BUSINESS

So … you want to swipe your debit card for that purchase?

Money expert Clark Howard has — for many years — warned consumers about the dangers of using a debit card for daily spending.

His concerns are primarily tied to the flimsy consumer protections you receive if a bad actor gains control of your debit card versus the more sturdy protections you’d get by using a credit card.

And, if a bad actor gains control of your debit card, that puts real cash in your checking account at risk. This can create a cascading effect of bounced checks, insufficient funds on bill payments, and more potential cash flow problems while you sort this out with your bank’s fraud department.

A similar theft of your credit card would only expose your line of credit with that card issuer until things get squared away. Most credit cards offer a “zero liability” policy for fraudulent charges.

This, along with the potential to earn cash back rewards, is why Team Clark believes using a credit card for your everyday spending is a better idea. This is provided that you are able to pay your bill in full each month to avoid interest charges.

However, we still often get questions about whether there are exceptions to that advice. And we do have some.

In this article, I’ll walk you through the two simple safety precautions you should take if you’re planning to use a debit card for more than getting money out of an ATM.

Precautions to Take Before Using Your Debit Card to Pay

As mentioned above, Clark strongly prefers that you avoid using your debit card for purchases in most scenarios.

But sometimes life presents scenarios in which using a credit card just isn’t feasible and using cash isn’t an option.

For example, some merchants have started charging convenience fees for swiping credit cards. These fees may have you considering swiping a debit card at the point of sale or using it to pay an online bill.

If you do, we advise taking these precautions to protect your cash.

1. Set Up a Separate Checking Account for Debit Card Purchases

If you’re planning to spend with a debit card, we suggest taking the extra step of setting up a separate free checking account to fund these purchases.

This way you can separate the bulk of your funds from your “spending money” to avoid a situation where someone gets your debit card and goes on a spending spree with your funds.

Limiting the balance of the checking account attached to your debit card will leave the thief with very little to spend before they run out of funds, and it will keep the rest of your cash safe and secure in an unattached bank account.

Clark also uses this “extra checking account” method for safely moving funds when his family is required to use payment apps like Venmo for various transactions.

2. Use a Mobile Wallet Instead of Swiping (Whenever Possible)

If you’re going to pay with a debit card, we recommend loading it into your Apple Pay, Google Wallet or Samsung Pay wallets on your mobile device and using the tap-to-pay payment option whenever possible.

These systems use tokenization, so merchants receive encrypted payment credentials instead of your actual debit card number.

Clark says this is a much safer way to pay than using your physical debit card.

Bottom Line

Debit cards do not have the same consumer protections offered by credit cards. And choosing “credit” when processing a debit card transaction won’t change that.

So, the safest way to complete a debit card transaction is using the tips we provided above to achieve the following:

Protect your primary bank account balance by setting up a separate checking account for debit card transactions.

Fund that account with only enough money to cover your planned purchases.

Add that debit card to Apple Pay, Google Wallet or Samsung Pay and use tap-to-pay whenever it’s available instead of swiping or inserting your physical card.

Do you have tips for safe debit card usage? Have an experience you’d like to share? We’d love to hear about it in the Clark.com community.
The post Is There a Safe Way to Use Your Debit Card? appeared first on Clark Howard.

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Big purchases run on borrowed confidence.Almost nobody shopping for a diamond has the training to price one. So you lean on numbers, and they arrive already packaged, usually inside a headline telling you the market is doing one thing or another.That works fine when the packaging is neutral.Here is the route a diamond statistic travels before it reaches you. A producer commissions consumer research, a trade publication writes it up, retail blogs recycle the write-up, and somewhere around step three the chain of custody quietly disappears.What survives is the number. What gets lost is who paid for it.That process is running at full speed behind a claim you have almost certainly seen. Natural diamonds are staging a comeback, buyers are trading up to bigger stones, and demand is healthier than the gloomy coverage suggests.Every version of that claim traces back to a single survey. It was published by De Beers.

Natural diamond spending rose 25% in 2025 while engagement ring budgets fell.Cheng Xin / Getty Images

