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Coffee Break: Korean Skincare Set

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kit with minis of popular Korean skincare items

This Korean skincare set from Sephora caught my eye a few weeks ago when it was only a pre-order… but it's available for sale now.

Everyone raves about Korean skincare but it can be hard to find in the US if you only want to order from authorized retailers… I'm pretty sure Sephora fits the bill.

This set is a mix of cleansers, moisturizers, treatments, and a face mask to help you elevate your skincare routine. I've particularly heard great things about the Beauty of Joseon sunscreens, the brightening sleeping mask, and the innisfree hyaluronic cream.

The kit is $35, which feels like a great price for an intro intro to the field — it's allegedly a $110 value.

Sales of note for 4/24:

169 Comments

  1. I work for a small business that outsources HR to a benefits manager. We recently switched benefits managers and I had to re-do all my benefits elections. I signed up for the same amount of supplemental life insurance that I had previously (which I had elected years ago), but apparently it was denied. I don’t yet know the reason for the denial, but I had a baby since then and did have complications in the pregnancy, so it could be related to that. Long shot, but does anyone know if there is any protection for workers to maintain their existing supplemental life insurance in this kind of scenario? I’m in CA and my company does not have a real HR department that would have knowledge on this.

    1. Not the question you asked, but I would recommend independent term life insurance for this exact reason: you don’t want your benefits to be dependent on your job. I used Select Quote after my kid was born and it was very easy.

  2. Has anyone used one of those services where you have lots of people send in video greetings for a birthday? Any recommendations? I want to do something for my mom’s upcoming 70th but haven’t used any of these before.

    1. I used Message for my dad’s 80th birthday and it was amazingly easy to compile a video. I shared the link to upload pictures & videos, but also told people to email or text things to me if they weren’t comfortable with uploading. Maybe spent a total of 2-3 hours, but part of that was because I put the photos into a slide show with music. It was a great experience overall.

    2. I did this for my husband’s 40th a few years ago. I had everyone send me videos and compiled it myself using iMovie and added some background music. I’m not tech savvy at all and was able to do it on my phone.

    3. Our room-parent uses VidDay and it seems to make a high-quality video. Super easy for users to record or upload

  3. Reposting due to nesting fail.

    If you live far away from your parents, how often do you see them and how long does each visit average?

    We moved further away from my parents a few years back, and they would happily spend all of their vacation/holiday time with us. We average seeing them for around 2.5-3 weeks each year, typically over 3 visits, and it is…a lot. I’m trying to draw better boundaries, but as you can imagine, they get very upset because they feel they never get to see their grandchildren

    2. I live closer to my parents now and see them about every six weeks or eight weeks, sometimes more, but when I lived across the country, I only saw them if I did all the work (and expense) of visiting them. I did not do this as often as they might have liked but they never offered to visit me or to pay for our tickets, so nothing changed.

    3. Not sure if you find this idea comforting, but in a couple years, you’ll be able to ship Junior off to Grandparent Camp. You get a week of quiet; the grandparents simultaneously get exhausted and loved. Hang in there.

      1. Not all grandparents are up for this. My parents do this, but I definitely feel like they’re in the minority especially among older (70+) grandparents, and older grandparents are common here and in my real life circles (highly educated people with big jobs tend to have kids later).

        1. Agreed, my parents adore their grandchildren whom they only see once or twice a year and at most they watch the kids for one day/night when we visit them and we escape to a hotel for a night. They are in their upper 70s and my kids are Capital E Easy compared to other kids, they are just not up for “camp grandma” like I might have assumed. Even younger grandparents I know don’t do this because they are enjoying their own retirement, volunteering or working still, or otherwise just not interested! My own grandparents never did this either so maybe it’s just not our custom.

      2. My parents have never and would never, and my kids are now in their teens. Not everyone gets Grandparent Camp.

      3. I don’t know anyone who has grandparents who do “Grandparent Camp.” This feels like a TV/movie thing that doesn’t exist in real life.

        1. Definitely happened with my kids and although my parents were really young when I was born, they also ran Camp Grandparents for my brother and sisters’ kids when they were in their 70s.

        2. My parents did it, but it wasn’t a Pinterest-worthy experience, mostly hanging out with relatives for a couple weeks doing regular life stuff with a few fun things mixed in. My in-laws tried but they could/would only do it for a couple days max. We had to nix it when my youngest was in elementary school because my MIL couldn’t be trusted to keep her ramblings/conversations child-appropriate and really upset our kid (no one needs to hear the blow-by-blow of a high-conflict divorce 30 years after the fact).

        3. I was definitely shipped off to my grandparents/aunts homes for the summer back in the 90s and really enjoyed it. I’m also sure it was a huge help for my dual working parent household.
          While my parents have offered to take my kids we have declined as they drink/drive regularly and think one of my kid’s allergies is all in his head.

        4. Both of my grandmothers did this. Every summer, I’d spend a week at my maternal grandparents’ house. They fed me tons of junk food and let me watch endless TV, neither of which was normal at home. But I also played many hands of Uno with my grandmother and played with my cousin who lived near our grandparents.

          I’d also spend a week with my paternal grandmother and up to 4 of my cousins–5 of us altogether! She was on the younger side. She was also a teacher/ junior high vice principal, so she was fantastic at managing kids. (I appreciated this more when I was in college and watched her handle my younger cousins.) We stayed at her house some years, went camping one summer, went to my uncle’s beach house a few times, and went to Alaska one year. Even at her house, it always felt like “Grandma Camp.” But she was really strict and made us do chores too! I remember snapping beans, kneading bread dough, and weeding the garden.

        5. My parents do this multiple times a year for 3-5 days at a time. They live two hours away.

        6. My dad (the most hands off dad AND grandparent) did this, but my compromise was that my kids were at least in middle school and my dad funded their attendance at camp. So, he was free of them from 9-3 pm daily and they got to try nice bougie camps that they would not have attended otherwise-golf camp, lacrosse camp and even a camp focused on kayaking through a river ecosystem! The only downside was that he expected them to “read” between 3pm and dinner, which was…not happening for active boys. Nonetheless, they all survived over several summers of this and my sons have fond memories.

