Full Show: Summer Travel Tips and Avoid These Money Mistakes

it's my pleasure to welcome you here to the Clark Howard Show where our mission is to serve you and Empower you so you make better financial decisions in your life it's officially spring that has many of us planning our summer travel I've got some warnings some info for you to share with you if you're planning on taking a trip in the near future and also I want to talk about how the way we handle money can end up really painting us into a tough Financial corner and right now the stakes are higher and I want to talk about that so summertime travels here and I just uh read a report on what the airline CFOs were saying to the Wall Street crowd about what their bookings look like for the rest of spring and Into Summer and they are crowing a big one about how much they've been able to push airfares up for this spring and summer some of it is that Revenge travel thing people talked about that people couldn't travel for a while and some of it are credits that people have that may be sunsetting that they're trying to get used same issues come up with the cruise lines what are called fcc's future Cruise credits where it's given a boost to bookings because people have money from during covid that if they don't use those credits by a certain date it goes poof so there's an unusual spike in demand for air travel for different reasons and air travel that you can shift to the second half of August or later will be significantly cheaper than it's going to be from Memorial Day till mid-august and that is a pattern that's really clear and because of the way travel patterns work in the summer in any year that's how it works but the difference is what you'll pay could be even larger this year that then has spillover effect into accommodations because even though most travel is done by automobile not by air is a good proxy for travel patterns so bookings for hotels resorts airbnbs vrbos they're all at their Peak summer Memorial Day to mid-august so anybody who can shift a little later in that travel those of you have kids and the school calendars that's why people who don't have to worry about the school calendars benefit from doing the back end of summer rather than the first part of summer so that's just number one when you go matters I talked recently and you may not have heard this episode of the podcast about how there are newer Discounters that are offering potentially real savings opportunities for you flying off the Beaten Track routes now you know the the three oldies of this allegiant that specializes in flying out of places that normally wouldn't may not even have air service at all and are offering flights to to four days a week usually to fund in the sun places vacation kind of places at very cheap fares but with all the limitations that come with flying a legion you know the frontier and spirit story except there's one in particular the frontier oh my goodness you should see these videos people are posting online Frontier is giving bonuses to their employees who rip off their customers at the gate and there's this these incredible videos of people they have a sizer at the gate and if your item won't fit in the little uh personal item thing they're then charging you a hundred bucks and then the employee gets a percentage of that as a market incentive from Frontier to try to get them to rip off as many people as possible and Frontier being Frontiers like yeah we do this this is great except for the passenger and I mean what a way to break down trust but the crazy videos are ones where people are putting their things in the Sizer and then the gate agent says nope nope nope I still think it's too big it can't go or you pay us a hundred dollars and they know person's got to get on the plane they got to go where they're going to go they're going to their vacation Frontier fix this this is wrong period um but uh Breeze and ovalo I've talked about both of them recently that are newer Discounters that so far we're not hearing complaints about and they're offering a lot of new Roots a lot of a little bit off the beaten path routes that they're offering because they're new they're offering really well below everybody else's fares on them and that you should know I want to talk about though using a hotel versus using Airbnb or VRBO there have been so many stories about people who booked private rentals through VRBO and Airbnb there was one recently that was just mind-blowing about someone who'd rented one of these private stays in this case it was VRBO and it was an area struck by wildfires and the vrb policy is yeah tough so what what difference does it make if the area is closed captioning not available you booked a place that said it was non-refundable tough Airbnb to their credit in a situation like that has in writing that you get your money back but the gray with that if you're if there's a natural disaster Zone and the property you're staying at is not directly in an affected County even if you can't get to it because you have to cross the affected area if it's outside the Zone then their policy doesn't apply but at least they have one VRBO come on get your act together just fix this but here's the big distinction okay the hotel chains seeing how VRBO and Airbnb have been so successful having these non-refundable bookings it could be a year out your book you're out your money if you can't go whatever