Pod Insights The Clark Howard Podcast 01.02.26 2026 Smarter Spending Resolution / Clark Answers His Critics on Clark Stinks About this episode Clark kicks off the new year discussing how you can rethink your buying decisions moving forward. And of course, Friday - Clark Stinks day! Christa shares Clark Stinks posts with Clark. Submit yours at Clark.com/ClarkStinks. Rethink Buying Decisions: Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 Clark Stinks: Segments 3 &4 Mentioned on the show: NYT: Shoppers Turn to Discounts and Debt, but Not Just for Holidays Is Borrowing Money With Affordable Payments To Buy Nice Things Really So Bad? How to Save Money on Groceries: 22 Clever Ways How to Shop for Lower Car Insurance How Often Should You Re-Shop Insurance? Life Insurance Archives - Clark Howard How To Get the Best Price Possible Shopping Online Backdoor Roth IRA: How High Earners Can Still Contribute 5 Tips To Protect Your Digital Privacy Clark.com resources: Episode transcripts Community. Clark.com / Ask Clark Clark.com daily money newsletter Consumer Action Center Free Helpline: 636-492-5275 Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1:04 Speaker 02 I'm so glad to welcome you to the Clark Howard Show, our inaugural show of 2026, where 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 new to our show, welcome. Normally on Fridays, we start with our Clark stinks segment where I get to hear where I let you down. Got something wrong. Missed some information. But don't worry, I'm still going to do Clark stinks today. But because we, at the beginning of every year, we have so many new listeners and viewers,
1:47 Speaker 02 we're going to do things backwards today. We're going to start by talking about how you can rethink your buying decisions in the new year. Then we're going to get to your questions, followed by your Clark stinks. So some bad habits.
2:06 Speaker 02 Crystallized after being kind of like a side issue this past Christmas shopping season, the banking industry is crowing about how many people they got to do pay in for buy now, pay later, that they are hoping, and I'm hoping not, that they have changed the trajectory about how people buy things. And so now we're at the real test. A lot of people during the Christmas buying season feel stretched. They're buying something,
2:47 Speaker 02 maybe their wallet can't handle, and they give into temptation and they use these horrendous pay in for products, buy now, pay later products. And so what the banks are hoping is that they've gotten the serpent under the tent. Is that the right expression? It's elephant's nose under the tent. Anyway, wherever the snake fits in this, snake equals bank. Anyway, that they now have created this new habit in you and you're going to just do it routinely
3:24 Speaker 02 throughout this year. I got to tell you, pay in for is a rotten, terrible thing. Pay in for now is being very heavily reported on people's credit reports. A lot of people succumb to a pay in for at a cash register or shopping online. I mean, you go to buy an airline ticket, pay in for. You go to the register to buy who knows what, pay in for. You go to a website, pay in for. And the lore is, and the fact is, the banks, the retailers, the airlines, they're all so excited because they get people who are
4:07 Speaker 02 right on the bubble about whether or not they're going to buy something, whether or not they're going to book the trip, whether or not they're going to do who knows what. And they know in their heart of hearts that it's not money they can afford to spend right now. But what the banks have learned is they can trick your mind. They can play a psychological game on you and they can get you to say, yeah, I really shouldn't do it, but I'm gonna do it because look, I'll get it paid off. And then the reality is, and the data shows that about one out of three of these aren't going to get paid in
4:49 Speaker 02 time. And people are going to mess up their credit. And they may have all kinds of junk fees they now have to pay because the whole lure they're paying for is paying for easy payments, no interest. It's all like, come here, come here, I've got something for you. And you think the bank is trying to do something nice for you. The next thing you know, you get sucker punched. And so through this year, I ask you to resolve to not allow paying for to harm you. Do not allow it to trick you into spending money you really can't afford to spend.
