Best travel mug

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Which travel mug is best?

When it’s go-time, many of us reach for liquid motivation in the form of hot, caffeinated beverages like coffee and tea, making a good travel mug a necessity. At its best, a good travel mug can insulate hot and cold beverages alike, maintaining heat or preserving ice for hours. Whether you commute by car, public transit or on foot, a quality travel mug can be indispensable — and there are plenty out there to choose from. Our top pick, the THERMOS Stainless King Vacuum-Insulated Travel Mug strikes a great balance of quality and value.

What to know before you buy a travel mug

Before hastily reaching for a truck stop travel mug, there are some considerations that will make the most out of your mobile beverage experience. Understanding what sets a quality travel mug apart from its second-rate competition is important.

Material

The two most common travel mug materials are stainless steel and plastic. Stainless steel travel mugs are typically the highest quality in terms of durability, heat and cold retention and visual appeal. On the other hand, plastic travel mugs are less expensive, microwave-safe and easy to find in a pinch. Travel mugs made from ceramic or glass can be stylish, but they are fragile and non-insulated.

Insulation

Aside from portability, a travel mug needs reliable insulation to keep your drink at the right temperature. A first-rate travel mug should be insulated, which is why it’s a good idea to avoid cheap plastic models that trade convenience for quality. Many manufacturers note the estimated time of temperature retention in the product’s details, making it easy to spot the right fit for your personal time frame. Some models claim to hold hot beverages at temp for up to five hours and cold drinks as long as ninr hours.

Size

There are two sizes to look for in a travel mug: capacity and physical size. Travel mugs come in all sizes and shapes, so it’s important to find one that fits your conveyance. Some oversized mugs hold a large volume but take up too much space for a standard cup holder. Other mugs are large to the eye but with a surprisingly small capacity. It’s ideal to find a travel mug with the best of both features, but make sure it’s the right fit for your commute.

What to look for in a quality travel mug

Leakproof lid

Nobody likes a leaky mug, so thankfully, more travel mugs are manufactured with leakproof and auto-sealing lids. Nobody wants their drinks dripping on them while on the go, so with a leakproof lid, you can carry your travel mug in your bag without worry.

Visual appeal

There are a few standard designs for travel mugs, which means there’s bound to be a shape and size that fits your needs. Traditional travel mugs have either a tapered or tiered build with a bottom that fits universal cup holders. Modern mugs are skinny, sleek and easy to carry around. Stainless steel mugs are often silver and glossy, but there are also plenty of colors and designs to satisfy every taste.

Ease of use

Most modern travel mugs have mouthpieces that are easy to access, but some still require twisting off a lid. We recommend choosing a travel mug that’s simple to open and doesn’t make it difficult to sip as you please. While traditional coffee mugs come equipped with a handle, many popular, modern mugs are slender enough to hold easily with one hand. If your mug is easy to handle, it will help make traveling simpler.

How much you can expect to spend on a travel mug

Most travel mugs range in price between $10 and $30, but there are newer “smart” temperature control mugs that cost from $100 to $200. Although there are some mugs under $10, they are usually not insulated or cheaply made, so avoid discount mugs.

Travel mug FAQ

Are travel mugs microwave-safe?

A. No. Unless a travel mug is made from 100% ceramic, you should avoid the microwave. Stainless steel, like all other metals, isn’t safe to put in the microwave and could cause some serious damage. Plastic, on the other hand, could contain toxins that are released in a microwave. Check the bottom for a “microwave-safe” label, but you’ll be better off keeping travel mugs away from your microwave.

Are travel mugs dishwasher-safe?

A. Most modern travel mugs are not recommended for the dishwasher because of the seams between the inner and outer insulation. Hand-washing with dish soap is the best way to keep your mug clean and mold-free. However, some are dishwasher-safe, according to their manufacturers.

What’s the best travel mug to buy?

Top travel mug

THERMOS Stainless King Vacuum-Insulated Travel Mug

What you need to know: The brand that has become synonymous with “travel mug” delivers an all-around winner with the King. The exterior stays cool to the touch while keeping your liquids hot for up to seven hours.

What you’ll love: This model comes with a universal handle and is available in four colors. It also fits cup holders of all sizes.

