06.17.26 Let’s Channel Your Inner Millionaire / Reluctant Landlords

Think you need a high end business or a lottery-ticket stock win to hit a $1 million net worth? Think again. Clark breaks down key insights of first-time millionaires. While old-school wealth looked like owning a successful service business, modern data from Kiplinger and Fidelity proves that regular people working everyday jobs—like teachers and government employees—are achieving financial independence. Plus, Clark examines a growing real estate trend: the rise of the "accidental landlord." According to Zillow, more home sellers than ever are turning into landlords because their houses aren't selling and they can't afford to cut the price. Drawing from his own 43 years of wild landlord adventures—including non-paying tenants and unexpected damages—Clark explains why you should never take this decision lightly. Plus, Christa shares your #AskClark questions and Clark gives his take. All this and more on the June 17, 2026, episode of The Clark Howard Show. Submit your questions: Ask Clark. Everyday Millionaires Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 Involuntary Landlords: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: 5 Key Insights We Learned From 50 First-Time Millionaires How Long Would $1 Million Last YOU in Retirement? Why You Should Keep Old Credit Card Accounts Open - Clark Howard Follow Clark Howard's #1 Rule To Travel Cheap Their Home Wouldn’t Sell, So They Became America’s Latest Accidental Landlords -WSJ The Hidden Reasons Your House Isn’t Selling (And How to Fix It) Best Rewards Credit Cards: Top Picks for Cash Back and Travel Scam Alert: New 'Party Invite' Message Can Empty Your Bank Account To help prevent spam calendar invites on Google calendars: 1. Open Google Calendar and click the gear icon, then Settings 2. In the left menu, click Event settings 3. Change "Add invitations to my calendar" from "From everyone" to either "Only if the sender is known" or "When I respond to the invitation in email". The "Only if the sender is known" option works well for most — limiting auto-added events to contacts and people you've interacted with before, so random spammers can't drop events onto your calendar anymore. 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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:41Speaker 01

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• 1:16Speaker 02

  I'm so glad you're with us here on the Clark Howard Show. Think about what we're about. Our mission is to provide you information and advice that empowers you so you can make better financial decisions in your life. And I want to give the example of the turtle today. Or as I was corrected by a listener or viewer, it's actually the tortoise. It was data that Kiplinger has collected about first time millionaires. How did people become millionaires?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  There are some real insights with it that I want to share with you.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  And also, a lot of Americans, this is something I talked about on Monday, homes are not selling like people would like who own them. And so people are becoming what are known as involuntary or reluctant landlords. If you are thinking about going down this path as someone who's been a landlord for over 40 years, there's some things I want to share with you. But right now, I want to go in the Wayback Machine.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Last century, there was research done by a couple of professors, and it generated some books like The Millionaire Next Door and some others in the series. What was key to what they discovered in their research about how people became millionaires, one of the key things that led to people becoming millionaires was they owned under the radar businesses, usually service businesses. People who might own a heating and air conditioning company, or a plumbing company, or an electrical contractor, auto repair shop.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Businesses that don't necessarily have glamour attached to them, but have a good stream of income and a value to the enterprise that when it would be sold, and by the way, you know, I make a lot of aspersions to private equity, but a lot of the people who become millionaires from these kind of service businesses, if they don't have a natural heir with a kid who wants the business or something like that, the big time buyers of these businesses tend to be private equity. They keep the local name there. You don't realize you're not dealing with who originally owned it.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  And the individual who built up the business over time is able to cash out and have that money. So that's a path. And that was very heavily in The Millionaire Next Door and other information that came out of that research. But what Kiplinger has found is that today, because of the financialization of the US economy, that people working a regular job can become a millionaire. Fidelity, I talked a few months ago about research at Fidelity Investments that found

• 4:40Speaker 02

  how common it's becoming that people who just have good habits, saving in a retirement plan for a long time, end up being millionaires. What Kiplinger found that was consistent in the research they did is that people who become millionaires, think about this, when you borrow money, you're paying back more than you borrowed, right? You ever look at, let's say you finance a house and you see you borrowed this amount of money and over the years you're going to pay this huge amount of money. You take out a vehicle loan, you borrow this much, but over the years of that loan, you're

