Motley Fool Money - Motley Fool Money: 11.29.2013

Episode Date: November 26, 2013

On this week's show, we eat some humble pie, share some stocks we're thankful for, and talk about a few turkeys.   And best-selling author and radio host Clark Howard serves up some advice from his book, Living Large for the Long Haul. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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If you're 45 or older and at average risk, ask your health care provider about the KolaGard test. KoloGard is available by prescription only. Learn more or request a prescription today at KolaGar.com slash screen. Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money. From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. Welcome to Motley Fool Money.

Thanks for being here. I'm your host, Chris Hill. Joining me in studio this week from Motley Pool 1, Jason Moser, from Fool.com, Matt Copenhefer, and from Million Dollar portfolio, Ron Gross. Good to see you guys. That is our Thanksgiving weekend special. Already? Steve Roydo. We haven't even starred.

It's going to talk about an itchy trigger thing. It's fair to say that on a show that really doesn't have a lot, and by that I mean any special effects, Steve gets excited the one show during the year when we have. It's an actual live turkey. You just keep strangling it. Does he have like a Santa's Bells thing when Christmas comes around? Absolutely. Nice. So we're going to give thanks for a few stocks. We're going to call out a few turkeys.

But we begin this week, guys, with a serving of humble pie. Our colleague Charlie Travers suggested this topic. Notice, he's not in the room right now. But I thought it was a good one to explore, because we have talked many times in the past about bricks and mortar retailers, how a lot of them are really under the gun as a business. And yet, when you look at shares of Radio Shack, GameStop, and Best Buy, in 2013, Ron, these... What are you going to meet first? I'm just saying, Radio Shack beating the market in 2013. GameStop up more than 100%. And Best Buy is up more than 200 percent this year, it is one of the best performing stocks in the S&P 500. I'm going to say two things, Chris.

Okay. One is that it is important to go back over things you've said, especially if you're in the business of doing it professionally, and looking at mistakes you made or things that you didn't get quite right. Having said that, Mr. Hill, what I would say is stocks that you mentioned, you were taking very high degrees of risk, and you would expect those stocks to outperform the most of the market if they work or go out of business if they don't. So you were not just investing in a blue chip company that outperform the market. You were investing in very high-risk companies.

Jason, is this a situation where, hey, broken clock, it's going to be right twice a day? Well, I would jump in and say that rather than, I mean, it's fun to look back on what we've said about these companies all year long. Yeah, I mean, I think Ron's point is well taken. It's very helpful to look at any mistakes you may have made to try to help shape your thinking in the future. But investing is about the future. And so when I hear those kinds of things, I look at these companies, the three that you mentioned in GameStop and Radio Shack and Best Buy, you know, and I ask myself a question, would I invest in those companies today? And the answer is still, no, I wouldn't touch any of the three. I mean, they've had great years. But, I mean,

this is, I think, it's been a rising time that has lifted virtually every boat with the fact that we've had such a big refinancing boom taking place. It has never been cheaper. Unemployment is coming back around. But I think what we've had is we've had a decent enough environment for consumers to spend. And that's what these are. They're consumer-facing stocks. And so, yeah, it's a rising tide that has lifted all boats. And I think that when you look at the end of the day, certainly Radio Shag is probably the scariest of the three. But I don't see any reason really long term for something like a GameStop or even a Best Buy to succeed at this level.

You agree with that, Matt? Let me just interpret what Jason just said in terms of the rising tide, lifting all boats. He's saying all stocks are going up, so investors have finally gotten to the point where we're like, we can't bid up anything else. What is left here? It's just these that have been left for dead. Let's go ahead and buy them. It's like the 75-foot yachts coming up, but so is that little five-foot dingy with the

barnacles on the bottom. It's, you know, Buffett likes to say there are no called strikes in investing. If you look back at every single uptick in a stock that you missed out on and try to read something into it and recalibrate what you're doing in your own investing, you're going to drive yourself crazy. I'm not touching any of these. Ron, I'm guessing you're not touching any of these either. No, I think they're all just too risky. Best Spy, actually, I think, has done a really good job in reinventing itself a bit and improving the customer service aspects of the company. I used to cringe when I would walk in there. You'd get no help, no advice. And as people call it, you know, the showroom for Amazon.com. It really was that. Lately, I've noticed an improvement there, and perhaps the stock is reflecting that. So unlike Walmart, that's actually a story you've actually set foot in.

