08.19.26 The FIRE Movement Today / Pricing Mind Games

If you think winning the lottery is the only way to achieve financial independence, think again! The Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement has shifted drastically over the years in the wake of inflation, rising housing costs, and healthcare challenges, but the core principle of FI is more relevant today than ever. Clark shares his own journey—including retiring at 31 and starting his first business by living on half his income—to show you how living on less than you make can buy you ultimate freedom. Also, are you really getting a discount, or are retailers just playing mind games? Clark exposes how major stores—especially in clothing and online marketplaces like Amazon—artificially inflate original prices just to mark them back down. Learn how to spot deceptive pricing tricks, use historic price-tracking tools, and resist psychological sales traps so you never get ripped off again. Plus, Christa shares your #AskClark questions and Clark gives his take. All this and more on the August 19, 2026, episode of The Clark Howard Show. Submit your opinions or questions: Ask Clark. FIRE Movement Update: Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 Pricing Tricks: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: What Does Financial Freedom Mean To You? Our Six Levels What I got wrong about FIRE / How to Retire Early in 7 Steps Best Of: The Clark Origin Story / About Clark Howard What Is Mortgage Recasting? / Mortgage Recast Calculator How some retailers inflate original prices to create fake discounts How To Get the Best Price Possible Shopping Online - Clark Howard How To Use Camelcamelcamel - Clark Howard National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys Home NAELA Best Small Business Credit Cards - Clark Howard How Do I Remove Myself as an Authorized User on a Credit Card? 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

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

• 0:50Speaker 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 to make better financial decisions in your life. In today's episode, I'm on fire. The fire movement. It was all the rage. Everybody wanted to be on fire. I have an update for you where that's morphed to. And later, you know, we all like to get a deal, right? So I'm going to tell you retailers are playing dirty tricks on us to make us think we're getting a deal when we're not. What you need to know.

• 1:35Speaker 03

  So what is fire? Financial independence, retire early. And it was a thing. I remember we first talked about it before, I don't know the term existed yet, but we first talked about it back in the late 90s. And then it got a name and became a thing. And there were people that were, you know, writing books and going on television bragging about how they retired by the time they were 42 or 45 or whatever. So it became something that people were aspiring to, and then it kind of crashed and burned.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  And the reality is that, as I said back then, it wasn't really to me ever about being able to bag work forever at a young age. And if you know my history, I call it retired. I retired the first time when I was 31. And I, I just didn't even think about work. That was my deal. I had been lucky enough to engage in a lot of ventures when I was young and developed enough wealth and kind of burned myself out from working too much. And I bagged it and moved to the beach when I was 31.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  And then I went back to work and I've had the great, great, great privilege since I was young, very young, to only work ever since, now I'm old, to have worked all these decades, only because I wanted to, not because I had to. It's a huge thing. So this concept that was touted so much online and in every form of media about you can be me, you can become independent and retire as young as you want, just by living a different lifestyle.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  And you just don't hear that anymore. A lot of things have happened in between. We had the great recession. We had COVID. We've had inflation. But one of the key tipping points for a lot of people is the healthcare part. Because in the United States, we don't have a really easy way for you to afford healthcare when you're not working or particularly not working for a big entity that provides healthcare coverage as part of you working there. So I want you to think about this differently and more like I've always thought about it,

• 4:30Speaker 03

  that the FI part is much more relevant to me than the full word. Financial independence and what that means. So when I was really young, just out of grad school, I resolved that I was going to live on every other paycheck. And that's what I did. I wasn't making a lot of money. I mean, right out of graduate school, I don't know what it is, inflation adjusted, but I was making $10,800 a year. Probably inflation adjusted, that would be like $30,000 a year. But when you're a student, you live on not a lot.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  I had to pay my own way through school. And so I lived extremely frugally. And when I was done with school, I kept living that same way. And by living on half of what I made, that's how I was able to start my first company when I was 25. And so, living on less than what you make is not magic. It is a mentality, a lifestyle, and sometimes you can't live that way. If you live in a crazy expensive metro area, your money's going to be soaked up by, by rent or mortgage or whatever.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  But I was able to set up my life where I lived on very little and I didn't suffer lifestyle creep. And that to me is really where it's at. I always talk about it's never what you make is what you don't spend that counts. And when you start your first job, that you're participating right away in the plans an employer might offer, because then it's automatic pilot with the Roth 401k from an employer. If you're not lucky enough to have an employer provided plan, that you set up your own Roth IRA that you contribute to automatically, that you put money aside rainy day account,