5:29 Speaker 03 All right, we'll go to questions now. If you have a question, you can go to Clark.com/ask. Kevin in North Carolina sent this one. Clark, you love the warehouse clubs and I've heard you compare them to each other and how they're better than the high-low grocery stores. But has anyone ever done a study, or do you have any thoughts on how they compare to Aldi or Lidl? If we do our daily shopping at Aldi and Lidl, are the prices still cheaper with the membership fee at BJ's or one of the other warehouse clubs?
5:56 Speaker 02 So Kevin, I am such a believer in Aldi and Lidl. Aldi now, I think they've crossed the threshold. They're now the third largest supermarket in the United States, traditional supermarket. A lot of people wouldn't consider them traditional. Aldi and Lidl have such a unique business model. That they are the best idea I know to stretch your grocery dollar, better even than the three warehouse clubs. They're also very different and they're hard to compare because a lot of the groceries you buy at any of the warehouse clubs, you're going to buy bigger
6:35 Speaker 02 quantities. Lidl and Aldi, because they come out of walking cities in Europe, originally both from Germany and they're arch rivals. They have always been, their DNA has always been about buying small quantities. So if you go in and you want to buy a banana, you're going to get a phenomenal deal on that banana. You buy a single apple, you're going to get a fantastic deal. Whatever you buy, it's going to be so well priced at Aldi and Lidl. And they do it like the warehouse clubs generally, that they very much limit choice. You'll have one type of ketchup, one type of anything. And that's how they're able to sell huge
7:18 Speaker 02 quantities of a limited assortment at crazy low prices. I love them both. Aldi and Lidl, if you're a regular shopper at both of them, you know, there's a lot of differences between the two of them. Aldi is a more streamlined, cheaper place potentially with less selection than Lidl, but Lidl is dirt cheap as well. Expect to pay 40% less at Aldi and maybe 30 plus percent less at Lidl versus a traditional supermarket.
7:54 Speaker 03 Kathy in Pennsylvania says, Clark, I really enjoy listening to the podcast and I've learned so much. I tend to listen while I'm on the treadmill and it helps pass the time.
8:02 Speaker 02 Have you ever heard that expression?
8:03 Speaker 03 I call it the treadmill. Yes.
8:05 Speaker 02 You do? I love that.
8:07 Speaker 03 On a recent episode, you talked about cellphone addiction and I wanted to share my solution. I found I was spending too much time scrolling on social media as a way to unwind. I knew I didn't want to spend that much time on my phone, so I decided to start a digital detox. I declared one day a week I could scroll away and keep up with the latest info, but no social media on the other six days. As an incentive to help me stick to it, I pay myself $20 a week as a reward for my digital detox. It's just the incentive I need to, and I'm on week three and it's going well. Thanks for all the great advice.
8:39 Speaker 02 Okay.
8:39 Speaker 03 In a time of New Year's resolutions, I thought that was fun.
8:42 Speaker 02 How much time do you spend on social media?
8:44 Speaker 03 Um, probably too much. I don't do, I mean, I really just look at Instagram mostly and once in a while I'll look at Facebook.
8:51 Speaker 02 Cause I have never used social media personally. And so it's never been something that, that has been part of my life.
9:01 Speaker 03 But we put you on there.
9:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm all over social media, but personally, I don't use social media. So I've not had that issue.
9:11 Speaker 03 But screen time.
9:12 Speaker 02 Screen time. My phone sends me that warning every week and tells me I used 18 more minutes on my phone the last week than the week before. Think about how much time you spend on your phone, how often you open it, all of that. And now, you know, Samsung is coming out with the Trifold phone.
9:32 Speaker 03 Oh gosh.
9:33 Speaker 02 So those of you who are aware.
9:35 Speaker 03 That sounds like a good joke. Fucking SNL skit.
9:38 Speaker 02 No, I mean, I've, I've seen the videos of it. And so it opens up, your regular old tiny phone opens up into a 10.1 inch tablet. And my son, when, when the videos were first released last month, said, Ted, are you going to order one of these? I said, I don't know. I don't know.
