Crap on a stick! I just realize at 38 I’m grown up. I’ve gone from being carefree and silly all the time to mostly serious, thoughtful and (dare I say it?) almost responsible. Ugh. My evil twin, SINthia, calls it straight-up boring. Carefree rip anyway… She gets everything she wants. Which is where my current, recurrent issues are coming from. Just once I would like to throw a fit and get my way. Dave Ramsey says there is a grocery store kid inside everyone of us.

If I could feed that child within I would say this: I want new furniture. Waaahhh. Not the kind on sale, the expensive kind, with faux leather that’s soft and downy and recliners on each end and a whole room to match. *SINthia on the floor–thrashing about shrieking* I don’t want another piece-a hand-me-down, craigslist crap. Early garage sale is NOT a decorating style. They call it vintage cause it’s old…not she-she. Shabby sheek is just another way of saying ‘my husband won’t give me the freakin’ credit card or the keys to the damn-it emergency fund“.

(As my boys watch in wide-eyed wonder I would continue banging my head against the floor screaming…)

There’s a TV. I wanna TV. I ate all my peas, now give me my TV. I’m tired of that ten-year-old albatross in our living room. I’m sick to death of stomping across the living room to tell the kids for the fourth time to clean their rooms, messing up the TV because of a loose internal connection, then jumping up and down in front of it until the ding dong dang damn it thing stops buzzing and hissing like a giant cockroach…If I had a high def skinny TV I could do my workout DVDs better. Waaaah.

Sniff. Okay. Sniff. I’m done.

Please tell me this sounds familiar. You know what’s even worse? I’ve brainwashed Ben into buying all this Dave Ramsey stuff is a good idea. He now thinks saving money is sexy. He just asked the other day if had enough money to write a check for a new (angels singing) TV and furniture?

Yes.

Where is it?

In the emergency fund.

Oh, so we can’t touch it?

Not unless it’s a true emergency. (Car explodes, natural disaster strikes, someone dies, etc..) Or if we both agree…(Eve dangling the apple…)

Get behind me, Satan, is what he was thinking. Sounds like we need to make an envelope for TV and furniture, is what he said.

*Gah*

I wanted to holler, “Run! Run! As fast as you can, before you get sucked into being a responsible grown-up. Turning 21 was fun, the rest is overrated. Please, run. I’ll martyr myself. Take SINthia with you. Don’t look back, damn it run.”

But alas, the fox had already eaten the gingerbread man and in this story Adam didn’t eat the apple. I was left with the faint smell of bedtime, a hand-me-down fairy tale and a grown up for a soul mate. Shite!

With the child within– without, I went over to our money envelopes and with a sigh, wrote TV/Furniture on one and said to anyone who would listen, “Some days it sucks being a grown up.”

What does your child within want need. A new truck? iPad? A new gun? Banjo? A vacation? What’s your poison? Here’s your chance to whine, you best take it. Thanks for listening.

Simply,

Sis

Mom, what’s for supper? is about the nastiest thing this mom can hear. It’s right up there with are you going to exercise today and it’s time for your root canal. Fightin’ words is what they are. But I’m learning with a little planning and a running list, I shall over come.

Since food is a necessity but eating out isn’t, it is in the top four things you should spend your money on first. Our family of four spends between $400-450 per month on food, eating out and household items (toiletries, cleaners etc.). Keep in mind we feed a lot of strays around here and  spoil our neighbors by taking them homemade goodies for all the great things they do for us.

I don’t like to shop for food so I only shop every two weeks. If you don’t have a lot of storage space or a freezer this might not work for you, so keep in mind your food availability and storage issues. Ready? Here we go.

It all starts with a list. This is the hard part. So grab a glass a whine wine and sit down with a cookbook, the weekly grocery store advertisement and clipped coupons (if you use them–I don’t) and start making a list of your family favorites. Keep in mind the food you already have and use it up first to keep things fresh.

After your list is complete grab the calendar and start making your menu. If you are busy on Monday evening with sports practice and meetings that would be a bad day to have something that takes forever to fix… like homemade chicken and noodles…right? But, it would be a great night to have pigs in a blanket, green beans, and a salad; something fast and easy.

Make a grocery list off your menu. For the pigs in a blanket example I would need hot dogs, croissants, a can of green beans and some lettuce with dressing. Boom. Done. Next.

