, no questions asked.” [20:00]

He warns listeners who have previously used 23andMe to take immediate action to secure their genetic information by deleting their data from the platform.

“If you're one of the 15 million who did the 23andMe genetic testing, you need to wipe your data clean immediately.” [21:00]

Action Steps for Users:

Clark provides a step-by-step guide for users to delete their 23andMe data:

1. Sign In: Access your 23andMe dashboard.
2. Delete Data: Navigate to Settings and initiate the data wipe.
3. Confirm Deletion: Respond to the confirmation email to finalize the process.

“Log into your account, go to Settings, and wipe out all your data. Then confirm via the email they send you.” [22:00]

He emphasizes the importance of safeguarding personal genetic information to prevent misuse by third parties.

“Genetic data is enormously valuable to a variety of industries. Protect your privacy by taking these steps.” [25:00]

Listener Questions and Expert Advice

Throughout the episode, Clark and Krista address several listener inquiries, offering practical solutions and expert advice on diverse topics.

1. Minivan Purchase Advice

Listener: Tyler from Missouri

Question: Advice on buying a new vs. used minivan considering a growing family.

Clark's Response:

Clark recommends purchasing a new minivan, particularly a hybrid model, due to the longevity and high demand for minivans. He suggests models like the Honda Odyssey, Kia Carnival, Toyota Sienna, and Chrysler Pacifica, highlighting the importance of warranties and fuel economy.

“Buy new. In the minivan space, people treat vans as a utility and drive them for many years. New models also offer hybrids with better fuel economy over a 10+ year cycle.” [14:02]

2. EV Lease Issues

Listener: Michael and Georgia

Question: Problems with their Honda Prologue EV lease and seeking options to terminate the lease.

Clark's Response:

Clark advises utilizing the Lemon Law, which protects consumers against defective vehicles. He emphasizes the urgency of acting swiftly and following the formal procedures outlined in Georgia's Lemon Law to potentially terminate the lease and recover funds.

“File a formal notice under the Georgia Lemon Law. It's a formal procedure, and automakers are required to address serious issues like uncontrollable acceleration.” [16:04]

3. Buying Vehicles Online Before Tariffs

Listener: Beth from North Carolina

Question: How to handle test drives when purchasing vehicles online and whether to buy foreign brands before tariffs.

Clark's Response:

Clark suggests using rental services like Turo to thoroughly test drive potential vehicle purchases over a few days. This approach provides a more comprehensive experience compared to short dealership test drives.

“Rent a vehicle through Turo for a day or two to truly experience it before making a purchase.” [19:23]

4. High Yield Savings Accounts

Listener: Jason from a unspecified location

Question: When to switch to higher APY savings accounts and potential downsides of frequent switching.

Clark's Response:

Clark reassures there are no downsides to switching savings accounts frequently to secure the highest APY. He also recommends considering one-year CDs for better rates if the funds are not needed imminently.

“There are no downsides to switching as often as you want to the best online savings account paying the highest interest.” [28:05]

5. Ambulance Coverage in Rural Areas

Listener: Tom from Wisconsin

Question: Necessity of purchasing additional ambulance coverage in a rural setting.

Clark's Response:

Clark explains the gaps left by the No Surprises Act, which does not cover ground-based ambulance services. He warns against aggressive sales tactics and advises caution, highlighting the importance of understanding insurance coverage thoroughly.

“Ambulance coverage in rural areas can be unpredictable. Be wary of aggressive sales and thoroughly understand what your insurance covers.” [29:35]

6. Preventing Family Member Scams

Listener: An anonymous frustrated family member

Question: Strategies to prevent an aging father from falling victim to scams and poor financial decisions.

Clark's Response:

Clark recommends implementing two-signature checks to prevent unauthorized expenditures and restricting phone communications to known contacts to reduce scam attempts. He underscores the necessity of a family intervention to protect vulnerable parents.

“Use two-signature checks and restrict your dad's phone to known contacts to prevent scams.” [31:59]

Final Thoughts

Clark Howard wraps up the episode by reiterating the importance of proactive financial management and personal data security. He encourages listeners to leverage available resources, such as clark.com, for personalized advice and to stay informed about economic changes that affect their wallets.

“Our mission is to empower you to save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off.” [31:59]

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Key Takeaways:

• Car Tariffs: Negatively impact innovation, increase vehicle prices, and disrupt both new and used car markets. Consumers are advised to purchase from inventory before tariffs fully take effect.

