Pod Insights The Clark Howard Podcast 12.15.25 Protect Your Retirement Accounts / Electronic Medical Records About this episode In this episode - Brokerage accounts lack legal protection. Clark explains how criminals have figured out how to target brokerage and retirement accounts, and 2 steps you can take to protect your invested life’s savings. Plus - More doctor’s offices are moving to digital paperwork, but patient uptake is surprisingly low. Know the advantages of having electronic medical records. Safeguard Your Investments: Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 Electronic Medical Records: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: Protect Your Brokerage Accounts From ACATS Transfer Fraud Her Stocks Were Quietly Stolen From Her I. R. A. What Can I Safely Use for Peer-to-Peer Payments? Costco Tire Center: 5 things to know about before getting new tires When Is the Best Time of Year To Buy Tires? Here's How Long Your Home Appliances Should Last Report: The #1 Appliance Brand for Customer Satisfaction Axios: Ditching the clipboard: Wellstar patients can check in digitally Do Not Give Your Social Security Number at These Places How To Get the Best Price Possible Shopping Online Secret Pricing Tricks Companies Don’t Want You To Know How To Use Camelcamelcamel Clark.com resources: Episode transcripts Community. Clark.com / Ask Clark Clark.com daily money newsletter Consumer Action Center Free Helpline: 636-492-5275 Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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0:38 Speaker 01 We can help you sell, market and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.
1:03 Speaker 02 I'm so glad you're with us on the Clark Howard Show. You know, our mission is to serve you with advice that empowers you so you make better financial decisions in your life. In this episode, I don't want to make you paranoid. I need to make sure you're prepared. There are crooks who figured out a way to steal money from your brokerage account or retirement account. And I need to tell you what you need to do because the law does not protect you like it should, like it does for money in a bank or a credit union. And later,
1:48 Speaker 02 I'm really excited about something that it seems the average consumer is not. And that is medicine going to electronic medical records instead of the clipboard, which I despise at doctor's offices. I'm going to talk about that later. Right now, I need to talk about something that has been covered recently. And there have been, there have been a couple of stories and there seem to be some copycat stories about ACATS.
2:25 Speaker 02 ACATS, sometimes referred to as ACAT, is a transfer system in the brokerage industry that allows money for you to move from one brokerage to another all electronically.
2:45 Speaker 02 And ACATS has such poor security attached to it that criminals are using it to loot your account at a brokerage, or again, your investment account or your retirement money. And then, once that money has been stolen, it's unbelievably difficult, if not impossible, to get your own money back. I'm going to tell you in the simplest terms how this works. Criminals know so much about us from all these various data breaches. And so what a criminal will do is they will open up a brokerage account, so it's a shell account. They'll open an account with no money in it.
3:30 Speaker 02 It could be a retirement account, a brokerage account, because you're given a certain amount of time to transfer assets in. So they'll go online, they'll open an account as if they're you. They'll know the challenge questions, they'll have your social security number, they know all that. And then, however criminals know, they know you have an account somewhere else that they're trying to steal. And so, they set up the shell account, they initiate what in the industry is known as an ACAT or ACATS transfer, and then electronically, zoom, all the money in your brokerage account or retirement account somewhere else goes over to the new place
4:12 Speaker 02 with the account that's not yours, but appears to be yours. And then the criminal runs away with the money.
4:21 Speaker 02 And all that money you've worked hard to invest over the years or build for retirement over the years, poof. Now, depending on the brokerage, they may have locks that you can put in place. Remember how I've talked about the SIM locks where you set up a thing with your cellphone carrier so a criminal can't steal your phone number so that they've got the two-factor authentication coming to them instead of to you? Often, these will work together. So that's why you want to have a lock on your SIM, your cellphone, we explain that at Clark.com, and you want to set up a lock with your brokerage.
5:04 Speaker 02 Now, my big three favorite children, Schwab, Fidelity, and Vanguard, all offer this. Fidelity does it better than the other two. Fidelity has something where you can go to your account security and you can set up a lock which prevents a criminal from doing this theft where they open a shell account somewhere else as if they're you, sends through the transfer, and the money's gone before you know it. With Fidelity, if you set up that simple click, that lock on your account, the criminal cannot steal the money. Period. Simple. With Schwab and Vanguard, you have to contact them to set up a lock to prevent an ACAT
5:49 Speaker 02 or ACAT's transfer. The customer, no service person you talk to, hopefully you get a customer service person at Schwab or Vanguard, will know what you're talking about and will simply go in and add the lock to your account so a criminal can't do an electronic theft of your money. Now, as for the bank-based brokerages, I don't know about them. I don't care about them. I don't want you to have money with them. I want you to have your money with a discount broker. And so if you're with them, you need to do the same thing. You need to sign into your account.