• 6:44Speaker 03

  that you are intentional about creating financial security in your life, that ultimately with enough time and enough saved, you don't have to own businesses like I've owned, although that sped up the process. The key is that you don't create financial anxiety in your life, that you do live on less than what you make as your cultural norm. I've talked a lot about cultural norms. In the United States right now, we're at one of the worst numbers we've ever been at. People are saving two cents of every dollar they make, on average in the United States right now.

• 7:27Speaker 03

  Now that's because of income disparities in the U.S., the effects and ravages of inflation, that kind of thing. But if you think about people who are still in this era max savers, we get to that 2% because a lot of people are saving less than zero. So if you want to set yourself up for a really solid financial future, you start by putting money aside first and you live on the rest. That's the key, is that your lifestyle expectations in our culture, what's known as the marginal

• 8:10Speaker 03

  propensity to consume, is Americans advance in a career or a job, get a raise, get a promotion. What do they do? Their spending goes right up with it. That's what MPC is about, is that in our culture, the income goes up, our spending goes up right with it. Resist that temptation. You create over time, the financial independence.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  I love it. And I love your story. It's never gets old. Okay.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  Even though I am.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  No, you're not.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Yes, I am.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  Ask 10 people.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  Stop it. And if you want to dig up, we have an old episode where Clark tells the whole story of how he ended up in this career, and it's pretty fascinating.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  It'll be 40 years in January.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Since I started broadcasting.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  It's awesome. Okay.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  It's a long time.

• 9:07Speaker 04

  Well, you've got endless questions to still answer, Clark. So here we go. Mario in North Carolina sent this in to you. I've heard a lot about refinancing a mortgage, but what's your opinion on recasting your mortgage? I know it's typically done after you receive a large lump sum. But how often would you do it? And how would you structure it along the life of a mortgage? It seems too good to be true to only have to pay $500, lower your monthly costs, but keep your same payments and thus direct your money more towards the principal as opposed to the monthly interest. And I don't have to worry about unfreezing my credit since there's no credit check with recasting.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  So Mario, what a great question. All right. So mortgage recast, not every lender will permit it. Many lenders will cap how many times over the life of a mortgage you can recast. And they may even require that you pay in so much towards the balance before you're eligible for a recast. It might be five grand, whatever. So this is the opposite of trying to shorten the length of a loan by making a principal prepayment. Because what you're doing is you're creating more breathing space in your life by lowering

• 10:25Speaker 03

  what your monthly mortgage cost is. But you said that you're going to increase what goes to principal. The whole idea of a recast is you're keeping the loan term the same. So the benefit in terms of reducing interest paid over time is not as great as you might think. People who prepay on a mortgage and then keep making the same mortgage payment dramatically reduce how much total interest they'll pay over the course of a loan. But different people have different needs and circumstances. If you come into a windfall

• 11:06Speaker 03

  and you pay it towards the principal and you recast the loan, you will reduce your housing costs month by month. So it is a great thing to do with a lump sum because what often happens if somebody gets an inheritance or a bonus or whatever, well, they kind of frittered it away. And this way, you know, it went to improving your personal financial health. Not as much as you do by keeping your payments the same and just prepaying principal, but an absolute benefit.

