It's great to have you here on the Clark Howard Show, where our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you so you make better financial decisions in your life.

And maybe traveling in your vehicle today, hope that means you're off to some really exciting place, family, friends, or sightseeing

for the Thanksgiving holiday.

No traffic today on the roads.

Yeah, right.

But I do have a warning for you.

I'm giving about booking any future travel coming straight ahead,

whether it's a cruise, a rental house, a tour package, pretty much any, even an airline ticket.

And later, speaking of driving, cars are so expensive right now. I'm going to give you my tips if you're

in the market for a new one. So yet another smaller cruise line just filed for bankruptcy.

And I said another because there's been a plague of this, smaller cruise lines that sail out

of U.S. ports, those that sail overseas, tour operators, riverboat cruises.

There's something that they're asking you to do that I don't want you to do. And by the way,

where we're talking about companies going out of business, a number of small airlines around the

world have gone bust. And there are several in the United States that are not in great financial

shape. So I want to talk about

not having your money take a trip and you not get to take it. I don't want you being lured in

by a tour operator or a cruise line saying, hey, you pay us by check, and we're going to give

you a 5% discount or a 7% discount or a 3% discount or whatever the discount is.

When the discount particularly is higher than their credit card processing costs,

which are usually for a travel supplier that are doing big ticket items,

going to be about 1.5%.

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