Pod Insights The Clark Howard Podcast 01.09.26 Clark Answers His Critics on Clark Stinks / The Future Of Auto Insurance About this episode Friday - Clark Stinks day! Christa shares Clark Stinks posts with Clark. Submit yours at Clark.com/ClarkStinks. Also in this episode - After years of increases, there’s potentially good news on the auto insurance front. Clark looks at industry trends that point to lower costs for car insurance. Clark Stinks: Segments 1 & 2 Auto Insurance Prices: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: Certificate of Deposit (CD): What Is It, Best Places To Open One Clark's Road Trip Hack: Renting a Car vs. Driving Your Own Credit Card Car Rental Insurance: What You Need To Know Should I Buy Additional Insurance From a Rental Car Company? Today's Top Travel Deals Will Auto Insurance Rates Finally Drop in 2026? Why You Need To Shop Your Auto Insurance ASAP Teslarati: Tesla partners with Lemonade for new insurance program Should You Allow Your Auto Insurance To Monitor Your Driving? How Should I Handle Car Insurance for My Teenage Driver? 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
Transcript 0:01 Speaker 00 Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones. Like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then sometimes you make great ones. Like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.
0:30 Speaker 01 Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time.
0:42 Speaker 02 Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.
0:50 Speaker 03 I'm so glad you're with us here on 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. It's Friday, so you know what that means? It's time for Clark stinks. And I gotta tell you something that really does stink about me.
1:14 Speaker 04 Not about you.
1:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, it is about me.
1:17 Speaker 04 It's about AI.
1:18 Speaker 03 It's an AI fake that's running as an ad on Facebook. Is that right?
1:22 Speaker 04 Not even an ad. People are sharing it as a video.
1:25 Speaker 03 Oh. And it totally looks like me. If you watch our YouTube show, it looks like our full podcast YouTube show set. And it's me doing an endorsement of some kind of auto insurance comparison site, shopping site. And it's all fake. It's all, is that called a deep fake?
1:49 Speaker 04 It could be.
1:50 Speaker 03 Whatever you call that. So it looks like me talking like I am right now, doing a pitch for this thing.
2:00 Speaker 03 That just isn't true. And we've tried to get it taken down. So far, we failed.
2:05 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:06 Speaker 03 And I'm not the only one out there that there are fakes running around with people supposedly endorsing different products. So this is gonna be an increasing problem. Think about this year's elections, how much we're gonna have fake videos floating around. And you watch this video, I watched it, and the voice pattern's off just slightly, but it totally seems like me talking.
2:36 Speaker 04 Yeah, they took a video of you and they just changed the words you're saying.
2:39 Speaker 03 And you can't tell, watching it, that the words that supposedly AI has me saying are not the words coming out of my mouth. So it's gotten harder to know when something is real and when it's not. Here's what you need to know. I have not, since I went into public life in 1987, to this moment, I have never done an endorsement. An endorsement is when someone is paid to say whatever about a product, almost like an ad. I've never done that. And anytime you see anything pretending to be me doing an endorsement,
3:24 Speaker 03 you know it's phony. And I'm a little annoyed, right? Because for you to be misled and think I'm the one misleading you, wow, that stinks.
3:39 Speaker 04 It really stinks.
3:41 Speaker 03 Anyway, we got Clark stinks coming up. Later in this episode, I'm gonna talk about some potential edge of good news, maybe, in the auto insurance front. After years and years and years of these huge increases coming our way, there's a lot of developments I'm gonna share with you later, after Clark stinks. But now it's time to hear how I really am stinking it up.
4:19 Speaker 03 What are you starting with today?
4:21 Speaker 04 I'm gonna begin with Michaela. I hope I'm saying that right, from New York. Michaela says, consistently stanky poo Clark. Are you not trainable? Seriously, stop saying scamsters. It truly does not convey the gravity and complete devastation to people's lives. My mom, 93 years old, thinks it's cute and she keeps sending $10 checks to every charity letter in her mailbox. I'm begging you, Clark, words matter and you have to find another way to discuss the morally bankrupt people who scam.
4:51 Speaker 03 So where did I come up with scamsters instead of scammers? Cause it was like a mix of gangster and scammer together.
5:02 Speaker 04 Sounds like hamster to me.