Stretching your food budget. I try to get the most out of my money and time by making enough to have left overs or use the excess in other meals. Example. We like to have sloppy joes with rotel cheese dip and chips, a fast crowd-pleasing meal. I take a half of block of velveeta and mix with a generic can of rotel and microwave. With the left over cheese dip I can make enchiladas, Mexican pizza, burritos, potato soup, cheesy potatoes, spicy mac and cheese AND get another couple meals out of the rest of the block of cheese.

Same with a whole chicken. If I bake the chicken I can take the drippings and bones and boil them for some tasty homemade chicken and noodles, another twofer. A large roast can be up to three meals: roast, taters and carrots, hot beef sandwiches, and sandwiches (bbq, beef salad, or roast beef sub). I have a friend who dumps all of her leftover veggies (corn, green beans, carrots) into a container in the freezer and makes a hearty soup or stew with she gets enough veggies together.

Still too hard? Don’t go out to eat yet. You can pay a small price to have someone do this for you. Check out emealz.com. They will do all the planning for you. All you have to do is buy it and cook it. It’s a great resource for moms and dads on the go.

Even this frugal mom gets overwhelmed once in a while and allows herself one night a month I don’t have to cook. On those nights we go to a place where kids eat free or we have found a great coupon to use.

One last thing. Take cash. Cash envelopes aren’t just for kids, they help adults stay on budget too. Good luck.

Simply,

Sis

Have you notice what is old is new again? People are searching for green answers to energy consumption. Folks are rediscovering solar, passive solar, and wood and wind energy. I find it utterly unbelievable that people who rolled their eyes at the way Grandma did things find themselves on a road of rediscovery.

Take wood for example. Ben and I grew up burning wood. One because it’s a great heat and two it saves money. It’s doubtful our old farmhouse would have ever been remotely warm if we would have heated with propane. Some scoffed and looked down their noses, but at sports practice it was the farm kids hard from throwing grain sacks, hay and wood around that didn’t take much conditioning.

There are draw backs to burning wood. My dad, the cowboy, thought he would kill two birds with one stone to hook up his new, very green team of work horses to the wagon and cut some wood. The horses would get their training and we would get our wood. It was an enjoyable idea at first, with the crisp air and the snow on the ground and all. Like a Norman Rockwell painting I suppose. We arrived at the dead tree place and after a few snow balls and our pecking order established again, my brothers decided they would stand on the ground and throw wood to me and I would place it in the high-walled wagon. Perfect. Perfect until Dad cussed, spit, and cranked up the old McCullough chainsaw… the “broke to death” horses spooked, took off running–lines dragging (in other words no brakes) leaving me to get a plan and fast. My plan came a little too late when the horses chose to cut through a couple of trees (not big enough for the wagon to pass through).  After going over some roots sticking up and hitting the trees, our wood cutting adventure was cut short. The flip in the air was fun, but the fun ended with my head slamming into the wagon and sliding down the wood walls in a dull heap at the bottom like some kind of silly cold cartoon. The last thing I heard was “Whoa, you sons-a-somethings!”, the crack of the tongue breaking and horses heading to the house at a high rate of speed. Nothing like a long walk back to the barn (picking up pieces of harness) to think about what we might do different next time.

Hey, I have an idea, maybe we shouldn’t cut wood anymore…

I vowed then I wouldn’t burn wood ever again. That  idea lasted all the way to Washington DC (where I met Ben) and back to the Midwest where we would set up our first home. Come to find out, winters are long and cold in Kansas, and if you live in an aging sometimes drafty house on a single income propane can be pricey. “Maybe burning wood wouldn’t be so bad,” I thought while I turned the thermostat down to 55 for the night. Now, a few years later and some killer biceps I say… wood is good. I can split and stack with the best of them, so can the kids.

Is the turn in the economy causing you to look for alternative energy?

Simply,

Sis

(Thanks to BlogHer Pic Ap for another cool pic.)

I look around and see a lot of people hurting financially. I hate that. Some have lost their jobs, others have made a financial mess for themselves and both are in fear of what the future holds. (The future may be really scary if we don’t get the capitalist killers out of OUR White House and other government positions.) At any rate, here we are. We need to skinny-up and get our own house in order before sending money to another person’s house.