        7. We offered many times to my husband’s kids and were never taken up on our offer. We would love to be able to forge closer connections

    4. 40s, no kids, complicated relationships with all parents who happen to live in the same small town four hours away. We see them in our hometown for the holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter) for a few days. My parents come to visit us about once per year, and husband’s parents prefer to complain about the traffic in our city as a reason not to visit. See previous statement about complicated relationships.

      1. My parents cite traffic as a barrier too. It gets really old but it’s their choice to live like that.

        1. People also get old. It’s common to externalize (the traffic is bad, the city is bad), when the real issue is feeling overwhelmed by lots of cars and lanes and fast decision making.

          2. For some parents, yes. But, I am the poster at 232, and without going into all the details (see complicated relationship), it’s not the case here.

          3. Okay. It’s also not always a choice to not be able to handle certain kinds of traffic as a young person or for one’s whole life. I’m sure they’re difficult people though.

        2. Traffic does get harder to deal with as you age. We live about an hour from a big city and my mom refuses to drive into the city now. She was never super comfortable with big city traffic (she and I both grew up in small towns) and it gets harder to adjust to new things as you age.

          1. Agree with this. My parents were urban driving experts and mastered long drives, highway commutes, night driving, cities with aggressive drivers. Fast forward a few decades and it was local daylight driving on known routes only.

          2. Sure, but some parents will adapt to the new circumstances and do their part to keep the relationship going (relationships are a two-way street) and others will stay “it’s too trafficky” and wait for their kids to come to them every single time, even if they’re the ones dealing with work, childcare, etc. Seen it time and time again.

          3. That’s because some traffic is dangerous and your reflexes are less good as you age. There’s no magical adaptation. That’s simple thinking.

          4. Adaptation means using Lyft. Moving closer. Coordinating rides with friends. Not sitting there whining.

          5. Determined to be simple? No one is paying for a Lyft ride longer than 30 minutes away, and I can’t think how this carpooling scenario you envision works. Some regions in our country (DMV, NYC, the whole state of California) are too expensive to just move to, and the traffic there is legitimately scary.

          7. yeah nobody is taking a Lyft for 4+ hours (wouldn’t that be more expensive than flying??) and carpooling is really not a thing in much of the US.

            My parents moved to us and I’m thrilled to have them here, but blaming your parents for not wanting to uproot their lives and move to you is pretty wild. Even senior citizens have jobs and friends and volunteer commitments, and starting over in a new place is scary, especially when you’re older.

          8. I’m in the Bay Area and there are plenty of people who use Lyft for hour-long rides. We have a lot of traffic here and it’s a fact of life. You can either work with the facts or kick and scream against them, but there isn’t a world where retired parents who CAN travel (i.e., are not bedbound) can forever choose not to and still see their kids as much as they would like.

          9. My in-laws’ house is about an hour away and FIL will only daylight drive and refuses to use a taxi or car service (even if we pay). It’s too hard, hired cars don’t come to their neighborhood, they could be kidnapped (?), there’s always a reason we have to be the ones making the trek.

    5. We’re 5-6 hrs away by car, we see each other for ~ a week at Christmas (us going to them), 3-4 days at Thanksgiving (us going to them), a weekend every ~8 weeks (them coming to us). DH and I are from the same area, and our parents live in a beach town, so the kids live there full time in the summer and my DH and I commute back and forth (stacking WFH, vacation time, and then commuting). Even with all of this, it doesn’t feel like enough!

      We travel as an immediate family 1-2x a year (spring break, maybe another time in the summer).

    6. I moved back to my home city a few years ago, so now see them 1-3x a month. Before that it was probably every other month.

    7. Would they come stay at your house with their grands while you your husband leave? That would have been such an amazing blessing when my kids were at home, but with one one-time exception, my kids’ grandparents were not really up for it.

      1. Unfortunately, we are not comfortable with that because of one parent’s medical and dependency issues.

    8. Are they visiting you, or expecting you to visit them, or a mix? I would not want to spend 3 weeks/year visiting my parents (that’s… more than half my PTO and I have generous PTO for the US) but if they’re retired and want to do the bulk of the visiting, that doesn’t seem like a crazy amount to me if they’re otherwise pleasant people.

      Mine are local now and before they were local there was the pandemic, but in that narrow window between having our first kid and Covid, we probably saw them 2-3 times per year for 3-5 days at a time. They did most of the visiting but not all.

      My in-laws can’t visit us (FIL is disabled, MIL is his caregiver) so we try to have DH visit them at least once a quarter, but it’s a short flight so he often goes just for 2-3 days. Whole family goes at least once a year for 4-5 days.

      1. Agree with this. My parents are retired and visit us a lot, and it is a good compromise for us. I am happy my kids can have a close relationship with them, but we don’t have to spend all our vacations going to visit them. They have a separate condo near where we live, so they are not staying with us when they visit.

      2. What’s going on today? This is an especially nasty comment — either a troll, or someone who really needs a snack and a nap.

        1. I mean, a nasty comment is one that hopes something unpleasant happens, not stating an absolute fact of life, which this is. People act like their parents are a huge burden–it’s exhausting listening to the whining.

        2. I read this as more of a reality check. People here act like having parents who love you and want to spend time with you and your children is this massive burden. I lost my father last year and I would love to have him come visit me one more time. And I am so happy for the time he was able to spend with my kid.

          Obviously parents should not expect their adult children to spend all their PTO on family visits but having your parents come visit you for three weeks a year does not strike me as excessive unless your parents are particularly nasty. I would also remind people with their own children that they should remember this when their children are grown and do not want to visit or be visited. You are modeling how you want to be treated.

          1. I wish you could have had more time with your dad. Not everyone is in the same situation as you, though. We all have different lives.