9:59 Speaker 03 I don't know. It might go against what Kathy's trying to teach us all. Might incentivize you to spend more time on your phone. So.
10:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, but the advantage for me traveling as much as I do, a lot of times I don't take a laptop on a trip anymore because I've got this folding tablet phone from Samsung. And then if it folds another time open.
10:19 Speaker 03 Robin in Ohio says, I just received a letter from my home insurance company telling me they are going to raise my rates by 25%. The reason they give is because even though I have a credit score of over 800, I don't have a proper mix of credit and they suggest I get an auto loan. I don't understand why they apparently believe
10:39 Speaker 02 Say what?
10:40 Speaker 03 Why they apparently believe I'll be more likely to file a claim because I paid cash for my car. I've never filed a home or auto insurance claim. Last year they raised my rates because I had opened up a new line of credit by getting a credit card within the previous 12 months. Now they're raising them because I didn't open up a new line of credit. I researched on the internet and saw others in Ohio were complaining about their rates going up, but they said the reason was because last year Ohio had the most tornadoes it had ever had. If that's the real reason, why wouldn't the home insurance company say so?
11:11 Speaker 02 What a great question. And you know, this thing we talked about, this is something we talked about last month, how in most states, auto and homeowners insurers set your rates not based on factors you would think, but set it based on your credit report and your credit standing with it. So, but that's most, that's not all. And they all do it differently too. So I'd say what your insurer is telling you is go reshop your insurance with other people would be the thing you really need to be about, Robin, because they're clearly
11:49 Speaker 02 looking for any reason to raise your rates. And this thing about the mix of your credit, when you've got a score over 800, having anything to do with setting auto and homeowners, that's the goofiest thing ever. I would go reshop both your auto and homeowners. Coming up ahead, it's time for our first Clark Stinks of 26, where you get to hear how I'm stinking it up.
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14:35 Speaker 02 It's time for Clark Stinks, where you get to hear how I failed to serve you well. Bad advice, bad information, being lame, whatever it is. In today's first edition of the new year of Clark Stinks. 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.
15:06 Speaker 02 You got some fun ones for 26?
15:08 Speaker 03 We're gonna start out with this gem from Bo in Rhode Island. He says, you remind me of my AM, BM.
15:19 Speaker 02 Okay, that's one of the funniest I've heard in the years of Clark Stinks.
15:24 Speaker 03 It is often suggested that you don't need a life insurance policy on your children. I would suggest that you do have ones that you can replace your income if you have to mourn. It seems like an easy way to alleviate some stress during a difficult situation.
15:38 Speaker 02 Wow, Bo, um, gosh, what an interesting perspective that, I mean, I, I hear what you're saying because if one of my children passed away, I'd be just broken. And it takes a while for that to heal enough that you can function again. I've never heard of that as a reason to have child life insurance. Wow.
16:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, I would just never, ever buy it.
16:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's, you know, life insurance is designed. For replacement of income that the person who has it dies and the family depends on that income in part or in whole. And that's generally why you buy life insurance.
16:26 Speaker 03 Yep. Sorry. So that was kind of a funny to a very sad, sad Clark stinks.
16:31 Speaker 02 Right.
16:31 Speaker 03 Kathy in Florida says, hi Clark, you don't necessarily stink, but you missed something odiferous regarding parents financially helping out their adult children. Who will make up the immediate shortfall when they're gone? My mom had been gifting my sister and I money on a monthly basis for years. I didn't need the money, so I put some toward my student loan and put the rest in a Roth IRA. My mom recently passed away after two years of declining health.
16:54 Speaker 02 I'm sorry you lost her.
