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Clark is usually no friend of Bank of America. Need we remind you of the Matthew Shinnick debacle -- when BoA had the San Francisco man imprisoned on false check fraud charges and then didn't pay his legal fees or even apologize? But today Clark refuses to join the chorus of boos rising across the country as people take BoA to task for their new rip-off ATM fees. The mega-bank is now charging non-customers who use one of their ATMs a fee of three dollars. Clark thinks that if BoA wants to rip you off, it is their right; that's how the free market functions. If they want to raise the charge to five or 10 bucks, Clark thinks that's fine too. The last time he paid an ATM fee was on June 16, 1996, in Moab, Utah. The merchants in that town didn't take credit cards, so Clark went to each bank in the area and found the cheapest ATM fee -- one dollar. He jokes that he then had to skip a meal to make up for paying the fee!

Clark remembers the days when ATMs first came out and surcharges were 25 cents. Now he hears they're as much as five dollars in casinos. But you can easily avoid rip-off charges if you only use ATMs that belong to your bank or credit union. Publix has its own ATMs that many people use for free because the regional supermarket chain has partnered with hundreds of financial institutions. So nobody on Capitol Hill should be talking about imposing price controls on ATM charges, according to Clark. If you choose to use an unauthorized cash machine, you must pay the price. Finally, Clark thinks the timing of BoA's new move is very interesting. Banks tend to raise their fees twice a year -- in August and December. They do this just in time for summer vacation and the holidays. Those are the two times of year when people usually don't watch their accounts too closely. So this latest BoA surcharge is a just little August surprise from the company!

How much of your retirement money should you put into your employer's stock? Not one single cent, according to Clark. Clark recalls when he first learned that companies were pushing their workers to put their 401(k) money in employer stock or only offering the company match when employees invested in their stock. It was back in the 1990s and he was speaking about retirement savings at a tech company. When he started talking about employer stock, there was a murmur that ran through the crowd. It turned out almost all 600 employees put a big chunk into their company stock. When the dot.com era went bust, those workers lost 90 percent of retirement savings. More recently you had the same thing happen during the Enron and WorldCom scandals.

The latest news in this arena now comes from Countrywide Home Loans. The nation's largest independent mortgage lender is facing a lawsuit because it required employees to receive their match in company stock. Countrywide also allegedly pushed employees to put their own money in company stock. As the mortgage mammoth's profitability has declined, its employees' retirement stashes are now in danger. Why the SEC hasn't outlawed company stock from retirement options is beyond Clark. He advises people who have been contributing to company stock to stop, and instead put their money in a targeted retirement portfolio option. This will adjust your risk based on the years you have left until retirement. Half of your money should be in a total stock market plan, so you don't have all of your eggs in one basket. You may also want to check out some overseas mutual funds since the capitalist market is expanding abroad rapidly. Clark wants you to spread your retirement investments among hundreds of companies instead of gambling on just one -- the one where you get a paycheck.

There's a new development in the banking world that Clark is excited about. For years, airlines have had great success buying customer loyalty through frequent flyer programs. Now Capital One has a new program that's built on the same idea. The company offers a Rewards Money Market Account that earns 4.66 percent -- slightly lower than Capital One's normal rate of five percent. But you can get travel rewards based on how much money you have in the account and how long you keep it there. The best part is that when you redeem your points, you're not locked into one level or rate of ticket. So if you can find a super cheap travel deal, you'll get the ticket and also get to keep the points you might otherwise have "spent" on a ticket of average price. It's like being rewarded for being a good airfare shopper. This is a potential win-win situation all the way around. Look for similar loyalty programs from banks and credit unions in the future. As Clark says, they're all about the "sticky," which means they're always trying to come up with new ways to retain you as a customer.

Have you noticed that car rental rates have dropping recently? Now that fall is arriving, there are very few leisure renters in the marketplace. So that drives prices down. Also, Clark's been seeing a lot of coupons that offer things like $25 off a rental or 20 percent off the entire bill. The easiest way to get these coupons is to sign up online with the individual car-rental companies.

Clark rents cars up to 40 or 50 times a year, so he's very interested in a new Hertz sub-brand that he read about in The Orlando Sentinel. Simply Wheelz is a discount Hertz company doing a trial run in Orlando -- the world's largest leisure car rental market. Weekly rentals are less than $100! Clark believes that Simply Wheelz is patterned after Europe's easyCar. You book online and use an automatic rental machine to get your vehicle -- the whole process is automated and there's no human interaction. Hertz is hoping Simply Wheelz will give it an edge over Enterprise, which is usually 30 percent cheaper head-to-head at the airports.