• 23andMe Privacy: Users must act swiftly to delete their genetic data in light of 23andMe's bankruptcy to protect their privacy.

• Listener Advice: From purchasing minivans and handling defective EV leases to safeguarding against scams and optimizing savings accounts, Clark provides actionable solutions tailored to individual needs.

Notable Quotes:

• “Tariffs have a lot of negative effects.” [00:56]
• “This is not a political show. This is about your wallet.” [03:47]
• “Buy new. In the minivan space, people treat vans as a utility and drive them for many years.” [14:02]
• “File a formal notice under the Georgia Lemon Law.” [16:04]
• “Rent a vehicle through Turo for a day or two to truly experience it before making a purchase.” [19:23]
• “There are no downsides to switching as often as you want to the best online savings account paying the highest interest.” [28:05]
• “Ambulance coverage in rural areas can be unpredictable. Be wary of aggressive sales and thoroughly understand what your insurance covers.” [29:35]
• “Use two-signature checks and restrict your dad's phone to known contacts to prevent scams.” [31:59]

This episode of The Clark Howard Podcast offers valuable insights into how economic policies and personal decisions intersect with consumers' financial well-being. Whether navigating the complexities of tariffs or safeguarding personal genetic data, Clark equips listeners with the knowledge to make informed choices.

Transcript

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[Clark Howard]

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 today. Wow. I'm going to address something that causes endless posts as the tariffs turn. Also, 23andMe has gone bust and there's something that I need you to do immediately if you're one of the 15 million of us who did the 23andMe genetic testing. So this is a story that changes flavors again and again and again. The Trump Tariffs Full Disclosure I hate tariffs. I've always hated tariffs. In history. You look at when America has imposed tariffs in the past, the two big times we did both led to depressions. Tariffs have a lot of negative effects. The President sees tariffs is key to his economic strategy. I don't understand it, but I have to say that because anytime you hear me talk about tariffs, you hear built in bias in me against tariffs. Just like you hear from the President the other way that tariffs are like some kind of gift from heaven. So today I'm not going to talk specifically about why I despise tariffs. If I did that someday. Gosh, Krista already has to deal with endless Clark stinks from people who think I'm some kind of super maga or something or ultra liberal or progressive or something.

[Krista]

It is unbelievable.

[Clark Howard]

I mean it's funny that people that are really political right now see everything from a political prism and fail to respect the possibility that there could be somebody who's an independent, which I would be libertarian except because of how I feel about military. I don't fit truly being a libertarian. But I don't believe that any one person, any one group, any one political party has infinite wisdom. We're humans. None of us have infinite wisdom. So go ahead, write your Clark.

[Krista]

Please don't.

[Clark Howard]

Please.

[Krista]

Seen enough? I've seen enough.

[Clark Howard]

You don't like crying when you read people say, I don't cry.

[Krista]

It's just like, I'm not reading this. I'm done. We're not doing this. Yeah.

[Clark Howard]

Yeah. So we're not. We're not a political show.

[Krista]

No, we don't want to be.

[Clark Howard]

