10.02.26 Clark Answers His Critics on Clark Stinks / Health Insurance Sticker Shock

Clark Stinks & Why Health Insurance Costs Are Surging (and How To Prepare) Friday - Clark Stinks day! Christa shares Clark Stinks posts with Clark. Submit yours at Clark.com/ClarkStinks. Also, healthcare costs are surging nationwide, and Americans are feeling the squeeze whether they get coverage through an employer or buy a plan on the state exchanges. With exchange premiums set to jump up to 20% in hard-hit areas and employer health benefit costs projected to spike at the highest rates in decades, navigating this open enrollment season will require making tough, strategic choices. Take the time during open enrollment to re-evaluate your coverage, compare providers, and look at alternative plan tiers. All this and more on the October 2, 2026, episode of The Clark Howard Show. Submit your questions: Ask Clark. Clark Stinks: Segments 1 & 2 Open Enrollment: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: TIPS: The Inflation-Proof Alternative to Standard Bonds - Clark Howard Do You Get Better Prices on Hotels From Third-Party Sites or by Booking Directly? The Hidden Danger of Booking Your Vacation Through Third-Party Sites 35 Clever and Unusual Ways To Save Money - Clark Howard Health Insurance Archives - Clark Howard Medicare Open Enrollment: Key Dates, Cost-Saving Tips, and What You Need to Know Axios: Large employers drop health benefits as costs rise Long-Term Care Insurance Is Getting Harder To Buy. Here’s Why You Might Not Need It Anyway Clark.com resources: Episode transcripts Community. Clark.com / Ask Clark Clark.com daily money newsletter Consumer Action Center Free Helpline: 636-492-5275 Submit your questions: Ask Clark. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:04Speaker 01

  I'm so glad 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 it's Friday, which means it's time for me to learn some lessons in our weekly Clark Stinks segment. Later, something that really stinks, rising healthcare costs. And many of us are moving into open enrollment now. You may be feeling sticker shock. I want to explain to you what's going on, what you may be able to do about it. But right now it's time to hear how I can do a better job serving you.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  I should have never encouraged you to speak.

• 1:51Speaker 03

  You must think I'm pretty stupid. You should be ashamed of yourself. Well, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're right, pal.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Hope you're starting off with a good description today about how much I stink.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  Yes, some people don't like these, by the way. They say that this part stinks, but you know.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Oh, come on.

• 2:11Speaker 04

  The Clarkies are so creative. Hi Clark, this one's from Brian in California. Hi Clark, you stink worse than Limburger cheese wrapped in a used gym sock. My God, that's so gross.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  I don't know what Limburger is.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  It's a smelly cheese. Just kidding, I love your podcast. You mentioned that 2.5% of a home's value is a reasonable rate to set aside annually for future home repairs and potential upgrades. This seems a little too broad brushed. As you know, real estate is location, location, location. Therefore, you can have two identical houses in different parts of the country with their values differing significantly solely because of location.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:50Speaker 04

  For instance, in one part of the country, the value of such a house may be $650,000 and a house with identical features, age and build in another part of the country, $400,000. That would create a set aside of $16,250 versus $10,000. Quite a difference and does not take into account potential weather extremes that may accelerate the need for repairs in one location versus another. It seems to me that a more accurate measure would be based on repair history averages for a given area. Keep up the great work.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Thank you. And Brian, by the way, that's my middle name. Great name you got.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  So you're right, but you're talking about perfect being the enemy of the good. If people are presented with too difficult to process, I think about a recent podcast where even as I was doing, it was like, man, this is so technical. I'm really making people's eyes glaze over talking about tips, treasury inflation protected securities. And it was just like so hard to explain in an audio video environment. If you tell people, well, you know, you gotta take local building and remodeling costs and you gotta blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. People end up doing nothing. So the 2.5% is really a horseshoes thing.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  It's to try to create the conversation to get people thinking about saving an amount of money for the unexpected, the rainy day kind of fund. In this case, for our largest asset, which is a home that we own or we're buying.

• 4:28Speaker 04

  Bill in Washington says, Clark, you stink worse than a coal-fired power plant during an inversion. Your take on data, I don't understand. Your take on data centers is only partially correct. Modern data centers don't consume water the way you described. Most use closed loop systems that continually recirculate water and many rely on recycled or reclaimed water for cooling. Older facilities have historically used large amounts of water, but those should be upgraded to more efficient cooling technologies. You're right that data centers use a lot of electricity. Living in Eastern Washington, we're fortunate to have abundant, low-cost renewable energy from hydroelectric dams plus a nuclear plant. And yes, our energy costs are rising, but that's largely due to the same politicians you suggest we lobby.

