It's my pleasure to welcome you here to the Clark Howard Show.

You know, our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you so you can make better financial decisions in your life.

And today, I'm going to talk about a couple of things I want you to know.

Later, I'm going to talk about an update on how to shop for airfare. There's a game of cat

and mouse going on with the airlines trying to force us into higher fares. I'm going to tell

you what you need to know to protect your

wallet when you're buying a ticket. That's later. And right now I want to talk about why I have

been obsessed for so long with you, if you are an investor, having a meaningful portion of your investment dollars

inside an investment account, retirement account, invested overseas.

You know, the United States represents somewhere around 5.5% of the world's population

and represents a little more than 20% of the world's population and represents a little more than 20% of the

world's economic activity. But most Americans, if they are investors for retirement or investors,

period, invest only in the U.S., not in funds that invest overseas.

And over the last 15 years, that was a great win, because if you were diversified

around the globe, the U.S. outran most of the rest of the world over a 15-year window, very unusual.

And now U.S. holdings are much higher valued versus the profits of companies than is the case outside the United States.

Now, I've always been into investing worldwide because economies generally around the world

have been growing faster than our economy.

And again, if you're only investing in the United States you're missing the economic growth

story around the world where again 94 to 95 percent of the world's population lives and in terms of

economic size somewhere close to 80 percent of the world's economic activity is not here in the U.S.

And it does not make you unpatriotic to invest outside the United States.

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