Coffee Break: Vida Shoulder Bag
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I feel like we haven't seen a larger shoulder bag in years — it feels like bag sizes have been S, XS, XXXS… and then XL. This signature bag from Veronica Beard is a nice departure from that, and it's out in a bunch of fun new colors, including this cool snakeprint version. There's also a fabulous patchwork one that would be great if you wear a lot of navy.
The suede bag features “curved, Western-inspired panel details snake-embossed leather,” which I LOVE. There's something reminiscent of Art Deco or Gestalt images about the cutouts. There's the braided strap to use it as a handbag or shoulder bag, as well as a crossbody strap that you can add.
The bag is $750, at Veronica Beard (other versions in solid colors are as low as $595, though). You can also find it at Nordstrom!
Sales of note for 8/14:
- Ann Mashburn – Seasonal sale, up to 50% off – we just included them in our updated Top 10 Brands for Comfortable Heels!
- Ann Taylor – 25% off all suiting! Also, extra 60% off clearance — readers love this blouse and I always love the variety of colors/textures for this jacket (it's a great separate)
- Anthropologie – Extra 40% off sale!
- The Fold – Up to 50% off, further markdowns (new lines added)
- J.Crew – Up to 30% off
- J.Crew Factory – 40-60% off sitewide, extra 60% off clearance
- J.McLaughlin – Summer sale, up to 50% off
- Lilysilk – Anniversary sale, save up to 70%
- Me & Em – Sale! Up to 60% off (new lines just added, exclusively online)
- M.M.LaFleur – 20% off pants (Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off on other items)
- Nordstrom Rack – Clearance, new markdowns up to 75% off! Nice selection of Vince, Veronica Beard, Reiss and Rag & Bone, a ton of affordable work dresses from Calvin Klein, Maggy London, Eliza J, and Donna Morgan
- Saks Fifth Avenue – Take 25% off one item (ends Mon)! Great selection of Veronica Beard, L'Agence, Vince, and more.
- Talbots – End of season clearance, 60% off all markdowns. $24.99 pants and jeans
- Theory – End of season sale is on! Love all the colors their best-selling sweater tee comes in, and some colors are on sale.
- Tory Burch – Private sale, ends 8/19!
I’m struggling to adjust to all the increased costs of basic goods and also declining quality. A pre-made pizza crust that we buy to do pizza at home (to save money) is $12.99 for two small crusts per package. It’s only enough to feed a family of 3 because one of us is on a GLP-1. Every time we buy berries, no matter what store they’re from, there are at least a few moldy ones. A pair of toddler shoes that have some reputation for being good for growing feet start at $55. We tried the cheapest sandals at Target and they broke on the first wear.
I thought making low six figures would feel different than this.
Sometimes it helps to think about inflation (what amount of money was worth $55 in today’s dollars back when you set your expectations about toddler shoes?).
Some of the food pricing is just extortion I realize (and apparently the egg industry did get in trouble for price collusion, so the conspiracy theorists were right; they were conspiring).
For quality and food safety, I feel I need to make more an effort to make it to the farmer’s market. I never think of getting e. coli from blueberries (I’m usually more worried about hepatitis).
I agree that this is a helpful way to frame it. Similarly, my BFF told me that she’d promised herself years ago that she would never pay more than $5 for her drink at Starbucks, and now it’s more than that. I asked if she made that decision back when she earned about $40-50k less than she currently does – she has admittedly seen very large salary increases in the last 6 years after being underpaid for decades – and it was. I also have to remind DH of this when he said he used to be able to go to a Thai restaurant he likes and the meal was like $10 plus tax and now it’s closer to $20 plus tax, so he thinks it’s now too expensive. But the cheaper price was 20+ years ago when he was in college.
Without question, some stuff is just more expensive beyond inflation and there is definitely an ensh1tification aspect. Some things we just need to re-adjust our brains about what things cost.
OP here and I do catch myself referring to 20-years-ago prices for some things (like sweaters) but prices have also gone up so much in just the last 5 years. We needed a smoke detector and it was $65 at our hardware store, not much cheaper at Target. They used to be like, $20 within the last 5 years.
Partly this is true, and partly prices have really skyrocketed in the last 5 years. For example, the Nap Dress I bought in summer 2021 was $125 full price. The same dress (fabric, style, pattern) today, is $178. That is > 40% increase in 5 years and that’s hardly uncommon.
This. The exact same car we bought two years ago now costs 20% more. The yogurt that was $4.59 a carton three years ago is now $6.89. And my “merit increase” has been 2% each of the past two years. That’s not even a COLA.
+1.
Travel is another big industry where prices have skyrocketed in the last 5 years even compared to inflation.
