04.09.25 Dollar Tree Adaptations / Summer Travel - Gas Prices

In today’s episode - We may need a new name for Dollar Tree, because things there are changing again as the retailer adapts to inflation pressures. Also, the gasoline industry is going “bottom bucket - top bucket”. Clark explains what this means for motorists, and how to save more on quality gas. Dollar Tree Changes: Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 Spend Less On Gas: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: What Can I Do if My HOA Is Doing a Poor Job? A Secret Mortgage Blacklist Is Leaving Homeowners Stuck With Unsellable Condos - WSJ What Condo Owners Need To Know About Insurance Polybutylene for Inspectors What Does a Home Warranty Cover and Is It Worth The Money? Does the Brand of Gasoline Really Matter? Buying Gas From a Station on This List Is Better for Your Car 6 Things To Know Before You Buy Gas at Costco Wholesale 7 Money Mistakes You Might Be Making at the Gas Station How To Save Money on Gas: 23 Ways How To Plan a Trip: Clark's Best Travel Tips To Save Money 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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• 1:20Speaker 02

  It's great to have you 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. In today's episode, gosh, I'm trying to come up with a new name for $1.25 Tree. It used to be known as Dollar Tree. Because things are changing again. Also, the summer travel season's upon us. So for most of us, that means we hit the road. And I want to lay out what's going on at the gas pump. So it's getting easier and easier for you to get better and better prices on gasoline. Whatever the price average is on a gallon,

• 2:04Speaker 02

  it's much easier than it used to be for you to pay less than that average. The market has changed so much to your advantage. So the Dollar Tree changes are not to your advantage. Dollar Tree... Forever was, everything was a dollar. And then inflation during COVID led to them breaking the buck and going to a buck 25. And Dollar Tree has always had, was known as very high margins. You may be buying things for a dollar 25, but they have a big markup, much bigger than a lot

• 2:47Speaker 02

  of other retailers because they source the stuff and so much of it is private label. But now because of the combination of inflation and tariffs, Dollar Tree has been experimenting with running their stores different ways and they've been trying in different neighborhoods, different pricing systems and different merchandise mixes. Now they are going to a system that is going to be from a dollar 25 to right now a cap of seven bucks. So when you walk in a Dollar Tree, no longer can you just put something in your, those

• 3:30Speaker 02

  little carry around baskets is what most people use and know that, well, I got 10 items, it's going to be 1250 plus tax. It's not the way it's going to be. It's going to be not a price signal anymore that, oh, it's only a dollar and a quarter, I'm going to buy it. You're going to have to actually know what the price is. It makes running the stores more complicated as well because now they have to properly price. You may have been in a Dollar Tree that has one aisle in the store that is items that are at different prices. And now it's going to be that way apparently throughout the stores.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  It'll take a while for them to do this universally, but it's just a clear indication that the price is no longer the price. If you're ever a five below shopper. Five Below was their whole shtick originally was to be a higher end discount store, more geared their primary customer historically had been teenage and 20 something girls and women is who they went after. Today, their product mix is wider to attract males and females of different ages. And the Five Below is what the store is called, but the price can be a lot higher than $5. So the same kind of thing that the price is no longer

• 4:56Speaker 02

  the signal other than, hey, we're trying to give you deals here. And again, a lot of it at Five Below, private label. So pay attention to the price of an item you pick up in either chain, because it's not Five Below only anymore. And it's not $1.25 tree anymore.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  I was just in one this weekend.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  And how much did you end up spending while you were in the $1.25 tree?

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Let's see, $1.25 times six, uh, 750, right? 750 plus tax.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  You were making fun of yourself.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  I don't care.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  You're an English major, right?

