Motley Fool Money - Motley Fool Money: 08.16.2013

Episode Date: August 16, 2013

Retail stocks suffer a bad week. BlackBerry puts itself up for sale. Carl Icahn takes a big bit of Apple stock and takes a shot at fellow activist investor Bill Ackman. Plus, radio host and best-selling author Clark Howard shares money-saving advice from his latest book, Living Large For The Long Run. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to Motley Fool Money. Thanks for being here. I'm your host, Chris Hill, joining me in studio this week from Motley Fool Asset Management, Tim Hansen, and for Million Dollar portfolio, Charlie Travers and Ron Gross. Good to see you, Jens. How you doing, Chris? We're going to talk retail smartphones

and two billionaires having a slap fight that we just can't look away from. We've also got best-selling author and radio host Clark Howard, and as always, we've got a few stocks on our radar. But let's start with the retail. Tough quarterly results this week from big names like Macy's and Nordstrom and Charlie, even the biggest retailer of them all, Walmart. How bad is it out there? If you just look at this week, it's looking pretty bad for retail. It looks soft but not horrible. Okay. Yeah. And across the board, as you mentioned, Coles, Macy's, Nordstrom, Walmart, all pulled down their full year guidance due to soft retail spending, at least in the kind of products. These guys are all selling, which is, you know, clothes and, you know, staples kind of stuff. But it's not really catastrophic. You know, Walmart's comps were down 0.3%. That's slightly worse than what they thought they would do at the end of Q1. But, you know, let's take a step back here. They're still going to earn over $5 a share this year. That's pretty good, very high cash flow business. us. You know, we're not talking about some of the drags of retail like JCPenney or Sears.

These are all companies that, for the most part, are doing well, even though things are a little weak. Tim, is general retail just a tougher space to succeed in? Because it seems like when we talk about retailer and retail stocks, we tend to gravitate towards the specialty retailers and not necessarily the general retailers, Macy's Coles, et cetera. Yeah, I think that's true. You know, something that's been happening over the past years is that more and more retailers are building their own stores. So companies that would previously only sell via big boxes or in mall-based locations, they now have their own standalone stores. And I think people are shopping at places like that. You know, the overall retail sales number

tracked by the census, you know, it was still up, it was still up three, four percent in July. So, you know, I think there's a, there's a trend among these bigger retailers that, you know, people aren't spending as much there anymore. There's some merchandising problems there. I think people are being a little bit more careful about where they choose to spend their money. But back to school is right around the corner, and a good back-to-school season would make up for all of it for a company like Walmart. I was going to say, Charlie, it seems like between back-to-school and then a few months down the line in the holiday, it seems like maybe there's a light at the end of the tunnel there. Yeah, and they're generally saying comps are going to pick up in Q3 and Q4.

We'll see if that comes true. I think are we still seeing that kind of bifurcated economy where the value-priced retailers like the Walmarts are doing more poorly than the higher end folks? I know it was kind of bad across the board, but is that seemed to still be the case? Yeah, the luxury space has really been the place to be in terms of making money, investing in retail over the past year. You know, wealthy consumers are spending freely. The Cannes al-Comp's in those businesses have tended to be strong. Nordstrom is an exception, but they're probably more mass affluent than, you know, high lux.

Mass affluent, yeah. You can stratify all kinds of consumers. That's the only reason I asked the question. But, you know, Estee Lauder, for example, just had results. And, you know, their really high-end product lines like LaMere did the best. And the mass consumer product lines didn't fare quite as well. So, I mean, the evidence of that continues to be true. And, you know, which makes sense.

You look at unemployment. Sure. You know, people who without high school degrees are the most unemployed college graduates are the least unemployed, so there's your bifurcation. Let's move over to smartphones. Apple has reportedly settled on September 10th as the date to unveil the newest version of the iPhone. And BlackBerry announced it has set up a special committee to look at strategic options, including, yes, Ron, selling the company outright. It seems like if there is a saving grace for BlackBerry, it is as a private company. Is that their best move? I think they've been actually looking at this option for quite some time without just this official announcement and a special committee.