What you should consider: This travel mug costs a bit more than other models, and the handle may feel awkward to some users.

Top travel mug for the money

FineDine Insulated Skinny Stainless Steel Tumbler

What you need to know: This slender tumbler hides 18 ounces of liquid within a stainless steel, double-wall body that comes in a number of attractive visual designs.

What you’ll love: It’s a leakproof and shatter-resistant option with an easy-access flip-top lid.

What you should consider: It doesn’t keep drinks hot or cold as long as more expensive mugs.

Worth checking out

Contigo Autoseal West Loop Stainless Steel Travel Mug

What you need to know: Another sleek and slim model, this mug keeps drinks at the right temperature for a long time — up to 7 hours for hot drinks and up to 18 hours for cold.

What you’ll love: The West Loop is available in a variety of colors. Its auto-seal technology keeps it leakproof, which also means no spilling.

What you should consider: It can be difficult to clean, and some users complain of lingering smells and tastes.

Prices listed reflect time and date of publication and are subject to change.

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Uno de cada cuatro neoyorquinos agobiado por deudas de préstamos estudiantiles: encuesta

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El informe revela disparidades por sexo y raza: las mujeres y las personas de color tienen mayores niveles de deuda y más dificultades para pagarla.

Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit

Este artículo se publicó originalmente en inglés el 24 de julio. Traducido por Daniel Parra. Read the English version here.

Uno de cada cuatro neoyorquinos está agobiado por la deuda de los préstamos estudiantiles, según los resultados de una encuesta reciente.

La encuesta, realizada por la Community Service Society of New York*, se llevó a cabo por teléfono del 6 de julio al 7 de agosto de 2023 y llegó a 1.758 neoyorquinos.

Reveló disparidades por género y raza, con las mujeres y las personas de color teniendo mayores niveles de deuda y enfrentándose a más dificultades para pagarla.

En todos los rangos de ingresos, los hogares con deuda de préstamos estudiantiles tenían más probabilidades de experimentar graves dificultades económicas en comparación con hogares similares sin dicha deuda, lo que plantea dudas sobre si la educación superior sigue siendo una vía segura para la movilidad ascendente. 

City Limits habló con Carolina Rodríguez, coautora del informe “The True Cost of a College Degree” (El verdadero coste de un título universitario) basado en la encuesta. Como directora del  Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program (Programa de asistencia al consumidor de deuda Educativa), Rodríguez ayuda a los clientes a crear y aplicar un plan estratégico para hacer frente a su deuda.

La deuda de los préstamos estudiantiles se ve agravada por el elevado coste de la vida en Nueva York, explicó, donde gastos como el alquiler y el seguro médico pueden ser considerables, mientras que los salarios permanecen estancados.

“Si se tiene en cuenta lo que cuesta, digamos, una educación de cuatro años, y los salarios y la capacidad de obtener ingresos, no se obtiene la cantidad necesaria para poder hacer frente al costo de la vida y pagar la deuda en un plazo razonable”, dijo Rodríguez.

Uno de los clientes de Rodríguez obtuvo préstamos estudiantiles hace casi dos décadas. Dejó de pagar la deuda y se declaró en quiebra, pensando que era la mejor solución, pero sólo consiguió una reducción del total de su deuda de préstamos estudiantiles y siguió teniendo que hacer pagos.

El proceso para ayudar a su clienta a obtener algún alivio de esa deuda fue largo y complicado, dijo Rodríguez. Aunque la prestataria había sido empleada del servicio público durante muchos años, no pudo beneficiarse de ningún programa de condonación de préstamos estudiantiles.

“Realmente habla de la complejidad de nuestro sistema que incluso aquellas personas que intentan obtener algún alivio a través de la quiebra, por ejemplo, pueden no darse cuenta de que pueden no obtener un alivio completo y podrían luchar durante años y años”, dijo Rodríguez.

Otro caso sorprendente le ocurrió a un padre que había pedido un préstamo de $100.000 dólares para que su hijo fuera a la universidad. Al no poder permitirse un plan de amortización, era sólo cuestión de tiempo que dejara de pagar el préstamo.

