Sure, we all know what basics professional women are supposed to have in their closets, but if you’re buying one for the first time or replacing one you’ve worn into the ground, it can be a pain to find exactly the right incarnation in stores. In “The Hunt,” we search the stores for a basic item that every woman should have.
 |
 |
 Franco Sarto – Cicero |
 |
 Stuart Weitzman – Blog |
Like this feature? Check out other recent installments!
(L-all)
{ 140 comments }
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about since I read it is this Mint article on “The Value of Tax-Deferred Savings.” According to the article, “[u]nless you make enough money to max out all of your tax-advantaged accounts (401(k), IRA, 529, HSA, and the like), it rarely makes sense to do any investing outside them.” (Please note, I am not a financial adviser — this is all just my personal knowledge, so take it with a grain of salt.) (Pictured: Marc by Marc Jacobs – Turnlock Shine Long Tri-fold (Electric Teal) – Bags and Luggage
, on sale at Zappos from $198 down to $150 today. Lots of great sales on Marc by Marc Jacobs stuff on Zappos today,
actually.)
To be honest, the value of tax-deferred investing isn’t something I understood until really, really recently. So I thought we’d review some of the main vehicles for tax-savvy savings here, answering — for each, the main questions on everyone’s mind:
{ 124 comments }
Today, a rare treat: a 360 review! In the 360 Review, Corporette examines a “professional woman”s” attire and critiques it from all perspectives: underling, boss, friend. Today’s guest post is from Ashley Faus, who blogs at Consciously Corporate — she’s reviewing Dr. Megan Hunt of the new ABC show Body of Proof.
Meet Dr. Megan Hunt, the intelligent, articulate, and often sarcastic Medical Exminer for the city of Philadelphia on ABC’s “Body of Proof”. Megan was a brilliant (and rich) neurosurgeon, until a car accident ended her career in the OR. Her impeccable (and expensive) taste in clothes and accessories carried her from surgeon to sleuth, and she looks professional and chic while she seeks the truth in the bodies that land on her table. Dr. Megan Hunt does an excellent job crossing the lines between business casual and conservative professional, with pops of color and accessories. She manages to look flawless while performing field work as well, with classic outerwear and practical shoes. In her personal life, Megan Hunt is coping with her ex-huband’s new girlfriend, her 12 year old daughter’s new interest in a relationship with her, potential new boyfriend material, and her mother’s re-election campaign as a judge in the city. If that isn’t enough stress, Dr. Hunt must deal with a flirty partner, two hard-nosed cops, a curious lab tech, and a sarcastic by-the-book supervisor. Megan is anything but “by the book”, leading her to clash with her supervisor, and often, her boss. Dr. Megan Hunt is played by actress Dana Delany, and she’s definitely not a Housewife anymore! (You remember her from Desparate Housewives?)
The Good: Megan wears well-tailored, ageless clothing, paired with professional accessories. Her clothing honors both form and function, as she looks put together in the office or out in the field. She generally stays office-appropriate, with knee-length hemlines, reasonable necklines that don’t draw attention to her bust, and fitted-but-not-tight outfits. She also knows which colors are flattering, and pairs her outfits well with her red hair.
The Bad: Sometimes Megan’s shoes are a little over the top, and her shoes seem to be a consistent source of attention, with high heels, strappy styles, and embellishments. And, per TV, her necklines plunge a little low in certain outfits.
The Impression: As a hiring manager, I would find Megan to be confident, polished, and all-business, if she wore one of her tailored neutral dresses to the interview. As her supervisor, I’d find that her clothes say power, and a hint of rebellion with the loud shoes. And, as a subordinate, I’d say that she’s a professional I’d like to emulate. However, I would probably need to wait until I had a few more years of experience under my belt before attempting to wear some of her more adventurous choices. In general, I think Megan projects authority and drive to all leveals of the organization, but shows a hint of personality with her shoes and accessories. Megan definitely likes to make a statement, and her clothes enhance her presence whenever she enters the room.
Perfect pairing of a classic sheath and cardigan, with a little edge from the print and the texture.
Nice knee-length skirt, well-fitting jacket, and a plunging neckline? Pair this with a button-down or silk shell for a more office-appropriate look.
Flat riding boots and a trench are perfect for a day in the field. The black is a little intimidating, maybe a jewel-toned scarf could lighten the look?
Or, pairing this gorgeous green wool coat with the above look.
With a neckline cut just a little too low, and strappy, silver heels, this outfit would be better suited for an out-of-office event. The conservative shape of the dress, bright color, and cardigan could work for the office with a higher neckline and closed-toe pumps.