• 5:12Speaker 04

  Policies like cap and trade, energy taxes and restrictive permitting have driven up costs and much of the revenue is funded to NGOs where accountability evaporates faster than water in a cooling tower. Those costs lend directly on consumers. I agree that data centers should invest in their own power generation and small modular nuclear is the best sense, most sensible option. But let's also hold accountable the people who actually are driving energy prices higher and who have the ability to change it. And then Michael in Georgia says, Clark, you can't be against data centers and against monopoly utilities at the same time. It's the utilities blocking data centers from self generating solar farms, onsite nuclear gas, precisely because the captive demand is what keeps their rates and their returns up.

• 5:57Speaker 04

  And so many people wrote in about the data centers, just so you know.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  And data centers from every angle. They are as unpopular as a tax bill. People look at data centers as like a giant tax on their own wallet. The data centers are something that right now people across the political spectrum are opposed to. So I'm going to say something crazy. I'm not opposed to data centers. I'm opposed to data centers that don't pay their own way. Where the general vibe in the country right now is we don't want data centers. And as long as they're paying their own way, I'm okay with it.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Now then there's all the creepy stuff about data centers and the AI agents developing their own world and then killing all of us off and all that. Whoa, it can get dark in a hurry, can it?

• 6:56Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm, for sure.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  I'm sure that was some of the stuff that people were writing in about.

• 7:00Speaker 04

  Indeed. Elaine in Rhode Island says, Clark, you stink more than my dog's poop bag trash can. That's disgusting. As a dentist, every time I hear you use the phrase doctors and dentists, I cringe. Doctor is an academic title bestowed upon those who have completed doctoral level postgraduate education. It applies to a wide range of professionals, including but not limited to physicians, dentists, veterinarians, lawyers and PhDs. There are also doctoral titles specific to pharmacy, education, physical therapy, audiology, psychology and business administration, speech therapy and nursing. The list of fields with doctors goes on and on, but I'm sure you get the idea. In the future, please consider using the phrase physicians and dentists when discussing

• 7:45Speaker 04

  healthcare related issues. It will more accurately describe the professionals you are referencing. Signed, your dentist. No, I'm just kidding.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Thank you for that. You know, the funny thing about that, my daughter is studying to be a, some places they call it OTD, others DOT, Doctor of Occupational Therapy. Yeah, your point's well taken. You know what phrase I'd be more comfortable with saying? Medical doctors and dentists. How's that?

• 8:16Speaker 04

  I don't know. Dan in Florida says, Clark, Android called. It says, thanks, I think I've cracked the Clark.com smartphone editorial policy. If it has an Apple logo, investigate immediately. Caution, if it runs Android, nothing to see here. Looking back roughly a decade, I found at least five to six Clark.com articles with a clearly negative or cautionary focus on Apple and iPhone. Comparable negative articles focused on Android, Samsung, Pixel or Motorola? A big fat zero. Not exactly a peer reviewed study, but six to zero is pretty obvious, pretty obvious slant. Clark, you stink. I say that affectionately, but maybe scrutinize Android under the same light from your Costco flashlight.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  So first of all, let me say this. The new flashlights we got are Members Mark flashlights from Sam's Club. They were a deal. Second, I had no idea that we had the anti-Apple articles. I don't know what.

• 9:20Speaker 04

  It's probably because when you've, you've never really, like on, when you do this podcast, it's, I don't remember having a pod that was like Android's doing something that's a problem. I don't know. But we do a lot of positive stuff about Apple, but you are biased.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  So Apple.

• 9:35Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Our, our audience is overwhelmingly iPhone MacBook users.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  The only thing that disappoints you about our audience and your immediate family.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  My whole family, my entire family is 100% Apple, Apple, Apple. iPads, MacBooks, iPhones, what are the ear things called that make people look like aliens? The little white things.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  AirPods.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  AirPods. They're all in all the time. I do have a MacBook Neo, which is awesome, the new discounted MacBook. My thing with Apple is it's expensive and I'm cheap. So that's really what it's about for me, but I don't control the editorial.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Of our website. So

• 10:28Speaker 04

  Well, you used to complain a lot about Apple, you know, how restrictive they were with their apps and they've gotten in trouble for it, too. So there have been stories that you've done.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm very, I'm very uncomfortable with Apple. Why isn't in some countries that the messaging works flawlessly iPhone to Android, but here in the United States somehow it doesn't. There are things about Apple that I don't like, but the simplicity of using Apple devices and the interoperability of information from one Apple device to another to another is extraordinary. And Android is just an operating system that different manufacturers can use, and it doesn't work together like Apple does. How about that? How was that?