6:32 Speaker 02 See if there's an option for you to lock your account from transfer to another firm that you just click like Fidelity has. Or you need to call them and see if you can put in an ACATS lock. A C A T S. Again, some firms will call it ACAT. Some firms will call it ACATS. But this is a to do list item because criminals morph. They figure out what's the weak link? Where can they steal money? And this has become a crime that is almost without prosecution.
7:13 Speaker 02 Because the criminals move that money so fast and they're off with the wind. Nobody's been able effectively to figure out how to stop this crime. Because the whole system was designed because, I'll take you in the Wayback Machine. There used to be a big problem with brokerages illegally refusing to release your money, your account to another brokerage when you wanted to move it there. And after a number of actions and arbitration, and I don't know in court, whatever. The industry developed the ACATS system to make it efficient and easy.
7:56 Speaker 02 And to stop firms from holding on to your money you didn't want them to have to move it. So now something that solved a problem for consumers. ACATS has now created a new problem for consumers, which is theft of their money. And that's why you need to have the lock in place that you then, if you do want to move to another firm, you simply remove the lock. This really gets into the realm of the paranoid, doesn't it?
8:25 Speaker 03 Well, you know, I mean, even if there's like a mill of chance, I don't know what you'd say, like the tiniest fraction of a chance.
8:34 Speaker 02 The movie, you say what you're saying, there's a chance?
8:36 Speaker 03 Yeah, Dumb and Dumber.
8:37 Speaker 02 Yeah. But the criminals, they don't even have to be that sharp to pull this crime off once they know the method of operation. And so this is one that will be on law enforcement's radar in about two years, but it's already happening to people right now.
8:56 Speaker 03 All right. Judy in Kentucky has a question about account security. Clark, you've mentioned several times that to protect theft or fraud, we should have an account at a separate bank from our main bank for linking P2P apps like Venmo. My question is, what's the best, cheapest and safest way to transfer money from my main bank, the account at the bank I want to protect, to the linked account at the separate and new bank? Do you have to store the main bank account routing an account number in the app to be able to transfer funds? Right now, I have two separate accounts at one bank in which I only replenish funds to my Venmo bank account when needed, and online transfers between accounts are simple. But in listening to you, I need to have the accounts at completely separate banks in order to have full protection.
9:39 Speaker 02 So, yes, you want to have, so let's say you're setting up for Venmo or Cash App. You set up an account, the easiest is one of the online banks, and then you link it, the online bank, to your existing bank. But it's not an automatic transfer of funds. You initiate the transfer of funds. So you have to remember, when you want to move money from your, let's call it your mothership bank, to your Venmo Cash App bank where you'll do Venmo and Cash App transactions from, you initiate the transfer of the funds you think you're going to need, the funds that you're willing to lose if a criminal is able to tap
10:20 Speaker 02 in and steal using the Venmo or Cash App. So as long as you're in control of the transfer from your existing bank to the online bank where you have the second account just for Venmo or Cash App, you're good and you're safe. And you know, I hate this. I mean, think about how terrible this is. I started off talking pretty long form about the problem of the ACAT transfer theft problem.
10:49 Speaker 02 And now we're talking about people using Venmo or Cash App to steal your money and all that. And you'd start to think, my goodness, is everybody a crook out there? No. But it only takes one to create a real problem for you. And that's why we have to talk about the precautions you need to have in place.
11:10 Speaker 03 Bob in Massachusetts says, regarding Costco tires, I know that I've probably paid for alignments over the years that I didn't need, but I don't feel comfortable spending a grand on new tires and having them wear faster because of misalignment. One of the larger local shops includes the alignment with the road hazard warranty. I don't want to run to another tire shop to have it done after getting the tires installed at Costco. I'm sure most tire shops will just say you need one to collect on their time, but I have trust issues with most car repair shops. Are alignments a form of a scam? And what's your advice on this?
