Pod Insights The Clark Howard Podcast 06.15.26 Flying - In The Face Of Change / Warning For First Time Home Buyers About this episode A shift is happening in the skies right now, as airlines quietly slash schedules and strip away basic comforts taken for granted for decades. If you don't double check your bookings, you could be walking blindly into a canceled itinerary—or a "bare-bones" cabin with zero food or water. Meanwhile, a strange new industry experiment means the ticket you bought for a connecting flight may turn out to be for an unforeseen road trip instead. Clark explains. Shifting to the housing market, if you’re looking to purchase your first home, Clark has a strict warning: Wait. It is a historically bad time to buy your first house in most of America, and doing so right now is essentially stepping into a financial trap. Plus, Christa shares your #AskClark questions and Clark gives his take. All this and more on the June 15, 2026, episode of The Clark Howard Show. Submit your questions: Ask Clark. Air Travel: Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 1st Time Home Buyers: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: Zero Service: Delta Air Lines To Remove Main Cabin Drinks & Snacks On 450 Flights Delta's Popular Short-Haul Perk is Going Away — Here's Why [The Washington Post] Airlines surprise passengers with ‘flights’ that are buses It's a historically bad time to buy your first home 20 major housing markets with enough inventory to create homebuyer deals later this year Surprise medical bills and the No Surprises Act 6 Things To Know Before Contacting the National Foundation for Credit Counseling 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. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1:16 Speaker 02 I'm so glad you've taken time out of your day to join us on The Clark Howard Show. You know, our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you to make better financial decisions in your life. In this episode, the cost of jet fuel having gone up so much has led to changes in the air. I want to make sure you're heads up on, and there are things the airlines are doing that are going to cost you money or save them money. And they're in a tough spot. A lot of airlines now, fuel is now their number one expense. So I want to ask you something else, too. If you're thinking of buying a first home...
2:02 Speaker 02 There are some things I want you to ask yourself before you do so. I call it basically warnings about buying a home right now as your first home. So let's talk about what you might experience with the airlines. Number one, I talked about it a while back. I want to mention it again. Because of the run up in the cost of jet fuel this year, airlines have been taking a machete to their schedules. And a lot of flights are being eliminated, some routes. But a lot of times it's frequencies of flights to a market. Some airlines eliminating flying to certain places,
2:46 Speaker 02 particularly on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, or cutting back a lot more on Tuesdays and Wednesdays because they're lighter travel days. And so if you booked a ticket a while back, the time to find out that your flight no longer exists is not when you go to check in for it the day before you're going to fly. I want you to do this as basic housekeeping. If you're thinking, oh, I bought that ticket months ago. Well, before you fly, I want you to see what the best accommodation is. And by the way, one of the neat things that's a positive of this is if you took a flight booking that you didn't really want, didn't like the time of day or whatever, you may be able to make a one-time change because of the flight change to a much better flight for your schedule.
3:31 Speaker 02 So it could actually work out as a positive. But waiting till it's time to check in and then finding there's no flight you can get on, or they've autoed you, what they call auto, where the computer has put you on a terrible flight, maybe a nonstop to a connector or something like that at really undesirable times. This is why you need to stay on top of that. Second, the airlines are cutting back any way they can. And one of them, the nation's most successful airline, Delta, is no longer serving any snacks or beverages of any kind on a huge number of their flights now.
4:13 Speaker 02 Cause a lot of Delta, United America, can all work on what's called a hub and spoke. So you come in on a short flight, change planes and go on the long flight. And so they run these flights through their hubs. So a huge percent of flights are affected where there's no, not even water. No water, no snack, nothing. This is something you need to be prepared for, especially if you've got kids. But the kid in me, I always have snacks. And it's funny, Lena and I were on a flight that delayed recently after we were already on it and we're just sitting there. And she said, okay, what you got in the snack bag today? And I start pulling things out.
4:56 Speaker 02 And this person across the aisle is like, are you running your own convenience store? Cause I travel with a bunch of snacks and we always have empty water containers that we can fill. So that we have our own water. This is more important than it's ever been because although Delta did it the right way. They just said, hey, we're doing nothing for you anymore on a meaningful percent of our flights. They're generally flights that are an hour, more or less. There's nothing anymore unless you're in first class. So be prepared because you never know when you're going to have a delay, missed connection, something like that.
5:39 Speaker 02 Or you're changing planes in an airport and you didn't realize that they wanted half your annual salary for a stale sandwich and a beverage. So you want to be prepared in advance. And the one that has burned some people recently, there's some, I would call it experimenting going on where you buy a connecting airline ticket and you don't realize the shorter flight isn't a flight. It's a bus. Yeah, it's a bus with an airline flight number. Just like if you fly on a commuter airline and it'll usually have a four digit flight number.