This is about your wallet. You got plenty of places you could go to see politics. So why did I say all that before I've even started talking about what you need to know about the tariffs on vehicles? Because I want you to hear me talking about this from something other than a political prism. Because if you're really agitated politically, it seems that no matter what you hear in your mind, it automatically goes into a political silo. But there's raw economics that enter into things. And with tariffs, what happens is innovation is reduced. Because if we stick with really ugly auto tariffs, what happens is that we become an island market. And, yeah, we'll have some foreign manufacturers that build more factories in the United States, and we'll have domestic parts suppliers that maybe have been in Canada or Mexico for a long time as part of NAFTA and then usmca, and they may come back to the United States. Well, they weren't really here, but they'll come to the United States. But what happens is we become an island market. The auto market's a worldwide thing, and so automakers will treat us in the future as a backwater. We're not going to be where the innovation happens. With the automotive sector as a footnote, we have the largest number of people working and automotive manufacturing in the United States we've had in two generations right now. So it's not like the auto market has hollowed out. But what has happened is there's so much automation in factories now, the newest automotive factories, that the number of workers it takes to assemble vehicles versus the number of vehicles they produce is way down because productivity is up so much. If you want to know more about this, there are a lot of news stories over the last month about the. I think it's called the Meta plant that Hyundai built for like $8 billion or $10 billion, something like that. This plant is in extreme southeast Georgia, near Savannah, Georgia, and it's so robotic, it's mind blowing. And that's the Future of automotive manufacturing. So it's not a job engine anymore like it once was. The United States, we have out of 340, 50 million Americans, there are 300 and something thousand automobile assembly workers. So the tariffs are really disruptive for an industry that has been healthy in the United States and does not generate and will not generate massive numbers of jobs. It's just not going to be because of how automation has changed. Enough background. What's it going to mean to your wallet? What happens when you have widespread tariffs is even vehicles that are not subject to tariffs or have very minor tariffs based on the domestic content they have end up going up in price as well. And as I mentioned briefly earlier, the biggest innovations don't come to an island market. So the automotive market will advance more around the world than it will here. A lot of the great innovations will not come here with tariffs being sustained. And it takes years and years and years from deciding you're going to build a plant to getting the permits to building it before you make the very first vehicle that comes down the line. So the tariffs are all negative for us. For dealers who will have less customer traffic, fewer sales, I mean it's just, they're just bad, ugly. So let's talk about you. If you need a car right now, need versus want you need a car right now. Dealers will have, depending on the brand, somewhere between six weeks and three months of pre tariff vehicles available to sell you. So some brands have seen a lot of people showing up on dealer lots trying to buy pre vehicles that come in with tariffs. So the prices may be a little higher where there's been a lot of dealer traffic at certain brands without any tariffs, but not like the price effect of tariffs. And some brands are going to be affected more than others. Who is really a domestic manufacturer? Rivian, Tesla, Ford and Honda. Those four automakers, most of what they manufacture, most of what they assemble that sold in the US market is made in the US market, not all the components. So even any of the vehicles from these four brands could have some tariff to them, but it'll be relatively minor. And who has the least domestic manufacturing in the United States? Volkswagen, Mazda and Volvo. They will have by far the largest impact on tariffs of, you know, big production brands. And everybody else is kind of in between. So you hear 25% tariffs. Does it mean that vehicles are going to have 25% price increases? No, but they are going to have price increases depending on how much domestic content there is and how much the manufacturer and dealers might absorb of those tariffs. In what you ultimately pay. Very high end luxury vehicles that are European brands. A lot of those are not manufactured in the United States. They're imported from Europe. Those already have high sticker prices. Those will have big, big potential increases in prices depending on the price point, 10 to $25,000. A lot of more economical vehicles may not even be sold in the United States anymore. Saw a report in the Financial Times of London that Mercedes is considering not selling any of their lower end vehicles in the United States anymore because of the fact that tariffs would raise the price to a point that buyers are going to be like, are you crazy? I'm not going to buy them. So the tariff effect from my perspective, remember my built in bias has no upside. No upside and has disruption. But I want to go back to something I said. Want a vehicle? Need a vehicle. Your vehicle's croaked, your vehicle's no longer reliable. You have to get a new to you use vehicle or a new vehicle because yours is no longer reliable transportation. There's a real advantage to you buying from inventory a vehicle before the tariff vehicles hit our shores. That's number one. Number two, if you just want a vehicle, unless you're rolling in money, just wait till you really need something and keep driving what you're driving. We tire out of vehicles way before the vehicles generally are tired. Now the effect on the used market is very significant because 80% roughly of vehicles that people are buying are used. The new vehicle market is a much smaller part of the market. Used vehicle prices will rise because the overall impact of the tariffs will have made new vehicles more expensive and that will generate more demand for used vehicles. So they will rise in price as well. So let's see, do I like tariffs? No, I do not like tariffs. There is no gray. The only time I think tariffs are appropriate is when a country is doing what's called dumping. You know what dumping is?

[Krista]

No.

[Clark Howard]

It's when like the Chinese do this a lot. They'll sell things with government subsidies below the manufacturing cost to try to keep factories moving in China and they'll dump products and other markets like us in Europe, whatever. And in that case, tariffs are appropriate because it is unfair competition when items are being sold at predatory prices below the manufacturer's costs. But otherwise let the free market rule.

[Krista]

Okay. And if you have a non political question, you can go to non political.

[Clark Howard]

Question, question or complaint.

