Frugal Friday’s Workwear Report: Whatever Floats Your Boat Tee
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Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.
I have a handful of Pride events on the calendar this month that I’m attending in my corporate capacity, and I always struggle with looking festive but still somewhat work-appropriate. This cap-sleeved top from ModCloth would be perfect with a pair of ankle pants and some business casual sneakers for all of your parade and picnic needs.
If you’re up for it, there’s also a fit-and-flare dress in a similar pattern.
The shirt is $39 at ModCloth and comes in sizes XS-4X.
Sales of note for 6/2:
- Nordstrom – Designer clearance up to 40% off!
- Ann Taylor – 30% off dresses, jackets, and shoes
- AYR – Ooh, good sale section — but lots on final sale. Readers love these comfy work pants and these jeans.
- Boden – 15% off new women's wear styles with code
- Express – Today only (6/2): all clearance up to 85% off when you take an extra 20-50% off
- J.Crew – 20% off $200, including new styles
- J.Crew Factory – Extra 50% off clearance + 40-60% off everything else
- Loft – 60% off sale styles
- M.M.LaFleur– Up to 70% off, plus new styles added! (Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off)
- Nordstrom Rack – Clear the Rack! Nice selection of Vince, Veronica Beard, Reiss and Rag & Bone, a ton of affordable work basics from Calvin Klein and dresses from Maggy London, Eliza J, and Donna Morgan
- Talbots – Buy one, get one 50% off everything!
Maybe I’m being weird here: does anyone else try to eat a different protein each night of the week? To the point where if you have 3 great chicken recipes you try to spread them into different weeks?
We might do one night of leftovers but that’s it. I can’t imagine eating six-day-old chicken after eating five previous nights of chicken – especially if I’m blowing a Sunday meal prepping to do it. Good for them, not for me.
I try and mix it up a bit, but we definitely eat more chicken than anything else. I’d say probably 3 nights a week generally.
i eat chicken more than once a week, eat it the most but no this isn’t weird, i get it.
Yes, but leftovers can make it into the next day’s lunch (either by design or because there happened to be extra).
Nah, not weird at all. I make a larger batch of something for dinner, then take it for lunch the next day. I would not want to eat the same leftover protein for days on end, nor the same protein each day. These days I am eating as an omnivore for proteins and it has been great to experiment!
Getting variety in your diet isn’t weird!
we tend to alternate chicken vs. fish vs. veggie meals but that’s because we know our own appetites as opposed to intentionally thinking “we should vary our protein.”
also, we do the “intentional leftovers” game. We don’t waste weekend days batch-cooking but instead whenever we’re making something involved, we make like 4-8x the servings and freeze in serving-size portions.
Yes, I rotate seitan, tempeh, tofu, lentils, chickpeas, black beans, soy chunks, tvp etc. But I just try and not have the same thing back to back so if lunch is tofu dinner will be beans.
No, but I do find that I naturally adjust the next week if we’ve had a lot of one type of meat in a week. We do eat a lot of poultry so it’s not uncommon for us to have it 2 or 3 times in a week, but it’s usually in different preparations rather than cooked all at once and then used in different ways, and it doesn’t happen every week. So in a poultry-heavy week, we might make an Indian dish with cut-up chicken breasts, a sheet pan meal that includes chicken thighs, and something with ground turkey. We also eat fish and pork on a regular basis. We eat beef and lamb much more rarely, but definitely still have it regularly.
We tend to use leftovers as lunches rather than repurposing them into another meal. Although I will sometimes plan on using the meat in two different dishes if I roast whole chicken – knowing we’ll have the leftover meat, I’ll plan on enchiladas a couple of days later.
I will freely admit here that I’ve never been good at meal prepping or bulk cooking. Kudos to those that do, but it isn’t for me!
No. If the recipes are different enough to have different flavor profiles or different forms I see nothing wrong with eating chicken 2 or 3 times a week. The vision of meal prepping that people on this board have is very strange and not based on reality.
yeah. I said yesterday that we eat chicken or meatless almost all the time at home but to me a pasta with chicken, a salad with chicken, a quesadilla with chicken and a chicken pot pie are all very different meals. I would not want to eat quesadillas night after night but if the base meal is different, I don’t notice or care if it has the same protein.
2-3 times is one thing but someone yesterday mentioned roasting a whole chicken AND cooking a bunch of chicken breasts every Sunday. That’s so much chicken!
It’s the most affordable right now honestly!
A roast chicken is only two meals around here though for two eaters (the night it’s cooked, and then a chicken salad for lunch the next day).
I feel that we eat way too much meat these days because it’s what’s left after some unforgiving dietary restrictions though.
That was me. I have a 9th grader, an 11th grader, and a high school senior who all play lax. My dh is a fairly serious power lifter. I work out as well. Lunches for 5, dinners for 5, and snacks mean we go through a lot of chicken. One roast chicken doesn’t even yield any leftovers if it’s a meal for us. It’s the most affordable protein for us right now. You might not want to know how many eggs, gallons of milk and quarts of yogurt we go through every week.
I eat chicken more than any other protein, but I still prefer some variety and would probably spread out the recipes a bit.
I’m only cooking for myself and cooking a different protein every night sounds like way too much work! For sure, if I’ve had the same thing several days in a row, something else sounds appealing! But it’s usually easier to scratch that “something different” itch with a standalone change in fruit/veggie sides than proteins.
I do eat a ton of chicken, because it’s significantly cheaper than other meat in my neck of the woods, and I don’t meet my protein goals on eggs/tofu alone. Whatever works for you though!
If one person in the relationship has a particular/neurotic way things should be done (let’s say making the bed every single morning, no excuses), do you think it’s on them to execute it since they’re the one with the requirements or should a partner humor them and also try to do the thing the right way? I’ve seen this go both ways (“I have to clean the kitchen every night because I can’t stand when it’s not clean” vs. “I clean the kitchen for my wife every night because she can’t stand when it’s not clean.”
I feel like tasks being the responsiby of the person with standards is ripe for abuse. One party can claim their standard is squalor to completely opt out of household tasks.
Depends on how many neurotic preferences the partner has! I’m the more neurotic one in my relationship, and there are certain things I’ll just do myself because I care a lot more. But, on the whole, my relationship feels balanced in terms of workload, and there are things that DH is much pickier about so he does those.
I think the relationship as a whole has to be considered as well as what the neurotic preference is. If the preference is for the bed being made, then the last person out of the bed is the one who makes it. If the issue is that there is a different color throw blanket for every day and the blanket must be placed on the end of the bed in a very specific way, then the person with this preference needs to handle it.
The kinda middle question could be something like throw pillows. In my marriage, I am the one who likes the bed made every day. DH does not care about whether the bed is made because he never walks into the bedroom between when he wakes up and when he goes to sleep. But he wakes up second. So he does make the bed because that’s what I like, but doesn’t ever put on the throw pillows because he thinks they’re dumb. If I want the throw pillows added, then I do those.
Idk, I think leaving the throw pillows on the floor is pretty petty. I don’t like throw pillows myself and don’t own them, but if my partner really wanted them and I found myself making the bed, I really can’t see myself doing everything else and then thinking “f your pillows, they’re going on the floor today.”
I also agree that it matters how many such particularities they have/how crazy the overall resulting expectations are. The more outlandish your expectations, the more fair it is that you should be responsible. My husband taught me this in the early days. He could either do the dishes his way, which I found inefficient, or I could do them myself. Both his and my way resulted in clean dishes, and I realized that wanting to control the process was unreasonable.
But there’s of course cases where one spouse will act like normal cleanliness expectations are completely wild, and then not lift a finger. That’s bad.
I think the neurotic partner should make the bed in your example. Hard to give a blanket answer without knowing what the neurosis relates to.
Making the bed is not neurotic. Not making it is often a sign of depression, ADHD, or other mental illness.
Or just living a busy life. I love when my cleaners make my bed, or when I change my sheets and make the bed freshly. However, I don’t have time to do it every day because of massive family and job responsibilities. I’m not mentally ill.
Or just having other priorities. I do not care if my bed is not made. It just doesn’t make a difference to me. I’ll make it if I have guests coming or if I’m doing a huge clean, but I could not care less about whether it’s made. I do not want to waste anymore of my very limited and valuable time on something I don’t care about.
LOL or sometimes people just don’t care about making the bed? It’s not that deep.
This is so stupid. Sometimes it’s a sign, sometimes it’s not. Can we not diagnose everything from afar?
Completely agree and just don’t understand people who don’t make it, are they just messy in every aspect of life?
If I don’t make my bed the inside of my brain feels messy.
I don’t make the bed, but friends comment on how neat and clutter-free my house is. Maybe some people make the beds but otherwise live like hoarders. Can we be different?
They have better things to do with their lives than fuss over bedclothes that are going to be messed up again in 12 hours.
