Pod Insights The Clark Howard Podcast 04.30.25 Tariff Proof Your Wallet / SAVE on Home Energy About this episode Today, Clark talks about where you can find deals that aren’t subject to tariffs. Also, now is the time to consider ways to lower home energy costs and Clark shares some money saving ideas. Buy Secondhand First: Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 Home Energy: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: 9 Things You Should Always Buy Used Automatic Bill Pay: How It Works and How To Do It Safely Are Solar Panels Worth it? 3 Things To Consider Before You Get Solar Panels How To Save Money on Utilities Residential Clean Energy Credit | Internal Revenue Service Roth vs. Traditional 401(k): What's the Difference? 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 0:00 Speaker 00 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.
0:12 Speaker 01 Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.
0:15 Speaker 02 They're running a cover two defense. But you're running to get game day deals on Uber Eats. Keep everyone at tonight's watch party fed with deals from your go to restaurants. Or stock up with deals on your favorite snacks and groceries. Whatever the occasion, get game day deals on Uber Eats all season long. It's not football without food. Uber Eats, order now. Terms apply. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.
0:50 Speaker 03 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. And today I'm going to tell you my favorite way for you to tariff proof your wallet. And later, do you know that this is a time you should be thinking specifically about how you're going to lower the electricity costs at your home? There are some specific reasons why that I'm going to fill you in on later. And I'm also going to take your questions.
1:35 Speaker 03 When you got one for me, submit it at clark.com/ask. So other day on the podcast, I addressed the fact that Timu and Sheen, which have been such powerhouse sellers in the United States.
1:55 Speaker 03 Are both having to raise prices by huge amounts because in the case of Timu, almost everything comes from China. Xi'an, a substantial amount of their manufacturing is done in China. So the cost of goods so high, but the opportunity right now is, it's going to be a shock to hear this from me. I know you're going to be shocked, shocked. The real opportunity right now is buying secondhand stuff of all kinds, from clothes to things. Secondhand market is gigantic. I believe in it so much as a place that you
2:40 Speaker 03 should be buying things. And there's a pattern that my wife mentioned to me the other day, and then she showed me examples that the secondhand market goes all the way from flea market to buying Salvation Army, Thrift, or Goodwill, or private players in that market, to boutiquey kind of used stores, particularly for clothing, to now high-end resale. There's high-end resale in major metro areas. There's the always financially troubled, the real
3:22 Speaker 03 real that is still out there selling online in a few physical stores. And high-end stuff, that market has really slowed down, and there are a lot of price cuts. And Solane was showing me on the real real, how many price cuts there are in so many things, which historically had not been a pattern. She shops at a number of secondhand, high-end. She buys all her clothes used and buys jewelry used and all this stuff. She's seen this pattern that their sales have slowed down,
4:03 Speaker 03 meaning they're an even better deal buying secondhand than before. And general secondhand, obviously, is going to be the deal and tariff-proofed. So this is something, when you're looking how you're going to handle your money, this is a perfect example of a way to stretch every dollar, regardless of what's happening in the macro market. It's an opportunity for you, in your own life, in your own household, to stretch that dollar as far as you can. Krista?
4:44 Speaker 04 All right. We're going to start with this question that came in from Sue. She says, is it safe to shop on Temu?
4:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, it's safe. I mean, Temu, the quality, the goods, people will gripe about them. But generally, they were so cheap that it's like, an aw well. And as I mentioned in a prior podcast, I saw a report that more than half of American shoppers have a Temu account.
5:15 Speaker 04 Oh, wow.
5:16 Speaker 03 That seems impossible to be that many.
5:17 Speaker 04 It really does. Wow.
5:19 Speaker 03 But I guess also because the price points, usually when people are unhappy with customer no-service experience and all that, we hear complaints. But I think the price points at Temu, pre-tariffs, were so low that people were just like, oh, well.
5:36 Speaker 04 Okay. Miriam in Georgia says, I don't trust the government to remove a tax or the manufacturer for increasing the price of their product when they can sneak it on the customer. For example, in World War II, there was a luxury tax of 25% on cosmetics. I was born after the war was over, and by the time I began buying lipstick, the tax was Still in place. A tube of lipstick cost a dollar. So the tax made it a dollar twenty five. When the luxury tax was dropped, the basic price of the lipstick was then still.
