It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Clark Howard Show. Our mission is to serve you with information that empowers you to make better financial decisions in your life.

One way I try to do that is by answering your questions

on this podcast, but no way I can get to all of them that's why we have

team Clark the Consumer Action Center where you get free one-on-one advice go to Clark.com slash CAC.

I'm gonna begin this show today though

with information talking about the economy

and something that I'm asked about a lot, bonds and

where they fit in your portfolio or maybe where they don't fit in your portfolio and

later a lot in the news recently about fully autonomous vehicle

self-driving cars. I want to talk about that because a lot of people after the bad publicity in San Francisco

I'll talk about if you didn't hear about it are like, wow, this is something we totally need

to put the K-Bosh on. I'm going to share with you my opinions coming up.

But right now, I'm seeing article after article in the general news and in the

financial news, trash talking what's known is the

traditional balance portfolio which is roughly 60% stocks 40 40% bonds, 70, 30, 80, 20, depending on your age, your situation, how much risk you're willing

to take. Well, the last few years have been the worst years for doing this type of

portfolio where you do a mix of stock funds and bond funds in pretty much history.

And so I'm reading all these stories

with headlines about how bonds no longer

play any role in your life. You should never buy bonds. You're much better

off buying CDs or having money in savings accounts for the portion you wouldn't have invested in stock type choices.

They go on and on and on about why anybody who would put money in bond funds is basically an idiot.

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