• 11:40Speaker 04

  Christina in Florida says, my husband recently lost his father after serving as his full-time caregiver for the past two years.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Well, I'm really sorry he lost his dad. And I'm also so touched that he did so much to care for his dad in his waning days.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  For sure. As a result, he inherited his childhood home, which has a $95,000 mortgage at 8.2% interest.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  8.2.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  With about 11 years remaining.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:09Speaker 04

  The home needs significant repairs, including a new roof, windows, HVAC, and other major updates. Because it's located in the beaches area, property taxes and homeowners' insurance are also very expensive. We also own our current home with a 2.99% 30-year mortgage. We owe approximately 266K with 24 years remaining and have invested more than $100,000 in cash renovations. I'm the sole income earner while my husband, age 56, has no retirement savings after leaving work to care for his parents. He will primarily rely on social security and retirement. I'm 10 years younger, have about $200,000 in my 401k, and expect to work another 20 years. Given our retirement outlook, we believe

• 12:53Speaker 04

  being mortgage-free is essential. Our challenge is deciding what to do with the two homes. We can't afford to carry both. If we move into the inherited home, we would need to finance extensive renovations, resulting in a mortgage payment roughly 40% higher than what we pay today. If we sell the inherited home, a realtor estimates we would net about $250,000. Selling our current home would net only about $50,000. This is a big math problem.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  You're giving me a lot of math.

• 13:21Speaker 04

  A lot of numbers. I think that's pretty much it. We also considered selling both homes and buying another, but current interest rates would leave us with a larger mortgage payment and restart the loan term. We're leaning towards selling the inherited home and using the proceeds to significantly reduce or pay off our current mortgage while completing the remaining renovations. This feels like the best solution, looking at potential retirement in the next 20 years. However, my husband is understandably emotionally invested in his childhood home. We would greatly appreciate your perspective on what we should consider or what you would recommend.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  So Christina, we're talking about your husband reeling. This is the home he grew up in. There's a lot of emotion and the decline and loss of his dad. From a purely financial standpoint, and I'm hearing your perspective on this, the childhood home should be sold. And you have a mortgage on your existing home of just under 3%. No rush on paying it. That is crazy low money. It's manageable. I would put all my efforts into that home. I would not sell both homes. Anything you bought in its place, you'd have a very high

• 14:38Speaker 03

  cost mortgage. Interest rates have gone up again on mortgages. This is a keep it simple. Now, there's something I can only read between the lines. Your husband left his job, cared for his dad, is now 56, has no retirement savings, would depend only on social security. And my question is, I want to know why your husband isn't going back into the workforce? That seems to me as an opportunity lost because he would have, let's say he works till his mid-60s, he would have almost 10 years to build up a meaningful amount of

• 15:21Speaker 03

  money in a Roth IRA. He's eligible for catch-up. He could work part-time and build up a reserve of money. So it creates financial security for him and the two of you together, for him to work at least part-time. You say sole income earner. Maybe he has health problems himself. I don't know.

• 15:43Speaker 04

  But even as today, he could take some of the proceeds and do a spousal Roth, right?

• 15:48Speaker 03

  That's right. That's absolutely. But the whole idea is he's young enough, barring personal circumstances or physical circumstances, to work for several more years and build up some reserves. So I would say, your linear question about the house, you sell the childhood home. Paying down on the mortgage wouldn't do that. Because at 2.99, it's better for you to use that money to build up more future retirement savings.

• 16:23Speaker 04

  Ringer in North Carolina says, motivated by how highly you speak of it, I bought an Aura ring to help me get my sleeping habits on track. In the app, I saw the option to connect my medical records to Aura. I'm curious, is this something you would recommend doing? How safe is my information if I choose to share it? And are there potential additional insights worth the risk? Thank you for helping us stay healthy, both fiscally and physically.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  So I'm pretty nervous about anytime you're asked to link your medical records. You're not going to have HIPAA protections when you do so. But I love Aura. I was saying just before we started the podcast, that when I woke up this morning, got my Aura score and my Aura information, it said something I have never seen before. It said that I had, it says I'm under stress right now. Is that what happens when we're working together?