[Krista]

Let's hear Pope go to clark.com ask for to ask a question.

[Clark Howard]

You're not even going to say where you go to file. Clark Stakes.

[Krista]

All right, we're going to go to questions. Tyler in Missouri says we are expecting our third child in June and are realizing we're going to want a minivan. Three car seats is going to be a tight squeeze in our Kia Sorento. We would like to purchase used but want to know your advice on whether new or used is best in the current environment. And initially we're leaning towards a Honda Odyssey but are also interested in the Kia Carnival and Toyota Sienna. We would probably put 10 to 20,000 miles on it a year and would plan to keep this vehicle 10 plus years. Is there an advantage to paying cash or financing the vehicle?

[Clark Howard]

Okay, number one in the minivan space. It's different than every other vehicle category. People treat many vans as a utility and they drive them year after year after year after year. How long did you have your Honda Odyssey when your kids were young?

[Krista]

I think I had it over 10 years for sure.

[Clark Howard]

Yeah. Completely standard that people keep a van a really long time and the inventory of used vans for sale is so small usually that the price points stay high because you're going to keep yours 10 years or longer. You drive up to 20000 miles a year. I'm say this is one case where you buy new. I did say that, didn't I? And buy one that is a hybrid. Let's see, Sienna comes in hybrid. The Carnival comes in hybrid. And you didn't mention the Pacifica which was the first, I think the first minivan to come in a hybrid version that the fuel economy benefit will be high enough over a 10 plus year cycle that I don't think it's even great. Like in the case of the Carnival, I think it's $2,500 more for the hybrid version than the regular. And Consumer Reports says that the Carnival is as I remember, the best. But go get access to Consumer Reports since this is a 10 year plus purchase. Read their reviews of all 4 minivans and see what you think the advantage of the Carnival is. You get a 10 year warranty on it. You don't with the others. So you buy new. You're probably. If you have cash, you could pay cash. I like that because auto loan rates are pretty puffed up right now. But if you can't, you need to borrow money, go to credit union and arrange your financing there.

[Krista]

Michael and Georgia says, my wife and I always purchase cars, used cars and we have never done a lease this year. There are really cheap deals on the Honda Prologue ev. We've never had an EV and thought we would do a three year lease to see if one would work for our lifestyle. We are approximately six months into the lease and only have 6,000 miles on the car. In the first six months the car has had all the warning lights go off, it becomes undriveable and the systems fail and has to be taken back to Honda. This has happened three to four times. There was recently a software update that we did and today my wife was driving the vehicle and it auto accelerated and gave her a high voltage system warning. This is obviously a safety concern. I traded in our 2014 Honda CRV when we did our lease for the money down. I want to know because of so many issues in the first six months and this latest issue with the auto accelerating, is there a way to break the lease and get my money back from the trade in?

[Clark Howard]

So can you break the lease? Brand new vehicle, you've had all these problems. You're at 6,000 miles and you have the right in almost every state to use the Lemon law. Yours is a Georgia purchase. I know you have the right with a lease to file Lemon Law. Under Lemon Law it's a formal procedure and in many states you pay a little fee for the administration, like three or ten dollars something when you buy a vehicle or lease it for the administration of the Lemon Law program. So you immediately need to pull up the Georgia Lemon Law, follow the procedure of it exactly as written and you will file a formal notice that is described in each state. Lemon Law with Honda they're requesting a termination of the lease because of the problems. Now you're going to need to read the statute to see what happens with the money you use to lower the cost of the lease from your trade in of your old crv. But but time is your enemy with a Lemon Law filing. Center for auto [e-mail] has a really nice descriptor for you about how to use the Lemon Law in your state and get to work on it yesterday and do exactly as it requires. The automaker Honda will be given one chance to properly repair the vehicle so that you no longer have the fear that when you get in the vehicle it could have a safety issue or leave you stranded. An automaker is only given one attempt to fix a serious safety issue. In most states the out of control acceleration is obviously an example of of a serious safety issue.

[Krista]

Okay. Beth in North Carolina says you advise making vehicle purchases online. How do you handle a test drive to make sure it's the one you want? Especially if there are two or three you're considering and if I want a foreign brand, should I buy before tariffs are in effect? I listen to you every day on my walk Certified Clarky.