        3. Reality is nasty then, I guess. We all will die eventually. If we’re lucky, our parents will go first.

    10. we live flying distance away from both sets of grandparents. we will likely see my dad 5-7 times in 2026, he has already come to us once and will come 2 more times. we will see him at 3 family events, and we will visit him once for ~4 days. His visits are usually ~4 days. I am the morning poster whose father is retiring who said I can’t fly in on his last day of work (bc we already have a trip planned on that date and will be flying to visit him less than 2 weeks later).

      My in-laws we’ll see 5 times this year. They already came once and will come again. Then we go to their beach house for ~10 days. Then my BIL is getting married so we’ll see them for the wedding and then we’ll go to them for Thanksgiving.

      On the one hand I am grateful we can afford to fly to see family and they can afford to fly to see us. On the other hand, we get very few weekends a year at home just as our nuclear family due to family visits, travel and DH’s work travel. The last time we were all home together was the last weekend in February. The next time we will all be home together over the weekend will be April 18. We went on our first nuclear family vacation last December and it was wonderful. Now my sister wants us to do trip together with grandparents over winter break and i feel guilty saying no as i know the grandparents won’t be around forever and i appreciate that she wants our kids to get to know each other..but i’d like us to have a trip just the 4 of us more than once every 8-9 years.

      1. I think it’s legitimate to want nuclear family vacations. Hopefully your sister understands that. We take a lot of vacations but my husband isn’t as into travel as I am, and also has a much busier work travel schedule, so a lot of our trips end up being me and my daughter + sometimes my mom or my mom and my dad. We only have one nuclear family vacation this year and I’m grumpy about it — I can’t imagine having them less frequently than that.

          1. It sounds like they visit family a lot already, though. It’s certainly not unreasonable for her sister to suggest an extended family vacation, but it’s ok if OP isn’t into that and it doesn’t mean her kids won’t know their cousins.

          2. And kids don’t want a vacation with their nuclear family–they want the big family and the cousins.

          3. Totally depends on the personality of the kids, you can’t really make a blanket declaration like that. My cousins are perfectly nice people and we’re friendly as adults, but I would have hated vacationing with them as a kid.

          4. Agree, you really can’t make blanket declarations for anything to do with family and visiting.

          5. My kids will see their cousins at least 2 other times this year. My kids are 4+ years older and honestly prefer not traveling with cousins since we honestly have very little time just the four of us since DH travels for work and we have so many other family visits. We probably only have half of the weekends a year at home all 4 of us. My kids are also twins and while we try to give them as much individual time as possible, they spend a lot of time accommodating each other and visiting grandparents, etc and one of them in particular would honestly prefer not to spend her vacation trying to plan around other people and i get it.

          6. I get it, subthread OP. My daughter is much older than her only cousin and while she loves him and it’s been fun to see their relationship grow as he becomes less of a baby and more of a kid (and we visit them and host them to facilitate the development of this relationship), during her childhood he’ll never be a peer or a friend and she would much prefer to vacation with just us or with a real friend.

          7. I think a lot of kids love vacations with their nuclear family. We try to spend a lot of time with grandparents and uncles/aunts despite distance (we’re all 2-4 hours apart and see each other at least once a month). Partly for that reason we’ve also decided that actual vacations are for nuclear family – we’re also busy with work and school and friends, and we need some time just for the three of us to be together. My 8-year old would be the first to tell you he really likes that mom and dad time.

          8. My 8 year old also craves nuclear family time even though neither of us travels much for work, to the point that I’ve wondered if we’re doing something wrong and somehow neglecting her or something. I feel better knowing there’s a similar 8 year old out there!

      2. Both my parents and DH’s parents are local to us, but DH and I often end up traveling with our parents or to visit non-local family. If not family, then we tend to travel with friends or to visit them.

        We started planning a trip in October, and I realized that this would be the first nuclear family trip in a long time. I told DH I was excited that it would be just the 3 of us. Later that afternoon, we received a save-the-date for a family wedding the second weekend of the trip. We’ll still be able to take the trip we were planning, with a few tweaks, and drive to the wedding “on the way” home. We wouldn’t miss this wedding for the world, but it’d be nice to have one vacation where it’s just the nuclear family the whole time.

    11. My family lives a 2.5 hour drive away. We see them probably every 2 months or so for a day. I wouldn’t mind more often, but this works for us both in this season. In-laws are about an hour drive, and we see them about once a month, either with extended family gatherings (more frequent with his mother’s family) or just us for dinner or something. I think that’s about right. I can imagine that having family far enough away that every visit is a multiple day trip where you’re hosting them is a lot more stressful than frequent regular day trips.

    12. We have a similar schedule, with parents staying in our house for 5-7 nights per visit 3-4 time per year. I like to see them but having any house guest for more than 3 nights wears on our family. Logistics, meal planning, and even just down time for 2 working adults and 2 busy high schoolers are all complicated during these visits. I try to remind myself to appreciate the time together because at some point they may not be able to travel at all.

    13. We are two plane rides away from both sets of grandparents, in opposite directions. We fly to my parents once a year for two weeks over christmas (my sister lives in the same town so we see her and her family then, too). We fly to DH’s parents every other year for 7-10 days. DH’s siblings live elsewhere and while we could coordinate with them to visit the grandparents, we dont. One of his siblings hasn’t even met our youngest child (age 9).

      Since COVID, our parents have not visited us. They are in their late 70s and I think COVID allowed them to get complacent about not traveling. I would honestly love to see them more (my ideal would be more frequent visits but for fewer days at a time!) but we can’t afford to fly our family of four across the country a third and fourth time every year, both in terms of money and PTO and frankly will (it’s tiring). It’s sad because as they get up there in age, any one of these visits could be the last time we see them– pretty bleak! I wish they would come see us, but as the ones that “left” they seem to think it’s only on us to visit.

    14. For the last 16 years we have lived between 4 and 14 hours away from my parents and DH’s parents. My parents come to us 4x/year and we go there 2x/year. DH’s parents come to us 3x/year and we go there 1x/year. So most months we have someone’s parents staying with us or vice versa.