Only doing things you care about and not expecting others to care about things you care about is the hallmark of maturity. If you care about your bed being made, go make it. If you don’t, don’t. No one has ever died from an unsmoothed duvet.
Allergies/asthma, here. Not making the bed is a sign of wanting a well aired, clean bed to sleep in, and not hanging around and waiting for it to air out.
I would argue that there is a basic standard of housekeeping that is not neurotic and to which both partners should contribute. This includes making the bed daily, vacuuming weekly and whenever there is visible pet hair on the floor, washing dishes and wiping counters/stove after cooking, cleaning bathrooms weekly, etc. There is also a basic standard to which these tasks should be performed.
The standard varies from person to person and family to family. There’s no one set standard that includes making the beds every day, and suggesting so it pretty judgmental. Maybe some people whose jobs are less demanding can do it. I can’t do it and maintain my high level of job performance.
I could do it if I cared, but I don’t care and neither does my husband so we’ve never done it. Honestly I think one of the best parts of being an adult is being able to do whatever you want about low stakes like not making the bed.
Some of this stuff actually is basic cleanliness (cleaning bathrooms when they are dirty), and some of it is absolutely not (vacuuming every time you see pet hair? Seriously? Wiping the counters and stove every time you cook? Making the bed?). All of that is optional.
It is okay to leave sticky food residue on the counter and oil splatters on the stove?!?
From meal to meal? Yes, absolutely, unless raw meat has touched something. I consider myself a pretty clean person, and cleaning the stove every single time you cook is crazy work unless you only cook once a month or something.
I don’t think there’s one rule for this. It’s a give and take of trying to figure out how both of you make a life and home that works for both of you, which usually involves a mix of (a) “this is important to you, and inconsequential to me, so we’ll default to doing it your way”; and “this is really important to you and inconsequential to me, and I’m feeling constantly nitpicked about it, so you’ll take the lead on it”; and “this is important to you in X way and important to me in Y way, so we’ll compromise on Z/this time we’ll just do Y/etc”. There’s no one answer.
IMO, most of the time when people start arguing about this, it’s not about the one specific thing, it’s about the overall balance.
Within reason, yes. I put some groceries away places that make no sense to me but DH likes them there…. and I like DH more than I like groceries “my way” so I accommodate.
It’s on them to do the thing and more importantly, not to be a jerk when it doesn’t get done. Partner doing the thing is an act of love and a gift and should be received as such.
And acts of love and gifts are critical to a relationship’s success — but they are to be received and perceived as gifts, not obligations.
Your desires aren’t my obligations, and vice versa.
This top is adorable!
Sharing here because I can’t share IRL. I hit a major retirement milestone, I’ve saved 6x my salary! I’m 47 and my plan is to retire when I hit 10x. I’ll also have a federal pension and SS (assuming it still exists in 15 years) to support. I’ve dialed back my contributions to just get the match because every indication is that I’m on track for my goals with that, and I don’t want to oversave in retirement at the expense of living today.
Congrats! Go you!
Congrats!! What calculators/projectors do you like?
Really? So you think you only need about 10-12 years in savings? Why not keep working to stay in touch with the world and keep earning while you can. It’s one thing to know you’d be able to make it and another to step out and risk inflation or illness making your life stressful when that’s easily avoided.
Congrats!! And I trust your judgment on how much you need and want to celebrate this community!!
12x income is the rule of thumb for retiring at 65. The earlier you retire the more you need saved, and vice versa. And this rule assumes social security will always be there. If OP’s pension is stable then that will replace SS in the calculations, but I would still not feel comfortable retiring early on savings of 12x income. There’s also the consideration of health insurance until Medicare kicks in. I am in around the same place as OP minus the pension and do not anticipate retiring before 65. The way things are going benefits will have to be cut at least to 75 or 80% before I hit retirement age, unless the income ceiling on the social security tax is raised or removed.
She has a pension, which most people don’t. That’s a huge factor. A good pension can be like 75% of your salary.
Also the money grows, so saving 10x doesn’t mean you withdraw 1/10th of it each year for 10 years and then it’s gone. Ideally you live primarily off the interest on the money or at the very least draw down the principal much more gradually.
