12.19.25 Clark Answers His Critics on Clark Stinks / For Christmas Procrastinators

Friday - Clark Stinks day! Christa shares Clark Stinks posts with Clark. Submit yours at Clark.com/ClarkStinks. Also in today’s episode: What if you still haven't completed your holiday shopping? Will you have to pay more this close to Christmas? Yes AND No. Clark Stinks: Segments 1 & 2 11th Hour Retail Strategy: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: Clark’s Christmas Kids 2025 Why Every Family Needs a Code Word The Best Phone Plan For You - Compare Phone Plans Costco vs. Sam's Club vs. BJ's Wholesale: Which Is Best? Warehouse Clubs Archives - Clark Howard Best Free Password Managers: 10 Top Picks Credit Card Car Rental Insurance: What You Need To Know What Can I Safely Use for Peer-to-Peer Payments? 15 Financial New Year's Resolutions for 2026 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

• 0:05Speaker 00

  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 so you make better financial decisions in your life. And I want to begin today thanking all those who donated to this, our 35th year of Clark's Christmas Kids. This is where we help children in foster care have a smile on their faces Christmas morning by giving them gifts to open. And you can still donate to help us in this joyous thing that we have been able to do

• 0:43Speaker 00

  for 35 years by going to clark'schristmaskids.com and donate whatever you can afford for a child who's not with his or her family this Christmas and is in foster care.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Over 10,000 kids and all the money goes directly to these kids.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's no overheads siphoning off, but the only fee we face is for credit card processing fees. That's the only one we have to deal with. So, thank you so much. If you have been a long time generous donor, I'm so grateful to you. If this is the first year you do it, I'm so thankful to you. And if this isn't a year you can afford to do it, but you help us next year, I'll be thrilled. Now, let's go to what you don't appreciate, where I'm stinking it up in Clark Stinks. And after we do that, I'm going to give you my ideas. If you are a procrastinator who, this close to Christmas, you haven't filled out your

• 1:45Speaker 00

  nice list yet, we're going to talk about what you should do.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  And I have no idea what you're going to say in that. You'd have not told me, so I'm very curious. I can't wait for that.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  How do you know it's going to be useful? It might not be.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  I bet it will be.

• 1:58Speaker 00

  Well, we'll see. But right now, we get to see where you feel I was not useful, or worse, in today's Clark Stinks.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  I should have never encouraged you to speak. You must think I'm pretty stupid. You should be ashamed of yourself.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're right, pal. For those who watch the YouTube show, you didn't dance that much today. Usually you're doing, yeah, there we go.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  All right. All right, we're gonna start.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  And nobody ever wants to see me dance. You want, you want people to say I stink? That would be a way.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, no way. All right.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  No, no way.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Ross in North Carolina says Clark wasn't so stinky, but could have done better with his suggestion for families to come up with a code word to defeat scammers who are imitating the voice of a family member. The problem with code words is that everyone has to be well informed and then be able to remember that exact word in a time of crisis. Instead, all that it's needed to determine if the person calling is really a loved one or a scammer in disguise is to ask them some question or questions that only the real person would be able to answer. For example, the name of a current or past pet. It's easy to think up unique questions like this, but doing a little beforehand practice could be helpful. Maybe this would be a fun activity to try at the next family gathering.

• 3:13Speaker 00

  That's a great suggestion. This thing of people impersonating family members, creating a sense of crisis and stealing money, just goes on and on. I just heard over Thanksgiving, a story from someone where money was stolen from a grandparent in one of these scams where they were told that a relative was in jail. And that's an oldie, but baddie. And somebody just got taken by it again. And now with AI, with the voice pattern theft, it's so easy for it to sound like the loved one. And that's why we're talking about code word, or this case, the pet's name, or whatever,