6:23 Speaker 02 Which designates on Delta, American, United usually that it's commuter flight. Sometimes a regular mainline aircraft can have a four-digit number, but it's a four-digit number, you want a heads up to see if you're on a commuter flight. You also want to know, are they putting you on a bus on a route that maybe is 150 miles, 200 miles away, rather than an airplane? And they'll sell it as an advantage because you'll go through security before you go on the bus typically, and then you go to a secure area at the airport and you just change to your regular plane. And if you knew that was going on, that's fine.
7:08 Speaker 02 But if you don't know that you're getting to the connecting hub on a bus, well, that's really not okay. So far, though, the airlines have done a fairly okay job through this spring with flight reliability, except for going back to Delta. Delta has had well-known pilot and staff shortages that have led to a lot of delays and cancellations, and they're scrambling to try to deal with that problem at Delta. Krista?
7:44 Speaker 03 Okay, Merrill in Washington says, I'm taking a transatlantic cruise on the Coonard Queen.
7:51 Speaker 02 The Queen Mary 2.
7:53 Speaker 03 Queen Mary 2. In August, the cruise line charges $75 a day for one person for Wi-Fi access.
8:01 Speaker 02 Oh, that sounds so reasonable.
8:02 Speaker 03 My goodness. I will not be in a port for seven days in order to take advantage of land-based Wi-Fi access. What is an alternative for Wi-Fi access onboard the Queen Mary 2 cruise? I do not need it for streaming, just for email and perhaps text for emergency kinds of contacts. Have you heard anything about the GigSky app?
8:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, we actually covered GigSky last summer, I think. We talked about it. It's not the bargain they advertise, but it's much cheaper than what you'd have from the cruise line. Merrill, for what you're trying to do for a week, you'd probably be fine with their cruise-only 5G plan.
8:47 Speaker 02 Which unless you can find discount codes, but full retail is 150 bucks versus you'd be paying 500 and something for the internet from the cruise line itself. And five gigs will go quicker than you think. So remember to use it only to check email, send texting, no video content at all.
9:14 Speaker 03 What about for someone like having Starlink with that? Is there any way to?
9:19 Speaker 02 The cruise lines have, I think all in their, their terms of service have banned passengers bringing the portable Starlink units. Although I do know people are bringing them. And if they don't get caught, they're taking them on the ship and having incredible internet service on the cruise ship at a much, much lower price with a little, have you seen the little portable Starlink devices?
9:46 Speaker 03 I haven't seen them, no.
9:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, I know a lot of people who travel in what we used to call the third world in developing countries, all travel with a portable Starlink device. And I should mention about Starlink, that Starlink has been trying to provide cellphone service in the United States. It would be worldwide, it would be better than Google 5 for international travel because it would just work anywhere. And right now, I just read a trade publication story about how AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have apparently gotten together and decided as a united front, they are going to do everything
10:30 Speaker 02 they can to keep Starlink out of providing cellphone service in the United States. And you know what? It's gonna happen. And they're gonna blow the doors off the pricing that we pay, particularly people who travel. Outside the United States, what you have to pay for cellphone and internet service. It's going to be a total game changer. It's going to be the next wave of much lower pricing.
10:59 Speaker 03 Okay, David in California says, if passenger airplanes become automated, what prevents hackers from taking over the controls and downing the plane? Or what prevents hackers from uploading a virus to do the same? What are the risks of this kind of automation? That's something I hadn't thought about. Very scary.
11:16 Speaker 02 Well, you know, people have, let's take a less dangerous situation than a foreign actor or hacker, whatever, making planes crash because of the automation. What about all the stories that have been running around about the Waymos? That just drove people right into floods during rain. And then there was one where, I forget what city it was in, but they, all these Waymos congregated at a dead end neighborhood. And people couldn't get in and out of their own driveways because all these Waymos were there. So could have hackers, you also have to worry about.
11:58 Speaker 03 Faulty.
11:58 Speaker 02 Faulty software.
12:00 Speaker 03 Or whatever, yeah.
12:00 Speaker 02 And so the Waymo people, which is Google's parent alphabet, been busy rewriting code and making the Waymos more reliable. And that's why David, for a long, long, long time, even though most aircraft from Airbus are pretty capable of just flying themselves, you will have pilots, at least one in the cockpit of planes, for years and years to come because of the what ifs, the possibilities you're talking about.
12:36 Speaker 03 Frank in California says, my daughter is getting married in Granada, Spain. Much happier topic. We live near Los Angeles and are wondering when the best time to purchase flights is. She'll marry in March of 2027.
12:49 Speaker 03 Congrats to your daughter.
12:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is really exciting. And I'm thinking about location of Granada. There's a big airport, is it Malaga that's near there? You're too early to buy a ticket for March of next year. And the airline I want you to know about, you're in LA, is Level. You may not have heard of Level. It's owned by the same people on British Airways and Iberia and Aer Lingus. They own a discount airline called Level that flies from a handful of American cities to Barcelona, and there you change to a number of destinations in Spain.
