Category: Humor

Humor, Money, Shopping

Cash or Card?

“Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.”
― Dorothy Parker

One of the best money practices I’ve found for for living in an expensive city is to give myself a cash allowance. I set up an account for myself that gets £100 a month paid into it automatically–no more, no less. I have a card for this account that allows me to withdraw cash from a machine, but is not usable in any other way, and that cash is my spending money for the month. If I forget to pack a lunch, or want a hot/iced drink in the morning, that’s the fund it needs to come out of. Same with purchases at markets or indulgences like magazines. At my very best and most diligent, if an item wasn’t groceries or a travel card, it was paid for out of that stash.

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Some months I’ve barely touched it and the fund has accumulated nicely, other months I’ve dipped into the extra to get a specific purchase. The bag I mentioned as part of my end of year shopping mission was a cash buy after haggling down the seller at Portobello Road, for instance. Secondary pro tip to this story, go to markets at the end of the day when sellers are looking to make one last sale or two before packing up and heading home. Yes a lot of things will have been picked over, but good stuff remains if you’re willing to look for it. I’ve also pulled this trick to get a week’s worth of produce from Borough market in a box for £5 on occasion. It never hurts to make your cash stash stretch as far as possible, and if that means you suddenly need to learn how to cook with beets that week, so be it!

Do you have a cash or card trick? Do you give yourself a strict allowance, or do you frame your spending money through another lens? 

Fashion, Humor, Money, Shopping

Bans, Budgets, and Cutting Myself Off

“To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.”
― Oscar Wilde

What’s your relationship with shopping and consumption, kittens? I’m curious because I’m in the process of resetting mine, and that’s primarily what we’re going to be chatting about this week.

Towards the end of last year I did the first of three shopping bans as part of my 101/1001 project. The self imposed rules were simple: regular expenses, utilities, and things for the house were permitted, but all personal purchases (with the exception of toiletries or replacing an item if damaged beyond repair–RIP cheap, shredded tights, hello Heist) were verboten. I’m not a massive clotheshorse or a major spendthrift, but I’m also not immune to consumer culture and its emotional traps, hence my goal to push the pause button on self-centered consumption at least once a year.

Rather sneakily, and perhaps not fully in the spirit of the challenge, as previously mentioned, I timed it so that the first ban would end in time for Black Friday. My motives were partly altruistic (Christmas shopping for other people) but not entirely. However, after three months of not buying anything for myself…it turned out that I didn’t want much.

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Stuffocation?

One of the things I started doing last summer and during my first shopping ban was to start and keep a “To Buy” list. If I spotted an item I like, a trend I wanted to try, or a piece that appealed to me, I wrote it down rather than whipping out a card/cash or trying to justify buying it. I sat on the idea for a while. Shock surprise, it often turned out that a trend played itself out in a matter of days or weeks, the appeal of a piece faded, or…I just didn’t think about it again until I consulted my list and remembered, “Oh yeah, I did see that. Guess it wasn’t as memorable as I thought.”

By the time my self-imposed strictures lifted, I took a look at my list and asked myself what I really wanted. The answer was a handful of shirts/sweaters that would be good enough for work but also dress up my casual clothes (an ongoing project), a bag to replace my day-to-day one that was ripped and stained, one new accessory, and one trend piece (a velvet blazer)–plus beauty buys. So counting Black Friday and excluding Christmas presents, my end of year personal shopping comprised the following:

Glossier/Pestle & Mortar – skincare and not really part of my ban, but I’m counting it for the sake of full disclosure (discount codes)

Sephora – makeup (Black Friday deal)

Everlane – two shirts and a sweater (discount code)

Nepheliad – a pair of earrings (discount code)

Brora – two sweaters (Black Friday deal)

282 Portobello Road vintage – a blazer and a coat (discounts from shop seller, and the coat was my Christmas present from Jeff)

Portobello Road vintage seller – a bag (haggled down price)

And that’s it. I decided that was going to be the total of my fall/winter shopping for this year and I’m considering my wardrobe updated for two seasons. Almost on the heels of one shopping ban I dove straight into another and the list above will represent everything personal I purchase for six months total…if I don’t screw up. The timing of this second ban also isn’t entirely altruistic because I’m publicly documenting my spending this month and don’t want to be disgraced in your eyes; I consider your oversight a way to keep me honest, kittens.

Your turn: talk to me about how you spend and why. Do you have regular luxuries you allow yourself? Are you tightening your belt, and if so, how? I’m very nosy, but genuinely want to know!

Humor, Links, Weekend

Weekend Links

“After luncheon the sun, conscious that it was Saturday, would blaze an hour longer in the zenith,…”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

Happy Sunday, poppets! Your first batch of links for the year is here, chock full of goodness. What good things have you been reading or listening to since last we gathered round the metaphoric table to share?