• 5:38Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  Working for you, though. Joke's on you. Okay, Jackie in California says, love the podcast. My husband introduced me to the show. We listen every day while we start our workday. We live in a condo in California and our HOA has increased our dues and charged some special assessments every year since 2021. Here is the kicker, though. Our HOA is charging an emergency special assessment of $4,200 to be paid in 10 months due to the HOA, saying their condo insurance has gone up 800%. I know insurance has gone up in California, but 800% seems outrageous. Do you have any advice for us on how to best navigate this? Thanks again. And it's Jackie and Emilio.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Jackie and Emilio, welcome to California. This has been principally a California and Florida problem and condominiums. The particular thing going on in California.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Is the insurance market there has been broken because of the wildfires. So homeowners associations, condo associations that buy what's considered to be substandard condominium coverage for the parts the association is responsible for. The association, that condo becomes like a marked place and no longer are people able to get conventional mortgages who might want to buy your unit. So they end up having to take out higher cost, hard to get mortgages to buy it, which then means your condo value drops.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Condominium owners in California are between a rock and a hard place, just like condominium owners in Florida because of the risk levels that the insurers have faced. So the association and if misery loves company, y'all are not alone with these very, very large special assessments to maintain proper condo insurance. So this is pick your poison because if the association instead buys substandard coverage, then the value of your unit declines and if it has a catastrophic loss, the association

• 8:00Speaker 02

  doesn't have the insurance to rebuild the complex, to rebuild the condominium. So the market eventually somehow will settle down, but that's why the board is not behaving badly. This is a problem, not universal in California, but it's become very common.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  And if there's any mistrust, I'm sure you can ask to see the insurance bill, right?

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you have a right to see the insurance policy they're buying. You should go to a board meeting and not in anger, but ask, you know, what has the insurance broker for the association done to shop our coverage around? Because this is a brutal amount of money and this brutal and who it's hitting the hardest in California and Florida are middle-class condominium owners, not the people who own rich condominiums, you know, rich people condominiums, but the mid-market in the condominiums in California and Florida. This has been devastating. I'm sorry, I have, I have no great news there.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Okay, Andrew in Iowa says, "I have a question about taxes for you. Most employers withhold taxes automatically and a lot of them, including my job, allow you to change your tax withholding amounts. I'm growing into the perspective that tax withholding is essentially just paying taxes early instead of using that time to grow your money. My question is, would there be any unforeseen problems with changing my tax withholding on each paycheck to zero and just locking in that extra 25% or so in a high-yield savings account until my tax bill comes due? As long as I'm not touching that money that's designated for taxes, it seems like a small raise I could be taking advantage of. A couple percentage points of growth would probably net me an extra few hundred in interest per year.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  Did I just find myself the money for free, new kitchen appliance or tech gadget every year? I could do some damage with that extra cash on Black Fridays."

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Wow, do I wish there was a free lunch like that, Andrew. Only if you're self-employed can you really play this game easily. So if you have not paid in withholdings throughout the year, you get hit with what are known as underpayment penalties by the IRS that are substantial. You are expected, over the course of a year, to have enough money withheld to be within shouting distance of what your tax liability will be. So if you reduce your withholdings to zero and then wait till you file your return, the IRS is going to get you.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  And the penalties are going to far exceed, the underpayment penalties are going to far exceed what you could earn on that money over the year. Now, reluctantly, I'll tell you how you can actually play this game. And self-employed people tend to do it. They do no withholdings through payroll the first three quarters of the year, and then the last quarter of the year, they make it up by just taking withholdings to the point they need to, to fulfill what they would have done over the year. So basically, you've got free use of the money for nine months, and then the last three months of

• 11:23Speaker 02

  the year, you're going to get a teensy tiny net paycheck because you're paying in all that withholding for the whole year in those 90 days. Because the IRS, if withholding is done through payroll, they don't do an estimate of what was paid each quarter. They take as long as what you put in was substantially enough over the course of a year, you've met your obligation, and there's no underpayment penalty. Can't wait to hear from the CPAs who do tax and say, Clark, I can't believe you said that.

• 11:56Speaker 03

  Bob in Washington says, what is your take on the company HomeServe for exterior water line protection service? Is it a good service or a homeowner's scam?

• 12:07Speaker 02

  It's neither of those two things. So HomeServe, like many others, sells generally home warranty plans. Also, because of all the problems people have had with polybutylene water service lines, it is a specialty product they sell as well. Now, if you go online, the reviews of any of these home warranty companies are all over the place. And if you read the reviews that people post about Home Serve, you'll see people that are very happy, you'll see people that are angry beyond measure, and you'll see people kind of in

• 12:48Speaker 02

  between. So it's not true peace of mind buying one of these things. But know this, if your yard service line is polybutylene, at some point, that polybutylene is going to give out, and you're going to have your own Old Faithful in your front yard, and you hope it does go straight up in the air because you know before you end up with a water bill that is a zillion dollars. So...

