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You can't afford it, you don't have an emergency fund, and at least in your OP you have a $125/month clothing budget. Continue to use it smartly and buy 'grown up' clothes and you will have a professional wardrobe within a few months. You are attempting to use KG levels of justification for making a poor financial decision. I'd say what is happening is you've got a bit of a bigger balance in your accounts that you are used to, so you're feeling like you've got some money to blow. Without a complete update on all your loans/accounts it's hard to see where you stand currently. I'd encourage you to establish a 'I don't touch this account' and chunk off some of the money into that account. You need to continue to live within your income on a monthly basis.
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Sep 19, 2015 20:39
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n8r posted:I'd say what is happening is you've got a bit of a bigger balance in your accounts that you are used to, so you're feeling like you've got some money to blow. Without a complete update on all your loans/accounts it's hard to see where you stand currently. I'd encourage you to establish a 'I don't touch this account' and chunk off some of the money into that account. You need to continue to live within your income on a monthly basis. You've definitely hit the nail on the head there. I read a while back that that kind of thinking is common in people who grew up poor/with a financially illiterate family. I definitely think "well, I have money right now BUT I MIGHT NOT SOON, so I should spend it while I can." I genuinely worry (a lot) that whatever situation I'm in, if it's good at all, it's precarious. This is because I've been in precarious, lovely situations -- of course I think that way. Even though now I am not necessarily in a precarious situation, it's hard to change that pattern of thinking. Not impossible, of course, but it takes time + effort. I am going to start funneling money into our savings accounts and stop reporting them as "available" money, in terms of budgeting for stuff. MAKE NO BABBYS posted:SF is actually way worse for thrifting than Santa Rosa is, it's more picked over and expensive. Anything designer or vintage is snatched up for eBay before it hits the floor. I actually go thrifting when I visit my mom up there rather than here at home. I am going to try these places! We stopped into a thrift store in RP today and I found a couple of pieces I like, which was cool and surprising and super cheap. It looks like Mission Thrift is closed, though. There's a consignment shop near our apartment that I've been into once that I want to stop into again soon, too. flynt posted:I don't think it's that big of an issue to spend a significant amount of money on clothes because your description does make it sound like you are pretty much starting from scratch but I think the time frame is too short. That's a lot of money to be spending on clothes in two months and finding clothes you love and are good quality can take some time. If you try to build an entire wardrobe in that short time you might compromise for things that are only okay. Maybe focus on 2-3 pieces a month? Personally I get kind of burnt out on long shopping trips and I'm less likely to make smart buying decisions. Make a list and try different types of stores including some thrift stores and Marshalls type stores. Knowing the color palette you are looking for is a good idea. Yeah, I'll keep it to just a few pieces a month and shorter stuff. I think part of the thing is that I've bought clothes from Ross, secondhand, or on sale at target exclusively for as long as I can remember. Part of me is like "whoa can I afford like, not cheap clothes now??"which again goes with the thinking that, well, I have money right now, obvi i deserve to spend it now before the world comes crashing down and I'm ~poor again~. moana posted:Everything you listed can be bought at Ross for a quarter of the price or thrift stores for a tenth of the price with a bit of time and effort. I just got the cutest dress (plus belt!) at Ross for $11 and have been getting compliments on it all over the place. Seriously, you are wasting shittons of money if you think you need to spend fifty dollars on a skirt. For the more expensive stuff (good flats), find exactly what you want and PUT IT ON YOUR CHRISTMAS WISH LIST. For the love of god, don't spend over a thousand dollars on new clothes. That's probably more than I've spent in the last five years, my goodness. I'm looking at dark brown + navy + cream as neutrals, and grey, salmon, olive, and darker red as accent. I even have a little chart of color proportioning I'd like to shoot for and examples of pieces I want to find & what they look like together. So, no dropping loads of money on clothes in short amounts of time. As much as I would like sometimes to blow loads of money on clothing, because that would make me feel happy and like an adult right??? (no)
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Sep 20, 2015 00:50
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Looks like it's called Redwood Gospel Mission Thrift? I think it's still open. I've had a lot of good luck with purses and shoes there.
