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Saving just $5 a day everyday can have an enormous impact on your financial future, syndicated Los Angeles Times columnist Kathy Kristof writes in a recent article. When it comes to this topic, everybody loves picking on Starbucks! But people also blow a Lincoln a day on buying breakfast or lunch on the go. For those who do come up with the extra $5 everyday, here's how it can grow with interest over the years: After 10 years, you'll have $29K; after 20 years, it will be $105K; and after 40 years, a whopping $800K!

Some of us are so careful with our money that we couldn't come up with an extra $5 a day. However, most of us could. Clark challenges listeners to write down everything they spend money on while walking around during the next 2 weeks. This will help you see where you can trim your budget.

In addition to frivolous purchases, our inability to delay gratification conspires against our future financial security. Money magazine reports that when people were offered $20 today vs. more money about 6 months in the future, the people overwhelmingly took the $20. In fact, people had to be offered money with an average interest rate growth of 4,800% to get them to delay gratification! The only way to overcome our innate bias towards immediate gratification is to set up automatic withdrawals before the money gets to you -- like with a 401(k), for example.

The Internet provides a lot of great things, but there's also a lot of sewage out there in cyberspace. JuicyCampus.com is a new type of website where students can anonymously post all kinds of scurrilous things about each other at 50 colleges around the country. This site is being used to settle scores, and the damage to reputations done in the process is irreversible. The real rats are the people behind JuicyCampus.com, who don't provide any way for a post to ever be removed -- no matter how much of a lie it is. They just sit back and enjoy revenue from online advertisers who flock to the site to reach a college audience.

The Washington Post reports that Texas Christian University students have organized to contact advertisers and tell them to boycott the site. Pepperdine University, meanwhile, has asked that the site be blocked on their servers. The truth is that words can and do hurt. A cautionary tale about just how deep the wounds can go comes from the ad agency world. News recently broke that an ad executive killed himself, and many believe it's because of defamatory lies posted on AgencySpy.com.

The Internet is wonderful, but there is a certain level of anarchy when you have the ability to hurt others. Clark wouldn't mind sites like JuicyCampus if they weren't anonymous. But the cowardice in the anonymity as it exists today is awful, and it poses a long-term threat to free speech. If you have kids at college, have a conversation and prep them for the ugly new world of online campus gossip sites.

RIP-OFF ALERT: Whenever Clark delivers a speech to seniors, he's always approached by those interested in doing reverse mortgages. Reverse mortgages offer a way for retired folks who are running out of cash to be able to remain in their home and get a check each month by borrowing against the value of the property. This can be a good option if you don't want a family member to inherit the house. Historically, however, the fees on reverse mortgages have been about 300%-500% higher than those associated with a regular mortgage.

Clark knows that most insurance salespeople are decent. But then there are those awful ones looking to perpetrate an equity stripping scam. They gain the confidence of an elder; strip the equity out of their home as a lump sum (instead of a monthly payout); and put it into piece-of-trash annuities, which net massive commissions for the salesperson.

If you have aging parents or other elderly loved ones, Clark wants you to put the warning out for them. Only a small sliver of insurance agents are this sleazy. But the sad thing is that if they're caught, they may only have to give the money back. How is that supposed to discourage them from doing it again? States need to pass criminal sanctions that will allow for hard time for equity strippers.

One final note: There's only one type of annuity that's absolutely fine for seniors -- immediate payout annuities, also called life annuities. The irony is that you won't hear about these from most insurance salespeople because they have tiny commissions.

RIP-OFF ALERT: If you think that banks are lying to you, the feds now say that you're right! The U.S. Government Accountability Office -- the investigative arm of Congress -- sent out undercover agents to determine whether a sampling of 185 banks across the country lie about their fees and rules. The results? Banks did lie, or they would not provide a disclosure of fees about 80% of the time.

Think about the debit card con game for a moment. These little cards are massive profit centers for banks. Banks say they approve transactions you don't have enough money for as a "courtesy" to you. But what they really want to do is rip you off with an overdraft fee of $30-$40. The Washington Post reports that banks make $18 billion annually on this con.

The bottom line is that you have a right to get a price list at a bank, just like you would at a restaurant. Did you know that in banking circles, free checking is called "fee checking" behind your back? Banks use offers of free checking as a loss leader to fee you to death. So if you're not good at keeping tabs on your balance, you need to become a cash person and buy with green. If you keep overdrawing anyway, you need to be more responsible and track your balance down to the penny. Some people think these suggestions sound quaint and very '90s, but what's the alternative? Clark has a teenager who has learned it all the hard way. She had a debit card at 15 and repeatedly overdrew it and got hit with fees. Now she's 18 and learned her lesson.