How dare you. All right. Let's just go down the table. As I said, it's Thanksgiving weekend. One stock that you are thankful for, Ron Gross. What is it and why? Perhaps uncharacteristically for me, Chris. I'm actually very thankful for Facebook this year. It's a company that we didn't want any part of at the IPO, and that was certainly bungled. We waited. We were patient. At its low of, you know, in the 22s, I think it was a real great buy.

We were happy with our $27 purchase. It's done really great for us. It's up, you know, maybe 70 percent almost for the year. We're up maybe 60 percent for the year in a million dollar portfolio on it. And we were just really patient and it's performed well. Your evaluation guy is the valuation starting to get a little price. We still think it has upside because of the optionality of all the things that Facebook could become in the future. For a real strict value guy, optionality is tough because you can't

really put your finger on it. But when you start to think like a David Gardner or a rule breaker, you could see many different things that Facebook could do in the future that would make the stock still attractive here. Matt Copenhefer. What do you got? Amazon.com. Not because I own it, though I wish I did. I think there are a lot of fools, a lot of full services that have done quite well owning Amazon. But Jeff Bezos gives me so much hope that things could be different in the investing world. For years and years and years, Bezos has basically been ignoring the quarterly dance that most companies have to do,

where they have their earnings, and hopefully they beat it by one penny and made everybody really happy. Bezos is focused on building Amazon into the best company that it can be, investing back in the company where he sees opportunity as opposed to. to trying to get that bottom line just right for Wall Street, it would be fantastic if more companies could think like that and act like that. And maybe they'll watch Bezos and do that. One can only hope. One can only hope. And here I was thinking for sure you would have picked a bank of some sort.

Bank of America was my next choice. Of course it was. Jason Moser, one stock you're thankful for? Well, since Matt has already called out Amazon, I'm going to cheat here a little bit and say that I have one personally and one professionally. Personally, Amazon.com for sure. I mean, it's one that I own. I have enjoyed watching this business. Had to rub that in my face, didn't you? Well, it was certainly not, there was not the intention. But with that said, it's definitely taken up a larger size of my portfolio. And a note too self, I probably want to look

at rebalancing here in the next few weeks. But professionally, I would say Chipotle, Mexican Grill, you know, that's one that back in October of last year, when we saw all the calls out there to short the stock and concerns of growth, the stock got hammered. And I had done a lot of research on it. Beat the drum pretty hard with Tom Gardner and getting at the EP in Motley Fool 1, and we did so. It has been a nice clean double for us since we got it in there. And so professionally, it's been a very rewarding investment, and I think that the best is still yet to come. You can always drop us an email.

Radio at Fool.com is our email address. That's Radio at Fool.com. We talked last week about Campbell's Soup and asked people to weigh in with some thoughts on soup. Send us their favorites. From Carl Nicholas, he just wrote simply, Bean with Bacon. That's it. Just one. From Troy Adamson in Vancouver, Canada.

He wrote, I love soup, but it's almost impossible to find any Campbell's product that doesn't have MSG in it. And finally, from George Tucker, he wrote, my family is anti-soup generally. No one likes soup but me, but then again, I run the family portfolio. I like that. That's a little, a little bit. An anti-soup family. Yeah, a little bit of a threat there, I think, from. from George to the rest of his family. All right, we got just a few minutes left. It's that time that our engineer, Steve, has been waiting for all year.

One turkey out there in the investing world for this Thanksgiving weekend. It can be a stock. It can be a business leader. Ron Gross, what do you go? Oh, come on. How could it not be JCPenny? Just a disaster, down 54% this year. Off its lows of $6 back into the nine, so you could have got a dead cat bounce there if you really watched it closely, but pretty much nothing has gone well for. Daisy Petty. Matt Copanever, one turkey? Actually, I like J.P. Morgan as an investment, but clearly this has been a big turkey situation. $13 billion in fines. Obviously didn't do what it needed to do when it bought Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns. And Diamond, Jamie Diamond, CEO, from first to worst.

