10.19.26 Shield Retirement Savings From AI Scams / For Love And Money

Artificial intelligence is creating unprecedented risks for your retirement savings, with AI-driven fraud causing massive financial losses across the country. Deepfakes and voice-cloning technology have become so advanced that scammers can effortlessly mimic real people, leaving brokerage firms and financial institutions vulnerable to fraudulent transfer instructions. Clark has recommendations to help secure your life savings. Also, navigating finances as a couple can be challenging, especially when partners enter a relationship with different money habits, debt, or savings. While maintaining completely separate bank accounts can breed distrust and weaken marital bonds, combining everything without a strategy can cause friction. Clark explains how to practice a balanced approach built on trust. Plus, Christa shares your #AskClark questions and Clark gives his take. All this and more on the October 19, 2026, episode of The Clark Howard Show. Submit your questions: Ask Clark. Protect Retirement Funds: Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 Couples Finances: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: How to Protect Your Retirement Savings From AI Scams and Cyber Threats Why You Need To Lock Your Brokerage Account Today Warning: A Devastating Bank Impersonation Scam Is Draining Life Savings in Minutes These Are the Biggest Scams That Cost Seniors the Most Money Best Online Banks: Free Checking and High-Interest Savings Accounts Joint or separate bank accounts? One choice is bad for your marriage The Financial Checklist Every Couple Needs To Know - Clark Howard How To Open a Roth IRA What Is the Highest Credit Score? - Clark Howard How To Improve Your Credit Score in 5 Key Areas - Clark Howard 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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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:04Speaker 02

  It's great that you're here for the Clark Howard Show. Cause our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you. So you make better financial decisions in your life. And today, protecting your retirement accounts in the age of AI scams. Woo, is it a scary thing? And I want to tell you where the real threat is and what you can do about it. Also in this episode, I've been reading some interesting information about couples and finances. Is it better to share accounts or not? I'm going to tell you what the research says.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  So the AI thing is giving people fits, right? Recently, my son sent me a clip of something that I said. And I got to tell you, Krista, lightning struck again. You, because you've heard the clip, right?

• 2:06Speaker 03

  He texted it to me and I thought you had recorded this as like a thing you wanted to put on social media or somewhere. It was about the Apple air phone or whatever.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  I don't know anything about the iPhone air.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  That clip though, is creepy.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Oh, I thought, I thought it was.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Because it 100% sounded like me, the right inflections, everything about it. And I never said any of those things. I don't review technology like that. But somebody listening to it would absolutely think that I was giving expert advice on which iPhone to buy in this current cycle. I mean, this is weird. I think about after my wife, Lane listened to it. She said, what about all these financial firms that have this verification thing?

• 3:01Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  My voice is my password.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  That's so not safe anymore. And so the danger is out there with your money. And I got a call from a relative who had mistakenly clicked on something. It was really worried, thought it was legit. Was really worried what kind of virus it had entered into her life. And was freaked out that a criminal would try to get into our money. I said, well, every day, any, this is a success tax. Anybody who's done a great job saving and investing has risk with where AI would enter, theft of data about you and all that would enter.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  And do you know that in the financial industry, the brokerages, the investment advisory community, they're all living in fear. And there was just a long story in Barron's magazine about this in the section they write to, for financial planners and the financial community, the investing community about the risk they face, reputational risk. And who knows what kind of financial risk they face. When they think they're talking to their actual client, they follow instructions from that client and it's not the client. It's an AI tool that is stealing the client's money.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  We're in a time period, think about how often people open an investment account and you're doing it online, you're never face to face with someone. One of the things that Barron's said for the investment advisory business, you better know that client face to face, not on a zoom. You need to know who you're dealing with so that if suddenly you get instructions and you think it's them, but it's not. But what about for you and me as consumers? Okay. So what did I say to my relative who called? What do you think I told her?

• 5:05Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  I said, okay, you have a new assignment. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you sign in to make sure your account is there. Because the way these transfers out, time is of the essence. And so if you just monitor your accounts, it's just regular housekeeping, like looking at your email, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, check to make sure everything's fine. Because if something's not fine and you know that, and on average it would be less than 24 hours or right at 24 hours, you're going to be able to likely do things to reverse the damage. But if you just go on with your life and you don't realize till you got a quarterly statement, what happened to my money?