El impago puede tener consecuencias nefastas, como la retención del salario por parte del gobierno, o una reducción de hasta el 15 por ciento de los fondos de la Seguridad Social, incapacidad o jubilación. Las deudas de préstamos estudiantiles no prescriben, por lo que las repercusiones legales pueden producirse indefinidamente.

“Cada vez son más los padres que piden mucho dinero prestado, y el problema es que no tienen las mismas opciones de reembolso que la gente cuando pide préstamos para su propia educación”, dijo Rodríguez. “Así que se encuentran en este limbo en el que no pueden permitirse ningún plan de amortización”.

Una laguna jurídica del Parent Plus Loan —un tipo de préstamo que se cerrará en julio de 2025— permite a los padres que consolidan varios préstamos acceder a un plan de amortización más flexible. El cliente ya había consolidado varios préstamos, pero necesitaba uno más para poder acogerse al programa. Esto le llevó a la irónica posibilidad de tener que volver a la escuela para obtener otro préstamo, con el fin de calificar para el plan de pago más asequible.

Rodríguez y su equipo descubrieron que los prestatarios con bajos ingresos son los más afectados, pero no son los únicos que tienen que hacer frente a la deuda de los préstamos estudiantiles. Más de la mitad de los hogares neoyorquinos de ingresos moderados a altos que tienen este tipo de deuda afirman sufrir tres o más dificultades económicas, como gastos de transporte, elevados costes de guardería y ahorros reducidos.

El estudio propone una serie de soluciones, entre ellas la reforma de la declaración de bancarrota y programas de enseñanza superior pública más asequibles. Rodríguez afirma que quienes ya tienen deudas por préstamos estudiantiles no deberían retrasar el momento de afrontarlas, buscando asesoramiento financiero cuando sea necesario. Los estudiantes que estén pensando en obtener un título deberían solicitarlo en varias instituciones, sopesando cuidadosamente la ayuda financiera ofrecida por cada una de ellas en función de su potencial de ingresos tras la graduación.

“Si tardas dos décadas en ver el retorno de la inversión, ya has perdido mucho tiempo para poder ahorrar para la jubilación, comprar una casa y dedicarte a todas las demás actividades que pensabas que te permitiría obtener un título”, aconseja ella.

*Community Service Society es uno de los financiadores de City Limits.

Para ponerse en contacto con la reportera de esta noticia, escriba a Anastasia@citylimits.org. Para ponerse en contacto con la editora, escriba a Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Thomas Freidman: Democrats could regret calling Trump and his supporters ‘weird’

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For a few days this last week I started to believe that Kamala Harris and the Democrats could come from behind and beat Donald Trump. But then I started to hear Democrats patting themselves on the back for coming up with a great new label for Trump Republicans. They are “weird.”

I cannot think of a sillier, more playground, more foolish and more counterproductive political taunt for Democrats to seize on than calling Trump and his supporters “weird.”

But weird seems to be the word of the week. As The New York Times reported, in a potential audition to be Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said over the weekend of Trump and his vice-presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio: “The fascists depend on us going back, but we’re not afraid of weird people. We’re a little bit creeped out, but we’re not afraid.” Just to make sure he got the point across, Walz added: “The nation found out what we’ve all known in Minnesota: These guys are just weird.”

As the Times reported, Harris, speaking at a weekend campaign event at a theater in the Berkshires “leaned into a new Democratic attack on the former president and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, saying that some of the swipes the men had taken against her were ‘just plain weird.’” The Times added: “Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation, said Trump was getting ‘older and stranger’ while Sen. Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, called Vance ‘weird’ and ‘erratic.’”

It is now a truism that if Democrats have any hope of carrying key swing states and overcoming Trump’s advantages in the Electoral College, they have to break through to white, working-class, non-college-educated men and women, who, if they have one thing in common, feel denigrated and humiliated by Democratic, liberal, college-educated elites. They hate the people who hate Trump more than they care about any Trump policies. Therefore, the dumbest message Democrats could seize on right now is to further humiliate them as “weird.”

“It is not only a flight from substance,” noted Prof. Michael J. Sandel of Harvard University, author of “The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good?” “It allows Trump to tell his supporters that establishment elites look down on them, marginalize them and view them as ‘outsiders’ — people who are ‘weird.’ It plays right into Trump’s appeal to his followers that he is taking the slings and arrows of elites for them. It is a distraction from the big argument that Democrats should be running on: How we can renew the dignity of work and the dignity of working men and women.”