• 11:19Speaker 04

  That's very good. I remember you've talked about when there was phone manufacturers that were potentially spying through Android phones. So there have been negative stories. It's not about Android, but about manufacturers.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Well, that's why so many Chinese brands are not sold in the United States anymore.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  You used to have some of those, I remember, to save money.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  I had a Huawei.

• 11:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Huawei was banned when I was using a Huawei phone.

• 11:40Speaker 04

  Matt in New York says, Clark, you stink almost as bad as the hockey equipment that I accidentally left in my equipment bag between seasons. Your suggestion not to cash checks for insignificant amounts and frame them on the wall while mildly humorous was terrible. Think about it. They don't cash the check. Then two years later, they follow your other better advice to go on missingmoney.com. Find out they have some money coming to them, only to find out that it's for that same penny. Again, even worse, if you've met your maker and your poor relatives have to go through the exercise of sending death certificates, et cetera, just for you to have the last laugh. I know many states have no minimum amounts in their, I think you say, eschewement rules.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've never known how to say that word.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  Big fan. Keep up the great work.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:27Speaker 04

  That's funny.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  So Matt, fortunately, most state unclaimed property offices now tell you, there's an item for less than $10 or less than 25 or whatever, or whatever their thing is, they say, you know, you decide, is this worth your time?

• 12:44Speaker 04

  Hal in New Jersey says, you always mention how you use third-party bookers like Priceline or hotels.com for hotel stays. The only faux pas about using these is that when you book through them, the hotel you're staying at will most likely not allow you to get frequent stay points with them. I recently experienced this where I booked through Expedia, but when I got to the check-in desk and gave them my number, the stays were not credited to my account because I didn't book with them directly.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  All right. So Hal, you're completely right. I've stayed in Hyatt Hotels 11 times so far this year, and I show zero points from those stays because it was always cheaper to book at some other website than to book at Hyatt, World of Hyatt's website, Hyatt.com. And so I'm willing to make that trade off because why are you getting the points? You're getting the points for free stays. If I'm saving a ton of money per stay, then I'd rather save the money.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  John in Montana says, it's amazing to me, the olfactory senses of the Clark Nation. I only know that you stink by the comments of others.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Tell me that word.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  I think you say olfactory. It's like your smell.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  I only know you stink by the comments of others, but I just can't get a whiff of your odorous body. Even when there's a gentle breeze coming from where you live, I don't pick up your scent. However, I have a few issues that perhaps others find detrimental. One, I'm glad you acknowledge us Americans are addicted to buying. Obviously, there's no easy fix, but one is just do not shop as much. I try to hit Costco once a month and I go with a list. Yes, I buy extra and fill my cart, but I save time and money by going less often. It probably helps that I live in Montana and 90 miles to Costco isn't a weekly opportunity. Two, I never hear you discuss the attributes of thrift shopping. When we go to town, we spend as much time thrifting as we do shopping at Costco. There

• 14:39Speaker 04

  are amazing deals. The money goes to good causes and it's rewarding to recycle goods. And three, lastly, when you're done with your stinky merchandise, throw it in the wash and give it to your favorite thrift store.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Well, we actually do talk about thrifting, but there's something that generally we don't talk about with the podcast and YouTube audience that I do on TV when I work with couples who are having financial difficulty. And one of my key rules is that other than for food, you only shop every four to six weeks. A lot of times, if you're in stores, you're going to buy things you later, turns out you really didn't need. So if you limit your shopping to where you're only in a store, let's say every four to six weeks, the amount

• 15:30Speaker 01

  you spend is so much less over the course of a year. I also believe that people who use cash, actual physical cash in retail stores, spend a great deal less. And I've found that to be true again and again. I only shop in stores with concrete floors and I don't get a shopping cart. If you avoid a shopping cart, it's much harder to buy impulse items. And if I'm buying heavy stuff, I don't get the cart till the end of the shopping visit so that I don't buy those impulse items. I have what's in my arms and that limits how much money I can spend.