Well-tailored neutrals with an extra hint of personality from the leopard-print shoes and detailing on the jacket.
While perfectly office-appropriate, this outfit is a little boring. I would pair it with a colorful bracelet, or a turquise skinny belt. Or, stay with plain jewelry, and add a pop of color with aubergine heels?
Megan adds visual interest with several different textures and colors.
Dr. Megan Hunt is a complex character with a fabulous wardrobe! She flawlessly pairs function and form, and takes her outfits from field work to office to home life in a seamless transition.
Interested in writing something similar for Corporette? Check out our guest posting guidelines here!
{ 131 comments }
Not only do I consider myself a bit of a tech geek, but I specialize in a weird subset of tech geekiness: tech for the office. These are my top techy things to keep at the office — readers, what do you keep? (Check out our prior discussions on clothes to keep at the office, as well as food to keep at the office.)
Gadgets
1. Refrigerator — This was one of my all-time favorite tech purchases for my office (and it lasted forever). I bought a super, super small fridge for my office — so small it could barely fit a six-pack of Coke. I kept water and soda chilled, as well as cheese sticks, lemon juice, cheese, salad dressing — even leftover food. You can find them for around $50 (look up “mini refrigerator,” “portable refrigerator,” “travel refrigerator”) and up.
2. Extra chargers for your phone, Blackberry, and any other personal gadgets. I’ve never regretted the $40 or so the extra cord cost me.
3. Speakers for your iPod or iPhone. This doesn’t need a lot of explanation, but you may want to brush up on the etiquette of listening to music at the office, particularly when other people can hear it. For my own $.02, I think it’s fine to quietly listen to music if it’s after working hours, but “quietly” is the key — the person in the neighboring office should never have to come over and ask you to turn it down.
4. Phone headset. If you log lots of time on the phone — on conference calls or in meetings — a good headset might be worth an investment.
5. USB heated gloves (pictured above). If you have poor circulation and are always freezing, you may want to prepare for those long stretches in front of the computer by purchasing these USB-heated gloves. They plug into your computer and warm your hands as you type and click your way through the day.
Download
6. Leechblock. I’ve written before of my affection for Leechblock to help keep you focused.
7. RescueTime. Seriously consider signing up for this service if you’re wasting a lot of time and wonder where it went — it logs every online activity.
8. Consider installing a bookmarklet for ShoppingNotes — if you see an item of clothing that you wish were on sale, you click the bookmarklet, and the free service monitors the price for any adjustment. I’ve gotten some sick deals by using this service!
9. LogMeIn. Talk with your boss about this, but LogMeIn lets you log into your office computer from home (or your home computer from your office).
10. XMarks. As someone who alternates between multiple computers, I love XMarks — it syncs my bookmarks across all of my computers (and browsers). This is handy for me, both because I have a crazy folder/filing system for some bookmarks, but also because I now don’t need to remember what device I originally found a new website. If you upgrade to the premium (paid) version of Xmarks, it will even sync your bookmarks to your iPhone, Android, or Blackberry.
Software
Most businesses supply you with all the software you need. Still, I’ve had great success with a few programs and had to recommend them.
11. PDF Factory (or something similar). This program is hugely helpful if you sit far from the printer, if you want more control over picking up your printouts, or if you email a lot of PDF’d documents. (For the lawyers out there, it’s very helpful if you frequently review documents in .tif format, as well as if you print cases from Lexis or Westlaw.) Basically, when you click “print” you can choose to print to PDF Factory. The program opens a new window on your computer, and begins to compile a PDF. When you’ve finished printing, you can save the PDF to your hard drive, e-mail it to a coworker, and/or print it to your local printer.
12. Microsoft OneNote 2010
13. Dragon NaturallySpeaking
Readers, share your tech must-haves for the office!
{ 88 comments }
When it comes to money, the true savings are never in the tiny things — they’re in the big things like your healthcare plan and your investments. My old friend Sue is a master at all of this hard personal finance stuff — I’ve asked her to share some of her knowledge with us today. You can follow her on Twitter at @suziedonuts if you want more great tips! – Kat. (Pictured: Boje Designs Paradise Lace Essential Wallet, available at Endless for $34.)
Yes yes, you know how to clip coupons and shop sales. But there are two problems with this approach: First, it takes too much time for not enough payout, so you’re practically doomed to failure before you begin; and second, you’ve heard it all before, so if you’re not doing it by now, you’re not going to do it tomorrow. Plus, being frugal requires constant vigilance. I’m not saying it’s not worthwhile, because it is; but especially when you’ve got a healthy cash flow coming in, you have to put dollars before cents.