• 3:57Speaker 00

  that you have some way of, in that moment where you're panicked, oh, my goodness, this has happened to my kid, or grandkid, or niece, or nephew, or whatever, have something, a system, that the whole extended family is in on to protect yourself from these thieves.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Great time to do it. In the next week, a lot of people are gonna be having family dinners with extended family. You could be making a call to a. Relative and just talk about this real quick. All right, James in South Carolina says Clark mentioned that T-Mobile would not give him a good deal, but he forgot to mention the Costco deal. We recently got four new Samsung S25 phones for free for $140 a month with the military discount for the Experience More Plan. But wait, there's more. Each phone got $400 worth of Visa and Costco cards, so I got $1,600 total. Excluding taxes, that comes out to $73 a month for four phones. With the better plan, we have top prioritization for the network. All MVNOs, except for Google Fi, have much lower prioritization.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  You know, I'm so glad about your post because it's not impossible to get a good deal with brand name AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile. It's just gotten much tougher as all three have been pushing up prices. And the CEO of Verizon recently has been on an apology tour, saying, "Yeah, we overdid it. We got," you know, he didn't use the word greedy, "but we pushed up prices too much and we made things too complicated for customers." And so the big emphasis you've been hearing from me is people are creatures of habit and they tend to go to what feels the most familiar and comfortable.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  And that's why you see AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile advertising every three seconds in football. Even in the same commercial break, you'll see ads from two of the three of the big three cellphone carriers. And I want you to look at the alternatives. You were able, combining what was available to you for your service in this great country, with your Costco membership, with the T-Mobile thing in the store, you were able to get a great deal for four. That's what I want you doing. I want you to really think through. Are you getting a good deal? If you're not, how are you going to get a good deal? And that's why we put so much effort on Clark.com into offering so many alternatives,

• 6:29Speaker 00

  including many discount brands that are secretly or Quietly owned by the big three.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  We have someone on the team and her job is to look at these all the time.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, Dallas lives, eats, sleeps 24/7, 365 cellphone plans. So you will save money.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Danny in Florida says, Clark, your aroma continues to fester like my sweat socks.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  You continually accentuate the joys of travel, which have their merits, of course, but there are many potential downsides to air travel that you tend to gloss over too much. In the spirit of level setting, below is my list of unavoidable perils that I wish you would voice more loudly and frequently. Hopefully, the Clarky base can better manage these by having pre-thought their consequences. Here we go. Airport transportation and parking is expensive, whether it be a taxi, Uber, Lyft ride, or parking lot. Airport food is two to three times more expensive than the general market prices. Rental car companies continue to find ways to add expensive rates, including toll charges, dent and ding damage charges, gas tank pre-fill, and other surcharges. Third-party booking sites have challenging customer service when it comes to managing

• 7:41Speaker 01

  changes and issues, and service providers, i.e. hotels, rental car providers, airlines, aren't willing to cooperate when these booking issues arise. Expect inconsiderate people to act in a self-serving way. Think seat kickers, seat recliners, unruly behavior, smells, and armrest hoggers, and potential long waits in lines. Finally, airlines do not care about damaging your baggage and typically are not held accountable for doing so, except in certain cases. And good luck filing a claim for damage compensation. With these things in mind before heading to the airport, there should be happy trails for all.

• 8:20Speaker 00

  All right, Denny, okay, everything you said is true. I gotta tell a funny thing that happened to me recently. In fact, people around were laughing. I was on a flight and I was working, had my laptop out on the micro tray, and this person in front of me would violently bring their seat back, and my laptop goes flying off.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Goes bam to the floor and people around are like, oh man. And when the laptop was okay, they were laughing. Then the person gets up later and the flight goes to the bathroom, comes back, does the same thing again. My laptop goes flying. I mean, it's just one of those things that happens when you're in crunch class and you're trying to work. I mean, there are a lot of things that happen with travel that are not so great. I just love the adventure experience, going places, doing things. I'm one of the few people out there who even has fun when I'm traveling for work. I just.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  True, I've seen it. I've witnessed it many times.