Turkey. Big turkey. Great hair, though. Great. Oh, that hasn't changed. Still has the great hair. We're going to bring our man, Steve, in, to judge a winner here in just a second. But Jason Moser, what do you got?

turkey for the year? So we've all heard the saying, better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. I think that Abercrombie and Fitch's CEO, Mike Jeffries, has certainly removed all doubt this year. Remember, he's the one that said, we hire good-looking people in our stores because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool good-looking people. We don't want to market to anyone other than that. That's just, that's not too cool. I think he's a big fat turkey for it. You know, that mayor in Toronto Rob Ford has been in the news lately. Oh, that's a good one.

And he kind of reminds me of the Abercrombie CEO, minus the allegations around drugs. But just sort of the bull in the China shop can't get out of his own way and really just needs to stop talking. Did you see the Ford Chris Farley mashup video on YouTube? I can imagine. I'm telling you listeners, get out there, Google it and watch it. Steve Broido, we got about 90 seconds left. Do you have a...

I mean, you're a very avid investor yourself. Do you have a stock you're thankful for? or a turkey that you'd like to call out in the business world? Intuitive surgical is not, it's not been a good year. For intuitive surgical, unfortunately. So that would be a turkey. I'm going to go with Ron if I'm voting for one. I think J.C. Penny has been a very, very troubled company.

And I don't know what they were doing in the last year or two. It just seems like a total nightmare. What's your holiday shopping strategy, as we are now full on into the holiday shopping season? You don't seem like the kind of guy who's necessarily gearing up to go to the mall. You seem like more of I'm just going to sit at my computer and do some e-commerce. Absolutely. I don't know why anyone would go to the stores, really. Maybe the deals are that good, but not for me.

I'm staying home. Do you think that's part of J.C. Penny's problem? Is people like you? It probably is. I am the problem. That's not the first time you've heard that, is it, Steve? Sure, true. What about that, Ron?

We've talked before, the holiday retail. We've got the shortest season in a decade. Do you share my sense of dread for this season for some retailers out there? Certain retailers, absolutely. There are, the numbers don't look so bad in the aggregate. It seems like we're going to see growth after over the last holiday season, but it's going to be selected. I think the lower, you know, as we've talked about, the bifurcation a lot, the lower, the discount retailer should have trouble. And some niche apparel retailers will have big trouble.

Coming up, one of the interviews from this past year that I am most thankful for, bestselling author and radio host, Clark Howard, serves up some advice from his latest. book, Living Large for the Long Hall. You're listening to Motley Full 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 bestselling author. And his 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. 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 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. And I'm in 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 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.

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. Coming up, more with Clark Howard. Stere it here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. If you got the money, honey, I've got the time. We'll go home from talking now. You're listening to Motley Full Money talking with Clark Howard.

His new book is Living Large for the Long Hall. 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, do you have, do you have, 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 the 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. 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 pair back your transportation costs, you open up a whole bunch of money that you can put to work in your 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 of cost for maintenance, repairs, energy, everything involved in maintaining a home because a home essentially depreciates. You know, 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 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? Didn'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, 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 condition 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-year-old money when she's going somewhere, and I always tell her keep the change. The reason I do that is that 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. 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 at 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 is complimentary. forget. 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'd been like that couple in southern 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. Just a walking in the rain and soaking wet. 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 consider 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 clip. 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 nix 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 Schick. 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. My 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 as just a hedge, a portion of what you invest in, gold and precious metals, fine, because it does have some countercyclical nature to it. But people got into it almost like a religion in recent years. Value got driven down after the... 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 hocking a debit card? No, you know, the Kardashians did that. for a while to 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 haul, 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.

All right. 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 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 Full Money. The show is mixed by Rick Engdal. Our engineer is Steve Broido, and our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.