Why the diamond market split into two different economiesStart with what nobody disputes. This is now two products with two unrelated cost structures.Natural diamonds come out of the ground on a schedule a handful of miners control. Lab-grown diamonds come out of a reactor, limited mainly by how many reactors exist.That gap has widened every year for a decade, as synthetic capacity expanded and production costs fell while natural prices held comparatively firm.Related: World’s quietest metal just dropped a huge bullish signalThe bridal market has already picked a side. Lab-grown center stones accounted for 61 percent of all engagement ring purchases in 2025, a 239 percent jump since 2020, according to The Knot Worldwide and its survey of more than 10,000 US couples.Natural diamond engagement rings showed no growth in total or center stone size over the same period, JCK reported.Supply on the natural side is genuinely contracting, though not for the reason the comeback story implies. Global rough output is forecast to fall below 95 million carats this year, the lowest since 1987, as mine economics force closures, according to independent analyst Paul Zimnisky.Mines are closing because the economics stopped working. That is a very different thing from a market tightening on strength.What the De Beers study actually found about diamond buyersThe research everyone is citing is the US Diamond Acquisition Study, and De Beers Group published it on June 11.More Retail:Trump’s tariff cuts may make popular luxury items cheaperMajor retailers have jacked up prices due to tariffsBest Buy warns holiday shoppers of updated return policyThe sample is respectable and the findings are real. Here is what the company reported:The survey covered 18,500 US women aged 18 to 74, not the “tens of thousands” some write-ups claim, according to De Beers GroupNatural diamond jewelry ranked first as most-desired luxury gift at 11 percent against 8 percent for lab-grown, per InStore MagazineAverage spend reached $4,063 in 2025, up from $3,242 in 2023, according to RapaportGen Z spends $4,080 per piece against $2,250 for Baby Boomers, according to De Beers GroupPoint-of-sale data from 950 independent jewelers showed sales up 4 percent in Q4 2025 and 9 percent in Q1 2026, per InStore MagazineNow the breakdown that almost never travels with those numbers. The overall acquisition rate, meaning the share of surveyed women who actually bought a natural diamond, was 9 percent in 2025, up from 8 percent in 2023, Rapaport reported.Among households earning $150,000 or more, that rate went from 12 percent to 15 percent.My analysis is that the second figure carries the first. The affluent cohort moved three points while the overall market moved one, which means most of the reported growth came from buyers who were already in the category.That is a real recovery. It is just a narrow one, and “natural diamonds are back” is doing a lot of work to cover the difference.De Beers also has a reason to want the first framing. Parent company Anglo American (NGLOY) has been trying to sell the business since 2024, posted a $3.7 billion loss for 2025 and took a $2.3 billion writedown on De Beers, its third impairment in three years, Rapaport reported.The company cut 2026 production guidance to 21 million carats from a prior floor of 26 million, citing “challenging rough diamond trading conditions,” according to its own production report.Independent analysts read the downturn as structural. The industry faces “a more fundamental crisis,” not a cyclical dip, senior analyst Joshua Freedman of Rapaport told News Anyway.None of this makes the survey false. It means you weigh it against the filings, and the filings and the survey disagree.The lab-grown price gap that costs buyers real moneyThere is a second number circulating that is out of date, and this one can cost you thousands.You will still see claims that lab-grown diamonds run 20 percent to 40 percent below comparable natural stones. That was roughly accurate in 2016.It is nowhere near accurate now. The per-carat gap reached 72.8 percent, up from 26.6 percent in 2019, according to appraisal and insurance data from BriteCo.Retailers put it wider still. The discount runs 60 percent to 85 percent depending on size and specification, according to comparison-powered retailer Rare Carat, whose own pricing pages undercut the figure the trend pieces keep repeating.Walk in believing the gap is 30 percent and you will badly misjudge what your money buys. On a $5,000 budget that is roughly the difference between a one-carat stone and a two-carat one.There is also a tariff variable nobody was pricing a year ago. US duties on diamonds shipped from India reached 50 percent before an interim trade agreement cut the rate to 18 percent in early 2026.What to check before you spend on a diamond this yearNone of this settles the natural versus lab-grown question. That call depends on what you want the stone to do.But I would run three filters on anything you read between now and December.Ask who paid for the number. Producer-funded research is not worthless and it is not neutral either, and that matters most when the producer is mid-sale.Ask how old the number is. The lab-grown discount has moved fast enough that guidance written two years ago is now actively misleading.Ask whether the number describes your purchase. An average built from every US buyer says almost nothing about a specific stone in a specific quality bracket.Then verify the stone itself. Free certificate lookup tools let you check a grading report against the listing before you pay, and Rare Carat runs one alongside its comparison pricing.Watch two things through the back half of 2026. Whether Anglo completes the De Beers sale, and whether the engagement season pulls any middle-income buyers back toward natural stones.Zimnisky sees the ubiquity of lab-grown rings creating its own counterforce. “People are starting to want the real thing again,” he told News Anyway.He may be right. But the number that proves it will be the acquisition rate outside the $150,000 bracket, not the average ticket, and that is the figure worth hunting for when the next comeback story lands in your feed.Related: 2 major jewelry brands close hundreds of stores in key market

TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.Why we love this dealThere are tons of storage solutions for the bigger items in your life, but what about the small ones? How do you neatly organize the miscellaneous writing utensils that always seem scattered in your desk drawer? Or the compacts for your foundations, powders, and brushes in your vanity area? What about the plastic bags for snacks and leftovers that always seem to overflow out of your kitchen drawers? It’s often the smaller items, knick-knacks, and trinkets that we struggle to find an organized place to store which leads to us feeling overwhelmed with clutter and mess in our homes — but it doesn’t have to be that way. With the Sindcom Stackable Organizer Bins, every item has a proper storage place. Right now, Walmart is selling the 26-pack of organizers on sale for just $15 — which means that each organizer is just 57 cents.Sindcom Stackable Organizer Bins 26-Pack, $15 at Walmart

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Maybe you just inherited money, sold a house, cashed out a pension or received a sizable bonus. Or maybe you’ve had cash sitting in a savings account for months, or even years, waiting for the “right time” to invest.