• 17:21Speaker 04

  Oh, no, I'm sorry.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  Oh, I've never looked at it in real time while we're doing it. The warning's gone, but it had a warning this morning that it was unhappy with my blood pressure yesterday and wanted me to check my blood pressure with a cuff. So, you know, blood pressure can be a silent killer. And whenever I go to the cardiologist, my blood pressure is always perfect. But maybe I'm more relaxed at the cardiologist than I am every day in life. So Aura is phenomenal. The data they collect, it's always there collecting from you 24 hours a day. Connecting your medical records, I'm not ready to do that

• 18:04Speaker 03

  yet. I'll leave that to your decision. But because all these medical things, all these apps, these devices, all that are not HIPAA compliant, and I don't know that Aura is required to do anything with HIPAA, that makes me nervous. So not for me. Coming up ahead, I want to talk about something that drives me crazy. When I see a giant sale sign, or I'm online, they're talking sale, sale, sale. And it's really funny at Amazon, if you have one of the things like Camel, Camel, Camel, or whatever, and Amazon's bragging about the great sale on some, then you look at the price history, and it's 30% higher

• 18:48Speaker 03

  than it was a month ago. I mean, we're going to talk about that straight ahead.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed-sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed-sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed-sponsored jobs.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

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• 20:36Speaker 07

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• 21:07Speaker 03

  We gotta talk because this is such an ongoing problem because it works. Retailers pretending something is a deal in order to lure you in to buy it because we want to grab a deal. We want to believe that the green light, that we make that decision psychologically we're going to buy that thing is because it was on sale. Well, over and over again, retailers get called out for marking something up to mark it down. It happens so heavily, particularly with one category in mind, women's clothing.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  Marking up to markdown has always been an issue because a lot of women's clothing, people only buy when it's on sale. So retailers will do what they call mark it up to mark it down, meaning that virtually 0% of the inventory is ever sold at original retail. This is something that's just the way it's done. But what's important is for you to know that marking up to markdown is the game. And you got to be honest with yourself because as I talked about just a moment ago about

• 22:33Speaker 03

  Amazon, if you use the tools available for you to see historic pricing data, you'll see often that things that Amazon says are a great deal, aren't at all. That it's actually more expensive than it's been in recent history. But everything says sale. Think how often you look at a category on an online shopping site. One after another says 17% off, half price, on sale, markdown, whatever. And if everything's on sale, nothing's on sale. So then it becomes not as much fun to do what I'm going to encourage you to do unless

• 23:18Speaker 03

  you're sitting with just all kinds of surplus money and you're never going to run out of it. Okay. Anybody? Anybody? Who's that? Okay, you're not the world's richest person, right? So you need to know that this is a deep psychological thing. And you have to resist. And I know in Star Trek, they talked about resistance is futile. No, resistance is not futile. Futile. You can resist if you want to. And I love the closet test.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  So you go look in your closet and how many things are there with clothing, let's say, that you never wore, but you bought? Or you wore once? And they're just taking up space. Or sporting goods. Oh, I've been guilty of that one. I buy various sporting goods and then they don't get used. I mean, whatever your weak spot is, wherever you know you're most vulnerable to taking that pitch from an online seller or a physical store and you buy it, just be aware that you're allowing yourself to be taken advantage of.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Now, there's also seasonal stuff. Like I've talked about, year after year, I've talked about back to school, that major retailers bring in merchandise just for back to school. Often you can tell in a discount store because they'll be in prepackaged cardboard display units. So the shelves don't have to be stocked and they come in off the truck and they're prepackaged and they'll show the price was and the price is, but the price was never because they're only there as items for a special event. Remember that when you're shopping for Christmas?

• 25:24Speaker 03

  Any special shopping cycle that you don't allow yourself, unless you want to, to be fooled by the fake sale? What category are you most likely to be?

• 25:40Speaker 04

  Oh, clothes.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  Clothes?

• 25:41Speaker 04

  I think so, yeah.

• 25:44Speaker 03

  How do you deal with it?