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Hi kids!

An interesting piece at Buzzfeed on why we should view and understand soon-to-be-President Trump through the lens of celebrity rather than politician. How that’s lent him strength but also makes him weak through unique vulnerabilities.

The Atlantic’s rundown of their top picks in podcasting for 2016.

Thought provoking article in Elle about Invanka Trump, the ideal of the Exceptional Woman in patriarchy, and the narrow few their (said acceptable, Exceptional Women) image represent/benefit.

These feel like a very “presents for dads” sort of thing. In a fun way?

Dave Barry’s Year in Review.

And a good reminder from the Washington Post that 2016 had a lot going for it too.

Drafting this post, my well beloved xoVain website is in peril as part of the xoJane shutdown/potential sale. This place was that tremendous and rare thing on the internet: a uniformly positive, experimental, educational, casual, and useful community. I hope the comment community that grew up around this site either continues the good work or finds a new home, and in the meantime I will forever kick myself for not pitching them. In fact, I bargain with the universe that I WILL pitch their new incarnation if only they get one. In the meantime, one of their editors wrote a great piece that’s worth reading. Also, their writers’ rundown of their favorite pieces from the site is also worth a read through if you like inspirational young women writing unapologetically about beauty and sharing wisdom and advice.

Speaking of, an editor I worked under during my work experience at Red Magazine writes some pretty great stuff. This post, a couple months old, but one I’m going back to a lot recently and therefore thought worth sharing, is worth a look in.

One writer quitting Twitter because, “No one cared.” Genuinely wondering if this and adjacent disappointments or burnout might contribute the end of this or other social media eventually. Thoughts?

And finally, a moment of levity.

Album of the Week: Run the Jewels 3, by Run the Jewels

Humor, Money

Spending Diary Vol. 1

“Money is a great servant but a bad master.”
― Francis Bacon

Well, this was a more expensive week than initially anticipated as we had friends in town who we had not seen in years, but I also incurred no or low costs by working from home for a couple of days which is good news. If nothing else this proves how expensive food and going out is in this city! I bought one item for the house, mostly because our apartment is cold during the day (we keep the temperature low to save on utilities), and used points programs to get some toiletries. Kinda. We did a grocery shop the day before this challenge started with a meal plan which meant that all meals that were not for the purposes of entertaining were made and eaten at home, and we did another meal plan for next week so we can compensate for some indulgences this week by not eating out at all.

ETA: I’m including recurring costs like membership fees in my tracking because I think it will be interesting to see how some of them stack up, plus I think it’s more honest. There are a lot of day-to-day costs of city living which are both interesting and a bit scary to acknowledge.

What, if any, were you indulgences this week, kittens? Drinks with friends? An Amazon order? Post-Christmas sales? Let me know!

Sunday
Brunch with friends split bill: 41.00
Blanket for our living room: 75.00

Monday
Gym membership (not technically paid today, but a monthly ongoing expense): 20.00
Quick grocery run: 9.00

Tuesday
Nada! Worked from home.

Wednesday
Toiletries from Boots: Free! I used accumulated points from previous purchases. However my order may have gotten lost with the Royal Mail so this might be a bit of a wash…

Thursday
Waitrose grocery order: 66.00
Quick groceries for that day: 7.00

Friday
Night out with friends: 110.00

Saturday
Travel card renewal (a weekly expense): 32.00
Borough market cheese, meat, and bread: 18.00
Dinner with friends: 45.00
Dessert with friends: 14.00
Total: 437.00

Friends, Humor, Money

Confess: What’s Your Guilty Pleasure?

“I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. If you enjoy something, you just enjoy it. No sense feeling guilty about it.”
― Cristina Moracho

Tell truths, minions, what is your guilty spending pleasure? Some friends I know always buy fresh flowers for their house, one loves going to the movies and is willing to splurge on weekly theatre tickets, a colleague I once had gets a professional blowdry a couple of times a month, one friend makes it a priority to go on a nice date with her partner every week. Mine is magazines. I don’t buy them every month, but when I’m feeling the need for some beauty therapy, a Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, or Tatler will do the trick.

On the flip side, what’s your guilty FREE pleasure? One of my brothers has managed, through birthday and holiday gifts to have a running subscription to XBox Live that he has never had to drop a dime on. One of my friends has an uncanny knack for finding left behind magazines and newspapers on the Tube that she reads instead of buying them (a trick I need to learn!), and yet another–a fitness and wellness queen–forgoes the gym to work out in London’s many parks. I give myself a manicure once a week, something I personally would never pay for, which helps me keep from picking at my nails and helps me feel more put together for the week.