• 16:13Speaker 04

  John in Florida says, as a 40-year graduate of the University of Florida, Clark shout out that the swamp is a dump. Seriously, it was a great laugh-out-loud moment when I listened to it during yard work. And I do appreciate the mention that we are real fans. Yes, we are. Let me treat you to some $20 tickets and free parking when our upcoming renovation is completed. Glad you made some great father-son memories at the swamp. Love your show. Thanks for all you and your team do.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  So if you missed that one, really quickly, my son called me on a Friday, said, hey, we should go to the Texas-Florida game. I'm like, when is it? Tomorrow. And I was on the road forever and got him at school and we went to the game. We have no connection to either school, other than both my brothers went to the University of Texas, nephews, tons of family members went there. And it was a great experience being in the swamp. But yes, that stadium is a dump.

• 17:10Speaker 04

  Okay, last story about Aura. Jeff in Georgia, you smell like my child's bathroom after a meal of asparagus. You propose your love of the Aura ring, but as a physician, I feel you overhype its benefits. Most academic trials have shown that Aura and other wearables are unreliable in showing sleep stages, quality, temperature, or movement. They are only good at things you already know, when you fall asleep, when you wake up, when you didn't sleep well, if you woke up a lot. They lead to unnecessary doctor visits and potentially a false sense of security because, quote, "My sleep tracker looked good." Get a bedside clock, ask your partner if you snore or are restless in bed, and buy a $20 pedometer instead of a $300 tracker that requires soul-sucking monthly fee. Thanks for the other stuff you

• 17:53Speaker 04

  do. Okay. And then Rich in Connecticut says, Clark, you casually mentioned a credit card that absorbs your Aura membership fee and then moved right along like that wasn't the single most interesting thing you said all episode. Since I've since read the fine print on half the premium cards in America, Amex Platinum, ring only, no membership, Sapphire Reserve will happily fund your Peloton habit, cares nothing for your sleep score. So either you found the one card nobody's written about, or you're grandfathered in and quietly flexing. Either way, name it, Clark. Some of us are paying $70 a year like chumps.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  So pays the monthly fee on Aura.

• 18:33Speaker 04

  They thought you said that, that you, your monthly fee is covered by a credit card.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  I'm grandfathered in because I've had Aura for six years.

• 18:41Speaker 04

  Okay. It must have been a misunderstanding, but you do have a card that helps you buy a ring.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my wife's ring, I got $200 off on her ring at Best Buy because of a Chase, no, a Citibank card I have.

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  So, all right. So on the, back to the physician about the Aura ring, your name, Jeff, I would say this about any sleep tracker, that the advantage of them is you see over time, your trend with sleep is getting better or getting worse. And if you see it over many months, you see a definite downward slope with your sleep, there may be an underlying medical condition there. You say it creates unnecessary visits to a doctor, but if, if there's a clear pattern that your sleep is going the wrong way and that you're really

• 19:41Speaker 01

  much more restless than you used to be, sleeping much less than you used to be, could be sleep disturbances in the night, whatever, call me crazy, but I think that that's worth knowing. And no, Aura is not the only one out there and others don't have a monthly fee. And you're able to see your sleep patterns as being foolproof? No, but I do find very useful patterns with Aura. And Aura did get me to change my sleep cycle and my sleep is better than it used to be because I let it nag me into going to bed earlier than

• 20:23Speaker 01

  I used to and having some peaceful, quiet time leading into bedtime. Both have improved my sleep significantly. I know you're saying, well, I could have told you that as a medical doctor, that you should do those things. Yeah, but Aura was there nagging me every day of my life and did change my sleep patterns. But I appreciate your perspective that it's not going to be as accurate as a hospital-based sleep study, no doubt. Coming up ahead, speaking of medical, wow, health insurance costs going through the roof. Tell you what's going

• 21:07Speaker 01

  on, what you can or may be able to do about it.