5:03 Speaker 03 Oh, to me, I did it. I started doing it years ago to show actually the opposite of what you're saying. To me, it was like making it more grave, what scammers are up to. So that's why I started calling them scamsters, probably 30 so years ago. And I hear your point. It is ugly. And you may not know this, my late mom had dementia fairly early in her age cycle and kept getting scammed by phony charities. And eventually we had to intercept all my mom's mail. And then the problem became the phone.
5:46 Speaker 03 That was decades ago and this is still a problem every day, so many different ways.
5:53 Speaker 04 Scott in Florida says, without commenting on a Clark olfactory offense, he left me with a confusing mixed message. One of his never, never, not ever rules would be to buy a CD from a bank. Instead, we should buy them only from his three favorite brokerages. Today, I wanted to buy a 12 month CD. On the fidelity side, the best rate was 3.5%. At bankrate.com, there were several at 4.1%, all from banks. That's a full half percent difference. They all claim to be FDIC insured and show no fees. So why is a brokerage a bad? Better source. What am I missing?
6:28 Speaker 03 You're not missing anything. And that is not truly a never, never, not ever thing that you never buy a CD direct from an online bank. Traditional bricks and mortar banks generally are not going to pay very high rates. But the key point I try to make about that is most investors, savers, aren't aware that most of the time, the best rates on CDs come through discount stockbrokers or investment houses. And so my three favorite children, Schwab, Vanguard, Fidelity, all sell what are known as brokerage placed FDIC insured CDs.
7:13 Speaker 03 And if you found one at a better rate at bankrate.com, and you're out earning what you can earn from a discount broker, go for it. But more often than not, the discount brokers will have the best deal on CDs of various lengths.
7:30 Speaker 04 Ron in Tennessee says, Clark doesn't stink at all. He just uses the wrong wording sometimes. We can't buy a home, we buy a house. That's all. Another wording one. All right. Patrick in North Carolina says-
7:43 Speaker 03 That comes from Habitat, by the way.
7:45 Speaker 04 Oh.
7:46 Speaker 03 Habitat has always said, we're not building houses, we're building a home for a family. So that's where that's in my head.
7:54 Speaker 04 Okay. Patrick in North Carolina says, Clark doesn't stink, but he is like the Hall of Fame quarterback on the team with no offensive line. He recently said that merchants could charge a credit card fee for debit cards if they were used as a credit instead of a debit card with a PIN. This is not correct. Regardless if ran as credit or debit, merchants are not allowed to charge a fee. See this link to a Visa document as proof. And then he sent a link that I did read through. Keep up the good work, Clark, and don't let the merchants get extra fees from us for no reason.
8:25 Speaker 03 So what did the Visa briefing say?
8:27 Speaker 04 It does say that even if it's cleared as credit card, they're not allowed to charge a fee.
8:31 Speaker 03 That is not how Visa may say that. That's not how I understand the regulations. So I'll have to do more reading on that because the whole thing with, you know, the checking accounts where you use a debit card, but say you're using as credit and you do so many transactions a month and they pay you nice interest on your checking account each month. The whole deal there is by you saying credit instead of debit, the fees are much higher. So it's a workaround for the banks to get more money out of merchants. My understanding is that when that's done, the merchant then all's fair.
9:13 Speaker 03 If they are having to pay much higher credit card fees, that they can then charge you those. So I will, I will do reading on that.
9:23 Speaker 04 Dennis in Oregon says, "Your recent answer and advice to a questioner who asked, 'Is it better to rent a car for a longer drive than drive my own car? Stinks worse than the manure truck. I got behind in slow traffic yesterday. Although it may be cheaper to rent a car if you don't own one, depending on how it's driven, it's not necessarily cheaper to rent a car on a long trip than it is to drive your own car. Your logic comparing AAA's computations of the cost to own a car to the cost of a rental car just doesn't work. While this average of 60 cents per mile ownership cost may be accurate, this cost includes the cost of the car, loan interest, insurance, et cetera, that won't change when you drive a rental and are paid whether you drive a rental or not. Obviously rental car charges will be in addition to and not replace
10:07 Speaker 04 most of the ownership costs that remain." And there's, this really struck a nerve because Rosario, North Carolina wrote in with this. "Clark stinks like my protein shaker I accidentally left in the car for a month." That's a good one. Recently, he talked about how it can be better to rent a car instead of driving your own for a 2,000 mile trip. To many of us, that sounds bougie and unrealistic. I don't know anyone who would choose to rent a car for a road trip rather than just hop in their own vehicle. Can you elaborate on this more or is this just the way to justify the luxury of a rental car?