11:44 Speaker 02 Having a real alignment done is not a scam, but it is oversold. If you look at any tire shop, or pretty much any repair shop that does alignments, they're all going to tell you, this is something you have got to do. The reality is, if you have uneven wear on your tires, you'll know that you need an alignment. Your tires talk to you. How often do you look at your tires?
12:16 Speaker 03 Never.
12:16 Speaker 02 Yeah. It's funny, because I just went through this with my son, Grant, who had uneven tire wear. I said, Grant, you need to go have an alignment. And he wasn't really familiar with that. But that's what he had to do, because he had such bad uneven tire wear. And that's when you really need to do it. Most people never, ever look at their tires. I guess it's part of my personality. I do look at my tires. And it's something that you should do. And if you see clear signs of uneven wear, get an alignment done.
12:58 Speaker 02 Does that mean that there's a problem with buying tires at Costco? No, because I actually had at Costco, at the tire center, person say, you know, you've got uneven wear on your tires. You need to go have an alignment. And so, I mean, I was told at the tire center, they don't do that. I don't think Costco.
13:23 Speaker 03 Well, that's what I think that's what Bob's saying is like, why would I buy?
13:27 Speaker 02 Tires.
13:27 Speaker 03 Tires at Costco.
13:28 Speaker 02 Oh, because they're a better deal at Costco.
13:34 Speaker 02 I mean, that's.
13:34 Speaker 03 And then you just pay another shop for an alignment?
13:37 Speaker 02 For an alignment, if you need one, you don't see, it's not automatic. You don't need an alignment every time you buy tires. But a lot of, a lot of shops will tell you, you need one every time you buy tires. To me, it's a react, not an act.
13:55 Speaker 03 All right.
13:55 Speaker 02 And I look forward to the Clark stinks posts from people who say, Clark, stick to what you do for a living. Do not tell people how to repair or not repair their cars.
14:06 Speaker 03 All right.
14:06 Speaker 02 They'll probably be right.
14:08 Speaker 03 Michael in Florida says, I was reading your plant, your article, the number one appliance brand for customer satisfaction. I heard once that when you buy appliances from big box stores, those appliances are made cheaper intentionally compared to buying directly from a dealer. The appliances people buy on price, basically because of price from big box stores, they buy on price instead of quality.
14:29 Speaker 02 Okay. So, Michael, I'm not smart enough to answer, are the big box stores receiving inferior merchandise from the manufacturers? They're being given versions of refrigerators, washers, dryers, dishwashers that are inferior. Is there any doubt that people buy on price? No doubt at all, particularly when people are buying something that they don't get up in the morning and say, I'm so excited. I'm getting that new dishwasher. They're not. So, it is possible.
15:10 Speaker 02 And I don't know that you're right that the big boxes may be selling cheaper versions, not just cheaper in price, but possibly not made as well as ones that are being sold by more boutique appliance shops. So how do I decide? Consumer Reports, something that people don't refer to or use like they used to. But Consumer Reports is so valuable because of the testing they do, and nobody can buy off Consumer Reports. It's wholly supported by donations and by subscriptions.
15:54 Speaker 03 They also use, they do use affiliate links, but they just say they do it in a clean way.
15:59 Speaker 02 So, but they're not.
16:01 Speaker 03 Their testing is agnostic.
16:03 Speaker 02 Their testing is completely in the lab. And if you go by what they say on reliability and the recommended appliances, it's done from the head and the heart, and it's going to get you a quality item, whether you buy it from a big box, or you buy it from a boutique, family-owned kind of appliance center.
16:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, because the model number is the model number, right?
16:30 Speaker 02 That's right. So it's possible that you would find that Consumer Reports loves a blah blah blah brand dishwasher, particular model number, and you look at the big boxes, and none of them are selling that particular model number. I mean, if you found that, that would be your answer, that you need to buy that at a family-owned boutique kind of appliance place. I don't know if you'd find that pattern.
16:56 Speaker 03 Isn't it ironic, though, that some of the most expensive appliances, like the super, super fancy ones, are traditionally quite unreliable?
17:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, that is ironic. Yeah.
17:07 Speaker 02 You want to sing an Alanis Morissette song now?
17:09 Speaker 03 Oh, no, nobody wants to hear me sing.