• 5:25Speaker 02

  going to pay this much more back. Well, that's one of the fundamentals that savers get, the compounding effect of time and money put aside. You know, it's why I've talked for decades and decades about the earlier you start living on less than what you make, the greater financial success you're going to have later in life for the rest of your life. And it was universal in the Kiplinger research that people who give their money time to

• 6:04Speaker 02

  grow, end up in this group of people who work not at jobs, they make a lot of money, those regular jobs, end up financially independent, end up millionaires, was specifically what they were looking for. And where do they put that money? This is going to shock you based on being a regular listener or viewer of me. 401ks, IRAs, that's where the money goes. The people who, they're like, schoolteachers, government employees, people doing just regular,

• 6:44Speaker 02

  everyday jobs, that you wouldn't think they're going to end up independently wealthy later in life, but they do because they are putting money aside like clockwork. You know, you hear me say these concepts all the time, but the proof is that this is how you can become wealthy down the road is deferring wants. Because what was another key principle of every single person, every single one who became a millionaire? They lived on less than what they make.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  I mean, it's so crazy that I've been through these arguments with my son, who's 20 years old, where he thinks it's all about picking the right investment and getting a huge return on your money, looking for the next Apple, or the next AI company, or whatever. That's like trying to win a lottery. I want you to stack the decks, that you don't need a lottery. You win just by habits. Saving, investing, and living on less than what you make. You know, there was a book like 40 years ago called The Wealthy Barber, it wasn't popular

• 8:08Speaker 02

  in the United States, it was a Canadian book, and it was about how this barber ended up retiring crazy wealthy, and his customers that were in his chair kept on having to work. And what he, what the barber learned was, you just, he'd hear people talk about, you know, they were taking this trip, or buying that new car, they bought the vacation house, or whatever, all about consumption. And he was like, you know what? I just need to put some money aside every week from what I make as a barber. And it was really just, it was almost like a fable, it was like just a story.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  To try to get the concept across that the core and the key is you live on less than what you make, you do low-cost investing, you use the tax code to your advantage with the Roth versions of the IRA and the 401k, unless you're making a lot more money than we're talking about here, and ultimately you end up with financial independence, which is the goal, right?

• 9:21Speaker 03

  All right. Salas in North Carolina says, Clark gave a recent tip about how to best pay off your credit cards. My question is, once you've paid off the credit cards, should you close them completely?

• 9:32Speaker 02

  No, no, please don't close them because that grabs defeat right from the jaws of victory. It's fantastic you paid off all the debt. And so you keep that credit alive because that is what forms your credit reputation, is your credit score and credit report. If you close those accounts, then you don't show available active credit. Now, I know it's scary to have that credit since you got in trouble with it before, but what you do is you use credit sparingly moving forward with the credit cards you had, but

• 10:17Speaker 02

  always design it where you're paying in full. I know there's a school of thought that says that every week, pay whatever you charged if you've gotten in trouble with credit in the past, just to make sure you don't get in trouble with it. And if you're comfortable with that, that's how I'd do it.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  Chip in Texas says, I love the camaraderie on the show. Everyone seems to have a great time sharing their experiences, even hugging Henry Winkler. I just realized that was on there. That's funny. Hurricane season runs from the beginning of June to the end of November, and I can see some amazing deals in Atlantic and Caribbean resorts. Hurricanes seem to have some warning period, so I was wondering what you Think about watching the weather and the deals to make a last minute cheap vacation. Are the insects and weather lousy during that time? And is there a safer way to save more money on a beachfront vacation?