10:43 Speaker 03 Okay, both of you, great, great thoughts and posts.
10:48 Speaker 03 So my deal on this is that I want you to own your personal vehicle for an extremely long period of time. Depreciation is one of the biggest costs there is as the value falls each year and then it starts to level out. So if you're not running a bunch of miles on your odometer, that depending on whose measurement you look at, the most recent I saw is 70 something cents a mile now, not 60, to operate your own vehicle a mile. If you instead, for when you're putting a large number of miles on a vehicle in a short period of time, let's say a week or so, it's a lot cheaper to put that on the rental car
11:31 Speaker 03 company's vehicle than to put it on your own. Yes, there are many factors involved and the cost of driving a vehicle one mile is made up of insurance, depreciation, interest, fuel, all those things, maintenance, all true. I think there's a real advantage to, instead of putting a huge number of miles in a short period of time on your own vehicle, to be able to keep that vehicle longer and benefit long-term from the depreciation flattening out. The goal is to keep a vehicle, if it works in your life 10 years or longer, average age
12:12 Speaker 03 of a vehicle in the United States, depending on how measured right now, is from nearly 13 years to just under 14 years.
12:20 Speaker 04 Okay, and staying on...
12:22 Speaker 03 One more thing. This is a little nugget for you. I rent cars, normally I rent cars about 30 times a year. This last year was only 20 something times. And there's a trend that's your friend and mine. The cost of renting a car is going down.
12:39 Speaker 03 And getting steadily cheaper. And I've seen it in my own life and my own wallet. I just rented a car for a trip to Los Angeles where the rental is costing me before junk fees, $24 a day and not from some rent a used something. No, from a regular rental car company, in this case Alamo through Costco Travel. And it's 24 bucks a day plus junk fees. And that's a lot cheaper than car rentals have been over the last five years.
13:12 Speaker 04 All right, we're going to stay on car rentals with Rick in Pennsylvania stinks. He says, not so much a stink is a lack of odor. There's something missing here. Clark talked about credit cards that provide primary rental car coverage. But if you don't travel a lot, the annual fee is a bit much on these cards. There's a more affordable option for less frequent renters. Most Amex cards offer an optional primary rental car insurance for $19.95 per rental, up to 42 days. You must enroll in the Amex Premium Rental Car Insurance Program to get the coverage. And you're only charged at the time of rental when paid with your Amex card.
13:46 Speaker 03 100% true. And a lot of people specifically use the Amex primary car coverage when they're traveling outside the United States. There are a handful of countries where the American Express coverage does not apply. A lot of them start, countries start with an I for some reason. But anyway, you look at that list. And if you do have an American Express card eligible for the American Express per rental primary coverage at 20 bucks, it's a deal.
14:20 Speaker 04 And Matt in Texas, still talking about cars, says Clark discourages automobile wheel alignment, saying it is oversold. And by the way, this was a very popular stinks, lots of them. When he encouraged his son to get alignment after noticing uneven wear on the tires, that does not fix the tires. It only avoids the same problem recurring. If Clark waits for the tires on his Tesla Model S to show uneven wear, then gets alignment, he risks the $300 of each tire being ruined. Plus Tesla discourages replacing individual tires. This risks $600 of tire replacement due to poor alignment. Short suggestion, either purchase a lifetime alignment and have it done every year, or visit Groupon and pay about $40 a year for alignment. Cheap insurance.
15:05 Speaker 03 Thank you, Matt. I appreciate that. I've had a lot of people bending my ear about what I said about alignments and I stand corrected from you and many others.
15:17 Speaker 04 And then Jules in Georgia, you had mentioned your passport book was full, says, I'm surprised you didn't mention, or maybe you don't know, now you can request a large book, 52-page passport when applying for renewing, which provides extra space for visas and stamps.
15:32 Speaker 03 Thank you for that. I don't know if I mentioned why I had the skinny passport book. And gosh, it's such an elite thing that I've traveled so much outside the world that I've filled my passport book. But I had to renew during COVID and the passport office was only doing the skinny, not fat passports at that time. And so that's why I'm going to have to early renew my passport because I'm almost out of space on the pages.
16:04 Speaker 04 That's awesome.
16:05 Speaker 03 I don't know. That sounds like a spoiled kid kind of thing.
16:08 Speaker 04 The price of, no, I mean, you've earned every penny and saved every penny. And I would say this too, like your travel that you've done around the world has probably cost less than people spend traveling within our own country because of the way you look for deals.