• 13:19Speaker 02

  It is a problem that's only a question of when, not if, the polybutylene is going to give way. I don't know if I said on the podcast or the YouTube show that my sister had interior polybutylene in her house and the polybutylene gave way and heavily damaged her house and she had to move out for, I think, eight months while her house was rebuilt. And I guess the only good thing is insurance paid and now she has essentially a brand new house, but it was a lot of disruption.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Coming up ahead, we're going to talk about gas and buying gas is gas for your car, truck, SUV. Wow. The market is going bottom bucket, top bucket. I'll tell you what that means straight ahead.

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• 16:01Speaker 02

  The market for gas to fill up your car continues to become more pro-consumer. Historically, buying gasoline for your vehicle meant that you were stuck at a major oil company's station. Tended to have not very nice bathrooms if they had them at all, and very inconsistent convenience stores, and very expensive prices at the pump, not set by the person who owns that location, but set by the major oil company in a cartel-type arrangement.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  And this was really wonderful for the major oil companies for a long time. But change started about 40 years ago, but really only accelerated to where it is continuing to be more pro-consumer in the last 10 years. Because now, it's reached critical mass that oil companies now account for the sale of a teensy-tiny percent of their own product.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  That you as a consumer have so many choices. Supermarket gas stations, the warehouse club gas stations, and the independent convenience store chains that are growing like gangbusters. Like Wawa and Sheetz and QuickTrip, both versions of QuickTrip, spelled differently, and Race Track, Maverick, and on and on. So the price points, what's called the price buckets, have spread so much that now we're getting to a point in a lot of metro areas where the price going to a traditional oil company station and a discounter

• 17:55Speaker 02

  are now commonly 60 cents a gallon difference in what you pay. And you might be fooled by the oil companies into thinking, "Oh, well, I'm only going to get good gas if I go to something that's a blah, blah, blah, oil company station." Baloney. And if you want to know going to an independent, that the gas that you're putting in your vehicle is really good, buy from a station that sells top-tier gas. Costco's top-tier gas, a lot of the big chains, the independent convenience store chains sell top-tier gas.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  And then you have nothing to worry about. But the generally safest places to buy your gas are what are known as pumpers. That's places that have huge number of pumps, get multiple, many, many fuel deliveries per day. And the gas doesn't have a chance to separate, end up with water in your tank that could cause a problem, anything like that. And now the warehouse clubs, particularly Costco and Sam's, are in an open-hours war at the gas pumps. They are stretching the hours, seven days a week, that the gas pumps are open way beyond the hours. The stores, the warehouse clubs are open.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  And in most markets, the cheapest gas you're going to get is going to be at the warehouse clubs. And I said 60 cents a gallon. Recently, I noticed when we were traveling that Costco was a dollar 10 a gallon cheaper than the gas station right down the block from Costco. A dollar 10 a gallon from a major oil company station. And the Costco was top tier gas, major oil company almost certainly not. So when you're thinking about buying gas, one thing you don't want is a credit card from one of the major oil companies.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Because then you're much more likely to go there for their puny five or 10 or 20 cent a gallon discount you're getting for every gallon, when you could have been buying much cheaper, potentially better gas somewhere else. And if you go to the independent convenience store chains, you're not going to save as much as you do at Sam's or Costco, but you're going to save a lot. And then they're going to have potentially clean bathrooms, maybe good food too, as we've talked about prior.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  All right.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  What do you think? You think I'm really excited by the major oil company gas stations? It's hard to know sometimes how I feel, right?

• 20:46Speaker 03

  Very difficult. All right. Christina in Wyoming says, "We have the Costco credit card, but now live two hours from the nearest store. Do we keep or close this card? We visit the store two times a year roughly."

• 20:59Speaker 02

  I don't know why you would keep the card. I'm not even sure why you would keep the Costco membership, unless where you are in rural Wyoming, going to Costco is when you buy provisions and large numbers. Then I guess you could keep the card since it has no annual fee and keep your membership because you're getting 2% cash back on everything you buy in the store. But man, that's a long drive to Costco. It reminds me of the first time I went to Alaska and I was shocked at people flying in in float planes to shop. I think that was, is that Costco or Sam's?