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Sep 20, 2015 03:16
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Gnossiennes posted:I think part of the thing is that I've bought clothes from Ross, secondhand, or on sale at target exclusively for as long as I can remember. Part of me is like "whoa can I afford like, not cheap clothes now??"which again goes with the thinking that, well, I have money right now, obvi i deserve to spend it now before the world comes crashing down and I'm ~poor again~. If you can make it a game to find high-quality stuff at cheap prices, you get both kinds of satisfaction, short term and long term. Go to higher-end stores and only look at the clearance racks, leave if they don't have anything on super sale. Make it clear to yourself why you don't want to spend money on things - write down the specific reasons you don't want to waste money. It sounds hippy dippy, but when you look back on your life, you're not going to remember that cute hundred-dollar skirt you bought when you were thirty and wore for a couple of years. You're going to remember the time you spent with loved ones. Wasting money on luxury stuff means having less time to spend on the really meaningful things.
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Sep 20, 2015 03:58
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MAKE NO BABBYS posted:Looks like it's called Redwood Gospel Mission Thrift? I think it's still open. I've had a lot of good luck with purses and shoes there. Heck yeah, I'll check it out. Thank you  Husband & I also passed by the place in Sebastopol that sells mid-century furniture, but it's probably best they weren't open (though I wouldn't have impulse bought anything as expensive as furniture) but i'd still love to stop in and look and maybe share my love of chairs (see avatar, not kidding, can seriously talk about chairs for hours). moana posted:It's worth examining your feelings when they come up like this, being mindful of what actually makes you happy and what brings meaning to your life. Shopping is definitely one of those dopamine blasters, along with sugary foods, nicotine, you name it - you get an addictive feeling from spending money on things, because you expect that doing so will make you happy. The happy feeling quickly turns to dissatisfaction though, if your choices directly oppose your long-term goals. I'm grateful for my time in therapy + mindfulness work. It's been a while and the whole moving thing kinda set me up in this mood of "oh well, i'm stressed so i should let myself just be stressed for a while, i deserve to let myself be stressed." which makes no sense imo; it's like, "i'm sick, so i deserve to wallow in my sickness." Nah, man, go to the doctor, drink some fluids, take some meds. Or in my case, keep up with mindfulness work, keep applying the months and months of therapy that helped me get through school and with working through past bullshit, and recognize that difficult situations and times don't mean i deserve to quit caring about the rest of life. It's just self-sabotage. As for spending time with loved ones, I think part of the desire to buy stuff (to get happy emotions) comes down to frustration on that front -- my husband & I's schedules don't meet up, so we don't always spend much time together. We were able to this weekend, but most weekends we have maybe one day together, and not always that, even. And his own working hours are mid-shift (2pm-10pm ish usually), which means we don't really even spend time together during the week. He's told me a couple times that this situation is why he really wanted to drop down to working part-time when we moved out here, rather than staying at full-time. I am glad we've been able to pay off the Amex, and we make enough to easily cover the monthly student loans payment (that will start up in two months), but I want us to be more secure financially. He's just not as concerned about having you know, a good cushion. He also hasn't ever spent time being poor and doesn't know how it feels to have no backup plan. There's a bit of resentment on both sides, I think. I wish he could understand why I feel precarious (I want to not feel like that). He wishes we had more time together (and I do too). What I'm hoping is that his work schedule will get more consistent (shooting for friday-saturday as off days) and then I could shift my work schedule to being sunday-thurs rather than mon-friday. My work has flex hours, so that would actually be easy to do.  Things I've done: Three lunches ready to go for this next week, as well as stuff to fix lunches for the other two days and plenty of stuff for dinner & breakfast. Spent the day at the beach including a stop in Occidental for lunch. Things I will do: Goal for next week is to buy lunch/breakfast max once at work Play more mahjong with the newly formed work mahjong club also the bs thread in e/n makes me want to not be a doofus about money and my life. thanks bs. it's been a  read
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Sep 21, 2015 07:35
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While most of the stuff you need you can pick up at a Ross/Kolhs/Thriftstore I do suggest buying at least one power suit (think something HRC or the Queen would wear) if only for client meetings.