16:23 Speaker 03 Well, I mean, I always let the deal drive the trip.
16:26 Speaker 04 Right.
16:27 Speaker 03 And that's how we decide where we go.
16:30 Speaker 04 Right.
16:30 Speaker 03 And it's what I've always done. And you know, for our staff reward trip and our staff meetings that we do somewhere in the world, when a deal pops up, what do we do within six hours? We book everybody, right?
16:43 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:44 Speaker 03 Yeah. And so this year, we're going to Croatia because it was a new route for United Airlines and there was an introductory special. And so that's where we're going. So it's so random. Name some of the crazy places you've been over the years.
17:01 Speaker 04 Oh, my gosh. Argentina, Australia, Shanghai, Tokyo was like $475 round trip, nonstop?
17:09 Speaker 03 $470.10. Don't exaggerate.
17:13 Speaker 04 That was 20, almost 24 years ago because I was pregnant with my daughter. And you still remember that?
17:19 Speaker 03 Well, because I mean, it's multiplied out by the number of people.
17:23 Speaker 04 Talk about spoiled. I feel like it's, you know, it's such a privilege we've had over the years to get these trips. It's unbelievable.
17:29 Speaker 03 Well, speaking of privilege.
17:30 Speaker 04 And I'm spending more to fly to Minnesota today, by the way, than just about the Croatia ticket cost.
17:36 Speaker 03 And it's going to be so warm in January in Minnesota. You know, people in Minnesota want to come south during January and you go there in June. Nope, no plan either. Okay.
17:51 Speaker 04 It's for an event.
17:52 Speaker 03 All right. So this is also irrelevant to Clark's things, but I want to tell you, we are in one of the two prime weeks for discounting in the world of travel. Every January cruises often have their lowest rates. And also a lot of international airlines offer deals right now. Air New Zealand has one. There are several European airlines offering deals right now for travel later in the year. Because after Christmas, people are pretty tapped out and they're not thinking about booking travel into the future.
18:28 Speaker 03 And so we are in one of the core key weeks to get great deals for travel going on through this year. Particularly for travel, spring, summer, and fall internationally. So if you want to pick up a bargain and not hear somebody else tell you, sitting next to you on a plane, that they paid a third of what you paid, pay attention to the deals going on right now. Coming up ahead, something that's been a no deal for the last many years is auto insurance. But there's more and more promise coming on the auto insurance front. And I want to tell you what you need to know about.
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21:23 Speaker 03 I want to tell you that after we have just received body blow after body blow from auto insurers pushing rates higher and higher and higher. We're in a time right now that that has basically exhausted itself. And insurers are looking more and more, depending on the state, at actually lowering rates some, not like the rates are going back to where they were three years ago, but the big run up seems to be over and now treading water and even some price cuts.
22:03 Speaker 03 So what that means right now, there's more gap between what insurers are charging. That fact, there were a number of insurers that were losing billions of dollars. I know, don't cry me a river for them, but they, but they need to make money to stay in business and a lot of auto insurers were losing huge money because they got caught so badly by the increase in the cost of vehicles, the increase in the value of used vehicles, the increase in the cost of parts for vehicles and for repairs and body shop work.
22:42 Speaker 03 It all just went crazy high and they played catch up and were pushing these rates up. And now things have moderated some on the cost front. And now in turn, that's being reflected more and more in auto insurance rates. Some insurers are just going to keep using momentum with you to keep charging what they're charging. That's why you go shop the market and see what you can do. I also wanted to talk to you about something that is like really kind of out there. And it's something that there's enough millions of miles of data on Waymos and on FSD, full self-drive Teslas.
23:28 Speaker 03 That the data shows that the accident rate when a Waymo is driving or a Tesla is on FSD, that the accident rate drops by 90%, 9-0%, and all of us think we're above-average drivers, but other people are terrible. The reality is, humans are not great drivers unless they're a professionally-trained driver, which is like nobody. So, these vehicles that do the FSD in the Tesla world, the Waymos, because the accident rate is so much lower, we're going
24:08 Speaker 03 to see some very positive trends. I alluded to this about six weeks ago, that as the vehicle fleet in the United States automates, and you and I aren't driving, we're just sitting there, that the terrible road fatality rate we have is going to decline gradually over a number of years as the fleet changes over. But also, there's an opportunity, speaking of auto insurance, to save a lot of money. Lemonade, which is an insurer that charges you based on how much you drive and how you drive, has new experimental rates that they are trying to implement, or some stories say they already have, others say that this
24:52 Speaker 03 is going to happen. You'll find out if you live in Arizona, California, or Oregon. Lemonade has a program with Tesla where you can just download the Lemonade app, and it can track mile per mile whether you, as a Tesla driver, are driving on full self-drive, which means you just sit there and the car does everything. And that the insurance per mile you're driving, where you're not driving and the car is, the insurance will be a little bit more than nominally free. It'll cost almost nothing for those miles, because the risk to them drops 90% of you being in an accident.