• 9:25Speaker 00

  Make the mundane exciting and the exciting mundane, that's me. And so, yeah, everything you said is true, but even with all that, I still love it. But I'm so glad you did lay out that my, what's that? My rose colored glasses are really not telling the whole story. You just did.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Amy in Virginia says, you were incorrect in your recent discussion of warehouse clubs. Everyone knows that Costco is your favorite store, but to state that Costco's prices are lower than BJ's is factually incorrect. I've done my research and you should too. I've been a member of both Costco and BJ's for several years and have decided to cancel Costco and keep BJ's. They carry the same exact items and brands and the prices are always either slightly lower at BJ's or quite a bit lower for the same item. This is across the board. On top of lower prices, BJ's offers coupons you can clip in the app that are automatically applied at checkout, resulting in far lower prices than Costco. You can use manufacturer's coupons on top of store coupons, which is a fantastic savings. In addition, the BJ's online shopping experience is far superior.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  I can see if BJ's has an item at my local warehouse and I can see the warehouse price, not so with Costco. In fact, I find the Costco online experience to be abysmal. Just tell me if an item is available locally and tell me the price. So please do some actual factual research and perhaps name your next dog, Berkeley Jensen. And also I want to say, we had a few people write in about this segment. People are very passionate about warehouse clubs in this audience. And Brian in Florida wrote in, he said Costco's 14% markup is misleading because they have so much in overhead and they keep hiring people. And other clubs are becoming more efficient and they're just bringing in more people and paying them more and stuff like that.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  So BJ's Wholesale, I just last week went shopping at BJ's Wholesale with their new coupons. I load them electronically into my BJ's app on my phone. And it's a little bit of a hassle to load them, but I saved a ton of money using the coupons. And yes, you're right, you can double stack their BJ's Wholesale coupons with the manufacturer's coupons and get double savings. And I've got a receipt here, just happens.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  I took a picture of a receipt of how much money I saved in BJ's recently using the coupons. Yep. So here's my coupon savings.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Wow, you saved $52.68.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  On a $116.68 purchase. So it's so wild I had a picture of that. Anyway.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Not really.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  It's not? I just thought it was so great that I saved that much money. So I was getting BJ's Wholesale prices already, and then with all the stacking of the coupons, saved another, what was it, $56? That was great. So yeah, they all do different things. But even though you have found BJ's prices to be the same or lower, that's not routine. Because BJ's Wholesale has far more variety of items. They don't have the same purchasing power that Sam's Club or Costco have. So overall, you're benefiting from BJ's Wholesale and that you can buy much more of what you want there.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  Overall, you may be paying a little more, but they're all, they all have their own personalities. Now, the thing from Brian again was about the overhead at Costco. So when I talk about the 14%, 15% markup, Costco runs the stores, pays the employees, pays the leases, does all that out of the membership fees.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  And the 14% is what they mark up the items. So 14% for brand name, 15% for store brand. That's from what they paid for the item to what you pay for it on average.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  And when I said it-

• 13:35Speaker 00

  I mean, max, that's the max.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  When I said it wasn't wild that you had that receipt, I meant because I'm not surprised that you would do that. Okay, Eric in California says, "In this case, it may be Krista who stinks. While I agree that password managers are great tools, I don't agree that LastPass is a secure solution. They've had several breaches over the years. Krista needs to change solutions. I was able to easily switch to Bitwarden and I have no affiliation with them."

• 13:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that was a really embarrassing thing for LastPass because not once, but twice, as I recall, they've suffered data breaches. And if somebody gets the master password, then they've got the keys to the kingdom to get any of your passwords. And, but it's been years, I think, since that second data breach they had at LastPass. I can tell you that a password manager is superior, even if there's the risk of hacking into them, compared to human nature, where people reuse the same password over and over and over again, when they're having to create it on their own. And the best thing of all is pass keys.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  If you don't know what pass keys are, it's a thing that all the big tech companies are cooperating on that is far more secure than passwords, at least for now, and is something involving using your iPhone or Android as your verification instead of a password.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Kimberly in Michigan says, "In a recent question, the listener was considering the Chase Sapphire Credit Card for rental car coverage. He mentioned he currently has a Fidelity Visa that pays 2% cash back. Looking into that card as a possible replacement, when my Discover It card is absorbed by Citibank, I see the Fidelity card has rental car coverage in its benefits and no annual fee. Thanks for passing on the savings."

• 15:22Speaker 00

  So first of all, Discover has been taken over by Capital One.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  Not Citibank. And so far, Capital One has not botched up, as far as I've been able to read or see, any of the wonderful benefits that Discover offered its customers. Now, over time, corporate America figures out how to mess things up, and Capital One may degrade the value of many of the Discover brand products. They have not done so yet. On the Fidelity card, as best I know, it's secondary credit card.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  It is.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  Car rental coverage, not primary. What makes the Chase Sapphire Reserve so valuable, and the preferred also offers primary-

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, both of them.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Is primary coverage means it's a much easier process and claim with the car rental company than it is whenever the coverage is secondary. That means your own automobile insurer has to be involved, then credit card company's involved, and it's an administrative headache.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Plus, I would rather not file a claim with my primary car insurance, and that could be a... Yeah. And also, the Fidelity does kick into full primary insurance, only if you're overseas. I did look that up.

