IRS.gov -- Download Form 9465 and file for a repayment plan

Many years ago, Clark saw a bumper sticker that read, "He who has the gold makes the rules." There's a real truth to that phrase. For example, sometimes companies are so large that they get federally bailed out. That's what happened to Chrysler in 1979 when Lee Iacocca grabbed the company's reins and used taxpayer money to get things back in shape. Taxpayers (and Chrysler!) eventually benefited from this move, but Clark is never happy when a federal bailout is needed to help out a capitalist enterprise. But that's the core of the unwritten "too big to fail" rule: If a company is so big that going under would have negative repercussions on an international level, then that company must be kept afloat.

Today we have a modern variant of the "too big to fail" rule in the housing market. Call it the "strength in numbers" phenomenon. Wells Fargo -- the second largest mortgage lender -- is looking to arrange workouts with homeowners who can't make their mortgage payments. Why? Because there are overwhelming number of homeowners with mortgages in default. All the delinquencies are forcing Wells Fargo to find alternate plans. Homeowners who make the best candidates for these workouts are those who fell behind on their mortgage but now are in a position to make payments again. But beware if your loan was sold off by your mortgage lender. The rules of the sale may have stipulated that no adjustments can be made to the loan terms. You may need to get a waiver from the current loan holder -- if you're able to track them down -- to get the benefits of the Wells Fargo workouts.

It's no surprise that we Americans are energy hogs. But everyday there are new developments that help us reduce our energy consumption. Soon auto shoppers will actually be able to believe the gas mileage stickers found on cars in dealer lots! The feds used to put fake numbers on the stickers because the test used to calculate mileage efficiency was bogus. So you could purchase a vehicle expecting to get something like 26 miles/gallon (city) or 38 miles/gallon (highway) and get substantially lower real mileage. Now the government is enforcing a legitimate mileage test, so all cars shipped to dealers after Sept. 1 will have real numbers posted on them. Why the sudden change? The Toyota Prius really pushed this along. People were expecting to get 50-60 miles/gallon but the actual numbers were so much lower that people really ripped off and complained.

Another positive change that's a little further off involves LED (light emitting diode) lighting. Clark and his wife often battle over using regular or CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) bulbs in their home. He has a number of CFLs from the '90s when the technology still had a lot of kinks. In fact, once he was doing a TV story about energy-smart homes and he wanted to demonstrate his lighting for the camera crew. The CFLs took about 70 seconds to come on after he flipped the switch! Today's CFLs are much better (and faster to light up), so his wife is now more open to using them in their home. But CFLs may soon be a thing of the past when LEDs hit the market. LED are now used in new billboards and offer just about the best artificial light possible while eating up low energy. They don't release extra heat and they last for years. LEDs will probably be in offices, retail stores and industrial parks before they're available for home use. Clark thinks within four years LEDs should become a popular consumer product.

Restaurants often put healthy selections on the menu and then report that no one orders them. People claim they want healthy food, but what they say and what they order are two different things. Think about the frozen yogurt craze. People took what should be a low-fat healthy meal and then piled on hot fudge, nuts and syrups to make it fattening! But now there's a supermarket chain in New England that may be proving people really do buy healthy things.

The Hannaford Bros. chain has launched a new nutrition-labeling program that aims to help make healthy shopping easy. The New York Times reports that Hannaford has gone through some 20,000 food items in its stores and labeled each of them with zero to three stars. Foods with zero stars are processed, fatty and sugary. Foods with three stars are things like vegetables, lean meats, beans, whole grain items and more. Sales of items with multiple stars have skyrocketed while those with zero stars have plummeted. Clark loves that people have access to easy-to-understand information for making better choices -- even if he still would prefer to eat foods from the zero stars group! But to his credit, Clark has gone from eating a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream nearly 365 days/year to about 25 days/year. He credits his doctor with helping him cut back instead of just going cold turkey and relapsing. And for those of you wondering about Clark's favorite flavor, it's Ben & Jerry's Vanilla Caramel Fudge!

There are changes coming to the way credit scores are calculated that could affect millions of women. For many years, people have been allowed to share their credit cards with authorized users. Husbands historically have done this for their spouses. But then some criminals figured out how to take the whole authorized user thing one step further -- they actually generate inflated credit scores for risky candidates by renting out someone's good credit. Think about it in the following way. Let's say Clark has terrible credit and his executive producer Christa has great credit. A third party operator can charge Clark $1,000 to rent Christa's status. Christa will receive $500, the operator will keep the other $500 and Clark gets a bogus good credit score in his name. The problem is that the renters -- Clark in this example -- have been defaulting at huge rates. So now the credit bureaus are just eliminating all authorized user credit standing across the board.

Women (or men) who have been married for many years and have always used their spouse's credit cards in lieu of building their own credit will be most affected by this change. They'll go from having great credit to zero credit overnight. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that there are more than three million women who have no credit standing of their own. Clark sometimes gets calls from new widows who suddenly have to deal with all the finances after a husband's death. He advises all women to have credit of their own. If you don't already have two credit cards in your name, now is the time to get them.