The first step in getting your financial life in line is taking care of what Dave Ramsey calls the four walls: housing (including utilities), food, transportation and clothing.

Housing. Whether you own or rent your housing shouldn’t be more than 25% of your take home pay. If  it’s more than that you should consider selling or looking for a cheaper place to rent.

Food. We have to eat don’t we? But if you’re in a financial mess beans and rice is what’s for dinner until your finances turn around. While getting out of debt our family of four spent $400/month on food and household needs (toiletries, light bulbs etc…). We budget for $500/month, now, but eat out a couple times a month for a special treat. To save money we shop at Aldis, grow a garden, buy meat and eggs from local producers, cook from scratch and always, always, always make a menu and shop from a list. (Just ask my kids what happens if your requests don’t make the list…probably go without until the next big shopping trip.)

Transportation. Dave Ramsey says all of your cars, trucks, boats, four wheeler’s value shouldn’t add up to more than 50% of your yearly gross income. So if you make 50K/year your total value (what they are worth today– not what you paid for them) shouldn’t be more than $25K. If you have more than 50% you have too much invested in items whose value drops like a rock. If you’re make a couple of huge car payments, getting into cheaper cars would free up a lot of cash and get you back on track quicker. (We sold our brand new truck when getting out of debt. The best thing we ever did.)

Clothing. I’ve seen very few people running around naked. The ones I have seen were being chased by cops. So it’s not just a hunch, you probably have enough clothes to get by on until you are out of your financial mess. If not, or if you have kids that tend to grow regardless of what your bank statement says…shop garage sales and used clothing stores to save big. (I just found two pairs of GAP jeans, a pair of Cruel Girl jeans and three new shirts for me at Salvation Army and paid less than $20 for all of them.) Good deals are around every corner if you look.

With the money left over you should pay off your debts smallest to largest until the money is gone. If you’re getting a tax return or some windfall don’t forget to get $1000 in the bank for an emergency fund. And cut up your credit cards for goodness sake, they are nothing but trouble.

You can do this. The hardest part is making up your mind to change.

Simply,

Sis

Crossposted on Blogher.com. Click here to check it out.

(Thanks to BlogHer Pic App for this photo that makes me want to throw-up.)

It’s tax time, ie: pay more time if you’re a overachieving small business owner or it’s get back more  than you paid in for others. How fair is that? 

Our tax system is broken. It unfairly taxes the high income earners (a lot of which employ most everyone else) and lets those that make $250K or less basically skate. Give me a break. Marlin the millionaire thinks we should have a flat tax, say 10%. He says if it’s good enough for God, it’s good enough for government. I love it. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t get a tax return and hasn’t for years. 

I find it interesting what people choose to spend their money on. According to cch.com 41% people will pay bills, 41% will save it, 15% will spend it and 3% don’t know. How can you not know? Anyway.

Since tax returns are mostly other people’s money (most returns boast more money than paid in) maybe they should be spent responsibly. Isn’t that what we want our politicians to do with our money? What if everyone who got a tax return used $1000 to start a baby emergency fund, (remember emergency funds should be 3-6 months of expenses used for true emergencies) then with the balance they started paying off their debts smallest to largest until the money is gone?

What if everyone woke up fiscally responsible? We wouldn’t be in massive debt to China, there would be happier marriages, politicians would be laying down with the people (lion with the lambs), pigs would be flying and hell would be freezing over. I’m afraid even that wouldn’t wake us up as a nation. Maybe when the people of China call in our debt and folks in India take all our jobs and we are eating rice for every meal– we’ll have a light bulb moment (not the Al Gore kind) and want to do something about it. But by then it will be too late.

Got returns?

Got ideas on how to spend them?

Simply,
Sis

W found the knife guy right away. After he spent a good 20 minutes smelling around looking for a boot knife, he finally decided he needed a diving knife. Keep in mind their are no oceans here in the middle of Kansas and darn few lakes that would be clear enough to make diving enjoyable. However, by-golly we’ve got boots. Bunches and bunches of boots. All that aside, he needed a diver’s knife. (Ben told me boys could never had too many knives or guns. Shocking thing is, I believe him.) Anyway. W wanted something he could strap on since they were lacking boot knives.