[Clark Howard]

Well, thank you for that. I hope that a day that the podcast is shorter than you like for your walk, that you keep walking anyway and when the podcast is longer than your walk, that you walk extra time on those days. Okay, Turo is your greatest friend. For a test drive, you go to a dealer for each of the makes. You got like 10 minutes in a test drive and you're on a controlled route. You really don't get to experience it. I love people renting a vehicle that they're thinking of spending. What's the average cost of a new car now? $47,000 for you spend huge money on a vehicle, pay Turo for the two or three brands you're thinking of renting. You drive somebody else's and you experience it for a day or two and see if it is a vehicle that you would really be happy owning. I I learned this a million years ago. There was a vehicle I wanted to buy, used of course, and I ended up in San Diego renting a car and it just happened that I was rented that make a model and the car was terrible. I never would have known from just a short test drive, but that vehicle was immediately eliminated from something I would buy. And that's why ever since I wanted you to have a 24, 48 hour period testing a vehicle at your own cost through something like today. So easy at Turo. Coming up ahead. Years ago on tv, we had a great idea for a sweeps month story that I was going to do these genetic tests and we were going to see particularly for where the test said, where I was from, if the tests lined up the same. Well, we never aired the story because the test results said exactly what I thought about where I was from. But then I learned all kinds of stuff about my genetics and my health and it's my information. But now with 23andMe out of business having gone bust, there's something you got to do right away if you did that vial with them.

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[Krista]

I was never really a runner. The way I see running is a gift, especially when you have stage four cancer. I'm Ann. I'm running the Boston Marathon presented by bank of America. I run for Dana Farber Cancer Institute to give people like me a chance to thrive in life even with cancer. Join bank of America and helping Anne's cause.

[Clark Howard]

Give if you can@b of a.com supportan.

[Krista]

What would you like the power to do? References to charitable organizations is not an endorsement by bank of America Corporation Copyright 2025.

[Clark Howard]

15 million of us apparently did 23andMe so we gave our samples. Then we got these reports and they have been so interesting to me over the years. What I've learned about myself health wise, what I've learned from it and Ancestry.com about where I have relatives all over the globe. I mean my goodness, I can't believe how many cousins I have all over the globe. And where I'm from, it turns out, is more nuanced than I originally thought. Over the years, as there's been more and more genetic matches, I found out that I'm actually Belarus and Ukrainian as my true background. Even though none of my four grandparents who immigrated to the United States were from Belarus or Ukraine, they were from Russia, Lithuania, Poland and Austria. It was all really interesting and fun stuff and some of the health stuff was very useful to me, but that information was private to me. With 23andMe bankrupt. The way the bankruptcy court process works, the 23andMe data is going to be sold to whoever the highest bidder is, pretty much no questions asked for whatever nefarious purposes. They'll use that genetic data which is enormously valuable to a variety of industries. And our privacy is going to be breached. You're not powerless. There's a simple procedure. If you go sign into your 23 and Me dashboard and you may not remember your username or password, you're going to have to do the I forgot stuff, get into your account, go to Settings and you're going to be able to wipe out you ever existing in their system, your name, everything about you and all the data they have wiped clean. I don't know a way that the whoever, whatever sleazy organization ends up winning in the bankruptcy court process. I don't know of any way they're going to be able to recapture that wiped out data. It's the best tool we got. So what will happen is you wipe it out but you're not done. You then have to go back in a confirmation email. They'll send to you to your email address of record and confirm that you want your data wiped out. And overnight the next overnight the data is wiped wipe clean. And you don't have to worry what some organization is going to do selling off data for very bad purposes. It will be bad purposes because that data is so valuable. Think about to the insurance industry. It's not supposed to use that stuff in most circumstances. Yeah, like that's not going to happen now. So that's why you wipe the file clean. If you love what you found out about family or your health or whatever. Before you wipe your file, print your file, print out the file and file it away. So you have the data but prying eyes won't see it. Did you do any of those?

[Krista]

I sure did.

[Clark Howard]

Have you wiped your data?

[Krista]

Yes, I did.

[Clark Howard]

It was easy, wasn't it?

[Krista]

Super easy. Such a bummer. All right, here's some questions for you, Clark. Jason in Georgia says I love that your website keeps an updated list of the best high yield savings accounts. I currently have about $86,000. A mix of my that wonderful. I know a mix of my emergency fund and savings for a future home. Down payment in a Capital One360 Performance Savings Account which has a 3.7% APY. Thanks to your website I know there are accounts with even higher rates. My question is when is it worth switching to a different account for a higher ap? And are There any downsides to switching too often, say more than once a year?