• 16:39Speaker 00

  Oh, you looked it up?

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Yes. Lisa, North Carolina, says, "Although I generally value your advice, Clark, I'm growing weary of the persistent negativity towards short-term rentals like Airbnb and VRBO. As with any industry, there will always be bad actors and negative experiences, but those are the minority. We own three guest-favorite properties, work hard to deliver exceptional stays, including a recent guest who got engaged on our deck and have the reviews and repeat visitors to show for it. Short-term rentals may come with challenges such as stricter cancellation policies, although not always, and guests should be aware of that, but they also have many benefits such as having an actual home in which to stay. As professors who run this as a side business, it's discouraging to hear our work repeatedly dismissed. Instead

• 17:22Speaker 01

  of blanket criticism, I'd encourage you to advise listeners to read cancellation policies carefully prior to booking and review past guest feedback. Not to say new hosts won't also do a great job, but reviews do speak volumes." And a couple of people who are, you know, kind of entrepreneurial on this and using this as a small business, did write in with similar sentiments.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  And I appreciate that so much. And you and others that do this as a part-time living, you may be running the greatest businesses ever. The problems that keep occurring are that for people who aren't running these as great businesses and a consumer rents Airbnb and VRBO have not done a good job of protecting the renters of these properties because they see their customer really as the property owners. It's been an unbalanced kind of thing. And so that's where for me, the problem has

• 18:21Speaker 00

  been. Absolutely, this is something that can work out great. And I've had great experiences with both VRBO and Airbnb. But what keeps coming up is when people do have a problem, getting it resolved has not been favorable to the renter in so many cases.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Mark in Florida says, Clark, you don't stink, but you are naive. You mentioned that the major colleges need a salary cap and then it will be an equal playing field. You should know better. Prior to NIL, there were so many under the table or backroom deals with bad actors buying players. That will occur again. It probably is still occurring. Just my thoughts. I enjoy the show.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  Thank you, Mark. Right now, we have a system in college football that is no system, college basketball as well. And to protect the fans, protect the sport, and protect the players, not to mention university budgets, there needs to be a real rethink of how college football operates. And we're not a sports show, but the economics and the lack of system in college sports is harming the experience. And for my next role in life, I'll be the

• 19:44Speaker 00

  emperor of college sports. And everybody in the conferences will hate me, but I promise it'll be a much more functional system. What do you think of that, about that?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  I think if

• 19:55Speaker 00

  Emperor of college sports?

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think if they looked into your history, the skeleton in your closet is that you helped get rid of the football team at your college and you wouldn't get that job.

• 20:04Speaker 00

  Oh, man. You know, things

• 20:07Speaker 01

  You know, I had to bring it up.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  So what's funny, last time I visited American University, that's where I got my undergraduate degree, they were selling T-shirts in the student bookstore that were still undefeated for the football team. And I said to one of the students working there, I said, you know, American used to have a football team. He said, no, we didn't. And I left it at that.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  So quickly, you, they did have a football team when you were there and you were on-

• 20:35Speaker 00

  We were in financial trouble and I was on the university senate as the undergraduate student representative and I led the motion to kill the football team.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  And after that, in the hallway-

• 20:50Speaker 00

  Oh, that was before, that was when it was on discussion. I got roughed up by two of the football players. So-

• 20:57Speaker 01

  This is a really long-

• 20:58Speaker 00

  I remember, I remember one of the big linemen had picked me up against the wall and my voice squeaking, "You can't intimidate me!"

