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Organic food is something that's not relevant to Clark's life. His wife buys it for herself or the kids, but he's not into this particular food movement. Maybe that's because organic food prices are suffering from massive inflation -- even more so than non-organic grocery items. The New York Times found that while regular bread can be around $1.19, organic can be up to $3.19. Regular eggs may be $1.34-$1.50 versus $4.75-$6.39 for the organic version. Regular milk can be $1.99, while you may pay $3.99-$6.79 for organic milk.

So what can you do to dial back the price? Get your store's in-house brand of organic food instead of buying a brand name. Most retailers in the food business have private label organic food available. You can also try shopping at Wal-Mart. Clark knows the monster mega-retailer is anathema to a lot of green shoppers. But the reality is that they offer better deals on organic food than other places.

There's no doubt that organic food is gaining in popularity. Yet only 3% of food sales in the United States are organic. A whopping 97% of our food dollars still go to non-organic items. People can argue about the health value of organic vs. non-organic, but this is a dollars and cents issue. Right now the dollars you spend for organic make no sense!

The Norwegians have a new electric car coming to the United States in 2009 that's got Clark very excited. It's called the TH!NK City and it gets 110 miles on a single charge and goes up to 65 mph. The cost? About 2 cents a mile! And it doesn't eat up foreign imported oil like a gas-engine vehicle.

In other news, a group of researchers in the lab have developed an easy way to take sugar and turn it into a power plant for a hydrogen-powered vehicle. This development is not ready for the mainstream yet, but it's in the works. There are a lot of promising advances that are going to take a while to materialize in the marketplace.

In the meantime, Clark wants to encourage you to look at offbeat transportation alternatives. Washington D.C. has launched a Smartbike program. You pay $40/year for access to bicycles that are strategically placed around town. Users have a code to unlock the bikes and lock them up again at the other end of their commute. It's almost like a Zipcar program for bikes!

Worried about getting too sweaty during your ride? Buy an electric bike for around $600 and it will be no sweat getting around. Clark knows this all sounds kooky, but we need to expand our minds and realize we're not sitting ducks for foreign-oil interests. Christa has long had a fascination with a bicycle that runs on a weed whacker motor. If you Google "weed whacker bicycle," you'll even find videos that detail how to convert your bike.

When you go to the store, you want to be respected and treated well as a customer. It's that simple. All the complex theories that MBAs learn in school really boil down to this: Treat the customer right. Yet the Wharton School of Business recently found that businesses aren't honoring this simple creed. Customers were treated down right rotten in 60% of the cases they examined.

The No. 1 complaint is that there are typically no employees around to help customers. The second peeve was long checkout lines. Finally, customers also get upset when there are employees present, but they don't offer any greeting, smile or eye contact.

In business, it's key that you focus on serving someone. For employers, it starts by wooing your employees with great treatment so they can romance the customer. Treat your employees with love and respect and they'll serve your customer. Everybody wins that way.

Here's one example of great customer service: When Clark's wife was in a car wreck, his insurer called twice after the accident just to see how she was feeling. How classy is that? The other driver's insurer -- who had to pay for the damage to Lane's vehicle -- never even called once. This kind of basic decency saves money in the long run because it makes customers less likely to think about litigation.

Financial writer Jonathan Clements recently wrote an interesting piece comparing people to junk bonds. Such a comparison is apt for about 20% of Americans. First, a little background: Junk bonds are typically issued by companies in financial trouble. They carry a high rate of interest because everybody's worried the company won't be able to pay up. So when you're talking about an individual, someone carrying too much debt can be called a walking junk bond.

About 1 in 5 of us carry such high levels of debt that there's a real question if we're good for the money. Have you created a perfect storm by having credit card debt, HELOCs, mortgages, car loans and more? If that sounds like you, recognition is the first step to erasing your junk bond status. Going forward, you have to be sure to buy things cash only and work your debt down, bill by bill. Your goal should be to create financial breathing space in the event of an emergency.