It's great to have you here on the Clark Howard show. You know our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you see make better financial decisions in your life. In this episode I got some news that will either make you really happy or really sad depending on whether you're looking to buy or sell a used car.

Later, you know the American dream has so much been encapsulated around home ownership and that

May not be true for a lot of Americans for a while.

So how, this is a hard one,

how do you as a renter build long-term wealth when for most people who are in the middle class,

the home has been the historical way you built wealth.

I'm going to give you my thoughts on that.

So think about it.

This podcast, we're talking about the two largest areas of costs in our lives, transportation and housing. So we're

starting with vehicles and I wanted to tell you that after the crazy run-up in used vehicle prices,

used vehicle prices now are down, latest industry data, down 27% from their peak. Now that means not that

they're back to where they were before but it's a big change in price.

Now I said there's good and bad in this so let me tell you both angles to this.

All right let's say you bought a used vehicle at peak pricing back in

21-22 and then prices kind of hovered and then they started declining modestly and then they've

declined quite a bit now down 27%. It means that you are, even if you put down a substantial down payment when you bought

a used vehicle back half of 21 and through 22, you are now upside down in that used vehicle.

And even if you didn't intend to drive it as long as economics say you're now going to have to you're just going to need to do it

almost certainly because of the economic picture changing. I keep hearing from people

who bought used vehicles in 21 and 22 that had crazy number

of miles on the odometer and the vehicle was still really expensive.

Well now as the used vehicle market continues to normalize,

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