      But when they stay with us it is not an “event”, they just fit into our life – they’ll help run the kids to their extracurriculars, make dinner or cut the lawn, come with me to the gym in the morning, etc. They encourage us to make plans with friends while they watch the kids or get groceries.

      So it doesn’t feel like a lot and I’m glad they can come so frequently.

    15. My parents live 3 hours away, and I have two kids under 5. We end up seeing them once a month or every other month. Right now, we probably go see them twice a year. When we visit them, we stay for 3-4 days.

      When they come see us, they will drive up Saturday morning and back at lunch on Sunday… which is frankly more disruptive than if they were here for longer. Since they come up for roughly 24 hours, including toddler nap time on Saturday, we feel obligated to spend that entire time with them rather than inviting them along on our weekend. My parents are also generally exhausted by the time they get to us because of this crazy travel schedule as well.

      2. Yup. I moved back home to Boston (from DC) when I was 25 because I realized I didn’t like only seeing my parents a few times a year and I didn’t want that to be my situation long-term. I had a few coworkers who saw their parents 1 week a year and realizing that could be my future upset me so I moved.

      3. i’m not the OP, but I think I would be just fine with that? I love my children but I want them to have happy, busy, fulfilling adult lives and I also hope to have a busy and fulfilling second act as an empty nester. Family visits are wonderful, but seeing your adult children 3 weeks a year seems fine to me from either side.

        1. Both you and your adult children can have busy and fulfilling lives that involve seeing each other more frequently! I grew up around my grandparents and cousins and I’m raising my kids near 3 of 4 grandparents and about half of their cousins so I”m sure what’s normal for me is driven by that, but I’d be really sad to only see my kids on occasion! They’re really cool people and we have a lot of fun and I’d like that to continue past age 18!

          1. I agree it probably all depends on what you grew up with. 3 weeks a year feels like a ton to me! I didn’t see either set of grandparents anywhere near that much growing up. Plane tickets were a lot more expensive back then and families were bigger, so middle class people weren’t just flying across the country 5 times a year like they do now.

          2. I think it’s different if you can see someone for two hours for dinner vs it taking over your life

      4. How about seeing your kid once in 26 years? Families separated by immigration and geopolitical nightmares deal with this routinely.

        1. I mean all of my grandparents got on a ship over 100 years ago and left Europe and never saw their families again.

          I think, as a result, they established a family culture that is very close and prioritizes seeing each other regularly.

    17. I get that parents can be tricky, but would you really feel okay only seeing your children 2-3x a year? And trying to have a relationship with grandchildren you only see 2-3x a year?

      1. I find that this place is pretty limited in its perception of how family stays close. Video calls are amazing. You can send artwork and cards and have frequent chats. You can text every single day. My two very best friends in the world are my cousins and we see each other 1-2 times a year – and yet we are SO close and have been our entire lives. It’s not about the exact frequency, but the level of effort and embrace of technology.

        1. +1 I saw my grandparents once a year as a kid and was incredibly close to them. Granted, it was a long visit (2-3 weeks) but only seeing them once a year did not prevent us from becoming close. I was much closer to them than I was to my paternal grandparents that I saw more often, because they were kinder, warmer people. And this was long before the internet!

          I think I literally don’t know anyone who visits their flying-distance parents more than 3x a year. The regional and cultural differences on this are huge.

        2. I find people here to be incredibly rigid about anything to do with family. So many people believe their way is the One True Way and anyone else is a monster who’s doing it horribly wrong. But the reality is that there are lots of ways to have a loving happy family and this is all *heavily* influenced by culture and family precedent. What is “normal” in one family is very unusual in another, and it doesn’t mean either is wrong, they’re just different.

          I come from a long line of academics so pretty much everyone moves far away from home. I grew up seeing my grandparents very sporadically because they both lived halfway across the country. I was close to one set and not very close to the other set but it had more to do with personality than physical distance. My kids are growing up with local grandparents who moved to us, which is amazing for both the kids and my parents, but I also don’t think grandparents not wanting to move to their adult children makes them bad people. I’m not sure we will. For one things, it’s considerably more complicated when you have two kids, because who do you pick?

    18. We live 900 miles away and see my parents once every couple of years, usually for two to three days. Sometimes we go their direction, other times they come our way. If we lived closer we would see them more often.

      My in-laws live in the next town over and we last saw them a few years before Covid. Once the matriarch grandma died, no one had any interest in keeping in touch and so they don’t.

      1. 900 miles doesn’t seem that far to me – it could be driven in 1 shot or would be an approx 2-3 hour flight!

        My second cousins (20 year age gap!) live literally across the country (LA and SF, I’m in DC along with a bunch of our family) and I see them annually…and they don’t have parents, siblings, or other closer relatives in my area!

        1. This really depends. It could be a 2 hour flight or it could take all day with multiple connections and a high chance of delays and missed flights, depending on where OP and her parents live. I’ve spent big chunks of my life living in places with no airport or where it took a connection to get pretty much anywhere and also have multiple family members who live in cities at least an hour from the nearest airport, and even that airport doesn’t have many direct flights.

        2. Flights are prohibitively expensive compare to driving, there are no direct options, and the nearest airport at one end is still a two hour drive.

          We have driven it in as little as 11 hours once (overnight to avoid rush hours in the major cities along the path). During the day, it’s more like 14 hours.

          1. wow I can’t imagine being an 11-14 hour drive from my parents and only seeing them every few years?

          3. And I can’t imagine thinking a 14 hour drive is NBD! That’s absolutely ghastly to me. My SIL is 6 hours and it’s miserable. We’re looking into flying next time even though it’s expensive and not direct.

        3. That’s great for you if you enjoy connection!

          I might be about to name a second cousin if I think about it really hard. Kind of seems like one of them lives somewhere in Indiana? Illinois? Somewhere with an “i” at least.