17:12 Speaker 02 Anyway.
17:12 Speaker 03 Good reference, little pop culture for you.
17:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, but that's pop culture 20 years ago.
17:17 Speaker 03 That's okay.
17:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, so that could happen, but you do it by doing the cross-reference. And so I'm not a shill for Consumer Reports, but I love what they do, even though they don't seem to like me so much, but that's okay.
17:33 Speaker 03 Yes, they do.
17:34 Speaker 02 You think so?
17:35 Speaker 03 Yes.
17:37 Speaker 02 All right, coming straight ahead, we're going to talk about a change in medicine that is so overdue and consumers and patients are not responding to it like I would have hoped. I'm going to tell you what it is.
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19:47 Speaker 02 So, isn't it weird that one industry in the United States still uses fax machines? This isn't a joke. Do you know the medical industry still does some stuff by fax? I remember when faxes were a big deal, 40 years ago. Medicine has been very slow to change the back office. But things are moving forward. In the past, I've talked about my chart and what progress that has brought. And a lot of people aren't aware that the push to go to electronics in medicine
20:33 Speaker 02 started in California with the big HMO Kaiser Permanente. That for them, there was such an advantage that if a patient or customer came in, that the doctor on duty, if they were going after hours, could see that patient's full medical history, bam, just like that, right on a computer. At the time, that was revolutionary. A lot of medicine is still revolutionary. But patients also have been part of the problem. I saw a story that shocked me. It was an Axios piece that one of the big regional hospital brands, Wellstar, has an electronic system where patients can check in,
21:18 Speaker 02 load their medical history one time, can update it as they're in any of their system facilities. And only 10% of patients are using it. They're going to one of their offices or one of their hospitals, and they're still filling out a clipboard. A clipboard. I mean, I can't... Write that anybody can read anyway. And then I'm given a clipboard and I gotta write my medical history. You have to, it's like Groundhog Day every time. You gotta write it down again and again and again. And that's insanity.
21:59 Speaker 02 If you're given an opportunity at wherever you go for medicine, to use one of these electronic systems, use them. Because you build that medical history and minutes can matter. When, let's say you're not conscious at the point that you have a medical emergency and somebody can see your medical history. The value of those electronic records is fantastic. And we're still in a Tower of Babel thing right now. Where one system doesn't properly talk to another, doesn't talk to another. We'll eventually get there. And yeah, I've talked about how medical stuff is responsible for roughly
22:43 Speaker 02 half of data breaches in the United States. Cause medicine's never been good at handling medical records with good security. But the electronic systems offer some hope with that. One thing never, never, not ever to list on any medical form at any time ever is your social security number. They're all asking for it. Never give it. Never give it to a doctor's office. Never anywhere with medicine. Because again, they're the Keystone Cops with the data breaches. And you're handing key information to a criminal on a silver platter when you fill out that social security number.
23:28 Speaker 02 But filling out the electronic forms, the medical records, doing the pre-check-in is an advantage to you, not a disadvantage. Krista?
23:41 Speaker 03 All right, our first question is from Thomas in Pennsylvania. My new dentist charged me a fee for using my HSA debit card. Federal law says it's illegal to charge a debit card fee, but okay for a credit card. The dentist office manager said the money goes to the company that they hired and they say it's legal. Am I wrong and who do I file complaint with if I am correct?
24:03 Speaker 02 It's a great question who you file a complaint with because you are right. It's, I think it's called the Durbin Amendment. It's illegal to charge a fee for using a debit card if it's cleared as a debit. You know how a lot of times you're pushed to, to clear a debit card as a credit card so that the bank can make fees on it? But if you are presenting a debit card being used as a debit card, it is against the law to charge a fee. So who's enforcing it? The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a little bit at the walking dead right now. That's normally who you'd complain to.
24:46 Speaker 02 You're in Pennsylvania, if your state has a consumer protection office, which most states do, but not all, you would contact them. And the back office people, the dentist are just doing what they're told by whoever they've contracted with, but they're not allowed to charge a fee on that debit card.
25:07 Speaker 03 Pennsylvania does have a Bureau of Consumer Protection.
25:11 Speaker 02 Very good, Krista. Thank you.
