I'm so glad you're with us here on the Clark Howard Show, where we're about is helping

you stretch every dollar so you have more control of your life coming up later this hour.

We're going to visit with Brad and Jonathan who host a financial independence pod, choose

FI and I've had an opportunity recently to talk with a number of people in the FI movement

which is all about you owning your bills instead of them owning you and it's been something

is heated up as controversial.

I don't understand why and that's why I want it from time to time to give different perspectives

including theirs coming up later.

Starting up before that, I have a heads up for you in today's Clark rage about big companies,

big organizations trying to steal your money or successfully stealing your money.

I'm going to tell you how they're doing it and what you need to know and do about it.

So the home construction market in the United States is really splitting in two directions

right now.

One of them are builders that are building using new modern methods that create homes that

use almost no energy at all and there's even a federal standard for it that started a long

time ago but most builders in the United States ignored it called the zero energy ready home

standard.

This is important for many reasons because nearly half the energy we use in our country

is for buildings.

Very small percent is actually for us running around in our cars or SUVs and so if you

build a home smart from the ground up, you greatly reduce the cost of operating that home

all through the years.

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