    19. I live about a 6.5-8 hour drive from my parents and see them about 4-5 times a year: a few weekend visits where they come to me, a week vacation where we meet at a beach location (I typically work remotely for part of the week so I’m not using a full week’s vacation time), sometimes a few days for Thanksgiving, then usually a week at Christmas (again, might work remotely part time, depending on how much vacation time I’ve used). Visits with my mother are not vacations. My brother lives slightly closer (more like 5 hours) and sees them a little more frequently.

    20. We reside in the US, and our families live in Europe, in the same country but a few hours apart by car. We visit each of the parents twice a year, over Christmas and in the summer. We try to spend at least two weeks at each parent’s place each time, and spend some time working from there.
      My in-laws are not able to travel that far any more due to health reasons and general inability to handle the logistics of an overseas trip. Especially my FIL is very frail.

      My parents are younger and try to make the trip over the pond once a year or every other year, but then they fly business class because health issues would make economy travel super uncomfortable. The cost is becoming more and more prohibitive. We do have other family close to where they live (my sibling, cousins, aunt), so it’s worth seeing them.

      I do admit that sometimes it feels like a lot to spend almost all our PTO on trips to our home country, but we acknowledge that we won’t have our parents forever, and as our school age kid grows, there will come a time when longer trips to Europe are not possible. Longer trips make it possible for our kid to grow up fully bilingual and develop a deeper cultural understanding of his roots than if we were just doing a week here and there.

      1. Totally hear you on older people being uncomfortable in economy seats for longhaul flights. One tip: it’s often cheaper to buy economy and then purchase an upgrade to business (a confirmed upgrade with cash, not a waitlist for an upgrade with miles). I’m not sure all foreign airlines allow this, but the big US-based ones do. It’s still not cheap (2-3x the cost of economy usually), but buying business tickets outright can be a LOT more.

        1. I think it would be great for older people who feel uncomfortable on flights but can afford them to pay for their kids to visit more often. Prices are one of the biggest burdens facing most families. It just isn’t doable to fly 3-5 people to see elderly grandparents as often as both sides would like, not on today’s stagnant salaries and with all the rising costs. Unfortunately, in my experience, such offers are not that common.

          1. This is actually pretty common among people I know. But I think for a lot of the posters here, price isn’t the biggest obstacle. Time is. And unfortunately there’s no way to solve that with money.

          2. I agree that time is also a huge obstacle. I have one pool of combined PTO and so much of it has gone towards illness and medical needs. I can’t afford to take unpaid vacation and keep the lights on.

    21. I have never lived close to my parents since leaving for college, and now at age 49, see them about 4 times a year, each for maybe 3-4 days at a time, up to a week in the summer. We saw them more often when my son was young; he is now 13 and doesn’t particularly enjoy family visits. He has no cousins. I frankly don’t enjoy hanging out with my family that much and tolerate it best in short bursts. My parents no longer travel to visit us almost ever, but they did more pre-pandemic. We live in NYC, and I think dealing with public transit and hotels and such is just getting to be a lot now that they are older (my dad is 80, my mom is 78). When my son was elementary school age, he would sometimes spend a week with them in the summer, or part of a week, but neither side is really up for that anymore.

    22. My mother is a 6-hour drive away over unpleasant roads, with no reasonable flight or train options. We see her on average once a year for 4-5 days. She always comes to us for Reasons.

    23. My parents live 4-ish hours away, and we typically see each other once a month, for a weekend. More often, they come to us, but sometimes we go to them and sometimes we meet in a fun location in the middle. They also do Grandparent Camp between one and three times a year for 3-5 days, which makes both them and my son very happy.
      I really enjoy time with my parents and I very much hope that they’ll consider moving to our area when they fully retire (my dad is semi-retired but freelances, my mom is planning on working for a few more years). That said, I’ve learned that with the mix of personality quirks in our family, it’s better to have more frequent but short visits, so we don’t do longer joint vacations. I think my parents would probably say that they wish we would do that if you asked them – but they also have never suggested it, and that makes me think that they actually agree and just wouldn’t want to say it out loud.

    24. My husband and I live about 6 hours driving from his parents, 8 hours driving from mine and my brother(approximately the same direction, just a bit further), 4 hours from his sister, and a short plane ride away from my sister (totally opposite direction). It sucks. I really, really love living in DC (no kids yet) but we know its not our forever home because we don’t want our kids to only see their extended families once or twice a year.

        1. We’re really deeply considering what the near future brings. DC has been really good for my career, and my husband has had a good run here too, but his career is more portable (and he left a good job in his hometown to be with me). We are hoping to get pregnant this year so maybe we will be forced to make a decision sooner rather than later….

    25. My parents are gone but my MIL lives a few blocks away and we see her almost every weekend. Many of my friends’ parents live nearby and they see them regularly. I see the parents of one or another of my friends a couple of times a week in passing. When we host gatherings, all the kids and grandparents are invited (we live in a medium sized apartment so it gets cozy but we have fun!)

      I live in outer borough NYC. I grew up here (different neighborhood) but not all of my friends did (and we didn’t know each other growing up, met as adults through our kids). I really hope that my kid stays in NYC or moves somewhere I want to move to so I can keep seeing them regularly when they are an adult. Only getting to see them 3 weeks a year makes me sad to think about.

      1. I LOVE multigenerational family friendships like this. Now that we’re the adults and the older generation is sadly dying out it’s become even more meaningful to have friends that knew and remember my grandparents, parents, and other relatives.

        About two years ago a friend’s grandmother passed and she posted a picture of the two of them together at her first birthday party. My own grandmother was in the background of that picture. My grandmother died nearly 20 years ago so it was incredibly meaningful to find a “new” picture of her.

  4. How much clothing do you keep for sentimental/keepsake reasons? I have a couple of boxes of pieces that I wore on important/momentous/memorable occasions. Sometimes I look at the boxes and think, “I should get rid of those items,” but then I think, “I wore that to the concert/that important hearing/that great day on vacation/when I met that guy.”

    Is this crazy or do others keep clothing as mementoes/keepsakes?