16:55 Speaker 03 I received a call two days after her passing from my brother-in-law asking for financial help as they didn't, couldn't meet their bills without the monthly deposit they were receiving from mom. Despite my warning several months prior that it would be ending when she passed. The inheritance is in a trust and it will take several months to settle. We got them taken care of with an IRA outside of the trust, but as a sibling, I would have rather not received a call like that. I think parents really need to think twice about financially supporting your kids. If your adult children aren't fiscally responsible, giving them money may not necessarily help them in the long run. Thank you, Clark, for all you do. I was able to afford to cut back on work to take care of my mom in her last months because I listened to you. Also, these parents need to think carefully about who they give financial power of attorney to.
17:39 Speaker 02 That is all very, very solid advice at a very difficult time for you. And I thank you so much for sharing your story. And it's true, you could have five siblings and each of them handle money completely differently, one from another. There are people who have spent every last dollar they'll ever see in their lives. And there are others who are just wired to be savers. And the hard part is a parent helping an adult child is you're with the ones you know that are wired to always spend, you're enabling that behavior.
18:20 Speaker 02 And it's hard out of love when you want to help a kid. But is it helping when you're creating a pattern that's so unhealthy?
18:31 Speaker 03 Moving away from.
18:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, we had two very, very downbeat kind of things involving passing away.
18:38 Speaker 03 Okay, Ben in Ohio says, no whiffs of moldy cheese or rotting meat, but just a new perspective. During a recent show, you discussed the psychology of using cash and how it kept people from overspending. Typically, this would be accurate for the older generations, but in talking with my 18 and 21 year old children, they explained how they felt no emotional tie to spending cash, but it felt a much stronger tug when using digital currency. As we talked more, I realized it was not only their youth and comfort with the technology, but that they also viewed cash as extra and it's not tracked in their spending the way credit and debit cards or other forms of spending do, Apple Pay, Venmo, et cetera. It was an interesting perspective.
19:18 Speaker 02 I love this because I've never heard that perspective before. I'm going to talk to my kids about that and bring this up and see what they think. Because just like I was just talking about, of my three children, two are extremely careful with money and one is not at all.
19:43 Speaker 03 And I've been looking at, I've been testing out my daughter once a budgeting app. And she and I are both starting to test out some of the ones we have at Clark.com on our article reviewing budgeting apps. So I'm going to see how that goes. Because I think, you know, that is something that younger generations do. And I get that the electronic thing makes a lot more sense than. Patricia in Arizona says, Clark, you stink, but only in the way a browser does after tracking me across eight airline sites. I was left hanging, wondering what I should do if I find that I get a better deal on travel if I'm not logged into the airline or hotel's website. For example, if I see that when I'm incognito mode, my price is reduced. Should I screenshot the prices and contact the airline or hotel? Or should I post about it on the airline or hotel's X page?
20:24 Speaker 02 Actually, what you should do is you should buy it while you're on the incognito price and they're not going to raise that price. Once you've clicked through to purchase and you add your information. If it's an airline, if you really want to be careful, you don't add your frequent flyer number to the account till after you've purchased and then you go back and add the frequent flyer number. But we are going to see an increase in the use of what the industry calls surveillance pricing where pricing will be individually based and you're going to see steadily more difference between
21:07 Speaker 02 an incognito search and searching where they know who you are because they're basing the individual price on the pattern of how you historically have been price sensitive or not.
21:21 Speaker 03 Tom in Alabama says, Clark, I'm not sure you stink, but Krista does. On your podcast, you were answering-
21:25 Speaker 02 Wait, wait, wait. That's the second time in the last month you've read one where-
21:29 Speaker 03 So what? It's all right. You were answering a listener who asked if they should ship condiments to their Airbnb in Hawaii to save money versus buying them in Hawaii. Before you gave an answer, Krista suggested they just grab extra condiments at a fast food restaurant and stick them in their luggage. Really, Clark? Chick-fil-A serves about 1.6 billion customers a year and if half of them, or 800 million, took just one extra pack of ketchup at a cost of eight cents, it costs Chick-fil-A $64 million a year. Who pays for that but all the other customers as that cost is passed on to all of them? So her cheapness is causing my food to cost more and thus costs me money and higher food costs or the restaurants charge more for condiments. So please use all you need, but
22:14 Speaker 03 quit filling your pantry at my expense.
