Consider refinancing your mortgage at these terms (12 10 25)

Author

Jennifer Hutcheson
December 10, 2025

💵 Today’s Top Stories
Home insurance

Interest rates are falling, and there’s a path to refinancing your mortgage — especially if you bought at the peak. Clark explains the criteria you must focus on if you refi right now. Read more.

Bank

The four monster mega banks and huge super regionals are eating the industry — and generally don’t treat you well as a customer. But breaking up with a bank cold turkey is hard. Do this instead. Read more.

Print photos

Photos make a great present, keepsake or home décor piece. But you don’t want to break the bank printing them. Here are the most affordable places to do it. Read more.

Smartwatch

Clark famously loves smartwatches to monitor his health. If you’re like Clark, you may not realize that not all cell phone providers support all smartwatches. Here’s what you need to know. Read more.

📺️ Americans Are Drowning in Subscriptions

Want to save money in 2026? It could be as simple as reviewing your monthly financial statements and canceling a subscription you don’t use – or consolidating or downgrading.

Four in five Americans paid for a subscription service in the last year, CNET found, spending $1,080 a year on average. That includes almost $200 on “unused” subscriptions.

And Millennials spend $1,215 per year, each, on subscription fees.

Here’s the share of Americans who are subscribed to various categories:

Streaming/video: 61%
E-commerce: 37%
Music: 33%
Big box retailers: 29%
Gaming: 17%
News/media: 15%
Health/fitness: 14%
Meal kit/food delivery: 12%
Security apps: 11%
Software management: 11%
Financial apps: 6%

The Wall Street Journal coined the term “subscription captivity,” saying we’ve graduated from subscription fatigue.

Globally, survey participants average 19 active subscriptions each, the WSJ says, averaging $254 a month. That’s $3,048 a year, much more than CNET says.

Outside of your mortgage or rent, potentially a car payment, food, insurance and your cell phone bill — which in a way is a subscription itself — your total subscriptions probably are one of your largest monthly expenses.

You can sign up for one of several apps that connect to your banks and credit cards and manually surface all your subscriptions, but it will cost you – likely in the form of a cheap but recurring monthly subscription(!).

Or do it manually.

Either way, it’s probably a good practice to do once or twice a year.

📊 Stat of the Day

🚘️ 450,000: Autonomous rides per week that Waymo (a subset of Google) is generating. It has almost doubled the number of rides since April. Waymo is also expanding faster than Tesla, its current closest competitor.

💰️ Deal Alert: Today’s Top Deals
Target store
Amazon Prime Christmas holiday
🎙️ Podcast

In this episode, fiduciary financial advisor Wes Moss tackles a piece of financial advice that he calls "lunacy" and "insanity" – a recent Op-Ed arguing that retirees should convert their entire Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA in a single year. Wes explains why this academic advice is a dangerous real-world strategy, warning listeners about the potential for a massive tax bill that could reach hundreds of thousands of dollars. Also, Wes addresses a sinister issue in retirement savings: billions of dollars in "forgotten" 401(k) balances. Wes warns that this money is often parked in cash or a low-interest money market, missing out on decades of critical growth.

☎️ Need Money Help?

The Team Clark Consumer Action Center is a free helpline that can help you navigate your money questions. Call 636-492-5275. Visit clark.com/cac for more information.

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