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Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.
These wool flannel trousers at J.Crew caught my eye — they're best-sellers, and at full price they're only $138. It might feel a little tricky, figuring out how to wear wool trousers in 2019 — but I think a lot of the tighter tops we've been seeing (fitted turtlenecks, bodysuits, ballerina cardigans — even, dare I say it, some of the faux-crop sweaters that end juuust at the waistline) are perfect to pair with a more voluminous bottom like these pants. Wool flannel pants are some of our favorite warm dress pants for the office, but do note that these are unlined — so if you find wool/spandex blends to be itchy, you may want to try wearing silk long johns underneath (great for extra warmth!) or, for a more affordable option, these Heattech leggings. The pants are available in regular, petite, and tall sizes, and I love that they show them to you in a size 2, 8, and 16. Wool Flannel Full-Length Trouser
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Sales of note for 10.10.24
- Nordstrom – Extra 25% off clearance (through 10/14); there's a lot from reader favorites like Boss, FARM Rio, Marc Fisher LTD, AGL, and more. Plus: free 2-day shipping, and cardmembers earn 6x points per dollar (3X the points on beauty).
- Ann Taylor – Extra 50% off sale (ends 10/12)
- Banana Republic Factory – Up to 50% off everything plus extra 25% off your $125+ purchase
- Boden – 10% off new styles with code; free shipping over $75
- Eloquii – Extra 50% off a lot of sale items, with code
- J.Crew – 40% off sitewide
- J.Crew Factory – 50% off entire site, plus extra 25% off orders $150+
- Lo & Sons – Fall Sale, up to 35% off
- M.M.LaFleur – Save 25% sitewide
- Neiman Marcus – Sale on sale, up to 85% off
- Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
- Talbots – 50% off 2+ markdowns
- Target – Circle week, deals on 1000s of items
- White House Black Market – Buy one, get one – 50% off full price styles
And some of our latest threadjacks here at Corporette (reader questions and commentary) — see more here!
Some of our latest threadjacks include:
- What to say to friends and family who threaten to not vote?
- What boots do you expect to wear this fall and winter?
- What beauty treatments do you do on a regular basis to look polished?
- Can I skip the annual family event my workplace holds, even if I'm a manager?
- What small steps can I take today to get myself a little more “together” and not feel so frazzled all of the time?
- The oldest daughter is America's social safety net — change my mind…
- What have you lost your taste for as you've aged?
- Tell me about your favorite adventure travels…
Kate
Help, please – I was at the office late then could not sleep. Maybe 3.5 hours instead of my usual 8. Later today I have 2.5 hours in a car with my boss driving (strategizing), then a long, important client meeting (at least 6 hours), then 2.5 hours back (likely debriefing). I’m skimming past no sleep posts and hopefully my makeup makes me not look like death, but I’m facing 11 hours mostly sitting down, have to be alert, don’t want many bathroom breaks, and probably ordering from Jimmy Johns or a carb heavy place for lunch. I do not usually drink caffiene. Any tips other than bringing nuts, maybe some tea, and pinching myself frequently? No kids, so this is not normal for me!
Anonymous
Now would seem like a great time for a cup of coffee.
Anon
Yeah, I’m not sure why you don’t want to drink caffeine, because this is why people drink caffeine. Coke, iced tea, tea, coffee. Go for it.
Anonymous
Do you have anything that you can smell? Even hand sanitizer? Something that will perk you up instantly? What about some gum with caffeine? Go by a Starbucks and right in front of the check-out they usually have a ton of mints, etc. I bet some have caffeine and they’d be so small that you could just take one to see how it work? good luck, I feel for you!!
Anonymous
“I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue…”
Anonymous
You’re a perfect candidate for caffeine if you’re OK with it – you aren’t already sensitized to it so it won’t take much. I’d do a couple half- or quarter-caffeine coffees (the rest decaf) during the day.
Anonymous
I bet the adrenaline of the day will keep you awake and alert. Then you’ll crash tonight. I know bathroom breaks are limited, but water really does help so much. Maybe when you first get to the client make sure you drink a good amount. Most carb heavy places have a low carb option. Jimmy Johns specifically will wrap your sandwich in lettuce. I also do not usually drink caffeine, but I know how it effects me. I’d be fine having a soda or half caff coffee on a day like yours. But if you don’t know how you’ll react, I’d definitely avoid it. Good luck!
anon.
MINTS! Peppermint really helps perk you up. Bring some hard candy peppermints or the small icebreaker ones.
Ellen
I agree. I can NOT have caffiene if I am goeing to be in a car for 11 hours! I am surprised at the HIVE, b/c I have to pee more with caffiene then with just water. I recommend mints or GUM, but if you are to tired, watch out that you do not bite your tongue or gums if you are not to careful. You also want to NOT open your mouth when you chew, b/c your boss will focus to much on your mouth and whatever sounds you are making. This sometimes is not a good idea.
houda
Days like this are exactly why I stopped coffee a couple months ago.
