This Week’s Best Ask Clark's: Hearing Aids, Insurance, & Car Buying!

Hey, Fran in Florida says, are airline ticket consolidators worth looking into for international flights? And if so, who do you recommend? I don't recommend any consolidators because it's kind of like buying a junk bond. You may get a better deal, but it comes with heightened risk. Consolidators are used to be a really, really big part of international travel because international airfares, even way after we deregulated domestic airfares, international airfares were set by a cartel setting organization called IATA, International Air Transport Association. They're just a lobbying and trade association now. But long ago, they would set these fares. And so consolidators were people who had the airline ticket stock and had an under the table deal with an airline that could write them at cheaper fares. None of that exists anymore. So a consolidator is someone who has some kind of crazy under the table thing where supposedly they can write cheaper tickets. But a lot of times, the worst problems people have is when they use one of these organizations. So you got to really know who you're dealing with and be comfortable with the risks associated with them, which brings me to what happens when you're looking at fares like on a kayak search or many times on a Google search. You'll see on an international fare search, these prices listed with who knows who those people are and often they come under that umbrella of consolidators. And I'll tell you the consumer problems people have, customer no service problems, using those UFOs, to me, they are not worth the savings. Yeah. And you like to save money. I do like to save. No way. Alex in Florida says, I usually go to Europe once a year and have been exchanging US dollars to euros with an app called Revolut. Exchanging at the airport is the worst and local banks tend to make a big, take a big cut. I keep an eye on the exchange rates throughout the year and try to exchange when the US dollar is strong to get the most value. I know there are many other apps out there, but I would like to know which is best with the lowest international transfer fees. I do like that I can have my Revolut digital cash card in my Google wallet. Other than that, I don't need any of the other stuff. So Revolut, as I've mentioned in the past, and people who have Revolut accounts like I do as well, received a very confusing notice about Revolut changing who they work with in the United States. As best I can tell, it's of no significance to those of us with Revolut accounts. You get extremely favorable, fantastic exchange rates using Revolut or carrying the Revolut card. It works like a stored value card and you can get ATM money with it and stuff like that. And their big competitor for money transfer is Wise, Wise money transfer. Any of these work so vastly superior to anybody ever going into any bank in the United States and ever getting any foreign currency. It's like the bankers get up in the morning and say, how can we cheat Americans more? And I don't think they cheat us any more than they do on foreign currency exchange in the United States. So the best thing to do other than Revolut or something like Wise, when you're traveling overseas, have a credit card that doesn't charge foreign currency junk fees. We have an extensive list at Clark.com. They're very common today. Or use an ATM card that doesn't charge you junk fees. My favorite for that that's worked so well for years is the Charles Schwab card. Those of you USAA have had great success with their card for getting money from ATMs. So there are ways you don't necessarily have to get ripped off when you're outside the United States and you need foreign currency or you need to buy things in a foreign country. But there are a lot of people out there trying to rip you off. The beauty of Revolut is their entire architecture from the ground up is about not ripping you off. Judy in Kentucky says, how do consumers navigate the routine versus diagnostic billing nightmare of the medical industry? I went in for a routine mammogram and bone density test. For the bone density test, since the radiologist determined I have osteopenia, they said that it shifted the coding from routine, which would be 100% covered by insurance as preventative, to diagnostic, I have to pay. Is this really the intent of the Affordable Care Act? Absolutely not. I didn't go to the radiology center to diagnose any problem, only to have my routine annual physical scans done as part of my annual physical. It would seem the bill should reflect the initial reason for the visit, not the outcome of the testing. Can I challenge this? Thanks for all you and your team do. Yes, polite persistence pays in a case like this and you'll need to work hard with the practice to get them to recode. I don't know if they somehow make more money by the recode or not. It's possible they make a lot more from it and they say, oh well, as a courtesy, we will relieve you of your co-pay on this because it's possible that the amount they made from the recoding is so much larger that that's why they did that. But no, you should not suffer when you went in for a routine test just to make sure