• 25:46Speaker 04

  I mean, I don't, I'm pretty simple in the way I shop. Like I usually buy stuff from like Target. I buy a lot of my clothes at Target. And then I buy, been buying a lot of used clothes online on sites. And so I always do research and look what the actual original price was. And I only shop from stores I know well too, if I'm going to buy online and I can see what, I know what the real price is. So, but it's tricky. I always get pulled in by these Instagram things. You know what? I'm actually more likely to with, I do take supplements and stuff. And so I'll see like, or I'll go on Amazon and buy a supplement I want and I'll go to, I'll look for it and I'll realize, no, it's cheaper somewhere else. Like you've always told me to shop that around and it looks like it's a deal on Amazon and

• 26:31Speaker 04

  it's really not. So supplements too for me.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Oh, you know, the one that drives me crazy on Am, this is not pick on Amazon day, by the way, but where people will buy stuff at a discount store and then they re-

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Resell it.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Resell it on Amazon at these big markups.

• 26:49Speaker 04

  I know, I know. And also if you're shopping on like Instagram, I know people do TikTok. I look through Instagram, I'll get ads and I'll click through to something and that looks like it's a deal from that website, but then I'll shop it around and it's actually cheaper. So it's happening everywhere.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  Right, so inquiry minds want to know, so TikTok really just emerged on the scene in mind space with people like eight years ago.

• 27:14Speaker 04

  Okay, I don't even know.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  No, it's about eight years.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. And now TikTok with certain age groups and demographics is gigantic. So are you and I going to come up with the next thing like that?

• 27:28Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  I mean, what's, what's coming next? I mean, before TikTok, nobody knew they needed TikTok. And then all of a sudden it's like TikTok.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  Snapchat, Snapchat's still big, I think.

• 27:41Speaker 03

  And remember the big, big, big one, when the internet first became popularized?

• 27:46Speaker 04

  MySpace.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  Does that even exist?

• 27:49Speaker 04

  I don't think MySpace is out there anymore. It's coming back. Oh, someone says it's coming, Grace says it's coming back, so.

• 27:56Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  Okay. Tanya in Ohio says, my father was recently scammed and is sending money in large amounts to the scammers. Oh, that's awful. I'm trying to protect his assets. How do I make sure that he does not reroute his pension and social security to a new bank account? I don't know who to contact to stop that from happening. He banks with Navy Federal Credit Union and they have been horrific.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  Really?

• 28:25Speaker 04

  It took me five months to get his account locked down, but if he transfers those two things to another bank, I will have no control.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  Tanya, my heart absolutely goes out to you right now. And I don't know if you're the Lone Ranger or you have siblings who can be part of this, but when my mom developed dementia, we started doing, I'm one of four kids, we started doing conference calls and we divided up responsibilities and things like that. And then we had to take full control of my mom's finances. And we divided up how we did that and who did this with mom and who did that and whatever. I don't know if it's just going to be on you, but you need legal authority.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  Now, if your dad is still considered to be of sound mind, you want, while he is, for him to give you durable power of attorney.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  If your dad is not truly able to make good decisions now, and someone can still be considered to be able to make decisions and still be in the early stages of not being diagnosed, but being scammed by crooks, and there'll be more and more and more, and you don't want him wiped out, you need to get that control. If your dad already is clearly what would be considered under the laws of the state, if he lives in Ohio like you do, and the laws of the state of Ohio is incompetent at this point, you're going to have to have

• 30:11Speaker 03

  help to get control. But you need to get control because you can't afford for crooks, and they'll work it till they steal all his money. They will absolutely do it. Tanya, if you feel overwhelmed and don't know what to do, there's an area of the law called elder law attorneys. All they do is assist in situations like this. And you may think, I'm going to pay a lawyer? Yes, because the consequences of criminals stealing your dad's money is much greater than the expense you would face getting proper legal help from

• 30:55Speaker 03

  an elder law attorney. But control is what you need. And I know with siblings, there's always interesting family dynamics. There's some who never lift a finger, others who take on a lot of the responsibility, or in some cases, everybody else says, oh, well, Tanya's going to take care of it. We don't need to do anything. But I need for you to act. I hate that you have had months, five months, just dealing with the bureaucracy at Navy Federal to try to protect one phase of this with your dad. You need help right away. Family, key players, the elder law attorney, please let me hear back from you.

• 31:40Speaker 04

  And maybe a geriatric social worker consulting with them?

