I'm so glad you're with us here on the Clark Howard Show where it's about your empowerment

with knowledge so you can save more and spend less and don't anyone ever rip you off.

Coming up in a few minutes in today's Clark Rageous Moment, what you should look for

to know that your stockbroker is ripping you off and later yet speaking of ripoffs, why are

eye glasses so much more expensive here in the United States than most other places in the

world? I'll tell you what you need to know so you can protect your wallet.

So I want to talk about something that has been emerging is an ugly trend at this point

in the housing market and it is interest only loans. I want to tell you what these are

and why they are poisoned to your pocketbook. A lot of people when housing gets to a point

that's not really affordable anymore for based on most people's income, people still

want to be in that house and they're looking for someone who will be the hero that will

make it possible for them to qualify and get in that home. Enter the interest only loan.

This is a product that caused more heartache and more foreclosures after the real state

by the last decade than you could shake a stick at. So what happens is for a period of years,

maybe potentially as long as 10, you don't pay on the balance of the loan at all. You only

pay the interest due on the loan. So if let's just say you buy a house just for 300,000

dollars, five years from now you still owe 300,000 and you continue to have to pay interest based

on the balance being 300,000 and home values go in irregular cycles, obviously up and down

in sideways. I was just speaking with someone who bought a home in 2003 that they sold

in 2018 after 15 years of ownership and they didn't make a nickel on that house in 15 years.

But they had a traditional mortgage so they were able to sell it and they still left the

closing table with some money because they'd been paying down on the balance over those years.

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