• 21:38Speaker 02

  From, from way in the rural interior of Alaska, flying in and they had a float plane airport right by the warehouse. Club. Now that's a long way to get your stuff.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  You do it. I recently Costco had my favorite Charmin Ultra toilet paper on sale. And so I went a couple of different times because it's like you get a limit of two per time. And my friend told me their daughter was like, they were out of toilet paper and she was like, why don't you go get some from Krista? Did you see how much she has? Like I have so much toilet paper right now. I was like, well, you're always going to need it. Okay. Lee in Pennsylvania says, I would like your thoughts on using unleaded 88 gasoline. Some people say it will harm your engine and others say that it's fine to use. I do know that it's good for your wallet at the pump. Thank you for all you do.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  So it's not necessarily good for your wallet at the pump, Lee, because it's ethanol 15%. Ethanol historically was maxed at 10% at the pump unless it was a special one for a special blend of ethanol that was E85 that certain large SUVs can run on E85. So Congress, in spite of the automakers being opposed to E15, Congress to try to help farmers out, raised

• 23:07Speaker 02

  the possibility, made it legal for you to buy this 88 octane that's ethanol 15%. And unless your vehicle is what's known as a dual fuel vehicle, it can also run on the E85, I would not buy the E15. I would stick with E10 because you don't want to take a chance of needing a major repair. But let me go to the thing why you don't save money. Ethanol burns less efficiently in your gas engine vehicle than traditional gasoline. So your fuel economy is meaningfully reduced, which wipes out the savings you think you're getting

• 23:52Speaker 02

  per gallon. And if you were farmer who's in the ethanol business, I know you hate me right now.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  Be some special Clark stinks.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  Mike in California says, we were searching for a one way trip from Copenhagen to Los Angeles on kayak. We chose a flight and booked it on SAS Scandinavian Airlines for May. It was booked through a travel company. I gave you the name there. But after a few hours, they sent us the information. The price is what we expected. And when we put the booking reference number into the SAS website, it looks fine. And we have been able to choose our seats. The unusual thing is that there is a return flight booked to JFK in August. Nothing was ever mentioned about a return flight on that date or any other. Our question is, should we cancel the return leg after we take the first leg, not cancel it at all, or handle it in some other manner? We have no home and live on the road, and I

• 24:48Speaker 03

  already have plans at that time. So we can't take that second leg. In fact, I think going back to Denmark at that time would make us overstay our Schengen limits.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  Is that how you say that?

• 24:59Speaker 03

  I don't know. Is it Schengen?

• 25:01Speaker 02

  That sounds good. I never.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  I just tried to act confident.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  That was really nice. All right. So Mike in California, at this moment, since you live on the road, anybody doing a search on kayak needs to be aware that when you see unusually low fares from some UFO booking site, that you are dealing in a gray market. And they may or may not come up with a real ticket for you, a real reservation. They may run off with your money, or they may do something that the industry considers to be sketch, which they've done in this case. So what they did is a round trip ticket was cheaper than a one way. And they have a database that was able to shop this UFO return. You

• 25:49Speaker 02

  said, New York back to Europe return that you're never going to use. And that is a strategy to save you money. And you just what they call your no show segment, an NS segment on your return. If you cancel it, SAS is going to bill you a much higher.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Price for only having gone one way on a round trip ticket that then is recalculated as a one way. That's why you just no show. But buying from one of these unknown outfits on kayak is very, very risky. In this circumstance, seems like you're ending up just fine. But be aware and be wary on kayak searches because they make their money essentially being a promotional vehicle for a lot of unknowns that could turn out to be a serious problem with the plane leaving and you not on it.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Sounds like you were fine in this case. Have an absolutely wonderful day. And I want you to know, we work so hard. On Mondays, we have a long staff meeting and we talk about ideas that we're going to put on the podcast or YouTube show or do on short segments like Clark minutes or put in our newsletter or whatever. Everything we're devoted to at Clark.com, Clarkdeals.com, our newsletters, social media, our one-on-one free advice available to you through the Team Clark Consumer Action Center, what I do on TV stations, if you're in a TV market I'm on, or radio, if you're in

• 27:38Speaker 02

  a radio market, or you're in a newspaper town where I'm in your newspaper. The whole purpose is to reach, teach, and empower so that you'll learn ways to save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off. And you have my promise that everything we do is to serve you with advice and information you can trust. And coming up on Friday, you get to hear Clark stinks where you feel like the advice I gave you absolutely stunk up the joint.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  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.