• payscale.com - how does your salary compare with others in your field?

Health care is changing and it could have a major effect on you and your family, not to mention the entire country. Americans spend about 50 percent more on health care than any other country. Yet, lifespans are shorter here. Some folks are in favor of government-provided health care, but this concerns Clark. The government already pays for about half of health care in the country, so we’re already creeping toward socialism in health care. Clark would much rather see us go the other way, with individuals being in charge of their health care. Insurance companies should be required to sell standardized policies, which is a legitimate role of government. Clark thinks insurers should have about 8 to 10 policies and that’s it. You pick one, depending on how many people are in your family. Age and gender would also play a role because women go to the doctor more than men, as do older people.

Are you being paid a fair wage for what you do? There is a site where you can find out, according to Business 2.0 magazine. It’s called payscale.com. Once you go through the steps, the site will try to get you to purchase more products. But just keep hitting the “free” buttons and you’ll get a chart showing how you’re doing compared to other people in your field. It can also help business owners figure out what they should be paying workers. Now, any tool like this is not scientifically proven. But it is a great resource.

Last summer, Clark had an inkling that there was a scandal brewing on the college loan front. College administrators and financial aid officers have been taking various kinds of kick backs and, in turn, are ripping off students and their parents. The State Attorney of New York has found that perhaps hundreds of schools around the country have been “on the take.” Lenders visit the schools and convince the school employees to push that lender in return for trips and money. If your child’s school pushes one or two lenders in particular, or you are a student and are getting the hard sell, leave immediately. Shop around for yourself. One great place to check is myrichuncle.com. In addition, there should be some ethics policies put into place to stop this kind of activity. Congress will be holding hearings about this and Clark will keep you informed about what happens. He hopes that school officials and lenders who are in cahoots are charged criminally for this kind of activity in the future.

When Clark travels around, listeners always ask him what’s going on in the real estate market. There is some level of anxiety and he wants to put your mind at ease. Yes, people will lose their homes. In fact, projections are that between 1 million and 2 million households will have to go through foreclosure. That’s a conservative estimate. But there are more than 100 million households in the U.S., so in the overall picture it’s not a huge number. So where are we headed with housing? Most areas will see sluggish real estate markets for the next five to seven years. In other words, values won’t really go anywhere. Housing values and land values shot up way beyond their value in recent years, so the market is now taking a breath. If you have no need to move, it’s of no consequence to you. In fact, if property taxes are adjusted you will benefit. But for brand new subdivisions, and in the condo market in Florida and Washington D.C., there will be steep declines. If you are looking to buy either as a tenant or real estate investor, you will find great deals. Just make sure that if you buy troubled real estate at auctions, you keep your wits about you. People get so caught up in winning that they overbid. A deal on a home is 20 percent below market value. A deal on a condo is 30 percent below market value.