ClarkHoward.com - Clark's investing guide

Clark has been reading dispatches from the Tokyo Auto Show to get a sense for what ultra-efficient vehicles the Japanese have up their sleeves.

Here in the United States, we have GM coming out with the Volt in about a year. The Volt will be an electric car for the first 40 miles of travel each day and then switch over to a traditional gas engine.

We in the United States represent four percent of the world's population, yet we use 25 percent of its energy. That number is awful, but it's also great. It means that we can easily reduce the amount of energy we use. We've never focused on conservation previously because energy had been plentiful and cheap.

Yet now conservation is being encouraged through state tax credits and mandated through the new federal fuel economy standards. Incidentally, Clark doesn't like the federal standards; he'd prefer to see the vastly unpopular gas tax enacted!

Recently, the consumer champ saw a Forbes article that decried our country being more energy efficient and downplayed the effects of global warming.

Here's Clark's deal on global warming: He doesn't get it and he's not ashamed to say that he's not smart enough to be sure if it's real or not.

But he does care about national security, and he thinks that angle offers the most compelling reason of all to reduce our energy consumption. There's no reason why we should be at the mercy of OPEC and Hugo Chavez. If we want to retain our position of power in the world, we must dial back on energy so that our enemies can't use our petrol dollars to harm us.

At 54, Clark has been through a lot of history. Growing up in the South, he has faint recollections of the struggles of the Civil Rights Era. He remembers the Cold War and later the Berlin Wall coming down.

And of course he's been through multiple recessions, including the current one. Now that we're in the Great Recession, people are having trouble seeing the future being as positive as the past. And with great drama, the press is writing articles proclaiming that America's day is setting.

Yet we Americans have an ingenuity that allows us to reinvent ourselves.

People only look at what we have lost, but not at what may be created in the future. Here's a simple example of what the consumer champ means: Apple profits for the most recent quarter jumped 47 percent on the strength of Mac and iPhone sales -- even at their premium prices.

Steve Jobs & Co. continually make products that are easy to use and have a lot of sizzle. And they did it with candlepower, using modern American ingenuity to make technology so approachable.

Therefore, t's important to understand that, yes, we have had mess-ups with crony capitalism and financial sector woes that led to widespread unemployment, but we're not done. We still have bright people and a marketplace that lets people succeed.

Apple is just one example of a company that came out of the doldrums. When Jobs came back, he helped Apple recreate excitement, innovation and uniqueness in the tech world.

So don't buy into the idea that we're done as a country.

What idea do you have to do something better, cheaper or in a more innovative way?

MONEY-SAVING MOMENT: T-Mobile's Project Black marketing initiative will offer customers basic unlimited calling starting at $49/month. It's yet another nail in the coffin of the "bucket of minutes" model, where you pay for a set number of minutes each billing period.

Unlimited calling is the future of cell phone calling. If new stats that Clark recently saw are to be believed, more people are now signing up for unlimited non-contract plans than for contract plans that offer a bucket of minutes.

We're approaching the day when you'll buy a phone and then be able to bring it to any provider you want. No more being handcuffed to a 24-month contract in return for having your phone subsidized.

AT&T and Verizon will keep pushing contracts hard because they remain central to their business models. However, you as a customer want to be the a free agent and avoid contract plans so you can benefit from the savings to come.

In fact, the new issue of Forbes has a cover story titled The $10 Phone Bill. Metro PCS is being touted as one of the players that may drop your phone bill to this ridiculously low level in the next few years.

Already, it only costs Metro about $16/month to provide phone service for a customer and it's dropping as technology improves.

So, it all means you should be very wary of signing a contract with anybody. Be a free agent and benefit as the price points in the industry change.

The Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments about mutual fund expenses. But you shouldn't wait for the highest court in the land to rule on whether or not investors are getting ripped off on management fees. You can make choices today and have lower costs on any investment.

First, you can buy your investments direct (aka "no load") -- not through a commissioned salesperson (aka "load"). Second, you can buy index funds, which contain a broad spectrum of capitalism. That way you're not paying some supposed brainiac's salary to pick individual stocks for you. Schwab, Vanguard and Fidelity all sell index funds.

Meanwhile, a recent report from the Hammond Group finds that just buying plain vanilla index funds and holding them for 10 years will net you more money than doing the same with most traditional mutual funds. Keeping your cost low actually matters more than any brainiac's allegedly expert financial advice.

One final thought: This is not the time to feel as though it's "safe" to get back into the stock market. The market could go up, down or sideways from here. You need to dollar cost average by putting in equal amounts every pay period to minimize volatility. Tiptoe back into the game, don't jump back in with both feet!