First you need to make sure you are fully maximizing your savings the big stuff, and not necessarily the stuff you read about. The big savings can be found in your workplace benefits and your investment accounts. The tips below will help you shave up to $10,000 off your expenses.
(Note: For simplicity’s sake, we’ll assume in these examples that you are making $150,000, are married filing jointly with one dependent, and are living in New York state.)
Saving at Your Work: $3,576+
Whenever you start a new job, HR gives you a giant info packet. Grab a cup of coffee and dig in. A good benefits package is worth its weight in gold. At a large company, the benefits might include perks such as:
- Free admission to major museums in your city
- Discounted rates on mobile phone service, banking, childcare, and insurance
- Health Advocate services (I can’t say enough good things about these guys)
- Flex spending accounts
Sure, the museum and gym perks are nice, and I’ve used them. A lot. But the real savings for me has been in the boring stuff.
Let’s say you are spending $500/month on groceries, and you cut your food spending by 50% by shopping sales and using coupons. That’s $3,000 a year. And it’s a pain in the neck to do. Believe me, I’ve done it. I’ve got the coupon organizer and the deep freezer and the stacks of sales circulars. I even wrote up a grocery price book, although that’s a whole other post. Suffice it to say, there’s a reason that most of the women on Extreme Couponing are stay-at-home moms.
Alternately, you can save almost $3,500 a year just by finding tax-advantaged ways to do the same stuff you’d do anyway – namely, by using the flex-spending accounts that your company may already be offering. In our example, you’ll save 34% by using flex accounts:
- $1,700 savings: Flex Spending Account for medical out-of-pocket ($2,500/year per worker @ 34%) – just be sure to “use it or lose it” each year
- $1,876 savings: Commuter Spending Account for mass-transit passes or parking ($2,760/year per worker @ 34%)
- BONUS ROUND: $1,700 savings: Dependent Care Spending Account for daycare or preschool ($5,000/year per household @ 34%)
Source: Bankrate.com 125 Cafeteria Plan Calculator
During Benefits Season in November, set up your flex accounts for 2012. Then take the afternoon off and visit your local museum on the company’s dime; you deserve it.
Saving with Your Investments: $6,721
With all that extra cash, you can front-load a 529 plan, which can be used for educational spending for yourself and then handed off to your children when the time comes. In New York, you can deposit up to $10,000 a year state-tax-free into the New York 529 College Savings Program Direct Plan, which is administered by Vanguard. In this example, maxing out the 529 will save you another $738 in taxes this year. Not to mention, the money grows tax-free. If that $10k sat in the 529 for 18 years, growing at 7%, you’d save $5,497 in taxes versus using your regular brokerage account.
Source: Bankrate.com 529 College-Savings-Plan Estimator
There have been countless books written on investing. I’m not going to tell you how to invest, but please, make sure you pay as few fees as possible. I’m a Boglehead myself. I make a regular contribution to an index fund every month; if the market tanks, I increase my contribution as much as I can stand it. Since I put in relatively small amounts each time, I want to minimize my commission fees (the price you pay per trade) and my expense ratios (the % the fund charges annually for maintenance). So I stick to index funds from discount brokerages like Vanguard or Schwab, which have very low expense ratios. You can open a brokerage account at Schwab with as little as $100. (Vanguard’s minimum is $3,000.) You also should never have to pay a commission fee when buying an index fund.
Schwab’s expense ratio for its Total Stock Market Index Fund (SWTSX) is 0.09% as of this writing. The Morningstar industry average is 0.38%. If you invest $500 a month with Schwab, you save $174 a year in fees.
You can also link your Schwab brokerage account to its High Yield Investor Checking account, which is truly free checking – Schwab even reimburses all ATM fees. At two, $3 trips a week, that’s $312 a year in fees.
The Long View: Break a Million Without Breaking a Sweat
Based on the above examples, a married couple with children could save as much as $6,500 a year. What does that get you in the long run?
Let’s say you’re 30 now. If you invest that $6,500 in an index fund making just 7% annually (because that 10% figure you always see thrown around is so 2007), you’ll be a millionaire by age 65. All without clipping a single coupon.
Source: Bankrate Simple Savings Calculator
Readers, are you maximizing your money with all of these big picture items? What are your best tips with the big picture items?
