ChoiceTrust - Run a background check on yourself, or someone else if you have permissible purpose.

Today's topics are "Best Of Clark" repeats from recent shows

Have you heard of do-it-yourself funerals? Christa, Clark's executive producer, found a story in The Eureka Times Standard about someone who did just that. The woman featured in the story took her recently deceased friend's body and had a private funeral. She then took the body to be cremated, as her friend wanted. Some people may think this is strange, but it's how things used to happen. People took care of each other in life and death, handling the burial of their family members. No funeral homes were needed. It would be difficult if want to donate your organs, but some people consider it much more personal. Be sure you talk to your family about what you want when you die. Otherwise, funeral homes will stick it to your family. Clark is a big proponent of joining a memorial society, which allows you to pay a lifetime fee and gets you a discount on funeral services when you die. The societies negotiate costs with funeral homes, so group buying power reduces the price. Find out more at The Funeral Consumers Alliance.

If you have a music CD, you can do several things with it. You can copy it, put it on your MP3 player or on your computer. What can you do with a DVD? Not a whole lot. The movie and entertainment industry pushed a law through Congress, deeming it unlawful to make copies of HD-DVDs and music DVDs. The industry is trying to put something back in a bottle that can't be put back. In retaliation, techies have published a code on the web that essentially allows people to copy items and dismantles the block that the movie industry has installed. Clark loves that people are fighting back. Consumers buy this property and it's up to them what they do with it.

About two years ago, Clark first started talking about clinics where you can go to see a medical professional without an appointment. Big retail chains like Wal-Mart and Target sometimes have such places on premises. What you usually do is speak with a nurse practitioner, not an actual doctor. But they're affordable and a good choice if you have a very routine medical concern. The drugstores chains have also jumped on the idea of these in-store clinics because they help create an instant market for their own pharmacy counters. The latest development now is that Wal-Mart has announced plans to establish 2,000 of these "doc-in-a-box" practices in its stores.

Clark loves the idea of having a one-stop shop option in the medical field. Up until now, the medical profession has been very slow to embrace change in the marketplace. That's why the healthcare experience for the average American includes going to the doctor's office across town, getting a handwritten prescription and then running all the way back across town to the pharmacy just to wait to have it filled. That's a very inefficient process that's not customer friendly. This new wave of in-store clinics promises to help shake up the medical field. And because they take up very little real estate in a retail store, Clark believes they're the wave of the future. Whether it's a good or bad future remains to be seen; at the very least, the clinics will help alleviate the crunch in hospital emergency rooms.

Clark frequently fields one question from the public when he's on the road during his book tours: "When is it right for me to lease a vehicle?" With the leasing market up about 25 percent year over year, it's a great time to address this question again. There are two circumstances when doing a lease is acceptable: The first is if you like new wheels all the time and you only want to worry about gas, oil changes and routine maintenance on your vehicle. Then it's OK to lease a new car every two or three years, but no longer than that. The second instance is when luxury automakers offer factory-subsidized leases where they eat a lot of the cost. Luxury automakers hate to cheapen their brands with a bona fide sale, so often they offer such leases to help move extra product. But other than in these two circumstances, don't lease. And stay away from four or five year leases unless you want to face financial Armageddon, Clark says.

Meanwhile, the strong growth in leases means that in a few years there will be great deals on two and three year old cars when they enter the used auto market. Clark is a big fan of used cars, but be aware that you must always have them inspected by an independent mechanic before you buy. Finally, beware of one cousin of the long-term lease -- the balloon loan. This is the kind that starts with an extra cheap monthly payment, but at the end of five or six years you may owe the lender up to $10,000 or even $15,000. And by then, your vehicle's worth won't be able to keep up with that inflated balloon rate.

More than 70 million Americans have no option for saving for retirement at work, according to The Los Angeles Times. And what happens when we don't have options? We don't do anything about it. One reason is inertia. People just can't get motivated to do things on their own -- so they get stuck. But another reason is because all of the plans can be quite confusing. Clark calls it "Alphabet Soup." The good news is that you can now set up an automatic draft program to fund a Roth IRA. TIAA-CREF and Vanguard have great plans. So, set it up and then you can forget all about it. Just make sure it becomes automatic for you.

About 96 percent of employers are screening employees these days before hiring them, according to recent statistics. That would not be a bad thing if the information they're getting were true. According to a public interest research group, approximately three-quarters of credit reports have errors on them. Those errors can mean higher interest rates, dropped insurance or even loss of a job. What can you do? Spy on yourself first! A company called ChoiceTrust offers all kinds of background reports and screenings. You can even get a "CLUE" report there. Check out our list of resources for running your own check.