Clark Howard

What can’t you buy at Costco? The membership club is already a favorite among bargain shoppers who stock up on discounted living essentials and comically large packages of food products. Now, after you load up your cart with 300-count packs of diapers and mayonnaise by the gallon, you can shop for a mortgage too!

And no, it doesn’t have to be a jumbo loan.

Situations come up in life when you look back and realize if you hadn’t had insurance you would have been up the creek! So it makes sense to pay a relatively small price for coverage of things like your life, home, health and car in order to avoid potentially devastating losses. But there are other types of coverage out there that end up costing you a fortune for very little coverage or maybe even none at all! According to Consumer Reports, there are seven types of insurance you should avoid getting talked into buying.

1. Credit insurance – Something Clark likes to call Croak and Choke insurance. Lenders will promise to pay off all or some of your balance if you die or become disabled, but as it turns out, credit life insurance can be more expensive than life insurance. Credit insurance premiums can be as high as 1% of the account balance and according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, these premiums are double what they would be if you purchased the insurance on your own. And don’t miss this point: what you’re protecting with credit life insurance is not you, or your heirs, but the bank!

Hide the (college-bound) children! It could get even more expensive to borrow for that undergraduate degree.

Interest rates on popular federal student loans are set to double on July 1, from 3.4% to 6.8%. But Congress has the power to stop it, if only lawmakers could agree. On Tuesday, the Senate failed to even get enough votes to debate a bill on the issue.

That last concert you went to – what did you pay for the ticket? Too much, you say? Well, whatever the price, you obviously decided that the value of the music experience outweighed the damage to your wallet. 

But, every one of us has seen the sticker price on something – be it a concert ticket, sandwich, or a pair of pants – and balked. At a certain point, it’s just not worth it. So what if you could set your own price? Think you’d always give yourself a sweet deal? Maybe not, scientists say.

There is officially nowhere left to hide from identity thieves -- not even six feet under.

The identities of nearly 2.5 million dead Americans are used every year by scammers who illegally apply for some type of credit, according to a study by ID Analytics, a fraud prevention firm.