    1. I’m a huge packrat for sentimental clothing. I have an Andover Shop sweater that belonged to my grandfather in the 1940s, a bunch of vintage wool Fair Isle sweaters from a beloved aunt, I’m still wearing my favorite Old Navy tank top that is falling apart but that I got right before going off to college, etc.

      1. None. If there’s a keepsake that’s small, like a piece of jewelry, I’ll hang on to it. But clothing that reminds me of personal moments? That doesn’t appeal to me at all. That’s not meant to be a judgment — you do you, of course!

    2. I have sentimental stuff that was passed down from some relatives. I have a caftan that was my grandmother’s, my grandfather’s parka, and then some sweaters my grandmother knit. I sometimes wear the caftan as a beach coverup. The sweaters and parka are super warm so I occasionally bust them out during a polar blast.

      I have some team gear from high school and college sports that I still have. Most doesn’t get worn, but the Patagonia fleece and really great rain coat sure do!

      If I get married I’ll keep my wedding dress.

      But that’s pretty much it!

    3. Absolutely zero. I already have way too much stuff I don’t wear at any given time because I live in a four season climate and have a medical condition that has me bouncing between sizes, I definitely don’t need another reason to store extra clothing.

    4. i have a pair of seven jeans from the 2000s, my varsity windbreakers, my wedding dress, and the sweatshirt i got on admitted students day at my college

    5. I think I only have one thing that really fits this -the cami I was wearing when I met my husband, at a college party in 1999. Pretty sure I paid about $3.00 for it at one of those long-defunct cheap-o mall stores. It still fits but is obviously less than ideal in 100 ways, but every time I clean out the drawer, I look at it and think “eh, I’ll hold onto it a little longer.”

    6. I have nothing except my wedding dress and my high school letter jacket. I’m not sentimental about stuff though. My mom recently gave me multiple bins of my childhood clothing and I threw out everything my kids had already outgrown and she was slightly horrified but I just have no sentimental attachment to stuff, especially clothing.

    7. Only my wedding dress. I’m a sentimental person, but I don’t really mentally associate clothes with events otherwise.

    8. Just two pieces: a band t shirt I bought one of the best nights of my life, and a sweatshirt my mom found in my grandma’s house that she pulled especially for me. Not sure what to do with either of them, but I’m not ready to let go just yet.

    10. I haven’t kept much, but I do have the dress I was wearing when my husband asked me out for the first time, which I also wore on our first date.

    12. I took a big stack of sentimental old t-shirts, folded them into as tight, even, and dense a cube as possible then wrapped the stack in a sentimental bedsheet and stitched it shut. I sewed a cover out of upholstery fabric that complements my living room and we use it as a footstool or impromptu seat at the coffee table. The shirts are still in there, probably compressed into something resembling stone at this point. We have a useful object and I didn’t have to separate my memories from the shirts themselves.

    13. I keep bags of baby clothes but try to limit myself to 2. But it’s wild to see how small the kids once were.

      I also keep other clothes but I have a lot of extra closets… I don’t think those will make my next move.

    15. Ha, WFH today and I’m wearing a sweatshirt from my high school band days, which were the late 1980s.

    16. I keep things longer than I should for sentimental reasons, if I can still wear them. Some items, like t-shirts, might get downgraded to around-the-house only if I know they’re not in good condition but wearing them still makes me happy. The only clothing item I have in a box is my wedding dress.

    17. I have two boxes of things I keep for sentimental purposes and don’t wear. I have many things I keep for sentimental purposes that belonged to my parents, but I also wear them fairly regularly. Like I didn’t need to buy a flannel shirt/jacket because I have my dad’s from the 80s. I wouldn’t keep any of it though if I didn’t enjoy it.

  5. Have you ever done multiple workouts a day? I always used to see this as a sign of disorder, but now this feels like the ideal schedule for an early retirement. Pilates to pickleball to swimming, yes please.

    1. As a former D1 athlete, I am very used to it :) I usually work out 5-7x a week so sometimes that means doubling up.

      Sometimes that’s two separate workouts (before and after work), sometimes it’s a brick (a run right into a lift, for example). I run and lift regularly for general fitness and training, but I also play sports (tennis and rowing 2x a week each) and “dabble” in a bunch of active hobbies (hiking, water sports (sailing, kayaking, surfing) and other racquet sports (racquet ball, pickleball) etc.) so I’m pretty frequently doing more than 1 active hobby or workout in a day.

      My parents are early 70s and retired and their retirement looks a lot like your ideal schedule. My dad plays golf every day he can, my mom also golfs and she and her gym ladies do back to back classes (yoga to strength or yoga to aerobics). Both my parents do strength training, hike, and do a lot of the water sports and racquet sports I mentioned.

      1. I would love to see a sample “day in your life” schedule if you have any time on your hands this afternoon! I aspire to be this active. It’s been challenging to fit everything in postpartum but I really want to continue to make space for my hobbies. Do you get up really early? Work out at lunch?

        1. So first thing’s first, I need to caveat that I am childfree and have a relatively flexible job. Most of my hobbies are active. Many of my friends are active so I combine a workout and hanging with a friend. Also, as a former college athlete I think my workouts now look pretty easy and relaxed – I am not training to win anymore. I am slow and I am okay with that. Most lifts are about 20 mins and weekday runs are 2-3 miles (20-30 mins). I also am very flexible – I show up to rowing and tennis regularly because I have teammates, but for solo workouts I am fine with hitting snooze and skipping a workout if I’m tired. Or, if I have fun plans I prioritize those plans over a workout. Also – since I workout with a lot of my friends we often grab a drink or dinner after a workout together. Working out is certainly not in place of socializing!

          Spring through fall I play tennis on Wednesday evenings and Sunday evenings and I row on Tuesday mornings and Thursday mornings. I will also be doing a 25k trail race in May and a sprint triathalon in July. Right now I’m aiming to run 2-3x a week and lift 2-3x a week in addition to sports. So, I will head to the trail for a long run (5-10ish miles) on Saturday or Sunday. I lift, jog, or do yoga/mobility (all 20-30 mins) before work Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Monday or Tuesday I usually run with a friend after work.