• 5:52Speaker 02

  It's awfully late in the game. And as I've explained before, brokerages, you don't have the same consumer protections under the law with a brokerage as you do with a bank. If your account gets hacked at a bank or credit union, the law is clear. With the brokerage community, it's their written policies that matter. And they all have a little bit of hedge there that you got to be aware of, because what could the AI be? Instead of being you being impersonated with the financial house, it can be the opposite.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Somebody's impersonating the financial house or even your personal representative and getting information from you, they use to loot your account. In that case, even if your brokerage has a written policy, a protection for you from hacks, it wouldn't apply necessarily if you got tricked to giving information. The other thing is we haven't talked about it in probably half a year, ACATS. That is a registry that allows a simple electronic transfer out of all your funds. With the firms that permit it, you want to put in place an ACATS lock that if somebody

• 7:14Speaker 02

  does hack into your account successfully, they can't then electronically move the money out. There's additional procedures required to protect your money. Am I trying to make you paranoid? No. Am I trying to make you careful? Yes. Because this is a still developing danger to people. You don't want to be someone in one of the media stories like someone who was in two weeks ago, who had all their life savings taken from them.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  All right. We'll go to some questions. This one's from Dara in Indiana. I'm a full-time teacher and I have a side hustle selling things on eBay, mostly thrifted items. Is there a benefit to having a separate checking account and debit card just for this? For instance, when I go thrifting, should I use a separate card? When eBay sends my payouts, should it go to this account? Our bank and accountant were both wishy washy about this, both saying it's not really needed unless I wanted to. I do think it would be exciting to see that account grow and then use that account when I go shopping, but is there any benefit? Also, both suggested no LLC needed. Your advice regarding this? Thanks so much. Love your show. Just found it recently.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Well, I'm glad you're with us now, Dara. And I want to tell you, you don't need the LLC at this point. But I actually do agree with you. It would be great to use one card. To buy the things you're buying that you're then turning around and selling so that you have clear records of that, you know what kind of net profit you're making, what items you're getting a good return on, what items you're not. It's like, simple accounting. Necessary? No. Desired? Yes. Okay, on the thing of having a separate account

• 9:12Speaker 02

  the money goes into, I like that too. Because again, if this continues to grow, you know, when you talk to your accountant and your banker, they may not have thought of this as being something that's gonna generate real money. Who knows? It could. So if you set up an online bank account for this, where you don't have to pay any fees on it, and you have a card that you tie in for your purchases, I like it.

• 9:41Speaker 03

  Mike in Wisconsin says, "Our HSA account issues us a debit and credit card to pay medical expenses. For Clark's advice, we normally don't use debit cards other than at the ATM. The exception is that we have been using the HSA card at doctor's office and pharmacies to pay for copays because of the convenience. Should we stop doing this? Is there a way to force these transactions to credit rather than debit to protect our HSA balance?"

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Okay, so Mike, this is one of those exceptions to all the stuff I say about debit. If you're able to tie in your HSA so easily, and you don't have a lot of paperwork hassle, by using it at the doc and at the pharmacy, keep doing that. I mean, you got a statement on what's going on with your HSA. I'm not worried particularly about somebody raiding that account, and I would do it for simplicity, record-keeping, ease of use.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Liz in Kentucky says, "Hi Clark, I live in a house with really high ceilings, so changing the batteries on my smoke detector is very difficult. Lately, I've seen the plug-in models. They look so attractive, but do they really work?"

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Yes, do that.

• 10:53Speaker 03

  Well, but smoke rises. Everything I'm reading says, "Smoke rises," and so it's not a good idea if they're low.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  So you're saying, just plug into a regular outlet at ground level?

• 11:06Speaker 03

  That's what I thought maybe she was saying. But no, if you can plug it in, if you can put something in the ceiling, that would be great. But carbon monoxide detectors are okay to be low.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, carbon monoxide detectors are fine down low. I think versus having the smoke detector just die and not working at all, and I'll look to see, and we may hear from a firefighter, that you're right and I'm dumb.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  No.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  But, no, no. But I think that having the smoke detector, if there's enough smoke there, I think it's gonna trigger even though heat rises. So I think sometimes doing good, not perfect, is better. Because what happens to people who live in a house with the cathedral ceilings, smoke detector, once it dies, it's just sitting there as a thing on the ceiling. So I like the idea of plugging in.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  And maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm wrong. I'm sure we'll hear

• 12:07Speaker 03

  I'm sure we will.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  From people about that. Coming up ahead, sticking on the money theme of earlier, I want to talk about something that is just a hard puzzle to put together. When people meet later, you know, they're not fresh out of school, they, they meet and they get together in their late twenties and beyond, how do you handle money? What works best? And what preserves your relationship best? We're gonna talk about that straight ahead.