it is so whatever the policy is of the property manager renting the place out is life's tough and then you die that's it hotels now are starting to offer what they call their lowest rates by you booking non-refundable avoid the temptation one of the advantages you have typically with a hotel is you will be able to find rates available either with the hotel chain or with one of the third party booking sources that are refundable for an extended period of time close to when you're going you'll usually see that two days three days or 14 days before three most common numbers that that's the point at which most hotel bookings today go non-refundable where with the private accommodations through Airbnb or VRBO very common they're non-refundable at the time you book or many months before you stay and life gets in the way the insurance you can buy may or may not cover the circumstance that you would later not be able to go see that's the double whammy you pay for insurance on the accommodation and then your reason for not being able to go is not a qualified reason and you're out the money for the insurance policy you're out the money for the stay so you got to be fully aware when you book an Airbnb or VRBO um that really you own it whether you go or not in most the cases I I want to mention something I talked about I think two months ago that with a lot of the private accommodations the ratings are inflated and there was one article I mentioned that was a joke that every Airbnb is four and a half stars or better even though many of them aren't any good and so it is the hard part with any accommodations and the way the system's being gamed you got to do your work to make sure that the place really is um going to be A-Okay because you're taking your hard-earned money and your vacation time and booking it at a place and Krista I have a question for you as you come in because you have been an Airbnb Booker for since Airbnb was invented I think I like Airbnb but I'm pretty careful I mean this is this definitely gives me pause but the times I've used it it's been really great for a family it's when I'm traveling with my family and it helps us save a lot of money but I've never seen a place that didn't have I mean I always check the policy the extra fees you know the cancellation policy and that it's got literally hundreds and hundreds of reviews because you know you just don't know if something's new to Airbnb but you've never had an Airbnb blow up on you with it being a bad Airbnb or losing your money no lucky me I guess I didn't you know what have you stayed in like 50 of them over there a lot yeah wow I've also done their experiences too which have been great okay we do have some travel questions I'll actually start with this one from David in Utah because it's about hotels Clark I've heard you say many times you consistently get cheaper hotel rates through discount websites like Priceline and if you and you have discouraged booking hotels directly through the hotel's website I see the opposite most of the time I see the cheapest rates directly through a hotel's website especially if you sign up for the chains free memberships am I doing something right or wrong you're doing something right it's working for you David so what I do is I do my surveying first on third party websites like Priceline and I'm looking to see what's out there I'm looking to see what kind of deals there are and then I start cross-referencing by checking out the quality of the hotel because as I've shared with you the brand name on the building doesn't mean it much anymore and then I will go to the hotel chains website direct and I'm a member of like every Hotel program on Earth I'm a member of Hotel programs I don't remember when I stayed at that Hotel chain and I'll look and see what they have and I'll check uh what do they have for um you know AAA members where they have I'm old so what do they have for senior citizens whatever and so I'll I'll try all these things and still most of the time I find I'm better off price wise on the third party sites but then again I just stayed in a Marriott that I got my best deal with Marriott on a refundable room rate so it does vary and that's why what you do um checking both and what I do checking every possible place known to humankind is what will ultimately save you money and I know a lot of people don't have the patience to do the constant shopping that I do but I reshop my travel bookings before I go because so often for car rentals probably 90 percent of the time the rates drop closer to the rental and for hotels it's kind of a 50 50 shot that you'll find a better deal close to travel than what you already have but if it's the other 50 percent that it's not cheaper or that it's more expensive you already have what you have that's cancelable this is from Christopher in Kentucky I rented a car for two weeks I received a mid-sized SUV and was given a rate of 595 dollars and 54 cents when I turned in the vehicle I was told by the unpleasant attendant that my receipt would be emailed to me when I received the receipt I was charged an additional charge of 400 for a car wash which jacked up the bill to 990.74 this is a crazy charge what can I do okay first of all let's say that somebody made a clerical error first because if I were a car rental company I'm never going to come up with something as lame as saying you're paying 400 for a car wash so