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Last winter, Clark first started talking about natural-gas vehicles (NGV). He loves them because they don't pollute the air and they use domestically produced fuel. His wife encouraged him to get one, so he searched on the Internet and a found used 2007 Honda Civic GX. Clark admits that this could either be a really dumb purchase or a really smart one. Honda is making about 400,000 of these cars per year, but they're only for sale in California and New York. The cost is about $25,000 for an NGV versus about $17,500 for a standard Civic. One of Clark's challenges in having an NGV is finding a place to fill it up with specially compressed natural gas. There are a lot of filling stations on the West Coast and on the Eastern seaboard down through Richmond, Virginia. But in the Atlanta area there's only one single station in a more than 200 mile radius! Luckily that station is about seven miles from Clark's home. Clark believes that as a nation we need to start thinking outside of the box about our energy needs. Relying on foreign energy suppliers who want to harm us can only weaken our nation. Clark's Honda GX is his answer to this dilemma. What's yours?

If you're a regular listener, you know that Clark often speaks about ID theft, its dangers and how to avoid it. Many people think ID theft happens on the computer. But a Utica College study finds that ID theft by non-technological means is more common. Quite often your identity can be stolen by a crooked employee at an otherwise legitimate company, or at a business that's not careful when it disposes of sensitive information. Retail is the number one place where this crime takes place, but one in four ID thieves works at a financial institution. Speaking of banks, The Wall Street Journal recently reported that they are big conduits of low-tech ID theft. A TV reporter apparently did some dumpster-diving behind a number of banks and found that they unloaded old files and records without shredding them. That leaves your sensitive information unprotected. We're talking about things like names, Social Security numbers, addresses, dates of birth and more.

Only three percent of ID thefts result from high-tech intrusions like a computer hacker stealing info online. By comparison, more than a third of all ID thefts happen when your credit card number is skimmed by an unethical employee -- either in-person or on the phone. The truth is that there are many ways people steal your identity. In fact, e-retailers offer you more layers of protection than when you hand your credit card to someone behind a register who you've never laid eyes on before. About 20 percent of the time ID theft occurs when people steal from your mailbox. But that risk can be easily eliminated by purchasing a locked mailbox at any hardware store.

Good news for some cell phone customers who thought the industry's contract termination fees were too heavy-handed. AT&T recently announced that it will begin prorating its cancellation fees. Right now you have to pay the full cancellation fee if you want out at any time before the standard 24-month contract ends. But under the new rules, you'll be able to just pay a fraction of that cost because it will be pro-rated. AT&T is simply following Verizon's lead here. No word yet if T-Mobile and Sprint will follow suit, but it all begs the question: Is the cell phone industry ready to usher in a new customer-friendly age?

The dominance of the iPhone has really blackened the eye of the industry as people saw how the major carriers pervert capitalism by locking people into two-year contracts. Think about it: Each carrier forces you to buy a cell phone from them and then they make it usable only on their own network. Clark believes this is idiotic; it's like the power company telling you that you can't use a toaster that you didn't buy from them. Walt Mossberg, a usually chipper Wall Street Journal columnist, recently wrote with vitriol about the four carriers' stranglehold on the industry. He compared it to you buying Internet access and then the provider saying you can't visit a certain website. We need to bust this chokehold because it's bad for the country and consumers alike.

The banks that issue the bulk of credit cards in our country are seeing more and more problems with delinquency. Their response has been to raise interest rates across the board -- even on people who have not been late on their payments in any way. Sometimes they try to justify the hike by telling you that you've cross defaulted, which means you're penalized for being late on another bank's card. But your bank can also arbitrarily raise your interest rate -- sometimes up to 30 or 33 percent -- on just 15 days notice. So what power do you have? Much of the time, you have the option to suspend charge privileges on a card in return for being able to pay off your balance at the old rate. But if you have other credit lines, vote with your feet by threatening to take your business elsewhere. Try pitting your lenders against each other to get the lowest interest rate.