It's going to be tough to find someone a strategic buyer who wants them. So perhaps going private with a financial buyer might be the way they're going to be forced to go. But I think even that's going to be tough. They're obviously in a very tough, competitive situation. The latest offering, I don't think, knock the cover off the ball to put them. back in the game. You see, maybe Samsung would want it. Maybe some of, like, Lenova would want it. Microsoft has been talked about. Nokia has been talked about. I don't really see

it happening. Also with Apple this week, activist investor Carl Icon disclosed. He's taken a large position in Apple that he was talking with CEO, Tim Cook, about share buybacks. Tim, we learned this via Twitter, which, first of all, it's kind of amazing that Carl Icon is on Twitter. He's all over the Twitter. He's all over the Twitter. Is that a side of a Twitter top? I don't think so, but he's also taking some shots at fellow activist investor, Bill Ackman, who finally... He's adapted well to Twitter, where sarcasm and burning people is like the best use of it.

Is it a surprise that Bill Ackman has taken his ball and gone home and just walked away from J.C. Penny? You know, probably not. You know, at this point, he tried a new CEO. He tried to help them merchandise. It was a complete disaster. At some point, you probably just need to say, I'm not adding the value. I thought I was. going to. And, you know, the way he's handling this investment, though, I think is poor. It says something about his temperament in terms of, you know, they brought back the guy that he ousted. I don't know why he thought that would go well, but so it goes. And now, you know, he's stuck with a lot of money in JCPenney, and he's now walked away from it. So odds are he'd want to liquidate his position, but doing so will probably cause the stock to fall further. He's in a

He's in a tough spot. I know we could spend the rest of the hour talking about activist investors, because it really is pretty amazing to see these two going at one another. But let's move on to the stocks on our radar. We got a couple of minutes before the break. Ron Gross, you are up first. What do you got this week? I'm interested to see what Home Depot, HD, has to say next week, both because

I'm interested in the company, but because it's a bellwether for both housing, the economy in general. A lot of the retailers we've just been talking about speaks to the health of our economy. So I think it will be very informative to hear how they've done, but even more important, the forward-looking statements. Tim, what do you got? I've been looking at HDFC Bank, which is an Indian bank, a large Indian bank, the taker symbol is HDB.

There's an article in the Wall Street Journal recently about everybody's giving up on their investments in India. The rupee's gotten weak. Emerging markets have underperformed, developed markets. But HDFC Bank, frankly, is probably the best run large bank in the world. and the fact that it's so woefully underperformed and is in the market that it's out of favor makes it pretty interesting. Do you like these situations where there's a declaration like, this is over? Oh, yeah. When I saw that article, you know, I used the Twitter and it was like Zig and Others, Zah, you know, we're all giving up on India.

We're completely dissatisfied with what happened. There's, you know, probably means it's time to start looking at India. Take a closer look. All right. Charlie, what are you looking at this week? I'm going to stick with retail target reports on Wednesday. Their Q1 was soft. I think with what Walmart, just reported, we have to expect that Q2 will also be soft for Target. But actually, I do like this business overall. They have strong cash flow. They've raised their dividend every year since 2000. So if you get a pullback, I do think it's interesting to give it a closer look. And they're another source of embarrassment for Bill Ackman. Yes.

Nice. I'm not saying anything about any retail stock, but I will just say that I feel like you've actually spent time in a Target where Ron, all due respect. I can't imagine you actually. No, I love Target. I can't imagine you've set foot inside a Home Depot. We're underdoing some construction right now at home, so I have been very recently, but it makes me itch. Coming up, bestselling author and radio host Clark Howard on Living Large for the Long Run.

This is Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. I'm Chris Hill. Our guest can be heard each day on hundreds of radio stations across America on the Clark Howard show. He is the money expert for the HLN Network. He is a best-selling author. latest book is Clark Howard's Living Large for the long run. He joins me now from an event in Orlando.

Clark, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your busy schedule to talk to Motley Full Money. Oh, I'm honored to be with you. You start this book by talking about an experience that you had with money growing up. You were on what you refer to as the Silver Spoon Plan. It didn't really last. what is the Silver Spoon plan and what happened? Well, it's funny because I thought I was growing up rich. And my family lived a very high-octane life, very fancy life. And as best I knew, we wanted for nothing. And then my father lost his job, almost a scenario like so many of us have seen in the last several years.

He loses his job. And it turns out that, They were living on fumes. My parents hadn't saved any money. And the funny thing looking back now is that I was clueless what was going on. I was off at college at the American University in Washington. I'd come home for Thanksgiving. And we were at a family Thanksgiving dinner, and everybody was so solemn.

And it was like a sadness. And I was like, what's going on? Somebody is dying. Something's really awful happening. And sure enough, after dinner, my dad asked me to stay at the table. And he says, I have some terrible news for you. And I'm like, okay, here it is. I'm going to find out my dad's dying.