I don’t know what is sufficient for Harris to win, but I sure know what is necessary: a message that is dignity-affirming for working-class Americans, not dignity-destroying. If this campaign is descending into name-calling, no one beats Trump in that arena.

Thomas Friedman writes a column for the New York Times.

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Kathryn Anne Edwards: Women are America’s working class now

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It’s an election year, which means we’ll be hearing a lot from both Democrats and Republicans claiming that their party is the one true champion of working-class Americans. Sure, but what does it mean to be part of the working class in America these days? It means being female.

If there’s one statistic that describes the “working class” it is this: Of the 869,000 workers that are paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or less, 69% are women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Their ideal champion is one who fights for universal paid family leave, universal childcare, a higher minimum wage, improved regulations that guarantee paid sick days, and better enforcement of labor laws that protect them from wage theft and sexual harassment.

The polling firm Gallup has routinely asked Americans to self-identify into a class: upper, upper-middle, middle, working and lower. By their categorization, the working class is somewhere between poor and comfortable, avoiding poverty but missing the hallmarks of middle-class life, such as retirement security or owning a home. The working class have jobs, but they’re surviving, not thriving.

And as vague as the notion of “surviving, not thriving” is among workers, women are much more likely to fit the bill. Just under half, around 47%, of employed workers in the US are women but they are the majority of low-paid workers. There are a few ways to think about this. One is to look at the lowest-paying occupations and determine what share of the workers are women. Sure enough, among the bottom 20 lowest-paying occupations, in which a worker can expect to earn $30,000 to $35,000 a year, women are the majority in 15 of them, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — a clear overrepresentation.

An alternative to looking within low-paying occupations is to sum them up. Using this method, we find about 8 million workers are employed in the 20 lowest paid occupations and 4.9 million, or about 62%, are women. Clear overrepresentation again. Summing the data across the bottom 50 and 75 occupations would tell the same story. In other words, if it’s lower paid, women will be overrepresented.

With that in mind, the policies that they need championing are ones that improve working conditions for women because low-wage jobs are less likely to have paid time off, retirement benefits or health insurance. Also, such jobs are more likely to be in high-violation industries, or those identified by the Department of Labor as having the highest incidence of wage theft.

For women workers, there’s the added issue of harassment. Data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are hard to come by, but historically pregnancy discrimination and sexual harassment is much more common in low-wage industries, such as retail, accommodation and food services, than it is in higher-paying industries. Plus, there’s the burden of caregiving. Women are more likely to be caring for children as well as sick or elderly family members than men. Hence, a true working-class champion would also be fighting for labor law enforcement and paid family leave.

The politics of the working class has largely ignored women because they have proven less interesting as a voting bloc. Over the last 40 years, white men without a college degree switched political parties. They were dubbed the white working-class male. It’s a political moniker, not borne from the actual working-class demographic, but a convenient shorthand to describe people who have not gone to college. That’s not the same thing as actually being working class. For example, defined that way, 62% of Americans would be working class, which is far too broad. That’s more than double what those in the Gallup polls self-identify as, which has held at around 30% since 2000.

Sure, plenty of men are part of the working class, but they aren’t representative of the group overall because they generally earn too much. Consider that men with no more than a high school diploma out-earn their female counterparts by around $6 an hour. Viewed another way, men who didn’t finish high school can expect to earn about the same as women who did — $19 an hour. The low wages for women are one reason they are more likely than men to be working at least two jobs.

None of this is meant to minimize white, male, non-college degree holders as a group. They have a unique economic history that is deeply intertwined with the decline of blue collar work. Economists estimate that the wages of 25- to 54-year-old men without a college degree tumbled 18% in real terms between 1973 and 2015. But keep in mind that even after that decline they are still far out-earning similarly educated working women. Plus, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips and Science Act, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will create more non-college jobs at higher pay in typically male occupations.

The true working class — the surviving not thriving low-paid women in jobs without fringe, without leave, without care — deserve a champion, or at least a politician to recognize them for what they are.

Bloomberg columnist Kathryn Anne Edwards is a labor economist and independent policy consultant.

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