I don’t know if the K shape economy stuff is right, but it does seem like some people’s incomes have skyrocketed and also as though retailers are chasing those people, while assuming that anyone left behind is shopping discount.
yeah, the % of money spent by elite has definitely increased, and companies are responding to that (ie. offering more premium products at premium prices)
A lot of things have gone up 50% in the last five years, and my salary isn’t one of those things. So telling me to “adjust my brain” isn’t really the answer, ya know?
I am always flipping packaged fruits over to look at the bottom and I’m having a difficult time buying garlic that isn’t secretly moldy. It’s enraging.
not the point of your post, but i have had good success with the Toddler Parker sneakers from Target. and i buy them on sale
we used to get all of ours at sale time at like nordstrom. their return policy is open ended so you can return stuff if you don’t end up needing it. also gotten some at tjmaxx.
I had good luck with Cat and Jack sneakers at Target for little kids. They are not ultra high quality but for a kid who’s going to grow out of them within a year at the very most, they always held up fine. It gets harder when the kid’s feet grow more slowly and you need sneakers that will actually last for a while.
I make my own pizza dough in a bread maker I got secondhand on FB marketplace. It’s excellent and easy and cheap! Pizza is a staple in our house, so I feel you on that one.
I’m highly sympathetic to this complaint in general, but when you consider that berries are basically mold bombs in the making and shipping them anywhere is challenging, I still find it pretty much miraculous that you can buy fresh berries for a price that’s even vaguely affordable year round. That’s definitely not a case of declining quality, but something that was barely possible even a few decades ago (though I personally still don’t consider them worth it compared to either frozen or fresh local in season berries).
Supply chains and individual grocery stores can do wildly better or worse on both freshness and mold prevention. Sometimes it is where you live on shipping routes. Often it’s your local store letting mold settle in so that there are spores just waiting around for each new delivery.
Not a whole solution, but being willing to DIY rather than springing for premade convenience foods can be a significant savings. For instance, pizza crust is so very easy to make. Flour, water, salt, maybe yeast or a little oil depending on what style you like will taste more fresh and will cut that cost by an order of magnitude. Like, enough that you can buy the better shoes.
Although I do side eye a shoe that claims they are “better” for growing feet – is that because they are an actual medical device filling a need for the kid in question? Or just brand marketing, the way Golden Goose are “better” for me than Adidas?
Sometimes you just want to buy a convenience food at a convenient price, though. That used to be a thing.
That isn’t how it works though. You buy a convenience thing at a premium price.
Sure, and that premium price is now 40-60% higher than just a few years ago.
perhaps it is easy for you, but that is not really the point. see above re the nap dress, which obviously is not a necessity by any means, but still. things have gotten insanely expensive from food to clothes to airplane tickets.
oh yeah, my Nap Dress comment was not meant to imply it is a must-buy, just something where it is a really easy “apples to apples” comparison of the price change given it is the identical item.
Another less-frivolous example, yogurt used to routinely go 10 for $10 in the sale cycle, and now it’s typically 8 for $10. 25% increase in 3-4 years.
“Just make it from scratch” works for SAHMs. Not so much in a dual-career couple with kids to shuttle to activities.
Yeah, I find the “oh I just make it from scratch” advice frustrating. Obviously you can make everything you eat from scratch. It’s not feasible for all of us. If we’re eating pizza, it’s because we need something fast and easy that night that didn’t require me to make anything in advance. A lot of our other stuff is made from scratch but I don’t have the bandwidth to do more than I’m already doing while being a working mom. It’s wild for the price of JUST a crust to be super high – not to mention ordering a pizza from a parlor being a $50+ prospect these days.
If you want a high end pizza delivered to you, it’s going to be expensive.
If you pick up a Pizza Hut, domino’s, Papa John’s, or similar, it’s about $10.
Dude, you need the pizza hut app and to call it good enough. A true pizza parlor dish is a splurge and not what I turn to when I just need a pizza on the table, and soon.
Where do you live? The absolute cheapest large pizza (one topping, eight slices) at my local Papa John’s is $15.99. You can get two mediums for $25.99.
Where do you live that a pizza is $50?? The chain places are like $10-15 and the fancy local places are like $20-25.
Bay Area. A large BBQ chicken pizza at a well-reviewed local pizza place is $43. The mediums (too small for a family) are around $26. If you want it delivered plus tip, it’s well over $50. Obviously this is why a lot of people are doing pizza at home.
Costco sells pepperoni and cheese pizza for $10. A slightly better version from the gas station is 13.99, but there are always coupons to drive it to about $10 as well. My favorite higher quality specialty takeout pizza is about $30-40.
A bag of flour costs a lot more than it used to.
I go for the middle road here and sometimes buy premade and sometime make a huge batch of crust to freeze in portions.
Pizza dough takes hours to make, with yeast.