The last thing I told them before walking in was don’t forget to dicker. Deputy Barney all but ignored me and W just nodded. So I’m acting uninterested. At least as uninterested as I can with a camera in my hand. Reality is I had to be there to say it was okay to sell a ten year old a concealable diving knife, when W said this…

“Eighteen dollars! Is that yer friendliest price?

“I’d go fifteen for you.”

W nodded and immediately said, “Thirteen?”

The knife dude looked at me, shocked. I suddenly was in a conversation with myself about gum or something, digging wildly in my purse.

He smiled after a good long  as he felt his profits going out the window and said, “I guess…for you *sigh* I’d take thirteen.”

W handed him twenty. I about died. There’s nothing better than coming home with a little cash still in your pocket. I hate to brag, but dang I’m proud.

Poor Barney on the other hand didn’t have as good of luck.

He wanted a croking frog and before he even got to the dickering part, the old man in the top hat said, “Buddy, those are my wife’s frogs. If I don’t come home with exactly enough frogs and money she gets maa-add.”

So Barney just paid him and the man said, “Go ahead and pick out the one you want. Try them all out.”

Barney already had and said, “No, I’d hate to make your wife mad. She sounds mean.”

Frogman almost peed himself laughing. You  would think with that kind of comedic timing he would have given a discount, but what do I know?

Simply,

Sis

If you are like 75-80% of Americans or the Jones, you live paycheck to paycheck  and haven’t saved for a rainy day or invested for retirement. The top two reasons you haven’t is sitting in your driveway, in your stomach (or on your hips) in the form of eating out.

That was certainly our reality a few years ago. We had a brand new pickup sitting in the garage, but could hardly afford to put gas in it. Ben was constantly worried about providing for a family with one average paycheck.  My how times have changed in our wheat field.  Ben still works his same job, but when it comes to money our behavior is different. We just got done making a whirlwind trip to Oklahoma to pick up a pickup that we paid cash for. (The third vehicle we’ve done this with.) We used the principles we learned in Dave Ramsey’sFinancial Peace University class to track down, dicker for and finally drive away with a new truck. New to us anyway, everyone knows a car’s value drops like a rock. Right? I mean faster than granny can lose her falsies playing poker.

Cash for clunkers was a waste. As with ever other government program, in the end it hurt the tax-payer, hurt small businesses and gave more power to the government. According to CNN 17% of the participants who followed the socialist Pied Piper of Washington to the car lots in August had regrets of  trading in perfectly good vehicles and signing up for a payment, higher taxes and insurance. The big surprise was more gas money gets spent driving their nice new car. Tell me. How was that a good idea?

Before you use every excuse we used to use to drive a new car like… “Car payments are just a way of life. I need something reliable. I need something safe to haul kids around in.”..watch this video about how to drive free cars the rest of your life.

Get what your car is worth by selling it privately. Don’t trade it. Period. Dealers are experts at making you think you got a good deal. Remember they are in this to make money and they buy at wholesale and sell at retail. Learn their tricks and use them when you buy privately.

Research your next vehicle while your waiting for your car to sell. We used Consumer Reports, Edmonds, Kelly Blue book, and others to research reliability, market values, and safety ratings.

Buy gently used.Let the first owner take the huge hit on the depreciation for the new car smell. According to Dave Ramsey “it’s like throwing a hundred dollar bill out the window of your new car every week.” Doesn’t that thought make you want to hurl?

Find your car by searching Craigslist, newspapers, Ebay, repo auctions, bank parking lots, word of mouth etc. We have even talked to small dealers about finding what we want at auction and paying them $500-1000 over what they can buy them for. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box, that’s usually where you save money.

Have a mechanic look at it and drive it. Even if it costs you $30-50 dollars, it would be better than buying a lemon. While they’re looking ask questions and pick their brain. Do you work on these much? Is that engine a good one? Do these transmissions last? What vehicles do you work on the least?

Never pay asking price, dicker. I love doing this. I wrote about how to do it and not do it here. Ben usually lets me dicker because it’s not his forte. While we are doing the good-cop/bad-cop thing he has been know to say, “I know, Man, you ought to try to live with her.” It’s all in fun and part of our evil plan, but it works. So let the dicker er er in the family do it.

