Zenni Optical - Get complete prescription eyeglasses from $8 (Editor's note: This website was unavailable at last check.)
The Timeshare User's Group - Get consumer-oriented info on timeshares
RateMDs.com - Allows patients to rate and read about their doctors and dentists
Landlord.com - Provides services to landlords and other real estate professionals online

In the time-honored tradition of the "What I Did on Summer Vacation" essay, Clark opened the show today by talking about how he spent the summer break. This summer found Clark and his family at their beach home in Florida quite a bit. They also took a trip to San Francisco, where Clark and his wife visited relatives and did a lot of walking. Now that his family's vacation time has winded down, reality has set in especially hard for his teenage daughter. She's off at college for the first time this year. Unfortunately, she got a $77 parking ticket during her first day on campus because she didn't have a parking pass. Talk about the school of financial hard knocks! On a related note, Clark often chides his daughter when he sees her with bottled water. There was a recent study that compared the cost of drinking bottled water to the cost of drinking tap water. Consuming tap water will run you about 49 cents for the entire year, while drinking the same amount of bottled water will burn a $1,400 hole in your wallet! Many people still prefer bottled water to tap water because of taste and/or safety issues. In fact, Clark's beach home has notoriously bad tasting tap water. His solution? Just use a relatively inexpensive filtration system to clean up your tap water and make it taste great. Clark wants everyone to consider this option -- especially as more and more brands like Aquafina and Dasani are revealed to just be tap water in a fancy bottle with a huge price markup. Who wouldn't want to save $1,400 a year?

It's no secret that right now it's a tough time in the housing market for sellers and a confusing one for buyers. If you're selling and you have a lot of foreclosures in your neighborhood, you've probably noticed the value of your home declining. And if you're buying, you're facing a variety of exotic weirdo loans with adjustable interest rates, option payments and more. But relief may be around the corner in a market phase called capitulation. Look at markets like Denver, Salt Lake City, Houston and Southern California. These are all places that suffered through a bad real estate depression, but recovered and thrived. How did they make a comeback? Well, the ultimate measure of whether or not a real estate market will thrive is job growth.

It's also important to remember that the mortgage market is not a monolith and some segments are already in good shape. For those with decent credit seeking a conventional 15, 20 or 30 year loan, the rates are now lower than they were just a few weeks ago. What it comes down to is that a lot of speculative markets had bubble growth and it will take time for them to unwind. So if you're considering buying a home before the year is out, you may want to just wait a little bit longer until 2008. Likewise if you're in a cold climate, once winter comes there will be more opportunity, according to Clark. Think of the push toward capitulation like a baseball game; right now we're in the third inning of a nine-inning game, Clark says.

Clark has often talked about how free meal seminars offered by annuity salespeople are to be avoided at all costs -- unless you want to get indigestion in your wallet for the rest of your life. An annuity is basically an insurance contract. The money you put in is not taxed until you spend it. Salespeople love to sell them because they get giant commissions. In fact, the commission is so large that it's hard for even a decent person to avoid the temptation of selling this garbage. Now The Wall Street Journal reports that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Allianz. This German-based company has been selling equity index annuities to older people via seminars, infomercials and free-dinner events.

Equity index annuities promise a portion of the gain of the stock market, while assuring holders against losses. They offer the allure of getting money without risk. But Clark thinks they're a piece of trash because all insurance companies cheat you on the gain -- only giving you a tiny portion of the actual gain in return for their guarantee of safety against market loss. Worse still, you usually have to stay in for 15 or more years to get the benefit. So salespeople target senior citizens, who may not live long enough to qualify for the guarantee. And if you are lucky enough to get wise to how bad equity index annuities can be, you may lose between 10 and 15 percent in penalty fees for surrender if you try to get out. Regulators across the country are calling this an instance of fraud. As Clark says, the "just say no" rule applies here to these free meal seminars.

There are some new technological developments that Clark is very excited about. Say, for example, you want hi-speed internet. If you call your phone company to get it, you'll find out that you must purchase a landline as a prerequisite. The phone monopolies think they're smart pushing obsolete landline technology on consumers who want modern DSL. But the phone companies are just outsmarting themselves. When younger customers seek DSL, they don't even think about installing a phone line. They simply go through their cable companies and sidestep companies like AT&T and Verizon completely. So AT&T is now experimenting with offering what's called naked DSL that stands alone without having the requirement of a landline.

The Chicago Tribune reports AT&T will roll out a naked DSL trial service -- priced between $20 and $24 -- in Chicago; Austin, Texas; and Jacksonville, Florida. If it succeeds, look for it in other markets soon. Meanwhile, if you're a former Bell South (now AT&T) customer, you'll be eligible for naked DSL by December at the latest. That's as per a contractual agreement between the two companies. On another technological front, The New York Times reports that Time Warner is going to offer free DVRs in South Carolina that allow you to watch TV when you want -- only you can't skip the commercials like you would on TiVo. It's like renting your eyeballs, so to speak, to advertisers in return for free DVR service. Will this business model survive in the marketplace? Only time will tell.