• 11:12Speaker 02

  No, Chip, this is a winning strategy. And there are a lot of the resorts off off off season, particularly talking about end of summer. You know, when you get up to September is a great bargain month in the Caribbean. You know, fun in the sun kind of areas that are prone to hurricanes. And last minute specials, there are all kinds of sites. Vacations to Go is a popular one, but there are many others where they post last minute deals. And so you can say, you know what, it'd be great next week to be in fill in the blank. And look at this incredible deal. I actually recommend the other way.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  You see the incredible deals that are posted for last minute. You say, that sounds like fun. I'll go there. Where you let the deal drive your destination.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  Love it. Lewis in Florida says, why does Clark rave about the Aura ring, but fail to mention the additional $70 a year for subscription? The newest ring already sells for over $400. Over four years, the cost of having the ring plus the yearly subscription comes to roughly $680. With today's electronics and batteries that may only last four years, you could easily end up with little to no long-term value before needing another device. Clark acts like I'm somehow better than the rest of us redheaded stepchildren because I have a $400 ring and a $70,000 Tesla. As a Saints fan, I call that the classic Atlanta dirty bird attitude. That's kind of a Clark stinks.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Oh, that was a Clark stinks. I love it. Okay. So first of all, my Tesla was a lot cheaper than that. Second, the Aura ring has been so important in my life and is getting more important. Because as I've shared with you many times, my health is not the greatest. And having this device track my health and now the, the new software with Aura is allegedly going to allow much better micro-targeting of warning signs of potential serious illnesses.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  That's the future of medical wearables is being able to monitor your health and specifically zero in. One of the things that is anticipated with the newest Aura is that it's going to be able to give you warning that your blood pressure is not trending well. And that's something that wearables have been trying to do of all different types for a long time and nobody's really been able to crack that code yet. But as I shared recently on the podcast, Aura is actually helping to save people's

• 14:08Speaker 02

  lives who the health numbers, the warnings it's giving are leading to discovery of illnesses like various cancers before they've had a chance to spread and become potentially fatal. And so Aura is expensive. There is no doubt and I've been wearing Aura now for six plus years. And I really believe in what it's been able to do for me and being able to target my health and improve my health. One of the things it's done is I sleep dramatically better than I used to because of following the suggestions of Aura.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  So spending, it's a huge amount of money. You're not kidding for the ring plus the subscription.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  And so for me, who goes to doctors enough, I know where to park for free within one mile of most of the places I have to go to the doctor. If somebody has that kind of detail about how to avoid paying for parking at various doctor's offices, my health is, you know. So for me, tracking, I wear Garmin, I wear the Samsung, I got Samsung Health, I got the Garmin tracking me. I've got the Aura. Obviously, an obsessive overload on my part, but I want to be active in improving my own health. And that's why for me, it's

• 15:43Speaker 02

  been worth it. And not sure the Falcons are going to have a great season this year. It's been tough for us as Falcons fans lately. But you know, hope always springs eternal. And the best is always when we beat the Saints. Coming up ahead, involuntary landlords, basically a continuation of our soap operatic coverage of what's going on in the housing market. I want to talk about, so you want to become a landlord when you didn't intend to, what does that mean?

• 16:22Speaker 01

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• 17:51Speaker 06

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• 18:22Speaker 02

  Zillow reports that we've got a larger number of would-be home sellers converting into involuntary landlords than they have ever shown in data going back a good while, because Zillow's been around for a while. And so, people are feeling like they don't have a good alternative. That their house isn't selling, they can't afford to, or don't wish to, cut the price. And so, they say, "Oh, well, guess we're gonna have to rent this place out."

• 19:02Speaker 02

  As someone who has had a variety of experiences over the years with tenants, being a landlord now for 43 years, I've had a variety of rental properties. I have just two right now. I used to have a lot more. And having had some interesting adventures, like tenants who skip, tenants who don't pay, tenants who left after having had a fire in a property and just vanished. I mean, I've seen it all.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  I've seen damages of various kinds. And I have loved being a landlord. But if you are thinking, gosh, nobody wants my home. We're gonna just rent it out. Renting it out is not just a decision you take lightly. The process requires upfront. You know, you want to prevent problems, not try to correct them after they've happened. What do I mean by that? With screening tenants, a lot of involuntary landlords, look at the whole thing as just being a bother. And you'll advertise a place for rent.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  Somebody comes along, they seem nice, they seem good, drive a nice car, say they've got a good job. You say, great, here's the lease. You pick out a lease you find online and you fill it out, you have them sign it, and you get the money, you think you're good. And then that's the last good thing that happens. Because once you get somebody in your property who's not okay, getting them out, depending on what jurisdiction in the country is, from anywhere from maybe a couple of month hassle to more. Costs you money, you don't know what damage they've done, you've got no money on the property, screening tenants upfront is so very important.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  And there are services you can find easily online, and you can charge the tenant, just like any apartment complex. You can charge a would-be tenant an application fee to cover the background check you're gonna do. This is so very important because you never know when somebody might be up to something no good in your place. And so I want you to get the screening right. You can even, if you just hate the whole process of being a landlord, you can resign yourself upfront to paying a local real estate agency and more and more of them offer rental services for involuntary landlords,