10x salary is based on a Fidelity rule of thumb about retirement income. The money is presumably in investments, not a savings account, so the money will continue to grow as it sits there. Another guestimate people use is that you can withdraw 4% of your wealth without touching the principle. Therefore, if you have 10x your annual income saved you can withdraw 40% of your annual income without touching your principle. Many folks rely on social security to make up the difference.
https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/retirement/how-much-do-i-need-to-retire
What matters is your expenses, not your salary, and this person is silent as to that. When I was in big law, I was saving about 50-70% of my take home pay a year. Thank god I didn’t try to save an arbitrary number of years of my stupidly high salary when my annual expenses were around $50k. (And thank god I saved like that!)
Does anyone here work in public health? I got into EMT/ paramedic work to try to get into medical school. Shift work won’t be good as a lifestyle forever but I now don’t want the long haul of medical school. If you work in public health, please tell me the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I just saw in a FB group that people were paying $50k-$70k for college counselors?! Is this really a thing? How much have you paid and when did you start? I’ve got a very smart rising 10th grader who’s consistently in the B+ range, we won’t qualify for any financial support.
It’s a thing for the very wealthy. Obviously the vast majority of people don’t do this. It’s not much of a thing in my area. Our state schools are not ultra-competitive though – most decent students from my kids’ high school get into at least one of the two main state universities. And if you want to aim higher than that, you’re generally pretty self-motivated.
Practically anything is a “thing” in that someone is paying that much for something.
Is this a normal thing to pay that much for? Absolutely not.
Not sure I’d bother with a B+ average. Aim for schools with a high admissions rate and call it a day.
Yup. with a B+ average this is really the only path. You don’t need a counselor.
I paid around $1000 all in for a couple of individual sessions to discuss college choices and the application process and a group “camp” where they filled out the common app and wrote their essays. Best money I ever spent because my kid was simply too overwhelmed to start the process herself–she even refused to come up with a list of colleges she wanted to visit–and having the counselor supervise largely eliminated parent-teen conflict. She ended up at the exact school I always thought would be the best fit for her, but she actually “discovered” it on her own and is now thriving as a rising junior.
I have an autistic kid and had a severe health scare and looked into it in case I wasn’t in the picture or subsumed with health crises. I was quoted between 5K and 20K in a big US city. Many “fancy” places refused to work with a junior. You have to lock in after 8th grade for them.
I think it is helpful for a working mom if your school is like ours: large public school. They have “counselors” but they deal with qualifying people for free lunch, suicides, pregnant teens. At best, they send your transcripts in time. They don’t know you, so they can’t write a recommendation letter. It’s maybe one counselor for 200+ kids, so no way to do any meaningful college counseling.
I think that private schools handle this in-house. That’s part of what you are paying for.
I would never consider that.
If you have a B+ student, apply to your state schools and other schools of interest with high admission rates. No need to stress out.
I went to a very intense private school that cared deeply about the rates of kids who went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, and Cal Tech. That is a very, very intense world, but most colleges are not in that world and most students don’t need to be anyway.
Chicken-related comment: why does chicken that I prepare repulse me on the second day? Whether cold or heated, something about the texture just grosses me out. I don’t have this issue with restaurant chicken. And I like the chicken I make the first day!
chicken chicken chicken… when I type a word too many times it loses all meaning… chicken!
Heat checking…heat checking these chickens!
I have this issue with chicken breasts. Typically it dries out more and I hate that texture. Plus I get bored of chicken pretty quickly…. it’s just not my favorite.
To your second point, we studied a case in 1L contracts that asked the critical question, “what is chicken?” For a lively discussion on the meaning of “chicken” and a glimpse into why lawyers are some of the most depressed and neurotic professionals out there, see Frigaliment Importing Co. v. B.N.S. Int’l Sales Corp., 190 F. Supp. 116 (S.D.N.Y. 1960). :D
You’re overcooking it and/or not using enough fat in preparing the chicken to preserve its juiciness.
Marinating or brining chicken helps preserve moisture. Cooking in some kind of fat also helps.
I feel that way specifically about chicken thighs. I don’t like them all that much when they’re freshly cooked and I really don’t like them cold or re-heated the next day.
I hate the taste of leftover/reheated chicken unless it’s covered in sauce.
I have this too, especially for reheated chicken. It gets a weird taste and texture I cannot tolerate. I do find the more sauce the better – I think it covers some of the weird taste.
The condensation chicken (or other meat) gets while sitting in the fridge overnight creeps me out so much.
I’m Indian and the best way to use leftover dry chicken is in a curry. I believe that’s how Butter Chicken was born.
People with condos/ apartments and cleaning ladies – how often do you ask them to come? Is it weekly or more ad-hoc?