What are yours? Spill!

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Education, Expat, Humor, Life, Money

Money Matters

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
― Epictetus

Welcome to money month on SDS. In keeping with my 101/1001 goals I’ll be keeping a spending diary and reporting in weekly on where my money goes so that you, faithful minions, will keep me honest. There will also be posts on the subjects of money, spending, and adjacent choices. I’m curious to read your thoughts and feedback.

We the Small Dog clan have an odd sort of problem. We aren’t bad with money, but we’ve always made just enough to not have to worry about it. Hurrah for you, check your privilege, you might respond–which would not be an unreasonable admonition–but it has had a curious side effect in that we have never prioritized saving as much as I think we should have. Between rent, groceries, cars and subsequently travel cards, etc., most of our money has always been spoken for the moment it arrives in our pockets. We’ve always had a bit extra…and instead of saving, we’ve typically spent it.

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There are some socioeconomic factors at work here. Jeff and I are millennials and like many of our generation we are paying off massive student loans. We were fortunate in that I had a job through the recession, during the worst of which we lived in a cheap university town, but it’s still had long term impact. Our savings from my first job financed our move to London but for several years we were paying over $1,000 a month towards student loans which was, in a word, backbreaking. We’ve also tended to prioritize personal goals over financial goals (one of the key insights that came out of an Edelman study looking into generational behavior) such as living in a major city abroad rather than buying a house and preferring purchasing experiences to stuff. We’re not extravagant, but the fact is that there have been times that we’ve overspent or life has been more expensive than anticipated (losses in the family requiring international travel, for instance).

We also live in one of the most expensive cities on earth. By choice. But nearly everything is more expensive for us than it would be most anywhere else. There are endless think pieces and reporting on Londoners moving further and further out from the city in order to afford rent. Expats without UK driver licenses, we need to live more centrally as we rely on public transportation to get around. Rent is, as a result, our biggest expense by far and followed closely by food. Would we like to own property someday? Sure, but it seems like a very faraway goal. It’s not outrageous for a good but basic house in a well connected part of the city to cost over £1m. For a central London home, a deposit of close to £100k is not atypical and, according to this piece in The Telegraph, if we were able to set aside £500 a month towards a down payment, we’d be able to save up to that…in about 16 years. Yikes.

Years back I made it a goal to put a specific sum (nowhere near the £500 mentioned above) in savings monthly and have mostly kept to it. But in six months of freelancing it has been hard to keep that up and some of those unexpected life incidents have periodically depleted or swallowed our savings over 7.5 years of marriage. We’re fortunate to have not really struggled thus far (written with the biggest knock-on-wood possible), but an unexpected side effect of this making of enough-to-get-by-comfortably-but-not-much-more has been an attitude of living in the moment, financially speaking, and not really thinking as much about the future as we should.

Which is why I’m making savings and budgeting a much bigger priority moving forward. This is part of my Year of Less, in that I want specifically to cut down on casual spending, consume less in general, and budget more closely. But overall, I want to start cultivating a saver’s mindset. It will be a shift, but as I start thinking about the second two thirds of our lives, it’s one I want and need to make.

What has had a significant impact on how you think about money–a book you read, an experience you had, a relationship you’ve been in or witnessed? What were the immediate effects? The long term ones? And how have the past few years changed (or cemented) your ideas about money? 

Humor

Quick Poll: Do You Have Resolutions This Year?

“I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me. ”
― Anaïs Nin

Minions, a query. Are you doing New Year’s Resolutions? I’m seeing an interesting micro trend in my various media feeds about people purposefully declining to do them this year. Generally this has to do with positive attitude about not wanting to set goals by the calendar, committing to growth whatever the season, and so forth. All of which I heartily endorse, for the record.

As someone who’s decided on a theme rather than specific resolutions (mostly because I already have a pretty extensive list of To Dos I’m working through and I thought more would provide a touch of unnecessary overwhelm), I’m wondering if the idea of committing to new goals on January 1st is losing a bit of its pop culture luster. Is fear of the stereotypical fall off rate providing determent? Are people just tired from last year and resolving to go easier on themselves (Man Repeller queries that here)? Or is the aforementioned positivity and all the overall wellness trends in our zeitgeist genuinely providing a better way to look at goal setting than affixing it to a specific date?

Lend me your thoughts, or observations from the field!

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My family dog clearly has resolved to live her best life in 2017 and is already making headway by doing as little as canine-ly possible. 