• 21:56Speaker 02

  where you pay them a commission, first to get a tenant in there, do all the screening, and then to collect the rent, ongoing, they might charge 7% to 10% of the monthly rent for their services. If somebody has to be evicted, they handle it. Things need repairing. You're not getting the calls from the tenant. They're getting the calls from the tenant. Just know whatever the repairs are, it's going to be cost plus plus. You're going to pay a markup because they'll have their own captive contractors that they pay and mark it up to you for the services. But if you are going to do it yourself, rent is due when rent is due. A lot of times, people will slide on paying rent.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  And you being an individual, you might like the person, you may take their excuse. This is business. I need for you to think of it like if you've ever rented from a traditional apartment, building, or complex. What do they do if the rent's not in on time? They charge you late fees. And what do they do if you still don't pay? They start eviction proceedings as soon as necessary because that is no longer a revenue-producing property and they've got somebody living there rent-free. I need for you, if you are going to do this, to go into it like it's a business.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Business you didn't want to go into, but you need to jump in with both feet and do it right.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  And if you're not willing to do that, you hire a professional to do it. Or you decide, you know what? We're gonna let it sit empty and we're gonna still try to sell it. Maybe even cut the price to get it sold.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  Okay, you're ready for some questions?

• 23:46Speaker 02

  I am.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  This one's from Eric in Utah, who's in a tough situation. Eric says, I'm going through a divorce and I'd like to understand my options for financing the home we shared. I'll have the option to keep the house, but I'm not sure if my options to assume or refinance the loans. My self-employed income is low. It will go up over time at $40,000 and my ex's income is $250,000.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  There are two loans outstanding, a first mortgage and a second mortgage. The first is at 3% with $175,000 outstanding and 14 years left. The second is at 5.99% with $150,000 outstanding and 16 years left. The home's equity is $375,000. I have a brother who would be willing to co-sign as a last resort. He has a high income and great credit. I'm confident that I'll be able to afford the mortgage and would obviously like to keep the low interest rate. Thanks for all of your service.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  So Eric, first of all, I'm sorry you're going through the pain of divorce right now. And unless what you read, I misunderstood you. You said his income's $40,000 a year? I'm really worried about you, Eric. You say you can afford the payments. I'm worried at an income of approximately $3,500 a month, you're gonna be able to afford the carry cost of $325,000 in mortgage debt. I assume you're gonna owe your estranged spouse some share of equity too.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  And probably will have to refinance, for sure.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's a small percent of loans that are assumable.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  But it's a rare thing. So you got some homework here. You got to check to see if, and I'm really only concerned about the first mortgage at the 3%. You want to get those loan documents out and make sure you're really awake and not disturbed at all. You want to read through on what assumability options there are. And a loan will say clearly, if it's not assumable, it will say that. And what you're looking for is assumable, non escalating. That means you keep the same interest rate. And if you use an AI tool, you can load the mortgage into it and

• 26:14Speaker 02

  have AI search for the information you're looking for. If it's too hard for you to do it, just reading it yourself. Your brother is a kind soul. And the fact that he's willing to cosign may be required because of your income versus the amount of debt you're taking on. But you need to work on a budget and see, once you see what the monthly payments would be, if the loan's not assumable, and you're going to have to pay off both of these with a new refi at today's interest rates, can you afford it? I understand emotionally and practically,

• 26:56Speaker 02

  you want to keep the home, and you're going to have to see if that is actually a viable option. Because what I don't want you to do is get into a loan obligation you can't afford, and you're not able to stay in the house, and your brother can get stuck with some serious obligations from doing this. So that's why I want you to just look at the straight dollars and cents. Once you see what is actually involved in the possibility of assuming that the original first mortgage that's at a fantastic interest rate you'd love to keep.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  Dave in Alabama says, "The company I work for forces us to get a corporate credit card to use for travel. It's a card I would never get otherwise, it has no benefits for me. Now that I'm retiring, should I cancel this card or just throw it away, but leave it open? I don't want it to affect my credit score."