And he says, I need to tell you, I lost my job. And I start smiling ear to ear. And he says, what are you smiling about? I said, well, I thought you were dying. And he smiles. And he says, no, I'm not dying. I just don't have any money. And I said, what?

and he said, there's no money for you to go back to college in January. And I was like, what are you talking about? I mean, because we lived in a big nice house and my parents drove nice cars and they took these wonderful trips. And so I thought they were just loaded. And it turned out they just were obligated. And that event in my life, my parents eventually got back up. up on their feet. It took them about three years. They ended up okay. But that event changed the way I lived my life and the rest of my life. I had to go back to school, register as a night student,

got a job working full time. It was still the tail end of the war in Vietnam, and I got a job working for the Air Force as a civilian employee. And I would go to work all day long and then go to school at night, but I was able to pay my own way and get through college. And for me, it turned out to be a defining moment and one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life. You talked about your dad. He worked for a stretch of time on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. What did he teach you about money and in particular about investing? When he was a young man, he did work on the floor of the exchange, he always loved investing. elementary school, he's teaching me how to read stock tables when other kids are learning how to

read box scores for baseball. And so I from a very young age was taught about investing. And one of the things I did with my father, after he lost his job, eventually got back up on his feet, I started investing with him. We set up a company with some non-family members and my father and me. And we did investing doing private placements in companies and investing in small, relatively unknown companies. This was before computers, before anything other than reading and research and word of mouth to be able to figure out what you should be investing in. And he taught me the basic fundamentals of investing. And that has been, I mean, you think about first the negative lesson that they never save money. and then the positive lesson, teaching me the basics and fundamentals of investing,

those two things work so well together for me for the rest of my life. You're listening to Motley Full Money talking with Clark Howard, radio show host, TV star, and author of the new book, Clark Howard's Living Large for the Long Hall. Let's get to some of the specific areas that you address in the book and get your advice. And first, let's start with credit because there are so much. many people who struggle with their credit score, what are a couple of ways that people can improve their credit score? Well, there's so much misinformation about what makes up a credit score.

And what really matters are the most basic of things. And I'm going to say the first one, and you're going to say, duh, who doesn't know that? And that is, you pay every bill every month on time. and if everybody knows that, why don't people do it? Because that by itself makes up more than one third of your credit score. And that when people know it, they just need to do it. But the second one, people get so confused about, and that is if you, let's say you have a credit card and then you decide to get a different one. What most people do is they close the account of the first card.

not realizing that's going to hurt their score, not help them. And so knowing that with credit, you want to have a lot of available credit, but use very little of it. And if you want to be a credit superstar, never use more than 10% of your available credit. What about... And at most never use more than 30%, because you go above 30, you're going to really start to decimate your credit score and credit standing. We are in an age now where technology is so pervasive in so many people's lives.

And it used to be, you know, 20, 30 years ago, you'd have a phone bill and a cable belt. Now people have landline phones in their homes. They have cell phones. They have cable. They have Netflix. They have all these different convergences of technology. And I'm curious, what are your thoughts on how we can get sort of the best deal on technology coming into our house? Well, first, anybody older should watch what people younger are doing, because there are clear

trends that are separating people who are past age 40 from people who are underage 40. And the trends are this. People under age 40, many have never had a pay television subscription and never dream of having one. And that's an area where someone can reduce their expenses, even if they on the side subscribe to Netflix or whatever else, that's $1,000 a year they're going to save if they separate themselves from pay television. Second, on the cell phones, if people will go to non-contract providers, instead of being with one of the heavily marketed contract providers, AT&T and Verizon, if they go non-contract, typical person over a year,

will save somewhere around $600. Family plan, people will save well over $1,000 if they go non-contract versus contract on the cell phone. Is for home phone, who needs one? I mean, really? Home phone? Ditch the thing. And if you feel like you've got to have one, I wanted to mention straight talk home phone. Is that something you're familiar with?

I am not. Straight Talk Home Phone is a joint venture of Verizon Wireless and Carlos Slim, the world's wealthiest guy. And they sell this thing called Straight Talk Home Phone that is not based on having an Internet line in your home. It's $15 a month for home phone service. And that includes unlimited local, long distance, call waiting, call her ID, call everything. Or look at Uma. Have you ever heard of Uma-O-O-M-A dot com? The only UMA I'm familiar with is Ms. Thurman.