Getting a different car is time consuming and frustrating. It takes focus and perseverance, but in the end can save you big time. We figure we saved $3000 in the month it took us to sell one and buy another. Since I don’t work much outside the home, I figure that is my paycheck. For the time I put into it, I madesaved hundreds of dollars an hour. Certainly nothing to sneeze at. With savings like that, we can afford to do recommended maintenance and fix problems once in a while.

Simply,

Sis

Dear Dr. (Eco),
  I attended the recent breakfast meeting on the economy at (my bank) would like to thank you for your efforts. However, I must confess that, with
exception to the historical data you presented, I believe your conclusions are
incorrect.
  I can empathize with your perspective as you, in your own words, confess that
you never left school after kindergarten. I assume this means that you have
never signed a check on the front, made a payroll, or had an entrepreneurial
idea that you have backed with your own cash, blood sweat and tears? Your
view of economics is based strictly on theory. Perhaps that is why you can be
so cavalier in telling me to send my jobs overseas.
  Aside from the local job loss that would result if I followed your advice, let me
give you an example of another drawback to your suggestion for me to import
my goods and services. GM currently outsources the production of their
transmissions to India. As you may be aware, India is on strike and production
is halted in Michigan as a result. Boy, am I glad we bailed them out so that
production can be paralyzed by something beyond our control! This is certainly
a downfall of having our supply chain spread all over the world, wouldn’t you
agree?
  In response to your perspective of why our economy is in its present state, I will
give you my opinion. In short, it is due to our lack of ability as American
businesses, to compete globally. This inability cannot be blamed on small
business and its entrepreneurs. Part of that credit can go to our educators. Why
were Tom Peters and a Ph.D from mighty Harvard visiting China in 1995 to
study their system? In short, they knew then, as we all know now, that our
education system is broken. We are not competitive on the world stage in large
part due to our curriculum shortfalls.
  Further credit for our lack of competitiveness can be given to the incompetency
of our government. Ours is a bloated government that has been lobbied into
oblivion by special interests. Big business has yet to understand that capital,
labor and management must work together to create return on investment for
the investors. These are investors who have risked their hard earned money to
wager that a company will be a winner, not the MBA that thinks he can create
subprime loans to gamble with all of our futures. Add to this the fact that there
are 535 lawyers creating laws that they have no experience to author, and you get exactly what we have now. Americans lack confidence in our government,education system, and the financial sector.
  In the future, I would carefully consider the answers you give in a non-academic
setting, for there are some who heavily weigh your credentials. For those of us
that have created a company, supplied health insurance, 401k plans, paid
vacation, paid maternity leave, ROI for its investors, created jobs for the people
of the surrounding counties so they could buy homes, and pay taxes so the
state can employee esteemed teachers, your perspective was offensive and
skewed.
  I do agree with your student,(Jim) . (Our) County will continue to
decline in real estate sales until jobs are created. Despite your advice, I will
keep my jobs here and continue to work to get the government off my back. I
will compete with any nation one on one, if you untie my hands from the
bondage of big government.
  I do believe you to be a very intelligent man. Why not pool all the great
financial and intellectual resources at your disposal through the University of
(our state) to create a plan for success for American business? This would lessen
the burden of government on small business, increase state revenues and
prevent further unemployment. This in turn would eliminate the furlough days
that you are currently experiencing.
Best wishes on your future endeavors,
Marlin

President & CEO

When small business owners talk…we need to listen. Like I’ve said before, sometimes you gotta get your hand dirty it’s part of the American work ethic.

Simply,

Sis

(Thanks to BlogHer Pic App for this crazy pic.)

I talked at length this week with my friend Marlin, a first generation millionaire by-way-of his small business. (If you haven’t met him yet, please click here to meet him, here for part two– why some people don’t have money, and here to learn about savings.) He was so gracious and encouraging, but his words on the economy and where our country is headed were absolutely devastating.

According to the Small Business Adminastration (sba.gov)…

Small firms: (employing 500 people or less)
•    Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
•    Employ just over half of all private sector employees.
•    Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
•    Have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years.
•    Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).

In other words…if small businesses are thriving here in this once great country, we all thrive. Remember that.

In the state where Marlin lives, small businesses make up 80% of the employers. Just before Obama took office Marlin let 20% percent of his employees go. The grasshoppers he called them, only keeping the ants to prepare for the new administration. (You know the story of the grasshopper and the ants right?) That was 12 families that were changed just from his small business. He had worked besided these people and shared his wealth and family with them. “It broke my heart,” is how he put it.