6:07 Speaker 03 Of one twenty five. They just pocketed it.
6:10 Speaker 04 I'm afraid the high cost of a dozen eggs will never go back to the recent regular price before the shortage for the same reason. The egg producers can get away with it.
6:19 Speaker 03 Miriam, it won't play that way with eggs. With commodities, think of gasoline, think of natural gas, think of any produce item. The market at first, people try to hold on to the then higher price, but as the cost at wholesale goes down, the cost at retail does also go down. Think about all the times with commodities. When there are times sugar had gone through the roof. I feel like sugar at one point went through the roof and then it came back down. Then we don't realize, oh, the price of sugar is not so expensive anymore. And you think about with gasoline,
7:01 Speaker 03 all the cycles where gasoline goes up higher and higher, you know, goes over four dollars a gallon. I'm not talking California. I know California is its own fuel market. So I'm talking prices for the rest of America. It'll run up to four dollars a gallon and then right now in a lot of states, it's down to two something a gallon. And so commodities are in their own classification. Let's say though you have a good, that's a processed food item. So on the supermarket shelf and it has egg product in it. The manufacturer of that packaged item raised the price.
7:43 Speaker 03 They are then fit your thing you were talking about, about the lipstick. They do not lower that price back down when the cost of the commodities in that item go down. And only the pressure of private label brings down the price of packaged goods where commodities simply ultimately respond to the market.
8:08 Speaker 04 Okay. Brian in Virginia wrote this one. "I received an email from my insurer about installment fees changing. I reviewed my statements and there is no installment fee itemized, even though my policies are all set up for monthly installments. When I signed up, the customer service rep mentioned that I could pay monthly or in full the same total either way. I said monthly because why not? It's the same either way and makes my budget less lumpy. I contacted customer service and found out that they used to waive this installment junk fee if you set up auto pay. But now they intend to start ripping customers off for hundreds of dollars a year if we don't take immediate action to change billing instructions to pay in full and/or give them direct access to our bank accounts."
8:53 Speaker 03 Okay, so this is, Brian, a continuation of a theme we've been hearing from different companies and different industries, all different ways, that I gather that the installment fee, you said that if you give them direct access to your checking account, ACH, they're not going to charge you the installment fee junk fee. On the other hand, if it's charged to a credit card or some method where you have to make the payment in installments, they're going to charge you the junk fees. And this is a clear pattern that we're seeing in all different forms everywhere.
9:34 Speaker 03 Number one, any industry where you now pay a bill by credit card, you're going to see more and more where they're charging you a punitive fee to pay by credit card. And then the whole thing of billing you in installments, companies are going to look at that as an additional cost to them, billing in installments instead of a lump sum. And they're going to charge you some kind of junk fee for it. At least your insurer offers the option of a monthly payment by ACH, as I understood what you said. And avoid having to pay the installment junk fee.
10:16 Speaker 03 But yeah, this is absolutely a clear change in billing practices across big companies and small. And just so you can throw an egg at me, if you can afford to waste that egg throwing it at me, I am absolutely in favor of merchants passing on the credit card junk fees they have to pay onto you as a customer. Because of the Visa Mastercard cartel in the U.S., we have by far the largest fees that retailers and businesses have to pay
10:57 Speaker 03 for taking credit cards of any place on earth that I'm aware of. And it's a huge expense for businesses. And it should be transparent. And if they want to pass it on to us, they should be able to do that. Don't waste those eggs, though. Coming up ahead. Power bills, for a number of reasons in the United States, are escalating after years of consumption and bills staying pretty flat. And so you got to have a new playbook. So you're just not being eaten up by much higher power bills. I want to talk about that.
11:40 Speaker 00 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.
11:53 Speaker 01 Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.
11:56 Speaker 02 They're running a cover two defense. But you're running to get game day deals on Uber Eats. Keep everyone at tonight's watch party fed with deals from your go to restaurants. Or stock up with deals on your favorite snacks and groceries. Whatever the occasion, get game day deals on Uber Eats all season long. It's not football without food. Uber Eats. Order now. Terms apply. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.
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13:26 Speaker 03 We as humans have such an ability to adapt to conditions. We are not sitting ducks unless we choose to be. We're in a cycle, partially because of AI and all this demand for data centers which require huge consumption of energy. We're seeing much, much higher power bills coming down the road. But we're not a sitting duck. I want to give you an example. Where is power the most expensive of the 50 states? Okay, let's think about that. Where would it be most expensive in the US? Hawaii. It's an island market.
14:11 Speaker 03 It's hard to serve. And so power costs are outrageous. So what have people in Hawaii done? In massive numbers at all levels and prices of housing. People have put in solar arrays. They put in backup batteries to deal with power outages that can come particularly in an island market. We just saw that in Puerto Rico where the entire island went dark, except for people who had solar with battery backup or businesses that had generators.
14:51 Speaker 03 This is one of those things that as power costs go up, rethinking the economics of how we reduce our energy bills at our house is so much in order. We've got the big tax credits right now for as long as those remain in place. And solar is something that is not a simple, short decision because it can be expensive to put in solar unless you have a more modest sized house. And especially if you live in a climate with enormous sunshine like Hawaii, or Arizona, or Texas, or New Mexico. Did I mention Southern California?
15:34 Speaker 03 I mean, solar is just a slam dunk over time, putting it in. But if solar is a bridge too far, and remember with solar now, as battery costs have come down so much, it's become like a twofer. You put solar on the roof, or if you're in a position where solar works on the yard, it's a cheaper place to put solar. And batteries in the garage, battery backup. And one of the key things with batteries, even if you're not going to do solar, batteries in states where power costs are going up, up, up and away, batteries can be a big money
16:19 Speaker 03 saver, because they're these big batteries that are designed for residential use. And they cost about a third more now, per output, what putting in a traditional natural gas generator would be at a house. Used to be they were like 20 times the cost, but not that much anymore. What they do is they allow you to play the time of use game, where power consumption drops to like nothing for utilities like midnight to 5 a.m.
16:52 Speaker 03 So a lot of utilities almost give power away with time of use meters overnight. So what you do is you store power to those batteries in those overnight hours. It works for the utility, it works for you. And then during the day, when power is a fortune, you power your house from the batteries. And then that night, again, you replenish the batteries at the very low rates. I mean, this is the kind of thing you have to think about because one side is how do you become your own power company? Solar, batteries, whatever. The other side is the Dullesville thing, but much cheaper.
17:37 Speaker 03 That's making sure with these much higher utility rates that you actually have decent insulation in your home. That you have done the things you can do with automatic thermostats. That will reduce your power consumption for heating and cooling by about 20, 25%. Those thermostats are cheap. That you do things with weather stripping and, you know, deal with the heat exchange and cold that come in under the threshold. Where you don't have doors properly insulated coming into your home. There are simple things that don't cost a lot, but the quickest payback just about of all
18:21 Speaker 03 is making sure you got proper insulation in your house. So one thing you do, reduce the consumption. The other thing you do is be your own power provider. And it sure is great when you open a bill. And at our home, last month, our power bill.
18:42 Speaker 03 Was it $12? Something like that because we have solar on the roof. And so our bill was as close to zero as you could imagine. It's a great feeling.
18:54 Speaker 04 Okay, I have some related questions. Judy in Connecticut wrote in with a really specific one. So I'm not sure if you're familiar with these, but I'll just read it. Line brand portable solar generators are at Costco. I want to buy the Summit, but I also like the Adventure and Safari. Can you tell me how they compare to others that you've reviewed?
19:14 Speaker 03 So I have not reviewed, I'm not technically capable of reviewing these battery backup systems. Uh, because we're talking about those not, not a whole house, natural gas generator.
19:29 Speaker 04 Portable, it says portable solar generators. Yeah.