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Okay. Dave, first of all, congratulations on your retirement.

• 27:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Before you retire, I want you to get another card that's your card replacing the credit that this had. You said it's a card you'd never use. I want you to get one that would be useful to you in your life. If you're looking for one, what I'd love is for you to look at a simple, no annual fee, cash back card, paying 2% cash back. We've got a list of some of those on Clark.com. Replace the credit. I call it leapfrogging. You replace it and then you cancel that card. Your history of having had the card will remain part of your credit standing and you'll have the new card that would be useful to you to

• 28:43Speaker 02

  replace it. And whatever credit you need, you want to get before you're officially retired.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  Okay. And Sean in Wisconsin wrote in, a few people wrote in about this. "I heard you discuss the problem of spam calendar invites showing up on people's calendars. This happened to me too, and what made it especially frustrating is that I never even saw the original invite in my inbox. It went straight to spam, but the event still landed on my calendar. For anyone using Google Calendar, there's a setting that fixes this, and we only heard from people about Google Calendar settings. Open Google Calendar and click the green gear icon, then you choose Settings. In the left menu, click Event Settings. Change/Add Invitations to My Calendar from Everyone to either Only If the Sender Is Known or When I Respond to the Invitation in Email. If the Only If Sender Is Known

• 29:35Speaker 03

  option works well for most people, it limits auto-added events to contacts and people that you've interacted with before. So random spammers can't drop events onto your calendar anymore."

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Okay, I was trying to follow all those instructions. I was too quick.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Well, anyone can always pause and go back and listen to it. And we'll put it in the show notes as well today, the episode.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  I love that. And I want to thank Sean and the others who posted about this because this is just terrible when things show up on your calendar. You had nothing to do.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  I got another one the other day. It was from a different service than we even talked about. It was, it was like a fake Punchbowl invite. It's called, is one of the invite services, so.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  So you're gonna do this same thing?

• 30:19Speaker 03

  I don't know, because I do, I probably won't, because my Google Calendar is my work calendar that I use. And I get invitations to meetings from people from other organizations, but I'm careful to see what I'm being invited to now.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  I'm definitely gonna do this.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Thank you. I love it because Sean, you're part of Team Clark. You're making a difference for other people. If you're not aware of why this was so dangerous, people are trying to get you to click on things and then it can download viruses into your phone or your computer. And you don't want stray stuff showing up on your calendar. So, thank you for the suggestion about how to deal with this. And I appreciate all the time that I'll say, gosh, I don't know how to do that. And we will instantly hear from people who say,

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Clark, you should know this. Do this and this other thing. And then we check them out first before we talk about them. But it's all part of the force multiplier, what we do as a team to help each other, to serve each other. And we don't do enough as community anymore, generally as a country. And that's something I want different here with what we do in our orbit, is that we all serve each other and help each other and help make community better. So thank you for that. And we have more of that coming.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  On our next podcast Friday, as a special birthday treat for me, the day before my birthday, we get to have the birthday edition of Clark Stinks coming up Friday. And I so look forward to sharing that with you. So have some more empowerment in your life. So you can save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off. And see you on Friday.

• 32:23Speaker 05

  Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.

• 32:53Speaker 06

  Check home worries off your list and save up to $5,000 on repairs with Virginia Foundation Solutions. Wet basement, foundation cracks, uneven floors? Leave those to us. Small problems can lead to bigger repairs when left unchecked. Our experts provide waterproofing, foundation repair, and crawl space solutions to help protect your home. You've got enough on your list. Let us handle the repairs. Schedule your free inspection with Virginia Foundation Solutions today.