Make it, Save it, Spend it. Today's Moves

You're Paying for the Label, Not the Food

Consumer Reports blind-tested 70 grocery staples. Store brands won or tied in nearly 60% of comparisons.

The main difference between the name-brand ketchup and the Target or Kroger version? Price. In Consumer Reports' blind taste panel, testers couldn't reliably tell them apart — and the store brands ran 62 to 72% cheaper per serving than Heinz. Across 70 products tested, store brands were as good as or better than the name brand in nearly six out of every ten comparisons.

The categories where switching is an easy call: canned goods, pasta, baking staples, frozen vegetables, peanut butter, and Greek yogurt. The ones worth sticking with the name brand: sugary cereals, where the taste gap is real, and some spice blends. The rule isn't “always buy generic” — it's “know which swaps are invisible.”

The full breakdown of which store brands to trust and which to skip:

Your Garage Is a Store You Never Opened

Most homes have hundreds of dollars in unused stuff that sells in days on the right platform.

Facebook Marketplace is free — no listing fees, no commission on local pickup sales. Snap a photo, set a price, post it. Buyers near you come to you. For clothes, Poshmark and Depop connect you with buyers who are specifically looking for what you have. For electronics, Swappa and eBay consistently get you closer to actual market value than a trade-in offer at a store.

The mistake most people make is listing everything on one platform. A dining room table doesn't need to ship — Facebook Marketplace. A branded jacket has buyers who won't find it locally — Poshmark. Matching the item to the right platform is the difference between something sitting for weeks and selling by the weekend.

Which platform is right for what you're selling — and how to price to move fast:

Freeze Your Credit. It's Free.

It takes ten minutes, costs nothing, and makes it nearly impossible for someone to open a credit account in your name.

A credit freeze locks your credit file so that lenders can't access it to open new accounts — which means even someone who has your name and Social Security number can't take out a credit card or loan in your name. By federal law, all three bureaus (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) must do it for free. It has zero effect on your credit score.

You don't have to be a victim of a breach to do this. The FTC says anyone can freeze at any time — proactively. When you need to apply for new credit, you temporarily lift it online in minutes and then re-freeze. Most people don't because they assume it's complicated. It isn't.

How to do it, what to have ready, and what each bureau's process looks like: