Vox has an in-depth look at Consumer Reports, including their continued efforts at staying unbiased, rigorous testing methods, and their future financial outlook.

To ensure they’re getting the same thing you’d buy at a store, they buy all of these products anonymously, at full retail price. To maintain independence, they don’t run any ads in their print magazine or on their website and don’t even allow manufacturers to trumpet positive test results in their own ads elsewhere. For many of these products, Consumer Reports is literally the only group testing this thoroughly — and in some cases, they’ve noticed potentially dangerous defects and alerted manufacturers or regulators to issue recalls.

I have been a Consumer Reports subscriber on and off for years, and my parents also subscribed to it when I was a kid. I love their info when buying appliances, but when I’m not making any major purchases the unread issues tend to stack up in a big pile that whispers “I’m wasted money!”. Their constant reminders to renew just serve as reminders that I am not using what I’m paying for. So I cancel. Consumer Reports must have a very frugal client base, so I bet I’m not the only one that thinks like this.

Then I read stuff like this and I want to subscribe again. That’s my cycle. The print subscription is $29 a year. Adding an online access costs $20 a year, making it $49 a year. This is handy when I need car seat reviews or something specific. Getting the online access alone is $30 a year or $6.95 a month. A la carte is probably the best option for me, but as an American I love everything to be “unlimited”. 🙂

Updated. According to this CNN Money article, both Comcast and Time Warner are jacking up their modem rental fees again for 2015. Time Warner will now charge $8 a month, up 33% from $5.99. Comcast will now charge $10 month, up 25% from $8.

These fees are now so high that it is a “no-brainer” decision to buy your own modem. Unfortunately, many people either won’t notice the fee or don’t even know that bringing your own equipment is an option.

Being charged $8 a month is $96 a year. A quick look on the Time Warner Cable compatible modem list showed several models that can be found online at retailers like Amazon.com for under $50. (Here is the Comcast Xfinity compatible modem list.) And that’s just for the basic model rental – the model with a built-in WiFi router costs another $4.95 a month – nearly $60 a year – while you can just buy a router for 20 bucks! Crazy.

For my family member paying for Time Warner, I stuck with a familiar name brand and picked the Motorola Surfboard SB6121 for $64.99 and free shipping. (The SB6141 at $80 is the next model up and compatible with the fastest speeds available, though you’ll have to subscribe to one of the most expensive monthly plans.) Both are DOCSIS 3.0 which ensures future compatibility.

The installation process was quite simple:

1. Buy the modem. Wait for it to arrive. Remove old modem (unscrew cable cord and unplug power). Install new modem (screw in cable line and plug it power).
2. Call your provider or start a Live Chat session online. Time Warner is 1-800-TWC-HELP (1-800-892-4357), or pick the “Buy or Lease your Modem” option when chatting.
3. Provide them with the Cable Modem ID (MAC address) found on the back or bottom of your new modem. Wait 30 minutes or less and your high speed internet should be working again.
4. Remember to return old modem (this is really the hardest part).

Unless you plan on moving really soon, at $65 for the modem with free shipping you’d break even in less than 9 months. Even better, consider it a $65 investment that distributes $8 of tax-free income every month. That’s like earning 147% APY at a bank with a 0% tax bracket. You’d need $9,600 at 1% interest to earn $8 a month in taxable income.

Some people have accused Time Warner of making their cable internet speeds slower and/or experiencing service interruptions along customer service responses of “We can’t help you, it’s not our modem” after switching to their own modems. Share your experiences in the comments below.

I’m still into the “Cook It Yourself” movement/meme/trend/whatever. If you’re looking for a new year’s resolution and consider yourself a DIY person, why not CIY in 2015? Knowing how to cook simple, delicious food is a great skill to have and it can’t be bought with money. Here is a collection of articles and quotes related to this idea.

Corporations cook differently than humans. The New York Times has a neat article called What 2,000 Calories Looks Like. Basically, industrial food is made to be cheap but tasty. That usually involves adding a bunch of salt, fat, and sugar. So, you could have a single peanut-butter milkshake (2,090 calories):

Or you could cook yourself a feast including pasta, potatoes, eggs, chicken wings, turkey chili, coffee, and even beer and stay within 2,000 calories:

Writers, nutritionists, doctors, chefs and Michelle Obama have all been promoting a hot new diet: home-cooked food. “People who cook eat a healthier diet without giving it a thought,” Michael Pollan recently told Mark Bittman, both authors and advocates of the cook-it-yourself diet. “It’s the collapse of home cooking that led directly to the obesity epidemic.” The magic of the diet, its advocates say, is that it doesn’t mean skimping on portions or going without meat, eggs, cheese, alcohol or dessert.

This is Michael Pollan’s position of Eat Anything You Want, Just Cook It Yourself, as put into a short 2-minute video:

Well-known food writer Mark Bittman has a new book called How to Cook Everything Fast which mixes the right recipes with time-management tips to bring homemade food to tired weekday cooks. You can find a long list of reviews for it here. I enjoyed his quote that “the most radical thing that you can do for your health, if not the world at large, is cook.”

Here’s another good 2-minute video with Mark Bittman taken from the Time article The Truth about Home Cooking that explains some of his philosophy.

When I talk about cooking, something I’ve been doing for the better part of five decades, I’m not talking about creating elaborate dinner parties or three-day science projects. I’m taking about simple, easy, everyday meals. My mission is to encourage novices and the time- and cash-strapped to feed themselves. Which means we need modest, realistic expectations, and we need to teach people to cook food that’s good enough to share with family, friends and, if you must, your Instagram account.

Because not cooking is a big mistake—and it’s one that’s costing us money, good times, control, serenity and, yes, vastly better health.

Don’t let the corporations convince you that cooking is too hard; it really is doable if you avoid the common pitfalls and plan ahead. I agree with Bittman in that you should learn to make food you really want to eat, first and foremost. See if these Bittman recipes excite you: quick spaghetti squash or quick chicken parmesan.

Want more recipe ideas? Skip the poorly-chosen recipe from Sam Sifton’s Home Cooking Manifesto and try these 10 realistic recipes from Megan McArdle instead. Also see the links inside my Dinner A Love Story book review.

Feel free to share your own links and thoughts in the comments.

It’s flu and cold season, and I’m just recovering from being sick myself. Who knew there was even something called Tylenol Cold Multisymptom Liquid Severe or Mucinex Fast-Max Severe Congestion and Cough? That is, if you can find it while wading through an ocean of this:

Plus it costs nearly 10 bucks? This Atlantic article reminds us that all of these over-the-counter drugs are just combinations of the same old drugs like acetaminophen (Tylenol) or diphenhydramine (Benadryl). Even better, you can buy the generic versions for a fraction of the price, either individually or in their common combos.

The most important part is convincing yourself that generic versions of medicine have exactly the same effectiveness that the name-brand versions. Per the article, in order to be allowed on a pharmacy shelf, the generic version of a drug must deliver the same amount of active ingredients into your bloodstream in the same amount of time as the brand-name drug. You know which group of people buys the most generics? Pharmacists, because they see past all the marketing gibberish.

A new site called Iodine has a Cold & Flu Helper Tool that will help you determine what you need based on your symptoms, and help you find the generic version from places like Costco Kirkland, CVS, Walgreens, or Safeway. Or you can do what the author (an MD) does and keep generic versions of each individual drug, and make your own combo as needed.

Learn something, save money, and avoid taking unnecessary drugs with their potential side effects. Win-win-win!

I like my smartphone as much as the next person, but I’m also intrigued by things that last a really long time. Things that my children can inherit from me. Things like quality tools, classic books, good knives, or cast iron cookware. Up until today, I hadn’t really thought about my clothes in that way.

Outdoor clothing company Patagonia released “Worn Wear” before last year’s Black Friday as an “exploration of quality” and an “invitation to celebrate the stuff you already own”. Found via Farnam Street. Essentially it profiles a bunch of interesting folks who have used their Patagonia clothing for a long time. Depending on your perspective, the video could be about anti-consumerism, a great example of retail branding, or simply a bunch of cool people who do cool things.

Watching the video made me think of my 18-year-old LL Bean jacket. I first got it in high school, it’s been on many ski slopes and multiple continents, and I just wore it last week. Several years ago I had gained some weight and I tried to buy another one but they didn’t make it any more. Happily, it fits again.

From the video: “The most responsible thing you can do is buy used clothes.”

Related: Buy things that help you experience.

This interesting chart from the Appliance Standards Awareness Project shows how dramatically cheaper and more energy-efficient new refrigerators have gotten over the last few decades. Even as the average size has grown slightly, since 1980 the average cost has dropped by roughly half while the annual energy usage has dropped by nearly 2/3rds.

This WaPo article says this means it’s wrong to have a second refrigerator. Keeping your old, energy-wasting fridge could cost you $100 a year or more in extra electricity costs. At that rate, it may be better to either throw out the old fridge or even buy a new one.

Doing the math. If you don’t have your specific energy usage numbers, a fridge built to 1980 standards would use approximately 1,000 kWh more per year than a 2014 model. At the national average of 13 cents per kWh, that’s $130 a year. (I would recommend checking your own power bill because your actual per-kWh electricity cost could vary significantly.)

This caught my eye because we have an extra standalone freezer. It may use additional electricity, but it also reduces grocery trips and allowed me to fit 20 pre-made slow cooker meals inside at one time! More on that experiment later.

For me, cooking at home means using a ton of chicken broth and chicken stock (yes there are technically differences between broth and stock but mostly the terms are used interchangeably in recipes). It comes in handy in all kinds of recipes, and basically makes everything taste better (assuming you’re not vegetarian).

At $1 per cup the cost can add up, so I perked up when America’s Test Kitchen ran a Chicken Broth Taste Test. They tested various brands by drinking them straight-up, used in a plain risotto, and reduced in a gravy. The PBS cooking show America’s Test Kitchen (ATK) – which also publishes with Cook’s Illustrated magazine – can be thought of as the Consumer Reports for cooking in that they do not accept any advertising and are entirely subscriber-supported. I learned a lot of things I didn’t know about chicken stock:

• It’s okay to buy chicken broth. Yes, every single food “expert” will tell you that homemade stock is best and it’s so stupid easy you should do it yourself. But did you know that ATK themselves use boxed chicken stock for most of their own cooking? Since their last chicken broth test in 2005, they have used Swanson Certified Organic Free Range Chicken Broth on a daily basis. So don’t fret about it. Apparently it isn’t that stupid easy. Making my own chicken stock all the time is one of those things I’ll save for early retirement. (I admit homemade does taste better.)
• Most chicken broth is “a science project of flavor enhancers and salt”. Not necessarily something you’d like to hear, but apparently adding nucleotides and glutamates do indeed make things taste more umami and meatier. Many of these additives are considered “natural flavors” because they are made from extracted from things like yeast or soy protein. Also, too much salt may not be good for you but having too little means any broth will taste bland.
• Brands can change their formulas. As mentioned before, the 2005 taste test winner was the Swanson Certified Organic Free Range Chicken Broth. However, that product was recently reformulated with a new recipe and was no longer recommended in this 2014 test.
• It’s okay to buy chicken stock concentrate. Most chicken broth in stores is made by the same behind-the-scenes company (International Dehydrated Foods) in the form of a concentrate. Water is then added before final packaging by retail brands. Of course, that makes it heavier and bigger, so it costs more to ship and thus raises the store price. Therefore, a concentrate isn’t necessarily a more processed or more artificial product.

In the end, there were only two fully recommended products after performing the taste test.

The Better Than Bouillon Chicken Base (jar) is their Best Buy as it costs 85% less at $0.16 a cup vs. $1.06 a cup for the Swanson. In addition, the concentrate will last for two years stored in the refrigerator. When you need it, just add water to reconstitute. It has things like disodium inosinate and guanylate which probably interact with the naturally occurring MSG inside the hydrolized soy protein. Curiously, the label specifically states that no MSG is added.

The Swanson Chicken Stock (box carton) is the overall winner regardless of price, and it does not indicate any added glutamates on its ingredient list for those that don’t like that sort of thing. The issue for me is that my regular grocery store doesn’t sell Swanson Chicken Stock, only the cheaper and more popular Swanson Natural Goodness Chicken Broth (which was still rated relatively good but not as good as the stock).

ATK Founder Kimball said the worst one was Pacific Organic Free Range Chicken Broth, which tasted like “possum” or “roadkill”. Ew. I have personally been buying the Costco Kirkland Signature Chicken Broth, which I don’t believe was tested. But I’ve seen the Better than Bouillon at the store, so next time I will try it out. Sounds like a good thing to have as a backup.

(Note: All of this info is available via ATK’s freely-available text and video content at the time of publishing. If you register for free on their website (e-mail required), you’ll get more details on their review rankings and other tested products. There is also a paid subscription level with even more access.)

Also see: Best Value in Chef’s Knives?