• 12:39Speaker 00

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• 15:25Speaker 02

  All right, this is a tough one. You can have a couple has very disparate incomes, different attitudes about money. One may come into the relationship or marriage with debt, the other not. One's got a good balance for retirement, other not. I mean, it's, it's a mix. Because people have already established if they're getting together, getting married later, there's a lot more complexity with money. At the same time, research shows clearly that couples that keep all their finances separate, end up with a lot of distrust

• 16:06Speaker 02

  in their relationship. It hurts the bonds of the relationship of the marriage. So I, for years, have said, "His, hers, theirs." I like a house account, and that you each, particularly if there's great income disparity that, or asset disparity, that you have your separate accounts and the, the joint. But that is a procedure. That's a tactic. The overriding strategy is all about one of the hardest things to do in a relationship or a marriage, and that is communicate. People are much more likely to talk about pretty

• 16:50Speaker 02

  much anything in their marriage or relationship, except money. And so, you don't have a conversation when you open up a bill and you're angry, and you start screaming at the other person in your life. Conversation's about money. Not that money's a god. You don't make money the all, everything. But money is something you must discuss, and not when you're angry. And couples do this all different ways. But I want to tell you, if you're gonna create

• 17:31Speaker 02

  a good life with somebody, you're gonna undermine that if there's distrust and lying going on about money. And so, I really want you to have couples meetings. Yeah.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Just like you schedule an appointment with the doctor or the dentist or whatever, I want you to have a regular time that you talk about money, goals, how things are going, what's working, what's not. And again, never when you're angry. And that's why you have it scheduled. And how often do you do it? Okay, at an absolute minimum, every quarter of the year. Every three months, you have a meeting where you sit down with your spouse

• 18:25Speaker 02

  or significant other, and you talk about basically a financial health checkup. How are things going? What's going on? And the more you're willing to share with that person you love, the more you build trust. The more you hide, the more you create distance and potential distrust. And you each can help the other because one can have much better habits with money than the other. And so you learn from each other at least four times

• 19:04Speaker 02

  a year on the calendar, and you stick to it. And when you do it, you have the statements. What were you showing me, Krista?

• 19:13Speaker 03

  I was just showing you these statistics from this article that you actually had that 40% of couple, married couples, keep all their money in joint accounts. 23% of couples have only separate accounts, and the remaining 38% do the mix that you talked about.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  So basically, it's 40, 40, 20.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  But the research shows that having joint accounts is a good thing for a marriage, anyway.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  But not necessarily. So the data doesn't say that having only joint accounts, even though 40% do. So basically, 40% do everything joint accounts, 40% do a mix like I talk about. And the one in four people, approximately, that keep everything separate, I just don't think that's a good long-term recipe. And so I realize, this is the research. So think of it this way. We each are wired the way we are. But if you don't talk about those things with the one you love, you want to spend your life with, think about the

• 20:20Speaker 02

  gulf that you create in that relationship. I really want you to think about whichever way you want to handle the accounts, other than keeping everything separate, is fine. I don't recommend everything separate. But remember, it's not just about that. It's about having that talk. I know a lot of couples that are really good at this. They do a monthly meeting, or whatever they call it, about their money. But at least if you're doing nothing like that, do the once every 90 days. That's a good start.

• 20:55Speaker 03

  All right, we're going to start with Elizabeth in Oregon. Elizabeth says, Hi, Clark, I'm a longtime listener. You kept us company on our car rides as a kid. My spouse and I have managed to save quite a nest egg by our late 40s. We've been living internationally and never purchased a house. We've been extremely happy to not have that stress. However, we are now moving back to the US and don't have much income yet. When does it make sense to liquidate long-term investments and savings and pay cash for a house? Or do we try to qualify for a mortgage based on future potential income? Between investment savings and retirement accounts, we have nearly $1 million. It's scary to take it all out, but we are eager to put down roots.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Okay, so Elizabeth, a lot of things all at once. You've been living outside the United States for a long time. You're now in Oregon. What you've not said is, if you really feel comfortable that Oregon is where you're going to settle down, if you really feel like that's going to be it, and the community you're in, in Oregon, is where you're going to stay, if you were to buy a home, I hate for you to liquidate what you've got to avoid a mortgage. I want you to let that money continue to grow, pull enough

• 22:17Speaker 02

  out so that you can qualify for a mortgage, maybe even potentially 20% down on the purchase of a home. And let your nest egg, since your late 40s, I need for you to keep putting money into retirement accounts. And I'm saying pulling some out potentially and paying the tax on it to buy the home. But I think that's okay, as long as you're determined moving forward, that you're going to continue to build up that money. It's great you're at a million in your late 40s, but you're going to go backwards a little for that down payment. From there forward, I want you to regularly contribute, wherever you end up