you were okay to suddenly have it recoded and the joke's on you with you having to pay out of pocket. Jamie in Nevada says, I filed a homeowner's insurance claim in 2023 that the insurer fully paid. However, my policy renewal shows a 52% premium increase for the upcoming year. Should I stop shop competitors now to see if I can get a better rate or should I wait until more time has elapsed since the claim? Okay, so this is a good question. This is a great question, Jamie. All right, so that claim you have is on an industry database, what I call the bad boy, bad girl database where it shows that you had a claim which means your insurer thinks they got you right where they want you. But the increase that they imposed is so large, it's worth it for you to shop that homeowner's policy and see what others will write the equivalent coverage for, the same coverages as you have now. The thing you said about time, yes, the impact of that claim being on your record becomes less important with time, but right now you're facing this 52% increase. So I think it's well worth you shopping it. Also, I don't know if you've called your insurer and said, hey, what happened here? How did I get this 52% increase? Is there anything we can do about it? And you may qualify just by asking, you may qualify for something lower than what they're now quoting you. Wade in California says, should I buy the CarMax Extended Warranty for the car we just purchased? It's a 2023 Mazda CX50 2.5 Turbo. So if you look on reviews people have posted about the CarMax Extended Warranty, it's no better than what people say about others. There are people who've been really happy they had it, but overall the reviews are not awesome. There's nothing about CarMax that makes it a scam. It's just so often the hype with any kind of Extended Warranty exceeds what they actually provide as a benefit. My general advice has been when you buy a car at CarMax or Carvana, people think they don't need to have it inspected if they buy it from them. That's actually the next question. Oh, then I'll hold off and talk about that next. It's okay, but you always recommend the Manufacturer's Warranty, not... Manufacturer's Warranty. So this is a 2023 Mazda. You could, before the Mazda, this is a three-year warranty, you can almost certainly buy an extension of that in the Mazda brand product and I would compare what it offers versus the CarMax. I don't like third-party warranties. I'm not thrilled with the manufacturer-owned ones, but those have tended to be much more useful for people. Okay, and Dan in Florida, what is your opinion about buying an almost-new vehicle on CarMax or Carvana, sight unseen? Is there a product inspection good enough to be confident in making the purchase? That's interesting because I started to, and you stopped me. Yeah, that's not good enough. That, you know, CarMax and Carvana say we've done blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This car is great. They may even believe it to be great but may have missed something. With CarMax and Carvana, depending on which one and where you are in the country, Carvana gives you seven days to return a vehicle for any reason. CarMax, depending on the market, up to 30 days. Use that time to have it inspected by a mechanic of your choosing. If the vehicle's really new though, if it's a model year 24, 23, not a lot of miles on it, you're not as worried about the mechanical, you're more worried if it's been in an accident that they missed at CarMax or Carvana. Going to a body shop and paying them to check the integrity of the vehicle and check to see if it's been in any kind of serious accident would be really money well spent. But for one that's older, more miles on it, having it checked out by a mechanic of your choosing is money very well spent because you've got that time period, you can wind back the clock, give it back to them and get your money back. And that's really wonderful than later finding out, oops, this vehicle's got a lot of problems with it. Aaron in Minnesota wrote in. He said, my family made a goal of downsizing this year. We sold a lot of items on eBay and Facebook Marketplace. Both of these companies will be sending me a 1099 for our 2024 sales activity. Most of these items will have been sold at a loss, but we do not have purchase receipts anymore to prove it. Are there any best practices for us to use in order to lessen the potential tax exposure for this? Since we're not making a profit, I'd hate to have to pay tax on these sales. Okay, so there's so many people that sell personal items on eBay or through Facebook Marketplace or whatever, but they're selling enough stuff that they're going to generate enough potentially to get a 1099. And the IRS recognizes that if you're not running this as a business and they're personal possessions, there's a procedure where you come up with your best guesstimate of what the value of each item is. And you have like, okay, so I sold this, this best I can remember this kind of thing costs blah, blah, blah, when I bought it. And you can demonstrate to them that you can offset the 1099 with the costs you had on the items and report no income from those. The IRS has a publication that's not that hard