13:31 Speaker 02 And when Level opens up bookings, don't know how many months, they may do six months out. You'll want to look then sometime this fall, I guess, for fares that would take you to near Granada. Now, if you're going to do any other sightseeing while you're in Spain, and you flew into Barcelona, you just took the nonstop LA-Barcelona on Level, and then you can take the quick train, the Ave, I think is how you say it, from Barcelona to Madrid, and then spend some time in Madrid. And then it's a quick train ride down from there, not that bad either one of these trains,
14:13 Speaker 02 like three hours each. And you'd have quite an itinerary, and you'd have no plane change. But otherwise, almost always, Level is a big advantage for your wallet. And again, congratulations on the upcoming wedding. Give yourself a little bit of time, though, on the ticket. Coming up ahead, buying a home right now is tough. And I want to give you a word of warning as a first time home buyer.
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16:47 Speaker 02 All right, you want clarity from me. I'm going to say some stuff here that's going to be like, huh? Why do you say it like that? So it's really a lousy time in most of America for you to buy a first time home. The cost of buying effectively what it costs you per month in so many metro areas in the country is hovering at twice what equivalent rents are. So if you're buying a place, you have to own it a long, long, long time. You can't think of it as a starter home that gets you into homeownership, then you're
17:31 Speaker 02 going to dump it in a few years. Because there's a key trend that is finally your friend if you're somebody looking to buy a home.
17:44 Speaker 02 So what I'm saying is the conditions right now are generally very unfavorable for you buying a home. It's a trap because you'd be buying at not the absolute peak versus earning power, but still near the peak. The conditions, though, in the housing market are steadily moving to be buyer friendly instead of seller friendly. A lot of sellers not recognizing the change in the marketplace are still looking expecting last year's price, the year before's
18:27 Speaker 02 price, and then they're wondering, why isn't there place selling? What's happening, and there's a really nice chart that Fast Company did, that shows the amount of inventory on the market skyrocketing in place after place after place, excepting generally the Northeast and New England. And so what we've got is this big overhang of places for sale, huge increase in number of properties for sale. And what happens is a process known as price
19:08 Speaker 02 capitulation, and we're not there yet. That's why, as someone who's a would-be first-time homebuyer, unless you find something that's a screaming deal by some chance, I would say, rent for another year right now, because the conditions are only going to become more favorable for you as a buyer. We're in an odd situation right now with mortgage rates having spiked because of the federal budget deficit and inflation, and a fear that the Federal Reserve is not going to take, under its new leader, is not going to take inflation seriously enough. It's a show-me kind of time. Market's going to have to see a real seriousness
19:53 Speaker 02 about inflation, because think about it, if I'm lending you money, and I'm lending you money for a long time, like somebody lending for a mortgage. I want to make money on lending you money. So I can't figure out right now how messy inflation is going to remain. So I want more money from you, higher interest rate, to deal with my fears of inflation making lending you money a bad choice on my part. So mortgage rates are higher because of the fear of inflation.
20:31 Speaker 02 Home prices are going down, not anything like 2008, '09. That was a whole different circumstance. But a lot of sellers have not reacted to the reality of the market and they will. They hit price capitulation. When is it? Somebody has to sell. Somebody sadly passes away and the heirs are selling it. They're just going to get what they can, right? We're moving into a different dynamic because market by market, markets are becoming buyer's markets instead of seller's markets. But the prices in most places have not reached the point of reality from that change.
21:16 Speaker 02 Again, not huge price movements down, but the direction is down. The friend of a buyer, the enemy of a seller. And the inventories that stayed so tight for years because people didn't want to give up their 2%, 3%, 4% mortgage rates that they had where they lived. Life interferes. They want to go somewhere else. They want to move somewhere else in the country or where they live. Any of a number of reasons, somebody will finally say, you know what? I love that great mortgage rate I have. I got to move on. So the inventory level is rising, rising, rising.
21:59 Speaker 02 As this supply rises, in order to generate that demand, there are going to be more deals, just not yet. And that's why I want you to be patient.
22:11 Speaker 03 Okay. Ryan in Pennsylvania says, hey Clark, I'm 26 and a relatively new listener. I've been listening for about two years and your advice has helped me get out of $20,000 of credit card debt and start contributing to a Roth 401k.
22:25 Speaker 02 You realize in the last week or so, we've had three different people who have resolved they were going to get rid of credit card debt and have gotten rid of mountains of it. And, you know, one of the things here that I should have said the other day, Ryan, I didn't do anything other than giving you maybe a strategy or tools or direction. You're the one, you're the one, just like the other people we've heard from, who did the heavy lifting to extinguish that debt. Fantastic.