• 23:02Speaker 02

  working now, to 401K if it's available to you. And if you don't have access to that, I want you to do the Roth IRA and keep building for the future.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  Willie in Florida says, Hey, Clark, longtime listener here with a question I'd love your take on. I live in Florida, and I've been going back and forth on getting into boating. But everything I hear says boats are a bad investment unless you buy used, and buying used comes with its own bag of risks. On top of that, you're looking at buying a truck capable of hauling it, plus storage fees, insurance, maintenance, and all the rest. It adds up fast, and it's a lot of hassle for something I might only use a handful of times a month. That got me looking into boat clubs instead. A couple in my area have caught my eye. One has a $0 buy-in, the other is $1,200. Monthly dues are pretty similar between the two, anywhere from about $250 a month for weekday-only

• 23:57Speaker 03

  access, up to $400 a month for seven-day access. The only extra cost is fuel, which you buy at the dock. Both clubs give you a choice of several boat types, depending on what you need for that outing, and you're allowed up to four reservations booked at any given time. I'm a flexible guy. If I can't snag a holiday reservation, that's fine with me. Cancellation requires 90 days' notice, which seems fair and straightforward. Here's my math. If I use the club twice a month, it's still cheaper than renting a boat just once, and it's way less money, stress, and headache than owning a boat and a truck to haul it. Honestly, it almost sounds too good to be true. So Clark, what am I missing here, and what questions should I be asking these clubs before I commit?

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Willie, I'm a big fan of the boating clubs. The last time I said that, we heard from a couple of people on Clark Stinks, whose boating club had gone bust. In your case, unless you're paying the $1,200 upfront, and they went bust the next week, it's a much better thing financially, although a lot of people don't like using what's equivalent of a rental boat, even though it's a subscription club. From a financial standpoint, it's much better to do this. The club is taking care of the maintenance, and hopefully they're doing a good job with that. The club is buying new boats as the old ones wear out,

• 25:25Speaker 02

  and they're getting much higher use of the boats. So why is boating such an expensive thing? Because most people end up using a boat far less than they intended. And the boat sits and sits and sits and sits, but you have the overhead of that boat the whole time. So yeah, you go with the boating club, and if one of them turns out to be a dud, there's other boating clubs you can join. You found two, just in a quick look. I think it's a better way to be a boater. And if you find you never use it, you give them the 90-day notice, and you're out. You haven't had to store the boat, or haven't had to

• 26:08Speaker 02

  drive it, haven't had to have a big truck to carry it there, like you said. Yeah, let me know how it works out.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Richard in Georgia says, My credit score has consistently been in the 820s to 830s. Within the last several months, I started making several payments on my credit cards within a billing period. My credit score on Credit Karma for the last two months has now stayed at 850. I assumed it was because of the multiple payments. Would that be a correct assumption?

• 26:36Speaker 02

  You are 100% correct, Richard. You have achieved a perfect score because you're manipulating how credit scoring works by making multiple payments through a billing cycle. Because now, the credit card companies are not just reporting once a month, they're regularly reporting your balance. And so your score is usually based on, depending on how it's being reported, high balance in a month, or your balance at closing date. So by making regular payments through a cycle, you're taking 30% of what makes up your credit

• 27:15Speaker 02

  score, and giving it a rocket booster. And that's how paying your bills on time, using a very low amount or percent of your available credit, those are the two things that really matter. And they matter enough, in your case, that you're a perfect 850. I have never had an 850 credit score. I've had scores in the low 800s. And as long as you're 780 or above, you can get any loan you want, pretty much. So you're in awesome shape. You are already in great shape, but you're able to nudge it up to perfection. And it's because

• 27:58Speaker 02

  exactly what you said you're doing. So, good for you. And having an 850, again, it won't change what loans you can get, going from an 820 or 830 to 850. But it sure feels good to be perfect, doesn't it? Something I will probably never achieve in anything, but I'll keep trying. So thank you so much for joining us today. We're here with you all week long with advice every possible way you could think of. I mean, my goodness. If you live in a market where I'm on the TV news every day, you can see me there. You're

• 28:42Speaker 02

  in a market where I'm on radio, you can hear me there. We've got our newsletters. Please, if you've never checked out our newsletters, I hope you'll consider it. Because I feel like they're free, but the information we give, I think, is really valuable for decision-making about money in your life. Just go to clark.com/newsletter, or newsletters either get you there, and you learn so much. And then, we're all over social media, and YouTube every day, giving you advice and little nuggets of information to absorb however you prefer. It's all about you, and your empowerment with knowledge, so you can save more and

• 29:26Speaker 02

  spend less. And don't let anyone ever rip you off. And we'll be at your service on Wednesday.