25:13 Speaker 03 No problem. All right, Dan in California says, Clark, I go through great pains to block out or tear off the section with my name and address on junk mail before putting it into the recycle bin. If I let my junk mail build up, this process can take me up to a half hour in one sitting. Am I just spinning my wheels? Does it matter if my name and address is out there on envelopes and non-sensitive mail?
25:34 Speaker 02 You are more cautious than I am.
25:36 Speaker 03 Same, I never thought about that.
25:38 Speaker 02 I just recycle all the junk mail that shows up.
25:42 Speaker 03 I mean, if I get a credit card offer or something, I don't recycle it.
25:45 Speaker 02 So I gotta tell you, on Saturday, I got a lot of mail in the box.
25:54 Speaker 02 And every item turned out to be junk mail. There was no, there was no mail I actually needed. And I just threw it right in the recycling bin. But if you're that worried about what might happen, this would be the time for you to spend a little money on a shredder. Instead of taking all that time out of your day to rip those off, you just shred all your junk mail and then you're not going to have to worry about it.
26:22 Speaker 03 All right, AJ in California says, I was ordering disposable gloves from Amazon because years after getting great ones at Costco for a great price, about four to six months ago, they switched to an inferior product. The price was $17.80 per box. I know I saw that price because I have-
26:39 Speaker 02 Is that the Costco price or the Amazon price?
26:41 Speaker 03 This is Amazon. Costco was just an aside.
26:43 Speaker 02 Okay.
26:43 Speaker 03 Okay, so on Amazon, the price was $17.80 per box. I know I saw it because I have the history in my phone calculator and I use that price. Then you know how if you leave an item in your cart or in saved for later, if the price changes, Amazon will notify you of the price change. While I was working on my order and finding a second seller of a similar product, I got a notification that the price changed from $17.85 to $18.
27:10 Speaker 02 This is while doing this on the computer.
27:13 Speaker 03 Right.
27:14 Speaker 02 So just minutes.
27:15 Speaker 03 I took a screenshot. The from price is already higher than it was five to 10 minutes ago as I researched the other product. Then as I completed my order and looked everything over and at the second product and then went to the first one, the first had changed to $18.05. Overall, I spent maybe 15 to 20 minutes on this, but not hours or days later. Isn't this crazy? Thankfully, it was only 25 cents more.
27:39 Speaker 02 Okay, so as we covered just on a podcast, was that two weeks ago? Amazon prices move all the time. And I'm just going to give the brief, brief on this. The prime day items overwhelmingly were not at the lowest prices they had been historical average. Amazon acts like prime days when you're going to save all this money. Amazon uses such sophisticated, dynamic demand pricing that the prices just move constantly. You gave a great example, not a big price difference, but that the price moved twice.
28:21 Speaker 02 In 20 minutes. And so that's what's hard with Amazon. I think that Amazon is outsmarting itself. I think that they're overusing the capabilities they have to the point where they could undermine trust in their customers. Just my thought, Amazon, it's your company. You do with it whatever you want. But my goodness, do we have sharp listeners and viewers that AJ took these pictures, validated the price changes in 15 or 20 minutes, changing twice, unfortunately going up both times?
29:01 Speaker 03 Imagine if they did that. It's only 25 cents in this case, but then multiply that by how many people this might be happening to.
29:08 Speaker 02 And the irony with Amazon, they don't really make any money as a retailer. They make virtually all their money from Amazon Web Services. And that's why Amazon is priced as a technology stock, not as a retail stock. I appreciate you pointing out yet again that you got to be really mindful, if you care about price, you got to know you cannot trust that Amazon says something's a deal. You have to actually be doing your own work or using one of the tools I've talked about, like Camel, Camel, Camel, or the others that
29:47 Speaker 02 will show you the historical price movements on Amazon. Thank you for that. And thank you for tuning in to our podcast YouTube show today. I hope something today was useful and helpful to you and that you take the opportunity to avail yourself of all the different ways we provide advice and information to you on social media, on YouTube with our YouTube Shorts, with our websites, Clark.com and Clarkdeals.com. There's stuff I do if you're in a market that I'm on TV and radio. And the idea is to serve you every possible
30:32 Speaker 02 way so that you're empowered with knowledge that you can act on to save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off. And we'll see you on Wednesday.
30:48 Speaker 01 LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m.
30:57 Speaker 01 We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.
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