[Clark Howard]

No downsides at all. And any of that money that you don't need for a year. Right now there's a direct advantage buying a one year CD at the highest rate available. We're going to be in a really weird split that loan rates are going to stay high, maybe even go higher and savings rates are going down. And so while you can still lock in, let's say a one year CD at 4.5% to 5% or maybe a little more depending on how much you shop around the money you don't need, like maybe the money for the down payment on a house that you're not going to need in the next year, buy that one year cd if you are planning to buy a house within a year, then just yes, switch as often as you want to the best online savings account paying the highest interest.

[Krista]

Rate Tom in Wisconsin says, my wife and I recently were invited to a presentation put on by a company that provides coverage for emergency ambulance bills and related expenses. Just wonder if you can explain if this coverage is really necessary. Basically what we were told is that because we live in a rural setting, it could cost more than $5,000 out of pocket and if our insurance would not cover the ambulance services. I listened to your show and I've never heard you discuss this type of insurance. Could you please shed some light on this? And thank you. Love the show and all of the free advice you've given through the years.

[Clark Howard]

Thank you very much. And the ambulance thing is a real concern. In the no Surprises act, the Congress in its wisdom included air ambulances but did not include ground based ambulance services. So in a rural area, even though air ambulance would up front look like it was much more money because the no Surprises act, ironically enough, transporting from a rural area to a distant urban hospital not only might save your life going in an air ambulance, but it'll probably be cheaper for your wallet because of the no surprises act depending on your insurance, it's completely roulette what you end up with on an ambulance charge. It could be something really bad, ugly like they say in the presentation. But these people are very aggressive selling these ambulance policies. The reviews online are brutally negative generally about these policies, very aggressive sales efforts and when you do have a charge, getting it paid back through the insurance people repeatedly say is very, very difficult. So yeah, it could happen, it could be something bad. But that ambulance also could be what is the key to saving your life. It's a, it's a tough Thing. It should not be a roulette thing with the bill.

[Krista]

And this is from someone who just identified themselves as frustrated. I'm writing because my family has endured years of stripe because my 83 year old father who's still working has continually fallen victim to lottery scams. Additionally, he has made very poor investments in fraudulent IPOs, subscriptions and other complete waste of money. He is still self employed and working and it has been very difficult to get my mom to intervene. She's reluctant to go to the check writing requirement requiring two signatures. And as a family we do not want to attempt to declare him to be incompetent. He recently passed several cognitive assessments. They have been married for 50 years and as a family we are desperate for answers. Are there any strategies I may have overlooked to prevent this from happening again?

[Clark Howard]

Yes, you go to two signature checks and make yourself or one of the other family members other than your mom the second required signature for a check to clear. This is something that so many of us have dealt with, are dealing with, or will deal with with an aging population. If you're a longtime listener or viewer to our YouTube show, you know what I went through with my late mom as she got older and was being scammed out of money repeatedly and we had to come up with a number of procedures to eliminate that. One thing you could do with your dad's cell phone is you could have it where only calls from people in his contacts ring through on the phone. That's very easy to do with. I know with an Android, it's very easy to do. I assume also with an iPhone where the phone only rings if it's a known caller that's in your contact list. And that's one thing that can cut down on this. But yeah, if mom's not willing to get involved, it's gonna have to be one of the kids or another family member who intervenes. And maybe you need to do a family conference. This would not be like a normal intervention, but a clear family conference where you're all together. If family members are very far away, you do it some kind of zoom thing and you almost impose your will as adult children. Just like with my mom when she was dangerous driving and I basically stole her car. So she went down to the garage and there was no car there. I had to do that because she was a danger to herself and others. As kids there are times you have to intervene in a rough way because if you don't, your parents can end up broke or something else. The thing is your parents did so much for you, raising you, and there comes a time in life where you then have to be there to be their protector. And this is that time. So thank you so much for joining us. Know that we are here to serve you so many different ways. One on one free advice is one of the things we are proud to have offered since 1993. So if you want free one on one advice from our Team CART Consumer Action center, available to you 30 hours this week and every week except holidays, go to clark.com cac to see how that works. It's just one way that we try to empower you so that you save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off. Have a great afternoon.