to weed your way through. If I remember right, it's 551 that we were talking about this before when people were freaking out about all these 1099s and you will not have to pay tax. And of the things you're going to get, you're going to be a potential target for any kind of audit. This is not it when it involves a very low dollar amount. If you're reporting, getting a 1099 that reports, let's say tens of thousands of dollars of revenue, then there's going to be more scrutiny on you. But if it's just enough that you might have generated a 1099 and you keep whatever records you can generate, you should absolutely be fine. What are his thoughts on the new PayPal debit card that provides a 5% rebate on selected purchase categories? Okay. So as long as you understand the risk with a debit card and you're chill with that, you can do it. So with a PayPal linked debit card, the only money at risk is the money you have available on your account. Debit cards tied into a checking account that you pay your mortgage from or car payment or rent big expenses and your payroll goes into it and stuff like that. That's playing with dynamite because you have so much money at risk. If the debit card is paying these on these select categories and you're disciplined and you only use the card for those categories and you're comfortable again with the that if somebody gets your number and uses it, your money disappears, then you have to fight with PayPal to get your own money back. The advantage of credit cards is there's only a charge there. No money of yours has left the building. Your money is still there. So that's why I call them a piece of trash because the debit card is so anti-consumer. In this case, if you go in eyes wide open and you protect yourself by not having too much money at risk in the account, I think it's great. Norman in Georgia says, what Garmin device does Clark wear to detect a fall? There are many on the market. So my Garmin device does not. All right, so those of you on the YouTube show will see there's something really wrong. We'll get a lot of questions about the number. I wear two watches. So this is not really a watch, although it does tell time, I think. Yeah, so this is my Garmin fitness tracker and I've been in the Garmin orbit for 15 years and I'm obsessed with fitness and even though I'm far from an athlete, I'm obsessed with fitness and Garmin, in my opinion, is the best at it. And what's that model? I have no idea. The cheapest one you could get? It was on sale and it just does the thing. That doesn't detect falls. And today it's very unhappy with my step count. Okay. And it only has my goal today, 16,380 steps. Wow, slacker. You're really slacker. I try to be 18,000 a day. The other I wear is the latest Samsung watch. It's the 7, I think is the number they're on. This one does fall detection and when we were moving recently and packing boxes and carrying boxes, it kept thinking I was falling and it kept asking if I wanted it to call, it was going to call 911, tell them where I was and I had to cancel it out and hope that sirens weren't suddenly heard in the distance. So there are a number of devices that do it now, but if Garmin's into that, I plead ignorance. I didn't even know that they were doing that. My Samsung does it for me. It's very sensitive to me thinking that I've had a fall. And the Apple watches do that as well. Apple watches were, I guess, the pioneers in doing that. Caroline in Florida says, what and where, in your opinion, is the best place to get a hearing aid for the value? And who would you recommend if it was for your mom? So Caroline, I've got a change in my answer on this and that is I am so excited for people who and what Apple has done with the AirPod 2 Pros, Pro 2s, whichever way you say it, that are FDA certified as hearing aids for minor to moderate hearing loss. I don't know where your mom is in the spectrum of hearing loss. If it's significant hearing loss, it would be a great idea to have her hearing checked by an audiologist. And Costco now, see my Costco people, they now sell, they have the largest share of hearing aids sold in the United States, far and away. And for traditional hearing aids, their prices are generally one-fourth of what the traditional industry price has been. So the test here at Costco is free. If the hearing loss is found to be mild or moderate, you could start if your mom's an iPhone user. You could have her start with the AirPod 2s. And the improvement in quality of life is so significant. I think the reason I'm so excited about the Apple thing is they're following Bose. Bose did this years ago but never established mind share with people that Apple can because of its installed base in the United States. And so many people of all ages wear those funny looking things coming out of their ears that nobody even looks twice at it. And it is an actual real hearing aid that can make life so much better, particularly in a situation where there's a lot of ambient noise around where you are. But I wouldn't, unless you know it's very mild, I wouldn't start with those until you've had a hearing test. And again, I'm a strong believer in Costco being the best place in America to have your hearing checked out.