          After my 25k, I’ll switch to doing bricks on weekend days. I will start swimming once the weather is nicer and I can swim in the lake.

          My parents have a Poconos house, so I spend many weekends there and it’s great for running, hiking, biking, and water sports.

          In the winter, I have tennis 1 night a week and I ski 1-2x a week (1 night after work – there’s a ski hill (emphasis on hill) about an hour away from me and then usually ski 2 weekend days a month with friends. In winter I then run/lift Monday-Friday before work.

          So, basically it looks like this:
          Monday: optional AM lift, PM run with friend.
          Tuesday: AM row. Occasional PM lift or run.
          Wednesday: Optional AM lift or run, PM tennis.
          Thursday: AM row, occasional PM lift or run.
          Friday: Rest day.
          Saturday/Sunday: long trail run. Potential hike/kayak/sail/racquetball/etc for fun. Potential second rest day.

          2. Yeah it’s a lot of fun! It also helps that I work 8:30-4:30 (and never longer!), have a 10 minute commute, and keep the rest of my life easy so I can make time for the fun!

            I live alone in a 1 BR apartment so it takes 45 mins to clean and I batch cook once a week. The evenings I’m not working out I’m usually hanging out with friends or doing art.

            I’m in my early 30s, I predict life will look quite different in a few years (ideally kids!) so I’m enjoying having the time to commit to my hobbies now!

    2. When I was marathon training, before being injured, the general belief is that “running doubles” is a helpful way to stack miles and reduce the risk of injuries.

    3. I love a “multi-sport day” on vacation – hike in the morning, a nice breakfast, bike to the lake for a wakeboarding session, etc. Or skiing all day followed by swimming.

    4. yes, whenever possible – bike to pool or tennis court
      hike up hill, ski down hill
      bike hike run swim
      sign up for a triathalon
      run in AM, yoga in PM
      weights then run
      yoga or pilates then run
      bike to brewery, bike home afterwards (does this count as two workouts?)

    5. My husband has a very flexible work schedule and has always worked out twice a day. Recently he even works out 3 times a day some days. I sort of think he has an unhealthy relationshipswith exercise, but he has a fulltime job and is actively parenting young kids. I would find it much less weird for a retired person to be working out that much.

    6. There’s exercise and there’s exercise. Would I ever go to the gym twice a day? No. Would I go to the gym in the morning and then on a hike with my friends that afternoon? Sure. Active activities are different than “exercise” in my book even it is exercise.

      1. Same!

        But honestly, I wouldn’t side eye someone who did work out multiple times a day, as long as they were fueling and resting appropriately. For me, putting on gym clothes twice sounds horrible but maybe for someone else it’s easier to say “ok, I’m only doing a 15 min workout now; and another 15 later”

    7. Yes, but I run marathons. If I am going to add strength training and have rest days, two a days are an inevitability.

      1. Oh, it absolutely can be disordered – there’s no question about that. It isn’t always but it can totally be a red flag on its own.

      2. I just remember hearing that someone would go to two spinning sessions in a row and thinking that was a sign of an eating disorder. Lady Gaga maybe?

    9. Depends on what you consider “working out”. I do dance as one of my hobbies, but I don’t consider that a “workout”. I go to the gym in the morning to do my focused programming with weights and sprints, and then I go to my hobby in the evening which includes dancing.

      I get sweaty enough while dancing that I need a quick rinse off before bed, but I’m in good enough shape that it doesn’t feel like I’m pushing myself or working out vs. just having a hobby where I’m active.

    10. No because I don’t have time, but if I was retired, I would absolutely do 2 active activities in a day (not 2 hard workouts, though)–like a walk and a swim, yoga and horseback riding, things like that.

  6. I read about DOOM piles recently. DOOM = didn’t organize, only moved. Large piles of stuff that just accumulate. Maybe you move them for Thanksgiving dinner, but they never go away. Often, they get larger or spawn offshoots.

    Apparently, it’s a huge red flag for ADHD (which I never thought I had, but perhaps I have it worst of all?). My DOOM piles are sort of a COVID WFH hangover of stuff that should be in my office (which was itself boxed up and moved as we consolidated our space), parental estate things, college-search for teens things, and clothes that I want to fit into again. If I ever have free time, I don’t want to spend it sorting unless it’s a rainy nasty day outside; I can’t toss because some of it matters (trying to cull bits from a storage unit after parental house sale).

    Open to advice — this wan’t a part of my 20s or 30s or even early 40s.

    2. ADHD has lots of signs going back to childhood. For all I know you have those signs — sometimes it’s people around the person with ADHD who notices it more!

      But the kind of problem you’re describing is common and not just a ADHD red flag kind of thing; think of the popularity of Marie Kondo and Hideko Yamashita! Or think of everyone in the previous generation who had to rummage through the attic if they actually needed one of these things they never organized.

    3. I have some version of this pile up from time to time because I am busy and organizing things isn’t a priority at this stage of my life. I don’t think of it as a sign of ADHD so much as of a busy life and different priorities. I think there’s a tendency to diagnose or label everything these days and if it helps you to think of things that way, by all means, but it’s not my thing for things that don’t remotely bother me and would be considered perfectly run of the mill behavior throughout history.

      Anyway, I think you can tackle in a few ways. Move the office box to your office, throw away what you know might not be important, slowly go thru a pile a week/day/whatever works for you for what’s left, or outsource and hire an organizer. The beauty of holding on to things for a long time is that you realize they really don’t matter at some point.

    4. clothes that don’t fit must go out (except you know my 7 jeans i mentioned above) if you could fit into it again you would want to buy new things to celebrate! I can’t imagine what you have for college search for teens. do you mean all that paper mail they get from schools they would never apply to? i don’t even bring that stuff into the house, just throw it out in the recycling on my way in. I would break it into time tasks (either i am going to spend 10 minutes moving my way through this every day until it’s done) or small tasks (going to clean the dining room table. Honestly if you are in your mid 40s i don’t think getting diagnosed with ADHD is particularly useful but i know that some people do find diagnosis to be validating.