I'm I'm hoping that there's just a clerical error um uh two things you do one immediately dispute it with your credit card company two contact the location that you rented from that will normally be an independent franchise three contact the rental car company itself to their customer no service you want to be getting on record everywhere I actually have a fourth I want you to file a complaint against them with a Better Business Bureau the car rental agencies as difficult as they are to deal with have some reputational worry and the Better Business Bureau may be potential leverage for you and it's got to be something weird I can't imagine that there's actually any car rental company that thinks they can get away with that I mean unless they think that they smoked in the car or something yeah I can't imagine well that it would say smoking being charged what I do anytime I get a car rental that you know have a thing in there 250 dollar fine 500 fine whatever it is for smoking in the car and you can't even tell somebody smoked in that car I before I leave the rental car Plaza I go have it written on my contract on the paperwork that the vehicle had been smoked in and that's there before I take my rental happened to me two of my last three rentals this is from Theresa in Idaho hi Clark family of four here we take two to three trips a year what is the best credit card for us my husband wants a travel credit card to help with the price of our flights but I think a plain cashback card would be best an annual fee is out of the question we intend to use this card to pay all of our monthly expenses mortgage bills private school tuition Etc these expenditures equal roughly eight thousand dollars a month and we pay off our balance monthly what's best for us so Teresa I am going to shock you beyond the pale your husband may be right on this one and your thing about no annual fee is probably not true in this case because with you charging roughly a hundred thousand dollars a year on credit cards you are someone who may well benefit very nicely from having a travel credit card when I think the one that would be the one I would think would be most suitable the one that all the reviewers just love right now Capital One Venture X rewards card it has an outrageous annual fee of 395 dollars have you and Mike gotten that card yet no I I had it when they had this intro that was just great still a good upfront bonus how could I say it'd be a good idea for you to pay 400 for a cart they give you 300 of it back just as travel credits for travel you purchase through their travel portal so the net annual fee is a hundred plus and that's before other benefits you get free lounge access from several different airport loungy kind of things that you can bring your kids in for free with you which is a thing that Capital One does with their card that others may not let you bring your kids in so you got that as well you got free food for them you got a place they can hang out um I think it's absolutely great plus you get 2x for all your charging so like a two percent cash back card you're getting two back and then you can use the points for your hotels for flights for all different kinds of things and so I would say in your case you fit exactly what I talk about you're taking two three big family trips a year for four people that's basically eight to twelve trips if you look at them person trips plus you're charging a hundred thousand dollars a year you're going to earn enough points that those points will be very useful and valuable to you right now the bonus and it changes all the time is 75 000 points just for signing up for the card and doing what you charge in two weeks will get you the 75 000 points which is worth um he's you know it's worth 75 750 and travel basically two years of the annual fee and then remember all the other credits you get we have a guide to the various reward cards on clark.com coming up ahead here I was just talking about charge charge charge and now straight ahead I'm going to talk about don't charge don't charge don't charge I'm a confusing man aren't I I'll tell you why do you know that the average credit card interest rate people are paying in the United States is at record levels right now this is very disturbing to me because you're paying such higher rates than you do on pretty much anything else and the percent of people that never pay more than minimum is somewhere around a little more than a fourth to a third of people it depends on exactly how you ask people the question but we've got a lot of people that are living off of borrowing money from the credit card company and Lending Tree came up with a number I've not seen anywhere else this says that the average interest rate is 23 point something percent that is higher than I've seen elsewhere but even if you go with what I've seen elsewhere that it's around 19 nobody ever got rich paying Visa Mastercard 19 interest because you think about what that means every dollar you worry about inflation every dollar you charge immediately is worth 81 cents that's like piling hurt on top of hurt with the six percent inflation we're running in the United States so this is really really nasty what's going on with the cards and I know that I'm talking about two different kinds of people with the credit cards there are people who are wheezing financially wheezing and for you just making sure you can put food in