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Sep 21, 2015 16:22
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sbaldrick posted:While most of the stuff you need you can pick up at a Ross/Kolhs/Thriftstore I do suggest buying at least one power suit (think something HRC or the Queen would wear) if only for client meetings. Unfortunately, I'm not customer facing at all, so a powersuit wouldn't be real useful.  Plus I'm a ~*creative professional*~ (albeit in a sea of engineers) so that sorta corporate attire may not jive so well, either. But i don't necessarily want to give in to my sea of black shirts and jeans just yet, either.So, Sept spending: Income: $8,627 Spending: $5738 ($2105 final amex payment + $3633 stuff) Left over: $2889 Extraneous spending: $768 (eating out, buying stuff, going places, entertainment, vaping) Groceries: $562 Bills: $2303 Good things: Last week I only ate out for lunch once, this week I've had food provided 3/5 days, and bought food once and am going out to lunch with some folk tomorrow. My goal is for buying lunch at work 1-2/wk, so that's good. I did get dinner with people a couple times last week (mahjong + hiking trip) and once this week (mahjong), as well as getting indian with the husband and in-n-out one night, and going to the beach and getting lunch. But for the most part, it's been lots of cooking and making smoothies because smoothies are good. Bad things: Still overspending on groceries. Husband still spends so much on vaping ($117 last month) holy gently caress stop smoking unicorn tears or whatever the gently caress costs so much Goals for October: Uh, don't overspend on groceries for once, keep with the minimal lunch buying, start potlucking the weekly mahjong (we halfway did that this week), don't finance a miata prepare for student loan repayment Things I want to buy: A sofa to go with our tiny loving loveseat A coatrack Those collapsible drawer-boxes for the shelves in our closet I'll probably buy the latter two sometime in the next couple weeks and start searching for a good sofa, which will not include blowing $5k on a mid-century piece or anything.
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Oct 2, 2015 07:44
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You managed to save ~32% of your total income, that's drat good. Is your goal to continue save 30% of your income which you will put toward debt/emergency savings? If so, I'd encourage you to start setting aside money out of that remaining 70% in order to pay for the FFL (heh).
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Oct 3, 2015 18:09
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n8r posted:You managed to save ~32% of your total income, that's drat good. Is your goal to continue save 30% of your income which you will put toward debt/emergency savings? If so, I'd encourage you to start setting aside money out of that remaining 70% in order to pay for the FFL (heh). I can't figure out what FFL means, I'm sorry :'( I will sit down tonight and think/write about what I want in terms of financial goals. We still owe 5k to his mother, which we'll need to talk about working out a plan on paying. I'm thinking 500/mo for the next 10 months. Also, I'd like to offer to pay for her flight out here when she visits here soon (I hope!! she's a really lovely lady and I miss her). Accounts: Total: $8278 His: $4895 Mine: $3383 Bad things: I got a OnePlus Two invite, and decided to do it. I won't defend it; I bought it solely because I wanted it. I'm well aware that it was not the best financial decision, and I accept and understand that. Good things: I've bought lunch only once at work this week (and only $4 at that), and won't be at work during lunch for tomorrow/friday. Upcoming spending: Going to SF tomorrow (Cal Academy Nightlife!), will probably buy food and drinks there. Might go to the beach this weekend since we're both off, will probably get lunch in Occidental or something Still want a goddamned coatrack, but will wait on it due to blowing $430 on a phone. I looked on craigslist, but I only found this vagina rock:  I also found this nice sofa, but that will be a next month or later thing.
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Oct 8, 2015 05:07
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