Whatever the reason, you’re holding money that could be working harder for you. The key questions are where to invest it, when to put it to work and what to buy.

One note before we start: If your lump sum is a pension buyout offer, the first decision isn’t how to invest it — it’s whether to take it at all. Run the numbers with our Pension vs. Lump Sum Calculator to see if the monthly pension payments are the better choice.

Before You Invest a Dollar

Two of these steps apply to everyone. The other two only matter if the money is new.

For Everyone

Pay off high-interest debt. If you’re carrying credit card balances at 20% or more, paying them off is a guaranteed return no investment can match.

Fill your emergency fund. Money expert Clark Howard recommends keeping three to six months of expenses in a high-yield savings account. If your cushion is thin, use the money to fully fund your emergency savings.

If the Money Just Arrived

Understand the tax bill. Some lump sums arrive with strings attached. Distributions from an inherited traditional IRA are taxable income, and most non-spouse beneficiaries must empty the account within 10 years. Proceeds from a home sale may include taxable gains above the exclusion. A pension payout needs to be rolled over correctly to avoid a huge tax hit. Know what you owe before you decide what to invest.

Spend a little of it. If the money is a true windfall, Clark has a rule that lets you enjoy some of it.

“What I like you to do is take 10% of the money and spend it however you want. Have a blast,” Clark says.

Spend the 10% guilt-free. The remaining 90% is what you invest.

Decide Where Before You Decide When

The timing question gets all the attention, but where the money goes is just as important.

You should consider the three most tax-advantaged places for your money first:

Your 401(k) match. If you’re not contributing enough to get your full employer match, raise your contribution rate and use the lump sum to cover the gap in your paycheck. The match is free money.

A health savings account. If you have a qualifying high-deductible health plan, the HSA is the only account with a tax break going in, growing and coming out.

A Roth IRA. If your income allows it, you can contribute up to the annual limit. Money grows tax-free forever.

After that, you face a judgment call. Do you max out the 401(k) beyond the match, or put the rest in a taxable brokerage account?

The 401(k) offers tax deferral, but it’s locked-up money. With a few exceptions, you can’t touch it before 59½ without a penalty, your investment choices are limited to the plan’s menu, and some plans carry high fees. A taxable brokerage account gives up the deferral but keeps the money available for anything, whether that’s a business opportunity, a house or retiring earlier. Long-term capital gains rates soften the tax cost.

Which one you choose depends on your plan’s quality, your tax bracket now versus in retirement, and how much you value access to the money. If you’re weighing this on a six-figure sum, it’s a good question to take to a fee-only fiduciary advisor.

All at Once or a Little at a Time?

Now the question everyone asks. Should you invest the whole amount today, or spread it out over months through dollar-cost averaging?

The math favors investing it all at once. Research from Vanguard found that lump sum investing beats dollar-cost averaging about two-thirds of the time. Markets rise more often than they fall, so money invested earlier has more time to compound. Every month your cash sits on the sidelines is a month it isn’t working.

But Clark doesn’t tell everyone to do the mathematically optimal thing, because investing isn’t only about math.

“I love dollar-cost averaging because of the psychological harm if you put in a lump sum and all of a sudden the market has a big decline,” Clark says.

That psychological harm is real, and it’s expensive. The worst outcome isn’t earning slightly less than you could have. The worst outcome is investing everything on Monday, watching the market drop 15% by summer, panicking and selling at the bottom. An investor who dollar-cost averages and stays invested will beat an investor who lump-sums and bails.

So here’s the practical answer. If you can invest it all today and sleep fine, do that. The odds are on your side. If a big immediate loss would genuinely rattle you, dollar-cost average, but do it with rules:

Set a fixed schedule. Equal amounts, every month, automated.

Set an end date. Six to 12 months is plenty. Longer than that and the cash drag starts to cost you real money.

No discretion. You don’t skip a month because the market feels high or double up because it dropped. The schedule is the schedule.

Dollar-cost averaging with no deadline can become an attempt to time the market if you aren’t careful.

What Should the Money Buy?

The specific investments you make depend on your personal situation and goals. There isn’t one right ETF or Fund to buy.

If you are managing your own portfolio, Clark recommends a low-cost, diversified portfolio built from index funds, with a stock-and-bond mix that fits your age and timeline, held across your 401(k), IRAs and taxable accounts as one portfolio.

If you aren’t comfortable managing your own portfolio, a fee-only fiduciary advisor can help you with how this decision fits into your larger plan.

Final Thoughts

There isn’t a perfect day to invest a lump sum, and there isn’t one investment that’s right for everyone. The important thing is to make a plan, put the money to work and stick with it. Time in the market almost always matters more than trying to find the perfect moment to invest.

The post How To Invest a Lump Sum or Cash You’ve Left Uninvested appeared first on Clark Howard.

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