your kids mouths right now you feel no other alternative than using the credit card and I will not tell you that's a bad thing if you are at life's Edge financially and that's how you're able to make it go right now that's fine that's not what I'm talking about here I'm talking about the discretionary Spenders who are running up these balances on cards because well you know I deserve it and it's a mentality that the banks have so cultivated through their propaganda through their advertising to you know hey why why wouldn't you do that life's short take advantage of this take advantage of that we'll send you a bill yeah that's who I'm talking to I'm talking to you um what's that expression people use about fear missing out there's another one fomo and then there's another one that's like yo YOLO you only live once oh okay yeah thank you that people have this thing thanks I'm so bad at those that's okay catchy phrases aren't I thank you Krista that people are like yeah I I want it and that settles it it's the same issue I've talked about with the pay and force thank goodness we don't get all the questions and complaints about paying for us anymore do we that was so prominent I think so many people have gotten burned by the pay and fours that I'm hoping it means that I'm not missing the picture and people are realizing oops too hot to handle you know this thing where you're shopping online it says oh well you don't need to hesitate to buy we'll bill you in four easy payments or at the retailer you're at the register wouldn't you like to do this on four easy payments four easy payments right into Armageddon because the default rate on those is gigantic and you're ruining your credit over what is almost always an Impulse buy with this so what I'm trying to do I'm not trying to guilt you I'm trying to get you to focus on your present and your future you don't want to impulsively buy things you cannot afford to pay for because those things end up where they end up in a closet they end up in the trunk of your car they end up under the sofa you forget that you even got them but you're having to pay for them so this is what I really want to reach you about is the impulsive spending done with borrowed money undermines your future and not your future 20 years from now or 40 years from now it undermines your future when the bill comes the next month enough preaching all right we'll go to questions now this one's from Jamie in Florida my wife encountered a new type of scam she received a text message from UPS that a package was available for pickup at a local Walgreens it was redirected from our house she didn't order it it was items from a buy now pay later site that we had never heard of the criminal used for public info with her compromised social to set up an account since the site says they needed that we suspect they were going to go there and retrieve the items and stick her with the bill only her email address was wrong when we looked it up on the site by order number from the packing slip she reported the fraud to them but if she hadn't gotten that text message redirection notice we'd be getting bills for items we never ordered it was almost 450 dollars Walgreens required ID so this may be amateurs testing something new or they made a fake ID we don't know still on hold their customer no service after reporting fraud to their billing and nothing is showing on her credit reports okay so that's all good news use in a bad news situation so much of this again goes back to the massive Equifax data breach of years ago that is allowing criminals to buy other people's essentially all their key data to create a false identity as if they're you there are packaged diversion schemes that are more uh dangerous than this one Jamie and it's where what they do is they have the package delivered to your address they're watching the tracking and then they have a pickup that they then have so let's say UPS delivered it in they will then have Fedex pick it up or private Courier Service so that they're not visible or they may themselves come and pick it up which brings up something that you need to do right away and that is to buy very inexpensive exterior cameras for your home since your wife is a target and you want to have video that when a package is delivered and then suddenly it vanishes again from your porch that you have the video evidence that you may need later with who knows who those packages may be being sent to your address by a crook because the diversion to the Walgreens is a different kind of thing than the way this normally plays out and the cameras can be ultra cheap the cheapest of all of the wise cams w-y-z-e an exterior camera from them I think it's like thirty dollars and you can use uh those things nobody ever talks about anymore instead of paying them for uh cloud storage you can use an SD card in it and do on-site free recording of so much depending on the size of the SD card so many hours of stuff and this is from Javier in Maryland Clark I love the show my wife used to roll her eyes whenever she would hear it's my pleasure to welcome you to the Clark Howard Show but now even she is tuning in my question we have a hundred and twenty thousand dollars saved up for a home in Maryland we couldn't find a house during the big run-up because everyone was going crazy bidding up the houses now even though interest rates are much higher home prices haven't come