Is that the change you voted for?

For the ants that got to stay…no pay cuts, no change in benefits. Before you cry ‘evil rich person…’ I know how he treats his people. I’ve had dinner with them. They welcomed me into their families. They all had nothing but great things to say about Marlin. His values and integrity are hard to match, from pay, to benefits, to their education, Marlin treats them very well. His attaboy from the government for taking on huge finnancial risks and creating jobs: pretty near 60% in property, federal, state, local, FICA, and other taxes. Thanks big government.

He often asks…If someone showed up at your door demanding you give up 60% of your money for the better good would you? That is exactly what the government is doing to our small business owners. Their communistic ways are unconstitutional. In fact, the US Constitution supports fair taxation because our founding fathers hated big government. But here in 2009 that’s not how it is playing out!

Let’s change the scenario. If you’re like Ben and I and earn average money and the government showed up and asked for 60% of our talent, time or things for the better good, to share the wealth, for the rights of others… would you…

a) give it to them 

b) go to jail

c)give up and get in the free soup line

or

d) VOTE THE CORRUPTED, NONCONSTITUTION LOVERS OUT OF OFFICE

I pick d. Simple economics tell us we’ve got to stop taxing the small business owners and lift the government’s regulations off of them so they can do what they are best at; making money and creating jobs. Marlin is 56 years old. He said he and others won’t take much more unfair taxation. Instead, he’ll quit and live off the money he has saved.  If that happens across the country, America, as we once knew her,will be in a heap of trouble.

Marlin and his other small business owning–freedom loving cronies say, November 2, 2010 is pivotal for our country. We need to get ourselves out of debt, in our homes and in our country, stop the corruption, set term limits on our officials and stop spending. Start now deciding how you will vote. Republican or Democrat doesn’t matter. Vote for someone according to your values, principles and if they will uphold the Constitution of America.

Simply,

Sis

PS ~ Coming up… a letter Marlin penned to a guy who had a PHD in economics (an educated idiot with more degrees than a rectal thermometer) about what he thinks of the doctor’s China supporting economics. Stay tuned.

Some of the best money spending advice I’ve ever got was from a former boss, the dad to the children I was a nanny for. He was a frugal sort of guy. (I wrote a little about them here in the context of a great waffle recipe).

Anyway. They seemed to be great money managers and taught their kids about money in unique ways. Like when they were teenagers they got X amount of dollars for the week, to cover gas, food and extras. If you ran out of money early, that was your problem. I remember the eldest child running out of money and asking her parents for gas money. Her mom suggested she ask her teammates (who she took home after practice) to pitch in, which she did. Problem solved.

One morning I was down eating breakfast and John was reading a Consumer Reports magazine. “What a nerd,” I thought, but asked him what he was researching. He was researching cars. Lynn needed a new one, as her ten-year-old old Honda Accord  had almost 200,000 miles on it and was ready to pass down their eldest child.

“Do you always research everything before you buy it?” I asked.

“Yes. If it is over one hundred dollars, it’s worth researching,” he said.

Fast forward 16 years later. This former nanny has had a subscription to Consumer Reports for years. We don’t buy anything without it. Even if it’s under $25. (Yes. I love crow. Thank you. I have to eat it daily for some of the stupidest things I’ve ever said.) Some of our Consumer Reports Best Buys include: a ten year old coffee pot, two digital cameras, Ben’s Truck, my car, our computer, coffee for the coffee pot, our washing machine, dishwasher, dryer, our deck stain, house paint, running shoes, laundry detergent (until we started making our own), cat litter, chain saw, lawn mower, shopping places on and offline… Shoot. I could go on and on.

Who’s the nerd now?

I would like to share my nerdiness with you and save you some money in the process, by giving away a free year’s subscription to the unbiased Consumer Reports magazine.

Just leave me a comment saying what you’re looking to buy.  A vacuum? Insurance? Beer? Wine? Batteries? Cleaners? What’s your poison? This give away ends at 9:00 pm CST on Friday, November 13, 2009. One entry per person, please.

Simply,

Sis

PS Consumer Reports is not sponsoring this giveaway. I am, because I want to. Because…I’m thankful for my readers. Because…I love ya, Man! Consumer Reports don’t even know I exist until my subscription comes due. Thank you.