Is UMA Thurman? I know. All right. So UMA is the phone service that Consumer Reports rates is the best phone service in America. You buy an UMA device. Costco sells them for $1.29. You can find them at various electronic stores at different price points. You buy the UMA device and that's your phone service for the life of UMA, however long that is.

They've been around now, I guess, seven or eight years. Hopefully they'll keep going. So you buy it, and then you port your number from your Monopoly local phone company. This sound quality on the calls is extraordinary. It's almost as if you're in the same room talking to someone. And then once you own the UMA device, your phone service bill drops to about $3 to $4 a month, depending on where you live in the country, and that's just for government pass-throughs. And it's a great, great, great service.

So if you don't want the internet thing, straight talk home phones 15, Uma figure around four. Coming up, more with Clark Howard. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Full Money. You're listening to Motley Full Money talking with Clark Howard. One of the things that was a very pleasant surprise about your book is, You've got real stories from real people across America who have saved money, who have struggled with money and figured out ways to rebound from that.

I know this is a little bit like asking a parent, which is your favorite child, but of the stories in your book, do you have a favorite or two? Do you have any that were pleasant surprises to you? I'm going to give two extreme examples. One is a couple that was drowning. in student loan debt. They had student loan debt that was in excess of $90,000. They had a reality moment and realized that they were never going to be able to pay off that debt. Never. And they took radical surgery to their family budget and they got rid of both their cars. And just the money that cars were costing them per month, allowed them to wipe out all their student loan debt in less

than five years. Now, here's the best part. They don't live in New York, Washington, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, any of the cities that have fantastic public transit and subway systems. They live in downstate Illinois, and they get around by bicycle. How does that work out in the winter? That's what I asked them. And they said, you know, you just wrap up warm and, you know, the roads are plowed there and they just fight their way through it.

The other interesting thing, not only they get physically healthy, but physically, the two of them are by far the healthiest they've ever been in their lives. And they feel so freed from this chokehold of death that they had. So, you know, I use them as an example because how many families are going to be willing to do that? But how many other families are there that maybe have three cars that could get by with two or two cars and could get by with one? And people don't realize that cars are the second fastest running money meter in your life. So if you can pare back your transportation costs, you open up a whole bunch of money that you can put to work in your life. life. So I love their story. And then the other one I love, a guy who is working in the financial sector for AIG and gets canned as AIG goes through all its problems. He's unemployed. And this

financier decides to become the king of pops. And he makes healthy popsicles that are made with natural ingredients, organic, fruits, vegetables. They taste great, my favorite banana pudding. They sell for two and a half bucks each, which chokes me up to think spending that much on it. And the guy's business is booming, and he is on the cusp of becoming not just successful, but becoming rich.

He got blown out by the economy, found something he loved, went out, risked everything, and now he's going to be a very, very independently wealthy man. You mentioned that cars are number two on the money meter. What's number one on the money meter? Housing, housing, housing. You know, what people spend on housing is not related to what's required for shelter. We in modern America overinvest in housing more than any other culture on earth.

Our tax laws push us that way. The American myth about you're not a success unless you own a home. And people wanting to show off has put Americans in a position where the average size of a home is much larger than it was a generation ago. And more than twice the size what it was two generations ago. And so we use too much disposable income and then face too high a level level. of costs for maintenance, repairs, energy, everything involved in maintaining a home because a home essentially depreciates. It requires continual loving, upkeep, maintenance. And so if people buy a house where they chew off more than they can really afford, the indigestion for your wallet goes on

and on and on. One surprising fact in your book is, is that for the millions of people who use Amazon and shop online, one way you can get a better price on Amazon is to put it in your cart, your virtual cart there, and then abandon it. How does that work? Or why does that work? Isn't that funny? Okay, so online merchants are getting more and more precise

at understanding our behaviors. And if somebody makes it to the checkout and abandons the purchase, within minutes, you may receive a 10% off coupon from that merchant. You may receive some kind of special limited time discount on that particular item, because rather than have you abandoned and lost as a customer, they're willing to take a smaller markup on that sale to get you back in the house. And so there are people who do this as a shopping strategy now. They will load stuff into a cart, abandon it, and just sit back and wait to see if they do get that offer.