22:17 Speaker 02 So I got a little funny annex to that. You have experienced in most of the world, when you buy at a fast food restaurant, well, I would experience this more than you.
22:27 Speaker 03 I haven't, yeah.
22:29 Speaker 02 They charge you if you want ketchup for your fries.
22:32 Speaker 03 Oh, really?
22:33 Speaker 02 Or in some countries, people use mayonnaise with the fries. You pay per pack and they'll ask you, do you want ketchup with it? Do you want, if you're at a terminal and you'll see the price go up for having the condiments. They treat every last thing you get as an additional purchase on your part. Because it does have a real cost.
22:55 Speaker 03 I don't know if you've seen a lot of Seinfeld, but this was written by Art Van de Lae. "You stink worse than the BO valet from Seinfeld. Never thought I would have to write one of these. You suggested that a caller continue to contribute to a 403B with fees as high as 1% rather than doing, quote, 'all the work of doing a backdoor Roth.' For someone who drives out of his way to avoid tolls, I would have thought you would understand the impact of a 1% impact on growth over a lifetime. Given that it takes about five minutes to complete a backdoor Roth, the compound savings of thousands of dollars would certainly be worth the hassle."
23:30 Speaker 02 Thank you for that. Okay, so when would I want you to contribute to a brutally high-cost 401K at work? Most 403Bs are crazy high-cost. Only if there's an employer match. Or, and this is the other part of this, what you said is completely right. You would much rather do an ultra-low-cost Roth IRA than contribute to a 401K at work or a 403B. You have to know consumer behavior, though. There are people who will never get around to doing the Roth IRA.
24:10 Speaker 02 So when you talk about the compounded loss of funds from the high fee in a 403B or a high-cost 401K, everything you said is right. But we've got opportunity cost here because a lot of people will never ever get around to funding the Roth. If that's their behavior pattern and they know it, having the money forced out of their check every pay period will be superior because in the Roth example, if they're never going to get it done, they're going to have no money. In the one where it's forced savings, they will have inefficient, high-cost money, but they'll have money down the road.
24:54 Speaker 03 Gianna in North Carolina says, "I must say that you are partially responsible for the surveillance pricing recently discussed on the show. You said all the data companies collect on us makes this possible. Are you not encouraging this by telling people to sign up for every company's members' club under the sun just to save a few bucks? I've also heard you say that digital currency is the way of the future and cash is going the way of the dinosaur. I know you love being able to just put items into your cart at Sam's and walk out without ever having to go through the register, but you don't seem to be aware that that means you're submitting to facial recognition and access to your financial data that can easily be used against you. Very soon, every shopper in a store will be recognized by their face and have individual pricing for every item they buy based on their income or shopping habits.
25:39 Speaker 03 Our cars track our driving habits and sell our data to insurance companies to jack up our rates. Biometric data from your health tracker ring is sold to companies to determine your rates for life and health insurance. We're all just giving this data up freely for convenience and a few bucks saved. Well, a few bucks saved now can result in hundreds of dollars later. My advice: use cash as much as possible and avoid companies who don't accept it. Use VPNs and shop as a guest instead of creating profiles and digital wallets for every store you shop at. Opt out of all biometrics and airlines scanning your face and refuse digital IDs at all costs. We have the power to resist these things in a free capitalist society, force change, and protect our sovereignty. It's lazy and anti-American to suggest that this is just the way of the future.
26:24 Speaker 03 Consider also that your show may become obsolete in a surveillance economy because there will no longer be any way to skirt the system to save money.
