1.9.20 Big discounts in January; Free file your taxes; CA privacy law ripple affects for you

The Clark Howard Podcast

Clark Howard

Investing, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2020

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There's a heavy wave of discounts this January in addition to historical discount patterns for this time of year. Fitness equipment is a deal now. Buy used and check out Craigslist and Facebook neighborhood groups. CES is pushing the latest high tech TVs. But unsold Christmas TVs are deal right now both online and in-store. Housewares and bedding are a January deal. Toys: there’s a lot of unsold inventory right now – a good time to buy birthday gifts. Winter clothing is more heavily discounted this year. The grounding of the Boeing Max makes January sales less aggressive, but travel deals for spring and early summer are available now. The IRS reports that only 3 out of every 100 eligible for Free File are using it. Free tax prep and filing is there for anyone who earns $70k or less annually. Many services provide free state tax filing as well. But no one knows. Don’t get sucked into paying. Many websites and apps are afraid of California, the only state with an online privacy protection law in place. For many companies, real compliance with CA means de facto privacy protection for all 50 states. Microsoft is among this first, with many following. You’re likely seeing new privacy links from sites and apps, allowing you create privacy settings and prevent them from selling off your personal data. Most sites and apps sell off our personal info in various ways all day long. California has designed a system allowing consumers to opt-out of their data being sold. The LA Times reports on how different sites are handling this. Some come with the dire warning that IF you opt-out of the sale of your personal info, they will not be able to offer you personalized ads. OH NO! Actually that’s what you want. This should be the national standard. It’s an abject failure in Washington that this isn’t already national law. California has essentially set a standard affecting the entire country. If you’re creeped out by the microtargeting of you and selling and reselling of your personal info, pay attention to these privacy notices and set the most restrictive measures allowed to protect your privacy as much as possible. Sure seems like Congress doesn’t care about U.S. citizens, when what should be longstanding national policy has to come from one state. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So glad you've taken time out of your day to join us here on the Clark Howard Show where
0:10.5	it's all about you and that quality yours.
0:13.4	I want you to learn ideas to me so you can keep more of what you make and speaking of
0:18.0	which coming up later, it is an absolute Clark rage that almost no one takes advantage
0:25.8	of a special IRS tax program that allows you to file your taxes for free.
0:31.7	I'm going to fill you in on that.
0:34.0	And coming up later, there's something strange you're probably seeing right now when
0:39.5	you go to websites and apps.
0:41.6	I'm going to tell you what you need to know new rights you may have that you may be sitting
0:47.8	on.
0:49.4	Clark.com is our main website and what I want to talk about is something that we have
0:55.3	put up a briefing for and I referred to it just a couple of days ago and it is the
1:03.1	reality that this year we're seeing heavier discounting than in prior years.
1:12.1	There are certain unusual factors that affected this Christmas shopping season that have
1:20.1	led to a heavier wave of discounts here and January and then there are things that
1:27.0	just by their very nature are historically deals in January.
1:33.1	So I've got a briefing for you at Clark.com but I want to just take a moment to hit you
1:39.6	with some of the highlights of categories that historically are a deal and then talk about
1:46.1	the ones that are more unusually discounted this year.
1:51.1	Number one, this is true.
1:54.0	Every January is fitness equipment is most heavily discounted in January more than any
2:02.0	other time of the year and the reason is that New Year's resolution time, people are
	...

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