You're listening to Motley Fool Money talking with Clark Howard. His new book, which is available everywhere, is living large for the long haul. Consumer-tested ways to overhaul your finances, increase your savings, and get your life back on track. We've got a bunch of parents listening to the show. So what's one or two things that we can teach our kids about? money. Kids have to understand that money is finite. I think about some of the things I've done with my children. I have three kids and I have rewarded them when they were in elementary school by taking them with me to the supermarket, which I think is one of the best environments to teach a child the value of a dollar. And a simple example is kids automatically conditioned,

by advertising want this brand, that brand, the other brand as you walk around the supermarket. So what I did with all three of my children, my youngest is seven, he's aged out of this reward system. He keeps asking to go to the supermarket with me. I said, that lesson's over grant. But what I do is as we go around and they'll say, I want blah, blah, blah, brand. I say, well, if you instead get the store brand, I'm going to split the savings with you. And they go around with me and they get the reward.

Well, they did until they got too old. And I conditioned them. It's a form of propaganda, a form of brainwashing, that there's a direct reward to your wallet based on the choices you make. That if you make smart, wise decisions, you will actually save money. I also do something else with, I have a daughter who's aged out of being a teenager, one who's in the heart of her teenage years. And I will give my 14 years.

year old, money when she's going somewhere, and I always tell her keep the change. The reason I do that is if I give her money to go buy something, somehow she has no incentive, no desire to spend as little as possible on whatever she's buying. But if I tell her that money is now hers and her responsibility, she rethinks, oh, wait a minute. If I buy the $3 one instead of the $7 one, I get all that change to then do something else with. So it's all about using discrete purchases as a way to build incentives. And for my daughter who's now 24, when she was 15 and had her first job, what I did for her is I said, Rebecca, every dollar you save, she was working as a hostess in a restaurant, said every dollar you save from your job, I will match with a dollar, what I call

the daddy match, and we'll put it in a Roth account. And my oldest, who never knew a dollar she didn't want to spend, somehow at that job managed to save $871, which I then matched with $8771 to open her Roth account. Now, you have a reputation of being a frugal guy. I believe you've even referred to yourself as being cheap, but I'm just... I am. It's true. I'm using an app on my phone right now that every time I swipe my finger across the screen, they pay me another penny. That's how cheap I am.

Can you give me an example of a time when you maybe went a little too far in your frugality? Or if you can't do it, maybe share a story that someone on your team, someone from the staff of your radio show, that is a story that they tell amongst themselves. Like, I can't believe. Let me tell you about the time that Clark did this. Oh, they don't tell stories on me behind my back. They tell them right to me and right in front of me. So the worst ever was we were in Wisconsin doing station visits, and we were in an absolute blizzard.

It was us on the roads and the trucks. We had to get to from Green Bay, Wisconsin to Milwaukee for early morning appearances the next day. And we get to Milwaukee. and it is snowing like you cannot imagine and piles of snow everywhere and thank goodness I lived in the north for a while or else it would have been no way I could have driven through it. So we get to our hotel in downtown Milwaukee

and I insist on finding free parking on the street because in any way I'm going to pay for parking. So my executive producer, Krista and I, are trudging through the snow. I mean literally trudging through the snow to get the hotel She steps down in a hole, ruins her shoes as they get waterlogged and I'm just ruined. She's so mad at me. We get to the front desk of the hotel and she asked the guy behind the counter, how much is parking here?

And he said, oh, no, parking's complimentary for guess. She has never, never let me forget that. She's rolling her eyes right now. You know what? Would have saved you the trouble if you had been like that couple in Southern in Illinois and you just biked to Milwaukee. That's true, but you know what I learned ever since from that moment? I always drop off whoever's with me at the front door of wherever we're going,

and then I'm the one who goes and walks from free parking. Coming up more with Clark Howard, including a round of buy-seller hold. This is Motley Fool Money. Before we wrap up with a round of buy-seller hold, the last time you and I talked, it was August 2011. It was, we were talking about your last book. And you shared a savings tip that at the time I considered to be pretty extreme. And I want to revisit that advice.

This is about 90 seconds long. But let's go ahead and run that. Another savings tip from your book, Reuse Disposable Razors. Yeah, I'm on the same razor since March. It's a 17-cent razor. And all you do is you dry the razor after you use it each time because the only thing that degrades the razor is moisture, not the act of shaving.

My last razor lasted a year. And I had a photo shoot this morning, and the makeup artist knew I did this with the razors. And she says that this razor's done. Her opinion was, I wasn't going to make it a year with this one. This one's only going to make it, what, five months or whatever, that I needed to bail on it. But I'm not quite ready to give up on it. I'm kind of in pain just thinking about this.