22:54 Speaker 03 My question is about insuring an engagement ring that I've recently bought.
22:58 Speaker 02 Congratulations.
22:59 Speaker 03 Congrats. I plan on proposing to my girlfriend in September. The jeweler gave me an appraisal form that states the ring is valued at $3,600. Don't worry, I didn't pay that much for it. What's the best way to go about insuring the ring, if it's even worth it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I love the show. Keep up the great work.
23:18 Speaker 02 So usually they'll give you an appraisal that's like double what you paid for something. So let's say we're talking about a $2,000 ring or something like that. You don't insure it. The chances of your intended losing the ring are very small. And the amount of money that you would pay over the years to insure a ring like that is not worth insuring. So you're best off just knowing if there is an oops and the ring is lost or possibly stolen.
23:55 Speaker 02 You just got to cough up that money and that's the best way to handle it, not insure it in this case.
24:01 Speaker 03 David in New Hampshire says, "In late 2025, I went to my in-network urgent care clinic and paid the copay, but they sent me a bill for $232. I called their billing office and they said the office is in-network, but the medical provider was out of network. So after I paid my copay, I still owe this amount. I have an FSA, but I maxed it out for 2025 and can't use this year's funds for it. The billing department and my medical insurance are dead ends. I can't believe I went to an in-network office but got stuck with a provider who's out of network. How can they do this? Do you have any advice on how to fight this? And P.S. I've been listening to you for over 20 years and I appreciate your life-changing advice."
24:45 Speaker 02 Well, that is so kind of you to say, David. And let's see if I can extend some kindness your way. This is covered by the No Surprises Act. No Surprises Act has strict guardrails on what you can be billed in a bill shock situation like this, where you did your homework, went to an in-network facility, and without any way for you to know, ended up seeing somebody who was an out-of-network provider in an in-network facility. That's why we have the No Surprises Act. Now, that means you want to contact them and say, "Under no surprises, I'm not
25:28 Speaker 02 supposed to be billed like this." Then you may have a real shock. A lot of these urgent care centers are owned by private equity, and the private equity owners now have paperwork that's pretty much spread like a plague across the United States, where when you sign in in many of these Private equity owned urgent care centers hand you a tablet with page after page of conditions you're agreeing to. And many times these urgent care centers will have something that says you're waiving your rights under no surprises. I don't know if anybody's challenged
26:11 Speaker 02 that under the law, but what you do is you go right back to them, David, and you say, you know, I understand this is covered by no surprises. What do I actually owe you under the No Surprises Act? Almost nobody even knows that the No Surprises Act exists and could be there to be a benefit to you here. Let me hear back, by the way, what happens?
26:36 Speaker 03 Payman Georgia says, are credit card debt forgiveness companies worth signing up with?
26:41 Speaker 02 Depends on what you mean by that, because there are a lot of phony balonies out there that say they can negotiate much lower amounts owed or forgiveness. And the people that are not on the up and up in this business, you pay them a big fee, and then what they do is they tell you, okay, stop paying all your bills. Believe it or not, they try to get you to look so terrible to the people you owe money to and put you in a position where you ruin your credit standing for seven years with your credit report and score, that the lenders feel like you're going to bankrupt out on them
27:25 Speaker 02 and they'll take pennies on the dollar on the debt. That is a very high risk strategy, and one I don't recommend. Plus, the money you have to pay these companies upfront is money that would be better to go to the people you owe money to, instead of somebody who says, hey, we're going to magically make your debts go away. Now, there are legitimate credit counselors that can negotiate potentially a lower balance, elimination of interest, whatever the situation would call for. And you can find a legitimate debt counselor
28:03 Speaker 02 at NFCC.org. Let me repeat that, NFCC.org. But be very wary of these people who claim they're going to be your hero, and they're going to make your debts magically disappear. Because usually they'll leave you sadder, wiser, and poorer. With that unhappy note, that concludes today's podcast. And I hope that something today that we talked about is helpful to you in your life. There's a lot we have to know. There's so many things about money today and obligations we have.
28:46 Speaker 02 It's more complicated than it used to be. I'm only doing my job if I successfully introduce information to you that you can catalog and act on in your own life. But if there's something I said, what was that you said? If you go to Clark.com, you'll find so much information in greater detail than I can discuss here on the podcast. And so I hope you'll check out what we have on Clark.com to provide you additional empowerment. Because empowerment with knowledge is what we're all about. So you can save more and spend less and don't let anybody ever rip you off.
29:31 Speaker 02 And look forward to seeing you on Wednesday.
29:33 Speaker 05 When you shop pickup at Kroger, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries selected just for you. Our associates are committed to getting every detail right, carefully handpicking your items, checking for quality and freshness, and packing your order with care. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. And right now, enjoy $20 off your first online order of $75 or more. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger, fresh for everyone.
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