19:31 Speaker 03 Yeah. So those come with some solar panels and you can charge them up, plugging them into the wall. Your power goes out, you get some replenishment of the batteries by having the solar array. No, I, and I looked, Consumer Reports, because I looked for this before for a relative. Consumer Reports has never rated any of these portable battery things. This is one where you have to go with the wisdom of the crowd and actually dig in and read reviews of the various portable battery generators or power things. What, there's some name for those things. I don't think you call them power generator,
20:14 Speaker 03 but the battery backup units that are portable. And really get a sense, not from what the sales stuff says, but what people who have them have experienced. And the, I mentioned the cost of the, the big battery units that you have installed in your garage. Those have come way down in price. The performance of these portable batteries has gone way up. What you're getting per dollar in terms of battery reserve is so much more robust than it was even two years ago. A big change in this market, but. Wisdom of the crowd here rules here. I have no wisdom as to what would make the
20:59 Speaker 03 one particular better than another.
21:02 Speaker 04 This one came in from Sarah in Texas. I'm considering buying a portable battery storage unit to provide backup power when the power goes out. It will be at least three kilowatt unit or more. According to the IRS website, a storage battery with at least this much capacity that is purchased in 2023 or later qualifies for a residential clean energy credit of up to 30%. It does not have to be hooked up to solar. Does it qualify if I buy a standalone unit that I plug into an outlet and use this for appliances and lights in an emergency? Or does it need to be permanently installed and integrated into my whole house electrical system?
21:38 Speaker 03 No, my understanding of the code is it does not have to be a permanently installed, professionally installed unit. And if you have one that you buy and meets the three kilowatt standard, you're just fine.
21:51 Speaker 04 Mallory in Georgia says, I'm 27 years old and have been out of school and working for two years now. I make $60,000 a year. I have approximately $39,000 in federal student loans and also borrowed from a family member and owe them around $20,000. I hear a lot about investing and would like to think about how I can help myself financially in the future, but it's hard to consider investing when I have so much left to pay on my student loans. Would you suggest focusing on paying my loans off as quickly as possible? Federal loans range between three and eight percent interest rates, averaging five and a half with no interest on the money I owe my family member, or investing? If you feel that I should invest, any helpful tips on what I should invest in first? Investing is overwhelming.
22:34 Speaker 04 I have a 401k at work that is 3% and my company matches equally, as well as a high-yield savings account with $6,000 earning 4.3%. I'm only earning around $20 a month in the high-yield savings account, so I feel I may get a better return elsewhere. My net profit each month after subtracting all of my expenses and rent and loan payments ranges from $1 to $500. What are your thoughts?
22:59 Speaker 03 Okay, so first of all, a quick note. The 401k that you're putting in 3%, the employer's matching with 3%, if they offer the Roth version of the 401k, that's what I want you in. All right, so the student loans. You got a student loan at 8%, that was the high one?
23:16 Speaker 04 Yes, they average 5.5.
23:18 Speaker 03 All right, but I don't care about the average. I care about the high. High priority to pay a student loan with an 8% interest rate. Earning 8% on investments, you're not earning, you're earning half that on savings. That's a high bar to earn above 8% consistently, but you have a guaranteed 8% return on that 8% student loan. Student loan you have, I think you said your low was 3%, pay absolute minimums on it. In fact, any student loan up to the highest one, the 8% is where your real priority is.
23:58 Speaker 03 When you have the money you have available to you, I want you to throw in every dollar you can at that 8% student loan. Just minimums at the ones below that. Once you've paid off the one at 8%, I want you to move to the next highest. I do want it to be a priority. On the other hand, if that 3% is a fixed rate for years to come, just pay the minimum on it. So you can then put a higher priority on putting money aside, more in that employer provided 401k. Eventually maybe having your own Roth IRA. I don't want you to take money out of the 6,000 you have in the high yield savings account.
24:41 Speaker 03 You need to have rainy day money and that needs to sit there, not earn a lot. But you're earning 4%, I think you said, that's money you need to have because rainy days come. And you're doing the best you can with a lot of stuff going on. You're still in your twenties, I think you're doing great. And just bit by bit, work down that student loan debt and build up long-term money. Good job. And I want to thank you so much for joining us on today's podcast. And know that we're here for you all week long, so many different ways.
25:22 Speaker 03 One of them is free one-on-one advice from the Team Clark Consumer Action Center. Available to you 30 hours each week. And if you go to Clark.com slash C A C, you'll see how to do that. But what we're about overall is empowering you with knowledge so that you learn ways to save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off. And have a great rest of your day.
25:55 Speaker 00 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.
26:07 Speaker 01 Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.
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