Humor, Life, Writing

2017 – A Year of Less, But Better

“I don’t believe in a lot of baggage. It’s such a nuisance. Life’s too short to fuss with it. And it isn’t really necessary”
― Hugh Lofting, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle

2016, you have flown by…and you know where the door is to keep flying straight on through. Bye! You have been an absolutely ludicrous year. But in spite of the crazy (and occasional heartache), there have been some high points too and I am grateful for them. Though the double whammy of Carrie Fischer and Debbie Reynolds was, frankly, a bit of a low blow to end on, don’t you think? Anyway, I’m willing to set that aside in the interest of the new year as there is a lot of work to do.

There’s a lot I want to accomplish in 2017. I’ve got work goals, life goals, weird and wacky goals, but on trying to figure out how I wanted to frame my thoughts I kept coming back to the idea of “less.” 2016 was a full on year with a lot of change, a lot of big emotions, big decisions, and big achievements. I’m not looking to undo or scale back on any progress, but in looking forward I realized that I want to consume less, narrow my priorities, and focus my attention to fewer things at a time.

Don’t expect extreme deprivation, I’m not looking to make a contest in asceticism out of this thought exercise, but I am going to try and be more considered in my consumption of stuff and my commitments.

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I did the first of three shopping bans last year as part of my 101 in 1001 2.0 challenge at the end of last year. It came to a close just in time for Black Friday…and I ended up getting a grand total of two jumpers and a couple of beauty purchases. I didn’t really want, much less need, anything else. I’ve never been an emotional shopper, but I really feel as if the ban was a bit of a reset button for me and clothing in particular–which was already under pretty good control.  The truth is, it’s taken a few years of thoughtful effort, but I’m pretty happy with where my wardrobe is. There are no major gaps and no major needs, both for a personal or professional life. Ditto my makeup stash which has also taken a while to put together and edit, but with which I am really happy. I use and wear everything I own regularly and don’t feel anything is wasted. I will indulge the odd purchase of something that is simply wanted, but don’t expect any major spending this year in the looks department. Less stuff, better quality will continue to be my watch cry.

On that note, I want to be more mindful of my day-to-day spending and consumption. Making my morning coffee at home rather than catching it (and paying for it) on the run, prepped lunches, sticking to grocery lists, not tossing that unplanned item in my basket when at Boots, exploring different travel options in the city, walk more, etc.. I’ve got a few posts lined up on this topic this month, so stay tuned.

Food wise, we now have the thing we’ve wanted for seven years: a proper kitchen. And I am going to be better about stocking and using it. Obviously this will require a bit of spend to get the things we need (we currently own a single small pot, for instance), but I think that committing to cooking more and eating out less will be a good thing. We aren’t overindulgent at the moment, but do give in to laziness and cheap, less healthy food more than we should. I want to be less lazy and more intentional about eating this year.

In the related field of health, the decision to consult and freelance was a good one in that it (surprisingly) reduced the amount of professional stress in my life. A freelancer always has to hustle and I’m certainly making less than I was, but going back on the freelance grind has allowed me to regain a sense of control and purpose that had slipped from my grasp a bit. I want to take this more balanced work mindset with me moving forward, whatever I do. Less unhelpful stress, more intelligent career growth.

Less fretting. I’ve developed some low level anxiety in the past couple of years that I want to get on top of. Things like changing up my work have helped tremendously, but whether through wellness or other means, I intend on letting go of a lot of baggage that I seem to cart around needlessly.

Less time online. I actually want to branch out on the site this year, try a few new things, blog more frequently, and a few other experiments, so never fear about me vanishing from round these parts. But in terms of time wasting, it’s alarming how much time I lose just mucking about on the internet while not actually doing or accomplishing anything. I’m not sure how to roll this goal out, but I’ll try and put some more intelligent thoughts together.

Overall, I think if I can come up with a theme for 2017, it would be, “Less, but better.” I’m curious to see what form this takes.

How about you, kittens? How are you approaching a fresh year? Do you have any resolutions, or other ways to frame it? Talk to me!

 

Humor, Writing

Highlight Reel

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”
– Benjamin Franklin

I am on record as being one of the many who believes that 2016 was rough and occasionally worthy of the moniker “dumpster fire.” But looking back, there were some amazing personal highs that I wanted to revisit in looking forward to 2017. It’s going to be a big year, but it also is going to have some big shoes to fill. What were some of your highlights of 2016? Let’s have a victory-sharing and mutual pat-on-the-back session to get the new year rolling!

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Reckon I earned a few of these this year.

We went to New York City to see X.

We also went to Spain for the first time.

We also spent several long weekends with unbelievably charming friends and hosts.

Jeff got me tickets to Beyonce’s Formation World Tour.

I turned 30.

I wrote some of my most personal posts in nearly a decade of blogging. I actually didn’t write nearly as much as I should have or wanted to this year for a variety of reasons, but I’m already making headway on rectifying that moving forward.