• 31:44Speaker 03

  That's true. I mean, you're not, you don't, even if you're the only kid who's going to lift a finger, or you're an only child, there are people who deal with this every day and will know how to help you protect him from himself and protect you in the process. Best of luck.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  I know. Good luck. Jessica in New Jersey says, I'm preparing to launch a solo psychotherapy practice soon, and I need to open a business bank account. I love the convenience of online banking and have come across people talking about options like, and she names a few companies. I would be using a HIPAA compliant payment system for clients. So the actual business banking is really for everything needed to run the business operations, have separate buckets to set aside for things like quarterly taxes, and maybe even earn interest. Is going with an online bank for business a good idea? And what else should I consider? What would Clark do? Bonus question, if possible, when is a business credit card a good idea?

• 32:46Speaker 03

  Okay, all right. So don't let me forget about the business credit card. So you're a low volume, low transaction kind of business account. So you don't need a traditional bank that's going to rip you off with every kind of fee imaginable. And going with one of the online banks that will do business banking is a great idea in a case like yours. Because it is very few transactions a month. You're really just looking for a place to park money, deal with the small number of transactions you have. I think that's perfect.

• 33:24Speaker 03

  FDIC insured is key. There are some app-based kind of things out there that I worry about the security and safety of your money. So that absolutely is good. And whatever you can do to avoid being ripped off on a business banking account at a traditional bricks and mortar bank, you want to do. Also, I should mention, Jessica, there are, you're in a part of the country that's big credit union, New Jersey. A lot of credit unions offer, they're allowed to offer a certain amount of business banking up to a threshold, and

• 34:05Speaker 03

  their business banking accounts are vastly superior to what you tend to find from a bank. So if you already do business with a Jersey-based credit union, see if they offer business banking and how theirs works, and more important, what the fees are, and if you can earn interest on your money. On a business credit card, let me tell you how they work. So a business credit card, they all pierce the corporate veil. They issue you a business card. They don't have to meet the laws for consumer protection. They don't have to give you the grace period you're used to, any of those things. But they also

• 34:46Speaker 03

  make you personally liable. So what I find is better is for you to find a consumer card that you love, use it only for your business, pay the bill through your business, because you're liable anyway. Why not pick up the better consumer protections you get with a consumer version of a card instead of a business version?

• 35:08Speaker 04

  All right. You didn't even need me to remind you.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  How did I remember that? I'm such a flake.

• 35:16Speaker 04

  Pamela in Florida says, my adult son is an authorized user on his dad's credit card. His dad is my ex. The credit card is maxed out, and it is affecting my son's credit score. Can he remove himself from the card?

• 35:29Speaker 03

  He sure can. If he's only an authorized user, he can contact the credit card company and tell them he wants to no longer be an authorized user. And you can't add yourself as an authorized user, but you can remove yourself as one, and then that will no longer harm your son. And this, it's funny, because I've been recommending parents to help a kid establish a credit identity, adding them as an authorized user. But I got to tell you, Pamela, you are not the first person we've heard from where it's boomeranged on

• 36:11Speaker 03

  the child who's now an adult, who continues to be an authorized user on a card. The parent who added them, their financial picture is not good for whatever reason. And then instead of helping the child, it harms them, just like it is right now with your adult son. So he needs to go through the process to be removed as an authorized user. And I'm not aware of card issuers that require the removal of authorized user status to be done by the person who added them. It's normal that you can remove yourself as the individual

• 36:53Speaker 03

  who is the authorized user. And if somebody's had a problem with that, I need to know it because I have not heard that. So best of luck to your son. I hope he's able to get that squared away. And I want to tell you, we're done for today. That rhymes. And we're going to be back at your service on Friday with my favorite thing. See, Friday's my favorite day. Why? Because it leads into the weekend. And Friday is my favorite day also, because it means I get to go to school. I get to hear from you. I get to get feedback.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  It's so important because I need to learn more how I can do a better job serving you. And that's why we got Clark Stinks Empowerment for Me from you. So know that what we're about is your empowerment through knowledge so you can save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off. See you in a couple of days.