down the houses are even more expensive with higher mortgage payments and we're feeling like it's not worth it do you think the housing market will get any better anytime soon would being patient pay off renting is not that much better in terms of cost but at least it gives us flexibility so there are some markets in the country where home values are actually declining uh but not by enough to make up for the now higher interest rates we have a couple of factors here one we have outrun most people's ability to afford a home that are trying to buy one the marketplace ultimately corrects for that and the way it does this time is going to be different than it might have in a normal environment because so many of the people in these homes have ultra low mortgages and they might want to move to a different home or different neighborhood or a bigger house or whatever and they're not moving because they'd have to go from having their two or three percent mortgage or in your case Krista 1.875 yeah they'd have to go from that to today's six percent or so more or less rates so people are saying hey I'm not going anywhere so there are very very few homes for sale and so we're kind of in this standoff right now but what will happen over time as we have normal economic growth home prices will likely Trail economic growth and activity in the country so it doesn't mean that prices will go down but over time people will have different reasons different needs different circumstances that they will sell even though they're giving up their cheap mortgages and all that there will be new inventory built so this is a terrible time right now but the prospects in the future are better now there is one opportunity that I have not addressed in a big way and that is new homes versus used I always tell you buy used homes because they're much cheaper per square foot but right now new home builders have inventory they must sell and new home builders are not necessarily cutting the price but they're improving the terms like maybe buying down the mortgage rate for the entire 30 years of the mortgage in which case what you're paying is effectively much less per month because even though you paid that price for the house you're not paying an app market interest rate but yes it is a very very hard time to be a buyer and a difficult time for most people to be sellers because of what they'd be giving up that they're locked into from patio North Carolina is it possible for us to pay cash for a home for our daughter before she sells her current home then when she sells her current home probably in six months for her to take out a mortgage and buy it from us for what we paid are there tax implications so you do this a different way Patty and you will absolutely want a real estate lawyer involved in it what you do is she buys the home as the buyer you are the mortgage provider and just as if you were Bank of whatever you are uh the bank of mom and dad and you you provide the mortgage to her secured by the property then it's already in her name when it's time for her to be able after her home sells and she wants to refi you out of that and then have a mortgage on the property she then takes you out of the deal with the refi and she owns it and she has the mortgages the clearest simplest easiest way and that's why you go to a real estate lawyer because they know how to do these end family mortgages and it's the cleanest thing for her to own it right from the get-go not you and then all you're getting is you're getting she has to pay you an app market interest rate that the lawyer will be able to show you what the current requirement is under IRS requirements um you charge her that rate and then you'll make a little money on that and then she just has the Home Free and Clear under her own mortgage after her existing house sells so she can't afford to pay the two mortgages would they just gift her back the money okay so that is true you can um gift her seventeen thousand dollars each year yeah under give tax rules for any purpose you can do that to any human being Krista You Wanna Give me 17. I was just gonna ask you okay you want to give that to me yeah I gotta do it anyway so unless you really need it then no no you have to do it anyway so um if you want to carry her for a while with it then that's how you would do that is you just forgive those payments till the old home is sold but all this stuff can be explained to you by a real estate attorney and if she's buying in your state of North Carolina it should be a real estate attorney in the state of North Carolina whatever state it is that the property will be not a general practice attorney needs to be a lawyer who practices real estate law and I want to thank you so much for joining us on today's episode remember if you have a question you need answered one-on-one we provide free one-on-one advice information and guidance from our team Clark consumer action center now in its 31st year of operation available to serve you Monday through Friday from 10 in the morning Eastern Time to four in the afternoon the number 636-49 Clark have a great day

Channel: Clark Howard: Save More, Spend Less

Views: 7,035

Keywords: clark howard, clark, money, financial literacy, finances, money podcast, podcast, financial podcast, consumer, consumer advocate

Id: SoafVrsSWEY

Length: 33min 7sec (1987 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 27 2023