Who else is getting sick of the “make every minute of the summer count!” messaging? I mean, yes, I want to. But as it turns out, I still have to function at my actual job, which means I still need to go to bed on time and have some semblance of a routine. I am perhaps salty because the bulk of the work that needs to happen on my biggest project of the year always lands in the summer.
That said, I’m proud of myself for 1) doing outdoor yoga before work this week; 2) stressing less about leaving early to pick up my daughter from camp; and 3) sitting on a covered porch during a rainstorm.
Curious — where’s that messaging coming from?
I really hate the “Make every minute of ______ count!” It’s just another forms of productivity culture and it’s damaging. Have your summer, enjoy what you can.
It tends to be an online thing, but I’ve also heard it from friends who don’t have full-time jobs to tend to during the summer.
It’s a big thing on the mom internet. “You only get 18 summers, make every minute count” etc
I enjoy it. It’s not the messaging I would seek out during a family crisis or something, but in general, I appreciate reminders to slow down, make the most of the day (when “most” = having fun, not when “most” = working at my corporate job), and find the little moments to insert joy into the setting. How many hours have I killed doomscrolling? How much time have I spent complaining about my circumstances instead of just getting out there and doing something different and joyful? Those reminders are helpful for a natural pessimist like myself.
Yeah, I have to work and can’t afford to travel so summer isn’t really a big thing for me. I try to get outside, read a lot, drink wine on a patio and enjoy the little things.
I might be the odd one out since I know a lot of people who don’t like that messaging, but I like it! Often it’s paired with good ideas for fun stuff I might not have thought of on my own and it can be so easy to execute – think things like popsicles in the bath. If a post bothers me, I sometimes have to acknowledge that I get a little defensive at times if it turns out I’m making excuses to not have fun (too busy/tired/etc.). There is ALWAYS fun to be had in life and I love seeing little examples and ideas from positive people I follow on social media.
Same here, you’re not weird, people here are just cranky.
Yep, solidarity. It’s the hardest season as a working mom. I also hate summer weather (except for the 1 blissful week we get to spend in northern New England where it’s not 90+) and perimenopause has made that worse, so basically I’m a huge grinch about the whole season.
Log off Instagram or whatever is serving you messages that don’t serve you.
On the flip side, I have to log off certain mom R3ddit pages that are SO negative – they’ll take this same complaint OP has and then thrash it to death over the entire summer. “I am SO sick of people telling me to MAKE every moment COUNT, don’t they know I’m a WORKING MOM???” It’s important not to lean into the negativity for low-stakes things like this.
How abusive would court staff have to be before you alerted the judge? I recently had a jury trial in a small town court. We are not from the small town. The courtroom bailiff was inappropriate and aggressive with us the entire trial. He complained about us to the judge and other courthouse staff. We had spoken with the judge before trial to confirm what was allowed – because the bailiff has complained about our requests – and we followed the judge’s instructions. The bailiff was angry with us that we followed the judge’s instructions and not the bailiff’s instructions. Examples:
– chambers confirmed our trial tech could test courtroom tech the day before trial. The bailiff didn’t want to let him in. We had to push back as respectfully as possible because this had been cleared by the judge, but the bailiff said we were disrespecting the court.
– We confirmed that our client rep could have her cell phone with her during trial in case anything came up. During a break, she was emailing with the CFO to try to get a settlement figure. The bailiff yelled at her and threatened to kick her out of the court house – not just the room – if he saw her phone again.
– we confirmed with the judge that we could bring water bottles; the bailiff did not want us to have water bottles (water bottles are expressly allowed on the court website). The bailiff screamed at us for bringing water bottles and at one point aggressively shook a water bottle in my face while screaming. I had to take a witness right after this and I was pretty shaken.
I have been practicing for more than 15 years, I’ve never even heard a horror story like this. We have another trial coming up in a few months in the same courthouse before the same judge. I am very concerned for a lot of reasons, but especially because I don’t know what he’s saying in earshot of the jury. The walls are thin back there and you can hear everything. If he’s trashtalking us in chambers then the jury can hear it. I’ve talked to colleagues and everyone is scratching their head, so I thought I’d crowdsource here to see if this group has any ideas about how to handle this graciously. Thanks!
I don’t care who you are or what your position is – you scream in my face, there will be consequences. I would definitely alert the judge.
I would alert the judge, but perhaps anonymously. This is not that dissimilar to how Alex Murdoch got a new trial, so I think judges may be slightly more open to hearing about bailiff misconduct at the moment.
I am apparently at the Hot Flashes & Crying stage of Peri – any tips on not crying?