Great to have you here on the Clark Howard Show where it's about you learning ways to stretch

every dollar.

That's what we're about here.

Coming up in just a few minutes, I want to tell you about a scam that is spreading

through the cell phone industry, not the cell phone companies fault.

I need to tell you what's going on and how to protect yourself.

And coming up later, I have tried under great protest many vegetarian burgers because I

eat a lot of red meat.

I want to tell you about what's happening in that area and that maybe I was wrong about

veggie burgers.

Yeah, that's going to make the people right.

All those Clark stinks about how I eat really happy.

Anyway, this did not make me happy.

You report, I saw in Money magazine, that Americans are running up credit card balances so fast

that the amount of interest people are paying is up 12% in the last year, 50% in the last

five.

Now, interest rates on credit cards have bumped up a little bit over the last couple

of years, but certainly not 12% increase over the last year and absolutely not 50% over

the last five years.

We as Americans, some of us are either personal tragedy will happen or some financial

disaster in our lives will happen that could cause us to go into credit card debt.

But most of the time, it just creeps up on us lifestyle.

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