• 21:09Speaker 01

  All right, this is like the longest Clark stinks ever, but it is our last one of the year. We're only doing a couple more shows. So I'm going to read one more quick thing from Jake in Ohio. Clark, I don't think you stink, but my one-year-old son thinks you do. When a car rides sleep is mission critical and he fights it like the big monster mega banks fight moral decency, my wife and I have discovered a secret weapon, the Clark Howard podcast. Without fail, your calm, measured voice and dry financial topics act as the perfect lullaby, delivering a near 100% NAP success rate. The irony is not lost on me because when I was a kid, my parents would consistently listen to your radio show in the car. I nagged them to change the station to literally anything else, but somehow, through financial osmosis, I am now a willing and regular listener. So while my son may

• 21:54Speaker 01

  not yet appreciate the man from Roth, I certainly do. You and your team have greatly enhanced my financial literacy, which will serve my family for years to come. And for that, I am grateful.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  So with my middle child, Steffi, who when she would have trouble falling asleep, she would say, "Tell me a story daddy." And I'd start telling her something like really dry, like talking about dollar cost averaging or something, and she'd go like right to sleep. So it is true. I am so dull that, I mean, it's not like a sleeping pill that could have bad side effects. I can put any baby or adult to sleep in just minutes.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  A superpower.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  It is a superpower. Oh, man. You can tell when you're talking to somebody and they start looking at their, if they wear a watch, their watch, or they're yawning, or they're looking around, they're looking for an escape. You can tell they're talking to Dullesville. Me. I love that one. Oh, coming up ahead, we're going to talk about the roughly third of you who haven't done anything yet with less than a week till Christmas to fulfill your nice list. How are you going to not have your wallet ripped apart? I'm going to tell you.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  So you hate shopping, you hate the crowds, you haven't done anything for anybody on your list, or maybe you've bought things for a couple of people, but you haven't bought the rest. What are you going to do now? Because the retailers, they know your game and the prices are the highest they are of the Christmas season, the last week leading into Christmas Day. Because this is when they got you right where they want you. But do they? Yes and no. Because what happens this close to Christmas is prices go two ways at once.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  There are items that are the in-demand items that retailers may have offered great deals during Black Friday month. They may have offered incredible bargains, Black Friday weekend, Cyber Monday, but now it's a whole different thing. If something's in demand, it will be the highest price it'll be of the season, even higher than it'll be outside of the holiday period when you look forward. But not every item is a hit. And the other thing that happens in the last few days before Christmas is retailers

• 24:41Speaker 00

  online, although really it's probably pretty much too late for online. So a lot of the last few days are in person. There will be items in the store that were unloved that retailers bought to plan. They plan out like a year ahead, some retailers more than a year ahead. We're going to have these promotional items and they'll be guestimating what demand's going to be for them. Well, a lot of those items they buy just for the Christmas selling season will sell below plan and they don't want to get stuck with them after Christmas because then the markdowns they have to take are brutal.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  So there are items that did not sell well, but could be totally appropriate for somebody on your nice list.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  So wait, let me get this straight. You're saying buy the stuff that nobody else wanted?

• 25:37Speaker 00

  Nobody, not as many, okay. So yeah, so for people on your naughty list that you have to buy something for anyway, buy the item nobody wanted. But a lot of these items, you know, a big national retailer will have bought so many thousand units or whatever the measurement is. That was what they anticipated the demand was going to be. It could be a perfectly fine item, but the demand was not as strong as their buyers anticipated. Those are the sweet spot items where it's something that you think would be nice for that person. I'm not talking about buying somebody something that is like was so unloved, nobody would ever want it.

• 26:19Speaker 00

  That's not what I'm talking about unless it's somebody you really don't like and you have to buy them a gift. But there's a lot of items out there that are in this kind of zone where they are marked down. And can I say something about the week after Christmas right now? Or do you want me to shut up?

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Okay. I've mentioned this before. I mentioned it like a few weeks ago. I want to emphasize it again. That the week between Christmas and New Year's has become a huge shopping week. Particularly in person at stores because of people who are going to get gift cards Christmas Day. And they'll go in the store to use them. At the same time, people are returning items. So it creates this huge demand cycle, the week between Christmas and New Year's. Don't do any returns then. Don't do any bargain shopping then. And don't use any of those gift cards till after the beginning of January. The reason you do is January is dead time in retail.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  Stores that were packed, you could now shoot a cannon off inside. You get to mid-January, you're not going to hit anybody. Just make sure you don't get into that return cycle after you're allowed to at a particular retailer. That's when things are marked down there. Most in January, starting about fifth, sixth forward. Anything left, they gotta get rid of. And those are the cheapest prices. In fact, the smartest family in the world would exchange gifts January 15th.

• 27:54Speaker 00

  I mean, that's the ultimate procrastinator prize. You don't give people gifts to open December 25th. Give them gifts to open Jan. 15 or something like that. And you'll save the most money buying them.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  All right.