26:32 Speaker 02 Thank you for your post and so much of what you said is accurate and something that I feel we need in the United States is legal opt-out rights, which we don't have right now, that we should be able to choose, instead of having to do some of the things you said, we should be able to choose if information about us is captured and stored. We don't have, there's no explicit right to privacy under the US Constitution, there's no explicit right under federal law, some states have been passing laws like this, but
27:09 Speaker 02 they're scattershot. And we need in an era of technology that can track our every movement, every second, and you're right, I'm contributing to it by saying, do this, do that, sign up for this, sign up for that, a national right to privacy law that is an opt-in instead of an opt-out, meaning that you have a right to privacy explicit with the business unless you choose to allow them to capture your data, that you would have to opt into letting them have your data and using it, is something we should have as a country, as many other
27:52 Speaker 02 countries in the world have now adopted. The idea of going as off the grid as possible, there are people that are doing that, but it is hard to do. I have a friend who pays cash for everything and doesn't join anything except the loyalty program at his favorite restaurant he goes to all the time. And it does take some work to create that trail of anonymity.
28:20 Speaker 03 But you're, you're using all the restaurant apps and everything, you're not worrying for yourself?
28:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm being, I'm being tracked every last way, except my Aura fitness ring. Aura does not allow any tracking of data that would be personalized down to an individual.
28:38 Speaker 02 But they could change that. They could change ownership. They'd say, hey, look at this. Look at what we can sell to insurance companies and all that. That's why we need explicit rights to privacy in US law.
28:51 Speaker 03 All right. And Barrett in Minnesota says, Clark and Ader, I love your show, but I feel you have such misguided optimism with electric vehicles. In particular, when I asked my insurance agency for a quote to add a new Model Y, the estimated monthly increase to my policy is $140 per month. In contrast, I recently bought a brand new 2025 loaded up Silverado. The increase was $25 a month. I have no kids in the household and good credit and good driving history. So what gives? When you show the Teslas and electric cars, please give a thorough comparison of gas versus electric when it comes not only to purchase, operating costs, but the cost to insure as well.
29:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, some insurers have been extremely anti-electric vehicle because they don't know yet, and they don't have good actuarial data yet, what it's going to cost them for people having those electric vehicles. That's why in so many states, Tesla offers Tesla branded insurance. My middle child lives in California, drives a Tesla, and she switched to Tesla insurance, and her insurance rates dropped by, believe it or not, almost 80%. And Tesla is willing to underwrite at that cost. So we do have something pretty clear
30:12 Speaker 02 here that the insurance industry has not really gotten comfortable with electric vehicles yet. And it's possible that actuarially, their trends show that it costs more to insure an electric vehicle driver because of the way they drive or the cost of repairing them. Who knows? But what a valid point. That with any vehicle, it's never just the purchase price of the vehicle. It's never just the cost of gasoline. You have to look at the cost of maintenance, insurance, the depreciation. And if you finance it, the cost of that financing.
30:55 Speaker 02 It's all part of the cost of the ownership cycle. And particularly with electric vehicles, because the technology's been changing so quickly, they depreciate like nobody's business. So they depreciate a lot quicker than gas engine vehicles where the change in technology is very incremental, where electric vehicles, the change in technology has been absolutely revolutionary in very short cycles. So that's another factor to consider with electrics. And I want to thank everybody who takes the time every week to post where you feel I didn't get it right.
31:38 Speaker 02 And so for those of you that are new to us here in 26, we do Clark Stinks, and we've been doing Clark Stinks since the 1990s. And we do it because I don't want to have the last word. We're all in this together. We all learn from each other. Knowledge empowers each and every one of us. And so I'm just a guy, and if I get lazy in my habits or lazy in my intellect and I'm missing a bigger picture, or I'm just thick in the head and I miss something, it helps me so much to do a better job serving you, to have Clark Stinks and for you to
32:20 Speaker 02 take the time when you feel let down with me to let me and your fellow listener and viewer know, say, "Thank you." And know that what we're about is empowerment through knowledge so you can save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off. We'll be back at your service on Monday.
32:48 Speaker 04 Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra volume meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time.
33:00 Speaker 05 Pricing participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.
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