25:37 Speaker 03 And this is something Lemonade wants to do in all the states they're in. They're in about a dozen states around the country, hoping to keep adding more. And Tesla, you know, offers auto insurance in a bunch of states. And I imagine that they will go to a system where when you're on FSD, full self-drive, that you'll pay lower prices per mile for auto insurance. How does this work with per-mile insurers? There are now several in the country. You pay a base rate based on your driver profile, driving history. And then you pay a per-mile, every mile you're on the road. Because obviously, if you're not on the road, you can't have a wreck.
26:20 Speaker 03 So you pay per mile and the automation improves the safety so much. And I'll share a little story that happened to me because I drive, according to the records on my Tesla, about 90% of my miles I'm driving FSD. So I was at a corner, I was getting ready to take a right turn, the car was. And then all of a sudden, it abruptly stopped because a vehicle, I was getting ready to go southbound, a vehicle coming northbound, made an illegal U-turn right there. And me driving, I was looking left. If I was driving, I would have pulled right into that vehicle making the illegal left.
27:03 Speaker 03 But the car with the FSD has cameras everywhere and stopped and prevented that accident. I mean, that was a perfect example of where the automation was superior to what I could do as a human. So a lot of good stuff after a lot of bad years with driving and premiums and all that.
27:28 Speaker 03 Good stuff I think is on our way. And yes, Krista, this is an example of me always being Pollyanna.
27:36 Speaker 04 Oh, I don't think so. Well, you know, I'm accused of the same. You say I wear Krista colored glasses.
27:41 Speaker 03 You initially coined that for yourself.
27:43 Speaker 04 No, I did not.
27:44 Speaker 03 I did?
27:45 Speaker 04 You did. Yes.
27:47 Speaker 03 Krista colored glasses are where no matter what's going wrong, Krista says, but it's gonna be okay.
27:52 Speaker 04 Usually it is.
27:54 Speaker 03 Okay.
27:54 Speaker 04 Okay. Steve in South Carolina says, recently my auto insurance premium increased by over 10%. I'm gonna say the carrier. My carrier is State Farm and I've been with them a number of years with home and auto insurance. No claims ever filed. When I contacted them about the increase, they wanted to put a tracker on my car, which would supposedly lower the premium. What do you think about this? Is it a good idea to trade more of our personal data for a lower rate? Thank you for all you do to keep us from being ripped off.
28:23 Speaker 03 Okay, so first of all, Steve, State Farm is rumored to be one of the insurers that uses profitability index scores, which are loyalty index scores, which are based on your personality and how loyal you are, that you are not going to be, if you're an extremely loyal kind of person, you're not going to be somebody who's gonna say, well, State Farm raised my rates, I'm gonna go shop somewhere else. Who knows if they really are using these loyalty scores or not, but a lot of insurers do. So I'll get to your question in a second about putting the device in your car. You should use this as an opportunity and as a clear signal to go shop your auto insurance.
29:04 Speaker 03 And you may find that State Farm is not offering you what the marketplace will, and that you can find the same coverages from another company at a significantly lower price. Or maybe you'll find out you aren't. But then as you shop around, you're also going to see this offer that State Farm made to you to put in a tracker on how you drive. And it's all about tracking how aggressively you drive, how much you do lane changes, how much you speed, how much you do jackrabbit starts and stops, that the insurers use these things as a predictor of the odds you're going to be in an accident and adjust your
29:49 Speaker 03 rates up or down based on it. So you have to know yourself and what kind of driver you are. If you are somebody who's extra, extra cautious, careful behind the wheel, then these trackers in your vehicle will benefit you. If you know yourself, though, to be a pretty aggressive driver, you don't want one of these trackers.
30:12 Speaker 04 Mike in Montana says, "We have a college student that is not a very good driver. He paid for his own car. He bought it from us, but is still under our name and insurance. We have above-average income and assets. Should we have him register the car under his own name and pay for the insurance for liability reasons? We're happy to reimburse him for these expenses until he graduates." We had a similar question for somebody. I felt it was worth repeating here.
30:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, because this has come up a lot.
30:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, and you and I would love to do this, right? We both have college-age sons driving.
30:45 Speaker 03 So, Mike, here's the thing. Okay, insurance is sold by state. The regulation of insurance and the rules for it vary by state, but this is something that's fairly consistent around the country. As long as a child is your dependent, you're providing 50% or more of their support each year, even if they own a vehicle in their own name, they pay for their own insurance.
31:13 Speaker 03 You still have liability risk potentially in the event they have an at-fault accident, particularly if somebody in another vehicle is injured. So it is not the shield you would hope it would be in most states. Montana is a little different with vehicle registrations and insurance. And so I can't speak specifically to whether what's generally true around the country is specifically true in Montana, but usually that will not make that difference for you.
31:46 Speaker 04 That's the reason that my, that my ex-husband and I still have an umbrella insurance policy because we have a, yeah.
31:54 Speaker 03 You got young drivers.
31:55 Speaker 04 Christina in Utah says, "My husband and I are both self-employed and have been enrolling in a high deductible health insurance plan through healthcare.gov for the last few years. In 2025, our monthly premium for our family of six was about $2,300 with $400 in subsidies, making our payment just over $1,900 per month. For 2026, the same plan, which is the second least expensive option for us, but has the closest healthcare facilities in our rural area, is jumping to over $2,900 a month. Side note, the max out-of-pocket per person is also increasing from $9,500 to over $11,000, and the family max out-of-pocket is going from $18,000 to over $21,000.
32:39 Speaker 04 While we can afford to pay the premiums, we are a healthy family that hasn't made much use of our coverage in the last few years. My husband's a healthcare professional, which also helps alleviate trips to the clinic and hospital. I know you don't recommend using health share programs, but paying over $35,000 a year for health insurance is painful. Do we just continue to bite the bullet and consider it a cost of living in the United States? At what point, if any, do we try to try out a health share program, knowing we can switch back to health insurance starting in January of next year?"
33:11 Speaker 03 Okay, this one's tough because you're talking about a 50% increase in premium year over year because the Congress couldn't reach a deal on how the subsidies would work for individuals and families buying coverage, small businesses as well. 50% increase, the out-of-pocket for coverages going up about 18% on top of that. I mean, this is bad ugly. And a lot of people are in a position that there's no way they can afford to pay the premiums that the increases have put upon them for 26. So you're talking about
33:55 Speaker 03 rolling the dice until you can hit 27, going into a cost share thing, one of the health share co-op kind of things. Yeah, so here's the problem. If you have a routine kind of thing, you're going to pay a fraction of this cost and you won't have the big deductibles in a health share. These co-ops are where a group of people pool their money together and then pay for care that people receive out of the pooled money. But they are not what's known as actuarially underwritten. And so if in a pool, you have, let's say,
34:39 Speaker 03 some tragic accidents in the pool, you have more than expected number of people who get, let's say, cancer or severe heart issue or have an organ failure that requires extreme medical care, you may not be in a position to limp along till 27 when you can go back into A traditional healthcare plan. So this is a roll of the dice on your part. Yes, if everybody's healthy, has no major illnesses, anything like that through 26, you're going to save a ton. But if somebody has an accident or major illness and you can't
35:24 Speaker 03 just wait till the new calendar year to cover it, you've got to just think this through and think how much risk you're willing to absorb. You're in a position unlike other people who cannot afford the new premiums. You're in a position to afford the, the cost of the insurance. You just don't want to spend all that money. I get that. But you got to think about the risk to the assets you've built up over the years. If there was a tragic event that required real medical spending this year, and I can't make that call for you, you'll have to decide.
36:06 Speaker 03 And this is happening, there's, uh, is it 40 million people buy individual or small business coverage who are all seeing these premium increases that 50% is kind of in the wheelhouse, but some people are seeing much bigger increases than that. You got to make your own call on what makes sense for you and the risk that you're willing to roll the dice on. So tough topic without an automatic easy answer. I want to thank you so much for joining us today and I hope that this is a wonderful weekend for you. If you are into
36:50 Speaker 03 the NFL like I am, I hope that your team wins this weekend in the playoffs and know that we are here. No matter what team you're for or against, we're on your team with your wallet. Everything's about your empowerment with knowledge so you can save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off. And we'll be at your service on Monday.
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