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• 23:28Speaker 01

  So healthcare costs have been going up, up and away, but nothing like we're experiencing for next year for health insurance. Changes put in in Washington have led to somewhat of what's known as a death spiral in the sale of individual and small group health insurance. And so what's happened is more and more people are falling in a category known as uncompensated care. That's where somebody gets treated and they don't have the money, don't pay the bill. So then what do the medical providers do?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  They raise the retail price and what they negotiate with insurance companies for people who have insurance are now paying in much larger numbers now for people who don't have insurance because the percent of Americans who have insurance is shrinking. And so what we're experiencing, depending on the state, because insurance premiums are set by state, is that states where people are peeling away from having health insurance, states that that's a higher percent of the population, insurance premiums are going up, gosh, could be 20% next year over this year.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  In states that have a more normal amount of people peeling away from having insurance, premiums may be going up 10 or so percent. So this is going to be a very expensive time for employers to figure out what they're going to offer you for health coverage if the employer offers it for next year. And when you go through open enrollment, you're going to have to make tougher choices. You're going to have to either go in a more restricted health plan that limits more of your choice where you go, or having to have pre-approval where you didn't have to have it to go see a specialist, that kind of thing.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Higher copays when you go to a doctor or you go to a specialist. All these things are part of the equation for next year. If you are a small business, your renewal year may not match up with calendar year. So you've got some time to get prepared for this. You don't wait till the last minute. Whoever your health insurance broker is for your business, you want to contact him or her earlier than you would have in the past and talk to them about what options are going to be available at renewal.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  It may in fact keep the premium increases to your employer, employees and your share down. Individuals buying on the exchange, if you're buying on your state exchange or on the federal exchange healthcare.gov, in some states you're going to see shocking increases potentially in the plan you have been in to this point. You may need to rethink what plan you're in for next year or what insurer you buy your plan from. I can't sugarcoat this at all. We are broken right now in the healthcare sector. Most of it is on the cost side.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Most of it's from the power of concentration of hospital systems in metro areas where they get monopolies or semi-monopolies and use that position to drive the price up of everything from a visit to your MD, to a specialist, to a lab, to a MRI, to whatever. So the cost pressures are real. And we have no active conversations going on politically about what to do about the share of our national wealth being consumed by healthcare.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  This has been a problem going on a long time because it's hard. It's a hard problem to solve. And when you push one way, you are making somebody unhappy. Politicians don't like to make people unhappy. So I don't know what the marketplace answer is to this, but the reality is for you and me, it means higher costs. I've seen it year by year with my employees, and I know it's going to be a really rough year at our renewal, which is actually in the spring, what those premiums are going to be. But it's a fact of the current marketplace.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  And I know everybody loves to hate insurers. The real problem here is not the insurers. It's the concentration of power in medicine, city by city, of major hospital systems. You want to see where the money's really going? That's where it's going.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  Andy in Illinois says, hey Clark, here's the sitch. My potential son-in-law is in the market for a pickup truck, but has limited funds and isn't sure exactly what he needs. I have a 2012 truck that sits idle at a vacation property most of the year. I suggested to my daughter that he could use the truck over the winter to figure out what he likes and doesn't like, so he would then buy the right truck down the road. It would be used as both a personal and commercial vehicle. I'm looking for the best way to not have any insurance liability during this period and also protect from losing the truck in case the relationship goes south. Is there a way to sell with a mandatory buyback clause or lease mechanism that would work? I don't really need the sale money or lease payments, but if the relationship does go

• 29:30Speaker 04

  south, I'd want the truck back.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Okay, Andy, you kind of stepped into it here. I wish you hadn't made the offer to your daughter that your potential future son-in-law or may not, may or may not stay on the scene, could drive your truck. And now you realize, oops. Because the only smart move, if you're going to let him drive that truck, is you sell it to him for market value and then you don't have that truck anymore. You cannot take on the liability of lending the truck to him, having him use it for commercial purposes. I about had my head spanned 360 degrees. Is that the maximum you can do?

• 30:18Speaker 01

  360 degrees when you said that? No, no, no, no, no. Please don't, please don't. Either keep the truck for yourself and say, you know, I talked to my insurer, I can't do this. Just say that to your daughter. And that's the truth. Well, it's not the truth. You haven't talked to your insurance person. I'm substituting in here. You don't do this with your future potential son-in-law when you're not even sure how solid the relationship is. And definitely don't have it your ownership. If you want him to be able to use it, you sell it to him, or give it to him, or whatever. Don't own this thing the second he starts

• 31:03Speaker 01

  driving it. Or you don't let him drive it. A or B. There is no C here.

• 31:09Speaker 04

  Okay. Vanessa in Iowa says, given the soaring increases in HOA fees, is it too much of a risk to purchase a property that has an HOA? I see a lot of homes with a high HOA to home value ratio, and these homes aren't selling. Is this situation becoming similar to chime shares? With no cap to rising homeowner costs in sight, how does one proceed?