• 28:08Speaker 00

  I am crazy, aren't I?

• 28:09Speaker 01

  No.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Crazy like Fox.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  Oh, I don't know.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Jeff in Tennessee says his Venmo is a secure way to transfer a large annual monetary gift to a relative. I don't want to send a check in the mail.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's absolutely safe for the person who's getting it. The issue is for you, if somebody gets into your Venmo account and they're sending money to themselves. That's why with Venmo and Cash App. I want you to set up a separate bank account at a place you don't normally bank or credit union that's just for Venmo or Cash App. And for reasons I've stated too many times, big bad Zelle has so many structural problems. I don't like you using Zelle under any circumstance because of the failure of them to properly protect consumers. But if you're going to use Venmo to send money to a relative, absolutely fine.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  That's not the problem. It's that somebody else gets into your Venmo, tied up with your regular bank account, and then money that you need to live on goes out the door.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  All right, now this goes back to Clark's things. We were talking about warehouse clubs and your segment about Costco's markup, but I thought we'd ask this real quick. Glenn in Minnesota says, Clark recently said or implied Costco has a maximum 14% markup on furniture, yet during the Cyber Monday week, I saw sales with price reductions much greater than 14%. Is Costco selling at a loss or is their markup actually greater?

• 29:37Speaker 00

  Okay, what a wonderful question. All right, so if an item at Costco, normally the price code is ends in 97 cents. Costco's marking it down below its cost. But when you look at something like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, all the deals Costco offered in phases through the month of November, actually, they started the first one late October this year. When you see those deals that are being offered, they're not doing that typical retail thing of marking it up to marking it down. They have worked out in advance with the manufacturer to do a promotion with them

• 30:17Speaker 00

  where the manufacturer is taking the hit on reducing the cost of the item for a Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotion. So the markup remains 14%. The manufacturer wanting to sell, move those units through Costco, gave them that special discount on those units that they sold during. The holiday cycle.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  And Andrew in Iowa says, is it worth it to take out a loan to max out my wife's and my IRA, Roth IRAs? I recently got a raise and we have had some unanticipated expenses. But since my income wasn't increased until recently, and some of that went towards this expense, we might not fully fund our Roth IRAs this year. I could almost entirely liquidate our emergency fund to hit the contribution limit, but that makes me uncomfortable. I think a small loan might be a better option. Unless we were to put money in at the exact worst time and the market immediately crashed, this seems like an easy yes. We save roughly 25% by having a tax advantaged account in exchange for an annual interest rate well below that, and it would be paid off before a full year of interest anyway. What are your thoughts?

• 31:29Speaker 00

  So you save 25% of your pay? Is that what you?

• 31:34Speaker 01

  What?

• 31:34Speaker 00

  I think that's the implication here. I'm not worried about you temporarily eating up your emergency fund to fully fund the Roths in this cycle.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Because if something happened, you could pull out the contributions without penalty.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I don't want, I don't even want to think about that.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  You don't want to do that.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  No, I don't, I don't even want to go that path. So you have until you file your return for 25 in 26 to do the contribution you want to do to the Roth for 25. So you may not need to even do this either or because you obviously live on substantially less than what you make, even with this unusual cycle of expenses you had recently. So if you can get the money funded into the Roth for 25, because remember, if you make a contribution in 26, it will say online or on a physical form, it'll say, is this a 25 contribution or is this a 26 contribution? So you're able to look back with it up to when

• 32:36Speaker 00

  you file your return. So I don't think you have to look at this as a start kind of thing. You've got to get done by New Year's Eve. It can happen in 26 and have the look back be helping you fill out the 25 contribution.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  But even if it meant you had to temporarily reduce your emergency fund, I'm not worried about you because you have this mentality of living on so substantially less than what you make and you just got the raise. So yeah, I want you to make the full contribution. No, you don't need to do a temporary loan for it. You borrow from the calendar is the way you're going to get that full contribution made for 25, but do it in 26. And remember next year, larger contributions allowed to Roth IRAs. First time in a long time, the limits have gone up 7,500 next year, 50 and over 8,600.

• 33:37Speaker 00

  And I want to thank you so much for joining us today. Hope you have an absolutely wonderful weekend and that next week, as Christmas approaches, is absolutely joyous for you and we will be at your service Monday.