I mean, I think I trade out my razor every couple of weeks. Yeah, and you're probably using one of those way overpriced multi-blade razors, right? Yes, I am. All right, so try it my way. This is like an intervention. Dry that blade for each time after you use it. Just dry it with the towel. Okay.

See if you don't stretch that two weeks to four or six without any nicks or cuts. I bet you that I'm going to save you money because where I pay 17 cents for a blade, you're throwing away $3 a blade and I feel really bad for you. Yeah, but I'm not cutting myself like I'm sure you are. I do not. As soon as I hit the point that I'm going to nick or cut, that blade's done. Now, that may take seven or eight months for that to happen, but at that point, I'll give up on that blade.

So, Clark, that was two years ago. And I want to tell you that I actually did take your advice, and I'm still on the same pack of razors that I was two years ago. So I am, I mocked you at the time, and I'm here to tell you, you were right. I was wrong and I have saved just countless hundreds of dollars over the last couple of years just by that tip. And by the way, it is something I tell all of my male friends that just like, no, no, trust me, this works. So I've- And I just saw, I got to tell you, I just saw a news report, I forget what newspaper I read it in,

that so many people are doing this now that it's hurting the sale of razor blades for Gillette and shit. that the words out that people know you just dry them and you can use them and use them and use them. Yeah, I was going to say, it's bad news for Gillette and Shick. And basically, if that's your business model, I feel like this is almost akin to the buggy whip industry 100 years ago. That it's just, it's only going to get worse as more and more people learn about this. And also, have you heard a dollar shave club? I have because their commercials online are hysterical. And if anyone hasn't seen them, just go to YouTube and type in Dollar Shave Club.

But yeah, I know people who do that as well. And so they're taking market share as well. And I understand some of the people that join Dollar Shave Club are really stretching a buck by they'll join it for a while, get a stack of blades. Then they suspend their membership. And they have enough blades to last them years and years. and they've saved a fortune. It works. I am living proof that your advice works.

We'll wrap up with a quick route of buy-seller hold. This was a hot investment a few years ago, but it's not as hot today. Buy-seller hold, gold. Hold. Do I get to say why? Absolutely. Okay. So gold is something that I have felt forever was overhyped.

It is something that if you have it is just a head. a portion of what you invest in, gold and precious metals, fine, because it does have some counter-cyclical nature to it. But people got into it almost like a religion in recent years. Value got driven down after the steam ran out of it. And so now, if you're already in it, I think it's a good time to hold, not sell or buy. It gives you two-day shipping on a number of items and access to a vast video library. Buy-seller hold an Amazon Prime membership. If you'll watch the movies that you can get with the Prime membership, absolutely buy.

On the other hand, if you're not into the video content that comes with Amazon Prime, pass because you'll do too much shopping on Amazon. And from our, I swear I am not making this up department, this performing artist just signed a deal to offer this. Buy-Seller Hold, the Justin Bieber debit card. Sell! Sell, sell, sell. It has enough fees for an army.

Should we be shocked that Bieber is hawking a debit card? No, you know, the Kardashians did that for a while, too. Some of the hip-hop artists have done it. And if anybody is in a position where they can't get a checking account or they don't want one, the best card out there is one that has no pizzazz to it. It's called Bluebird, and it's a joint venture of American Express. and Walmart, doesn't have all the junk fees that the others have, actually works as a substitute for a traditional checking account. The Bluebird would be a buy, Bieber is a sell.

The book is Clark Howard's Living Large for the Long Hall, Consumer-Tested ways to overhaul your finances, increase your savings, and get your life back on track. It is available everywhere. Check it out. Clark, always good to talk to you. Thanks. Great to visit with you. Thank you. I got about a minute left, so let me wrap up with a few housekeeping notes. You can follow the show on Twitter. At Motley Fool Money is our handle. That's all one word, at Motley Fool Money.

You can always drop us an email to Radio at Fool.com. Send us your questions, your comments. And if you have shaving tips, although it would be tough to beat the one that Clark shared with us. We also have a daily podcast if you want to check it out. Market Foolery. It's the number one rated business news podcast on iTunes. You can find it there and on stuff. Stitcher, Tune in, and various other places around the interwebs.

Market Foolery. Check us out when you get a chance. As always, the conversation continues 24-7 online at Fool.com. Hundreds of articles every day about the stocks on your watch list. That is going to do it for this edition of Motley Fool Money. The show is mixed by Rick Engahl. Our engineer is Steve Broido, and our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening.

We'll see you next week. I'm