      1. I must have a weird rise because it is so hard to find even B- pants and fitted dresses for my dimensions that I would not toss out-of-size clothing that was well-made and that I otherwise loved. Replacing items when sizes changes is never the thrilling awesome shopping I think it will be. It is just expensive, ill-fitting B- items of even lower quality than before. I can really only get rid of things like cheap junk bought for an event / out of desperation or things that I never loved to begin with. The good stuff stays if I could conceivably wear it again (and I can size flux easily and quickly now due to perimenopause / sad rigors of elder care giving just wearing me down).

      2. The college stuff I keep for my kids is program-specific and from visits (not the mail stuff). The sort of things that they may use when they have a decision to make next spring (so a 1-year sell-by date, which is great). It has a banker’s box that I will confine all college paper to (but expect a lot to be online now).

    5. Look up Dana K White (youtube and blog). Choose ONE pile, and follow her 5-step process on it exactly, even if you’re sure it won’t work for you, or you hate following anyone’s process, or you dislike being told what to do and want to come up with it all yourself.

      1. +1 for Dana.

        Her recent video on ytube on declutterring her office closet is a great demonstration of her method.

    6. I didn’t know that’s what DOOM stood for!

      With the caveat that I do have ADHD, I like to put a date on top of a pile or at the top of a box. When I next think about it (sometimes years later) I know odds are very high I don’t need anything in there. If I go thru it at all I try to set a timer.

      1. Yeah, I thought “doom piles” were just piles of stuff you’d given up on ever sorting through.

        1. i think that’s right. meaning you might move the whole thing upstairs so you can host thanksgiving but you’re not really going through it….

    7. I think lots of people have this. It often ends up in people’s garages and attics. We just accumulate lots of stuff.

      I have periods (right now because it’s spring) when I want to tackle more of this stuff. What helps me is to go through one thing at a time and it takes the time it takes.

      Cleaning things out that you might have emotional ties to (like from a parent’s estate) can be an ongoing process. There are things I kept that maybe I’ll get rid of at some point, but right now (5+ years later) this not that point. Give yourself some grace on that one.

  7. Great pick; love most of those Korean brands. And Sephora is legit; you don’t get anything that isn’t authentic.

  8. Help me get dressed for a networking/awards event, please!

    I’m going to attend a luncheon of a professional women’s organization in my industry, where some of my company’s female leaders, along with others from other companies, will be honored with an award. I get to attend as a representative (volunteer) for one of the company’s inclusion groups who interfaces closely with this professional organization. This event is in April in San Diego, but participants come from all corners of the US and even international. This is a large event with several hundreds of people attending.

    I have checked pictures of previous events for the dress code, and the pics show anything from colored suits, dark suits, dress/blazer combo, silk dresses… I’d say the outfits are leaning into color and interesting shapes, with senior leaders and speakers standing out more with creative dressing.

    I have the following options in my closet:
    1 – Classic shift dress in navy with a waist fold detail. I can add a navy blazer to make it a column of color.
    2 – Coral blazer in a slightly wider cut than the fitted “millennial 2010 blazer”  which I could pair with navy wide leg dress pants and a white shell. This blazer is my usual go to networking blazer, because it makes people remember and find me.
    3 – Anne Klein beige linen blazer with an asymmetric origami fold detail at the collar, paired again with the navy pants. If this was in black or navy, it would be a no-brainer, but the beige linen gives me pause for some reason.

    I have heels and flats in various shapes and colors, as well as interesting jewelry that I can use to fancy it up.

    I think personally that a blazer combo with dress or pants will work well, but am unsure what’s current, as most of my wardrobe stems from pre-2020. I work from home and haven’t attended fancy events like this in a while. My dressier wardrobe are linen or crepe dresses or pants with some flowy blouse, but that’s probably too “brunch with friends” for this professional event. I usually shop at Old Navy, H&M and the like, since I’m on a budget.

    Which of the above outfits would be good to wear – and if it’s none of them, any great finds?

    1. Number 1 or number 3. The color combination of number 2 sounds too “Florida Award for Elderly Volunteer” to me, though perhaps I’m just not seeing the vision. Beige linen sounds fine to me given the time and place. Personally, I’d go with the Number 3 option.

      From what I can see around me, pants are slightly more current than a dress, but you could certainly wear the dress.

    2. I live in San Diego and would go with one of the first two and leaning toward the coral blazer/navy pant combination. Just be sure your top can be worn without the blazer because the weather that time of year is incredibly unpredictable and can vary wildly both from day to day and within a single day. Check the weather right before you come for the specific part of San Diego you are visiting. We had a week of 90+ degree days this month and in that case, you would probably be more comfortable in a dress. Also, look at specifically WHERE your event is. Our weather varies quite a lot depending on proximity to the coast.

      San Diego is not a particularly fashion-forward place so I would not worry about it too much!

    3. All three of your options sound fine. I’d go with the one that makes you feel most put together with your chosen shoes and accessories.

  9. I was late for this morning’s discussion about retiring dad.

    It seems your dad has truly valued his medical school. Do the school have a student digital newspaper, blog or similar? Maybe they’d be interested to do an interview or lecture? In addition to having an inspiring career, he might have some good advice on how to get the most out of your education, how to stay interested and up to date and how to keep in touch with your fellow students.

    Tell him you’re proud of him, and that you’re looking forward to spending time with him.

    If you’re able to, check in on the retirement day, with a message before the celebration if there is one, and maybe a face time later in the day. Maybe you could send him a nice bottle of something, have a glass of your own, and do a late night video toast and talk about the day, and who he met and what the other new retirees are doing.

    For a gift, something to do with a hobby he’s not been able to do as much as he would have liked could be nice. Membership to a theatre? Inscribed binoculars for bird watching? A fancy sushi making class?

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