But 90% of those hours don’t involve active work on the users part. I make huge batches when I have time and freeze it in batches. Then when I want it I pop one out of the freezer and I’m exactly where I would be in the process if I drove to the store to buy it. Yes flour is more expensive than it was. Yes there is work involved in making it. Yes, not everyone wants to make it themselves. Sure it’s easy to buy a bag of dough when shopping for cheese and topping. But making 6 to 12 batches and wrapping them for the freezer takes maybe 10 minutes longer than making one batch.
There’s simply no way it takes 10 minutes longer, though. You can’t fit all of that in one bowl, for starters. I agree that it’s possible and not even THAT onerous to do but it’s not just 10 minutes more to make 12 batches as opposed to 1.
DIY can save a ton of money!
Still, “convenient” for people who can DIY is so often just “accessible at all” to someone who cannot. I’m worried about people who were already maxing out what they can do physically and what they can afford (like some of my older relatives).
I make pizza dough, portion it and freeze to keep the cost down to a bare minimum. I’ve never made 6 figures, but yeah, a lot of stuff that was a luxury food item, then became an everyday item, is now back to a luxury.
If you haven’t already, check out your local Indian, Mexican and Asian markets for deals, especially on spices.
On the berries, I agree they have gotten worse on the mold (i ended up buying organic this week because all the nonorganic had some obviously moldy ones), but if you are not already doing a vinegar wash on the remaining ones and storing them in a single layer, it really does help them last significantly longer. Wash in a mix of roughly 1 part vinegar to 4 parts water, the rinse, pat dry, and store in layers in an airtight container with a paper towel in between the layers. I had some blueberries that it took me about 3-4 weeks to eat them all and they were still fine when stored this way.
+1 I think i learned this tip here (maybe from you!) and it has helped immensely. I have a fruit-itarian kid so berries never last longer than a week in our house, but before we started doing this they were going moldy even on that timeframe.
even just the vinegar bath helps a lot. I wash them and then put them in a large open container, and they last for weeks.
But you can’t do that on an already moldy batch, right? If you come home from the store and discover that three raspberries in the middle are white with mold, isn’t the rest of the small package also affected? I’ve read from food safety people that the mold you see is not all the mold there is.
I’ve always just thrown out the moldy ones and eaten the rest. I’ve never gotten sick.
I agree, and am consistently reevaluating how to make things more affordable. I haven’t gotten a real raise in five years (any small cola was eaten up by higher health insurance costs), but prices just keep going up.
For the pizza, I actually just buy chain pizzas because they are the cheapest. My local Pizza Hut sells a large one topping for $9 and that’s more than enough for three people.
For berries, the only place I’ve found affordable, good quality is Costco. So I get all our berries there.
OP here and my “merit” raise was 2.5% (the highest anyone in our company got). Every insurance type we have has gone up too, not to mention daycare. It’s just rough right now.
Is this higher ed/non-profit? The 1-2% “merit” raises were sooo demoralizing and one of the biggest reasons I finally left. I thought the private sector was a bit better but maybe not.
I’ve realized every time I leave a social interaction, I beat myself up about not being right or perfect. This can run the gamut ruminating on things like responding to a story by relating instead of asking deeper questions, to panicking that a joke I made could have been taken the wrong way. Does anyone else have this? I think it is some type of social anxiety, but not sure if it’s in my head or if I am actually obnoxious/annoying in social settings.
following with interest, i almost always do this unless it’s a very good friend or someone i see regularly. to the point where i get intrusive thoughts about dumb things i’ve said.
It sounds like classic social anxiety. I’ve gotten much better over the years both with therapy and with simply caring a bit less. All human are boring, selfish, make weird jokes at times, etc. Unless you’re making racist/sexist/homophobic jokes, being loudly drunk and annoying in public, or monopolizing the conversation for over 5 minutes at a time I bet you’re perfectly fine and lovely.
I sort of do this. I don’t think it’s anxiety since I don’t think it’s in my head, and I’m not perfectionist; I just don’t always put together the pieces until I’ve finished processing the entire interaction later. So sometimes my joke was taken the wrong way and also that is why that person said that seemingly weird that thing they said, but I didn’t put two and two together until a little later. If anything I guess I could be more anxious? I think it’s an ADHD/attention thing for me, since I do have ADHD (for real) and I feel this was better when I was medicated.
The part that bothers me is that I never, ever forget. There are whole people I feel remember only because I flubbed a social interaction with them in 2004. So sometimes it feels like life is just a process of accumulating more of these regrets, and it feels a little heavy sometimes.
Yes, although I have trained myself out of a lot of it. Some by just listening and not opening my mouth. Some by not caring so much what others might think. Some by intentionally focusing on specific actions: only ask questions about others, and only answer with a relatable moment if someone asks me specifically, don’t volunteer a story or anecdote myself for the whole evening. Have a few questions to ask that are appropriate for the setting (“how did you hear about this fundraiser?” “What is your connection to the happy couple?” etc.).
