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Clark despises debit cards -- or what he calls "piece of trash fake Visa and fake Mastercards." The banks love debit cards because they make huge profits on them. Most of us have had the experience of making a purchase with a debit card and being asked if we want to do it as debit or credit. If you go for credit, the merchant will pay $1.50 in processing fees. If you opt for debit, the merchant may only pay 17 or 18 cents. So the merchants are always battling with the banks over the use of these cards. Sometimes the banks will even assess you a fee when you select the debit option for a purchase. Meanwhile, the September issue of Consumer Reports' Money Adviser states that your account is 17 times more likely to be hijacked if you go the credit route versus the debit option. But the debit option has other dangers. Certain banks now allow customers to use it to cover purchases that exceed their balance. The banks are all too happy to collect interest of around 1,000 percent on overdraft charges. So ultimately, it's your responsibility to not overdraw your account. Clark advises people to deduct your debit purchase from your account ledger right after making that purchase. It may be a hassle, but it will save you in the long run.

There are a few scenarios where consumers really have to be aware about the dangers of using of debit cards. These include paying for gas at the pump, paying your hotel bill during check-out and doing a car rental. If you use a debit card in any of these situations, you have to know that the bank will put a hold on your account for an amount that exceeds the total of the bill. So though you may only get $10 of gas, the bank may hold $100 -- and if you don't have a lot in your account, you may start bouncing checks. Also, when you use a debit card to pay for something now that you'll get later, you have no recourse if the merchant goes bust or your purchase never arrives in the mail. However you can dispute the charge if you use a credit card. The only time Clark thinks it might be advisable to use a debit card is if you're someone who has been in trouble with credit cards in the past and you habitually go into debt using them. Then the benefits may outweigh the risks.

Clark recently took his oldest child to college for the first time and came away with some musings about how much things have changed since he was in school. Back in the day, he went to campus with one trunk full of belongings. At his daughter's school, students showed up with fridges, microwaves, coordinated bedspreads and more. He even saw one student carrying in a 36-inch LCD hi-def TV. Meanwhile, everyone has cars on campus these days. When Clark was studying, freshmen weren't allowed to have vehicles. Sophomores could do so only with parental permission or if they had a job. Of course it goes without saying that when Clark was in college, there was no Internet, computers or cell phones. He used a typewriter and had one professor who did not allow papers to be turned in with any corrected letters on the page. If you made a mistake while typing -- even in the last sentence -- you had to start all over again.

Clark has one bit of advice for anyone who doesn't want to pay those hefty prices for college textbooks. His daughter's roommate spent $580 on books for class, while his daughter has to pay $135 for one book! Clark says to shop around for the books online. CheapestBookPrice.com, AllBookstores.com, Biblio.com, AbeBooks.com, A1Books.com, BookFinder.com, ValoreBooks.com and Textbook411.com are all good sites for this purpose. Amazon is also doing big business selling college text books, and there are some British book websites that offer science textbooks for about 40 percent off the domestic price (even when you factor in the cost of international shipping.) Don't buy your books before class starts. Go the first day and ask your professor if you can buy a prior edition and try to find it used.

Clark owns a mortgage that he collects payments on much like a bank would. Recently he's noticed that he is getting mail and phone calls from note buyers. These are people who are involved in the latest dare to be rich scheme. They've heard a pitch in a hotel ballroom somewhere about how you can score quick cash by approaching someone who owns a mortgage and offering to buy their note right now. They typically ask the note holder to sell his or her interest for anywhere between 70-90 cents on the dollar. Clark admits there is a very, very small legitimate business opportunity here. But most of these note-buying schemes are rip-offs.

On a related note, the median home price in the United States -- the level at which half of all homes are more expensive and half are less -- has declined this year for the first time since the feds started keeping records in 1950. Home prices are expected to get lower still in 2008 and even lower in 2009. There are some markets like Portland, Seattle and Charlotte, N.C., that are still increasing. But bubble markets such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, lots of California, lots of Florida, the Washington D.C. metro area and Boston are hurting. The only bubble market that hasn't burst yet is the New York metro area. Expect the average price of a home to decline about 1-2 percent per year for the foreseeable future. Just remember that you have nothing to fear if you're in a home and have no intention to move or sell. That being said, two million families will still be put out on the street this year alone. The only silver lining here is that the bulk of the foreclosures are not owner-occupied. They instead belong to speculative owners who may never have seen the properties they're losing. This housing "correction" is actually healthy because it will allow the country to get back to a place where home prices are more affordable to the average person. Finally, Clark denies that the media has caused the housing slump. The market is slumping because it was built on irrational loans that stretched people too far and too many houses going up on spec.

People have about a trillion dollars sitting in lousy checking accounts at banks. They're being hit with a lot of arbitrary fees for transactions and they're not getting a lot in return. The typical bank pays about .1 percent interest on such accounts -- that's one tenth of one percent. Bank of America, meanwhile, pays about .05 percent -- one twentieth of one percent interest! So Clark had been advising people to seek out a checking account from the online banks that pay higher returns. But if you don't like putting your money in cyberspace, Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab are now offering great checking account options too. Fidelity pays three-and-a-half percent on its mySmart Cash Account, while Schwab offers four-and-a-quarter on its checking account. You don't have to be an existing customer of either firm to participate. These options are FDIC insured and offer no fees, no minimum balance requirements and no ATM fees. Meanwhile, Clark's beloved credit unions are in this respect much like the conventional banks; they also offer puny interest rates. His credit union does, however, have one free checking option that you must ask for -- and it pays four percent interest. The bottom line is that you should consider switching your checking account if you're not happy with how your bank handles it.

Finally, Clark wants to clarify a point he made a few weeks ago when he was explaining money-market mutual funds. Some people thought Clark was saying that all money market accounts are risky. That's not the case. Find out what kind you've got. If it's legitimate and follows the "don't break the buck" principle -- offering a fixed share price of a dollar per share -- it should be a safe option.