• 31:30Speaker 01

  So Vanessa, the homeowners fees getting to a point where people are walking away from a purchase has been a problem in coastal communities. I'm not aware of it being a general problem all over the country. There are communities in Florida where people can't sell their place because of the homeowners fees, particularly in condominium situations where the condos are facing legal requirements to maintain a repair and maintenance schedule at the same time if they're at or near the ocean, having much, much higher building insurance

• 32:13Speaker 01

  costs that are being passed on to the owners. Generally, with a community homeowner association that's just single-family homes, and maybe you have a swim tennis, community facility that everybody has to pay for, it's unusual for those fees to get out of control. There's usually something beyond that, that is a situation where the homeowners association fees go out of sight. And a normal homeowners association should not be a problem. But if you find out from potential neighbors in a neighborhood, you just ask them, hey, have you found your homeowners association fees have stayed steady, or they've been

• 32:58Speaker 01

  going up and up and up? If they start bending your ear about, yeah, you're not kidding. I mean, they were, they were this, now they're that, and now they're talking about another increase. Then that's your fair warning.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Okay, this one's a tough one, from Jared in Maryland. I'm an active-duty Air Force officer with 14 years of service, married with two kids, and my wife and I have saved over $2 million in investable assets, all in your three favorite children and the TSP.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Wait, wait. $2 million, 14 years as an officer. I mean, a military officer makes more than enlisted person. But they, they often don't make the kind of money somebody does in civilian life. And thank you so much for the sacrifices you've done, Jared, for our nation.

• 33:44Speaker 04

  Yes. Over the last few years, both of my parents were diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's in their 50s, and now, and now in their 60s, with a genetic predisposition. I have a fairly high, around 50% chance of getting the single infamous gene, increasing my chances of early onset Alzheimer's, and a lower, around 25% chance of getting two genes, significantly increasing my chances of early onset Alzheimer's. My question is, what should I do about long-term care insurance? I'm 36 years old, and I'm debating whether to get long-term care established before getting tested for the genetic markers, or if I even need it at this age. I plan on doing a full 20-year Air Force career under the new BRS retirement plan.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Okay, there's so much in this, Jared. I don't even know where it starts. I'm gonna start with the simplest thing first. You participating fully in the BRS is the replacement for the former pension plan. And done right, it works very well, particularly for you as an officer. You do 20 years, you're gonna have 40% of your pay. If you went 30 years, you get 60% of your pay. And then you get the huge match of the TSP money, putting you in a great financial situation. So I'm so glad you're doing the participation in

• 35:13Speaker 01

  the BRS. It's great. You're gonna be financially, obviously, solid. Now, let's talk about Alzheimer's. I also show a genetic disposition to having a very high percent odds of having Alzheimer's, which one of my siblings has, my mom had dementia, and that's a risk that I face. My other siblings face it. And it's something that's there. The advantage you have in your mid-30s, the odds that we are not going to have improved treatments and potential delay

• 35:55Speaker 01

  or prevention of Alzheimer's 20 years from now, I mean, with the advances in medicine, I'm much more optimistic about your situation than maybe mine. Because we're in completely different life stages. So don't set up your life specifically expecting that you're going to follow the same path as your parents. You know, the possibility is there, maybe even you would say probability, but certainty and same result, very likely not, based on

• 36:35Speaker 01

  your age. Now, long-term care insurance, buying it now, the premiums will be very cheap, they're not guaranteed. And long-term care insurance as a market is substantially broken. There is, I'm gonna say it, there is a whole life insurance option, and normally I don't recommend whole life insurance, but it comes now with options where you can add on a long-term care insurance rider. And the benefit is a set benefit based on the size of the insurance you buy. Buy from what's known as a mutual company, where you're an

• 37:18Speaker 01

  owner of the company, and one that is rated A++ for financial strength by A.M. Best, if you do want to have some level of insurance for long-term care. You also may, because you're going to be retired military, you may have access to care through the VA system. And I know there's a lot goes with saying that. But do not automatically assume that the tragic path you've seen your parents on from their 50s is a path that you are

• 37:57Speaker 01

  also going to follow. Be prepared, but don't expect that that's gonna be your outcome. And again, thank you so much for your service to our great nation. I'm grateful to you and everyone else, and your family, that go through the sacrifices of serving in the U.S. military. And at that point, I will tell you, we are done for the week. I hope that you have a wonderful weekend in front of you, that you are enjoying football, like I will this weekend. It's just the greatest part of fall to me. My wife loves it because

• 38:42Speaker 01

  of the change in the seasons. I love it because it's time for NFL football for me. And I will be tuning in this weekend. Whatever it is you enjoy, I hope that it is a great weekend for you. And know that we are here to serve you all weekend long at Clark.com and ClarkDeals.com. And see you Monday.

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