OP here – I have had periods where I primarily ask questions and try to talk about myself as little as possible. However, I received a point of feedback from one person that it made it harder to connect with me, as people felt they’d shared so much about themselves but learned nothing about me. Do you feel like that the asking questions / not sharing about yourself unless asked yields overall more fruitful interactions? Was this to avoid feeling dumb because you’re too hard on yourself or to avoid actually saying anything dumb? I feel like I should train myself to go back to never sharing anectdotes about myself, since it always leads to rumination after, but I also don’t want to inhibit my ability to connect with others. Would really love your thoughts on this.
I definitely do this. Cutting back / stopping drinking really helped as I’ve found the ruminating is much worse after a couple drinks. But, it still definitely happens, particularly in the professional context.
A spinoff of some recent discussions: At what age do you think adulthood begins? A lot of posters have been asserting that 18-year-olds are “adults.” I am a social scientist; in my field we consider 18- to 25-year-olds to be “emerging adults.” They are no longer children but still developing decision-making skills and independence.
I would personally define full adulthood as beginning at college graduation or age 21 for kids who don’t attend college. By that age you should be able to support yourself, live independently, figure out how to register your car and handle insurance and do your taxes without parental guidance, etc. Kids 18-21 should be able to do a lot of things independently but may need and deserve some scaffolding and some chances to make and learn from mistakes without suffering life-altering consequences. I would say another level of maturity kicks in for most people somewhere between ages 25 and 30 when they really settle down and start pursuing long-term goals.
I’m more with you — the difference in my maturity level from a HS grad to a college senior was exponential. While paying a credit card bill or not leaving towels to mold on the floor (to the recent thread) is something I do think a HS grad “18 is legally an adult” should be able to DIY… and my parents had absolutely zero involvement in managing my daily college life… sitting down with my dad to do my taxes during college was really nice!
Your field defines people who don’t know how to handle insurance and do their taxes as not adults? Isn’t that a lot of adult aged people?
I think friends who did this well, started young and gradually became adults. Simple things like taking responsibility for setting the table as a kid, then getting and using pocket money to buy their own clothes, then arranging the days and times of their own driving lessons say… all with a willing parent available for help if needed.
I’m almost 50 so was coming of age in the 90s, and I feel like my own kids did a much better job of it than I did. On reflection, the resources in their school for mindfulness and emotional regulation were very helpful.
Not sure if this is what you were asking!
I agree with you. I was not at all a fully formed adult in college, but got there in my early-mid 20s. In my family, no one really thinks of college students as full-fledged adults. They have more rights and responsibilities than children but are still in the process of growing up. I’m grateful that my parents didn’t except me to become an adult overnight at 18 and provided a lot of scaffolding, particularly during my first year or two of college.
At least one of those comments was in response to a comment comparing a college student to her precious baby and telling the OP that she should be so proud that she could even walk and talk. In that context, it was a pretty fair response. You’re legally an adult at 18, not an infant. I think it’s fair to consider people in the 18-25 range young adults who are still learning to be independent and may need some assistance, but they are adults, not children, and I very much doubt that many of them want to be treated as such.
what do we think of Halara as a brand? I’m getting allllllll the ads on my social and it looks so good.
good quality? comparable to what? better or worse than Quince?
To the OP considering postponing a dream move in order to avoid disappointing an adult daughter:
Life is short! I lost my mom when she was just mid-60s. One of my happiest memories is knowing that she lived in her dream home in the 7 or so years before she died. It gave her so much joy!
Please do not postpone a move for an adult child who will very likely want to move themselves in the next few years for a job, relationship, social life etc.
And if you’re worried this may be hugely stressful life event for your daughter, rest assured that you have given her a beautiful childhood/young adulthood.
I couldn’t agree more.
I was one of the posters who admitted that she was a sad 34-year-old when her parents moved out of the family home. BUT, what I didn’t say was that was tempered by the fact that they were moving into a beautiful custom-built home that my mom had waited 40 years to have. She is not in the best of health anymore (though still living at home), and I am so glad that my parents were able to do that for themselves. They deserved it and sacrificed plenty.
I had a beautiful childhood home that I will always cherish. That does not mean my parents needed to stay there forever. It’s OK, OP. You are allowed to prioritize what you and your husband want at this stage in life. If not now, when?
I was one who also encouraged OP to move. My parents moved out of the family home when I was wellll into adulthood. They threw a “goodbye party” for the house and I think all of us cried a little — it’s so rare that you truly know something is The Last Time, you know? like the Insta graphic that went around awhile back about at some point your kid sits on your lap for the last time and you never realized it when it happened? — but it’s ok to acknowledge the feeling and then all move on!
The fact that OP of the family home is even thinking of this in terms of her adult children’s’ feelings means it will be ok. I love the idea of a final family farewell. Best of luck to OP making new family memories in the new home.