(L-2)
{ 151 comments }
When you’re a busy woman, taking the time to cook for yourself can be a luxury. It’s better from a health perspective — you know exactly what’s in the dish, as well as how fresh/healthy the ingredients are– and you can much more easily accommodate special desires (low calorie, low sodium, low fat, low carb) by cooking for yourself. Furthermore, frequently it’s far cheaper than eating out. The easiest way that I’ve found, when I get time to cook for myself, is to cook large batches — but then the problem becomes that my schedule is so unpredictable that half of the batch (or more) goes to waste. Not to mention you get “food fatigue” from eating the same dish so many days in a row.
My personal answer has been to cook large batches and then freeze them with a fairly, um, elaborate system. (I’m a bit crazy, but we all knew that.) A friend came to visit a while ago and was fascinated by my system, so she encouraged me to share it here. When I was single, I used this system ALL the time for pasta sauce — I hated opening a jar of sauce, then seeing the jar in the fridge a week and a half later and throwing it out 3/4ths full because I hadn’t had time to make myself more pasta.
1. Get good quality freezer bags. I like to buy Ziploc bags that are designed for the freezer — when I’ve used no-name brands or non-freezer bags I’ve had problems (leaky bags, freezer bite, etc). I prefer to buy quart-size because I’ve found that those tend to hold two servings — the perfect amount for me and my husband.
2. Cook a bunch of food. I’m a big fan of the crockpot, so a lot of what I cook for myself and the hubs are things like stews and soups. I also will freeze a lot of raw chicken and raw beef, as well as things like leftover tomato sauce. I haven’t had a lot of luck freezing fresh vegetables or fish, but your mileage may vary. Two things to note about the food: It’s going to be easier to fill the bags when the food is not piping hot — either lukewarm or chilled is preferable. Second, when possible I try to freeze my food as soon after cooking it as possible (rather than waiting 3-4 days) — I’m not sure if it’s right or not but my perception is that as the ingredients (like veggies) age, they loose some of their health factor. That said, freezing will kill a multitude of bacteria (I think), so you shouldn’t be too shy about freezing food at the tail end of the time when you would be eating it.
3. Label your bags before putting any food inside; this way the writing is neater. I like to include the name of the dish, the date I made it, and occasionally the amount (1lb chicken) or the Weight Watchers Points value per serving.
4. Next, get tall glasses (or sometimes even a vase if it’s a gallon-sized bag) to help my Ziploc bags “stand up.” This is hard to describe, so hopefully the picture helps — you push the bag inside the glass and then open them up.
5. Ladle the soup or stew inside. You’ll find that the Ziploc-inside-the-glass gets full faster than the Ziploc will, so after a while you have to remove the glass from the equation and let the Ziploc stand by itself.
6. Continue to fill the bag(s) until all of the soup is ladled out. If there’s some spillage on the bag, wipe it down. Next, you may want to weigh the bags using a digital scale
7. A note on closing the bags: there should be as LITTLE AIR IN THE BAG as possible. Air causes freezer burn, and no one wants that.
8. Next, get out a plastic cutting board (or other smooth, flat surface). This is key to a neat freezing process — even if you’re just freezing chicken breasts or something simple like that. Layer your Ziploc bags on the bag — it’s okay if they overlap a bit — and then slide the plastic cutting board into the freezer.
9. Then, let it sit for 4-24 hours. The bags freeze nice and flat, at which point you can remove them. If you like an organized freezer you’ll find that the flat quart-sized bags even fit in a shoebox, pictured at the very top of the post. (I bought a box of 20 clear shoe boxes from The Container Store when I was changing up my shoe storage system, and have found that they come in ridiculously handy in a lot of places, including the freezer.) Here’s one bag after it’s been frozen.
10. Voila! Healthy, homemade dinners (or lunches) for the next 3-6 months, depending on ingredients. If you’re heading off to work in the morning and want some of the leftovers for lunch, it’s easy enough to grab one of the frozen Ziploc bags and chuck it in your purse — it should stay frozen for your commute, and should defrost (either in the freezer or under a watchful eye just on your desk) enough to get it out of the bag before heating it up for lunch. I’m also a fan of taking out a Ziploc bag in the morning and putting it on a plate (or in a large bowl) to defrost in the fridge during the day, meaning all my husband or I have to do at night is to heat it up. Personally, I prefer to let the food defrost entirely so I can transfer it to a proper bowl or pot to reheat it — I like to avoid putting plastics in the microwave whenever possible (both because it is never pretty when you overcook plastic, and because I’ve heard rumblings that plastic in the microwave may not be so safe for you).
OK, readers, that’s my insane little system for freezing food. What tricks do you use when you cook? Any favorite recipes that work particularly well for the freezer?
{ 143 comments }