You can buy caffeine tablets at a drugstore. They should be effective at a low dosage given that you don’t usually have caffeine. I usually keep very strong mints for those endless meetings when chewing gum is not an option. If your boss is not sensitive to scent, I had instances where I’d try to smell cologne or something really fresh e.g. a vicks inhaler after a long meeting but I wouldn’t wear perfume, you never know how sensitive other people are.
In the meeting itself I back my back as much as possible against the chair’s back so I don’t slouch. That very upright position can seem slightly contrived but helps me stay awake.
Last resort is trying to take handwritten notes. Makes you focus and need to summarise every few sentences.
Good luck
C
Crystallized ginger or if you can’t find the real stuff, ginger chews. More effective than peppermint for me. It clears your head and wakes you up the way that eating a spicy salsa would- but is more acceptable to have in meetings :)
Anon
Red Bull. I know it’s terrible but it works in an emergency.
Delta Dawn
Put a tiny drop of hand sanitizer, or even water, behind each ear. Always perks me up a little bit– something about the cooling sensation wakes me up.
Miss
Definitely have a little caffeine. Maybe green or black tea if you aren’t used to it and don’t want to be jittery. Otherwise, peppermint (gum, candy, tea, etc.) and iced drinks work best for me.
Anonymous
This happens to me frequently enough to know that if I work past 8pm I can’t sleep (can’t wind down, too much adrenaline). I have a prescription for sleep meds (Belsomra, though I prefer Ambien) that I use pretty much exclusively for this purpose.
C
What do you do to keep your office clean and sanitized? After a few more rounds than usual of illness getting passed around the office, I’m looking to keep my space as germ-free as possible. I’ve started keeping disinfecting wipes around to wipe down my desk, mouse, and keyboard, but is there anything else you would recommend doing?
Anonymous
Wash my hands frequently and avoid touching my face as much as possible.
Anonymous
Just wash your hands. If you blow your nose a lot, you also need to wash your hands more. You are likely the culprit who brings germs to what you touch (vs a hotel).
Anonymous
Door knobs and pens/pencils. Also, don’t share writing utensils!
CL
I’ve started the following and have not been sick since: Make sure thumbs get washed too. Wear gloves to and from work. Don’t ever touch face or mouth.
Anon
Sleep! Sleeping a lot and eating well always help prevent sickness. When I let those things slide, I get sick.
Anon
This. If I’m getting enough sleep, it’s basically impossible for me to get sick. Most of the other advice is about germ avoidance. If you can strengthen your immune system, that’s going to be even more effective.
Anonymous
Wipe down phone too, those get nasty. I’d also do doorknob and lightswitch while you’re at it.
Anonymous
This – cleaning iphone daily – and sleep.
Anonymous
How do you clean your iphone? I want to do this, but I’m worried about damaging it somehow.
Anonymous
I use alcohol wipes or vinegar. Hasnt hurt it yet. Just Don’t pour it into the plug area
Anonymous
Use alcohol wipes.
cookie
I feel like I’ve gotten less sick in recent years when I really make an effort to not touch my face at all and to use hand sanitizer after going somewhere more “public” at work — like the cafeteria or a big conference room or whatnot.
Ellen
I agree. I also have a big container of hand sanitizer and clorox wipes in my desk and use it whenver someone comes by to shake my hands. I also do NOT let people use my phone @ work; instead I send them to the conference room, where they have PRIVACY, I tell them. I do NOT want their germs from touching and spitting on my phone.
emma
I totally think that doorknobs are the harbor of bad germs (so always use tissues, or whatever to open them). But wanted to add, I keep hand sanitizer in my purse, on my desk & in my car and use it frequently. Also, as someone who chauffeurs a little germ incubator (aka 3yo) around, anecdotally, elderberry syrup seems to help as well.
Xarcady
Something that has seemed to work for me the past few years is washing my hands as soon as I get home. I mean, I wash them all the other usual times you are supposed to wash your hands. But since I have added in the arriving-home handwash, I have had a decrease in the number of times I get sick per year. It doesn’t matter where I have been, work, a store, the library, church, I wash my hands within a few minutes of getting home.
Anon
I have to give props to J Crew for expanding their sizes and showing models of a range of sizes on their website. I wear a size 16 and I like their pants. Too bad they’re failing and the J Crew at my mall just closed!
Anonymous
Yes, but I am looking at the picture of the size 8 (my size). I have monster hips. I am thinking that the return of higher-rise pants will not be kind to people shaped like me.
January
I don’t know, I like them on the size 8.
Anonymous
That’s a model though — I’m thinking of how it would look with a lot more junk in the trunk :(
Anonymous
I have some weird innate lookism going on. I think that the size 2 pics look great. I think that the size 16 pictures look really good. I think that the 8s look frumptastic. [Not just these pants, I clicked around the site a bit.]
I wish more sites did this b/c clearly something in my mind just does not compute with seeing more realistic sized people wearing normal clothes.
Rainbow Hair
10:34, I think you’re realizing something important. When “pretty” or even “looks good” or, as is especially relevant here, “professional,” is sold to us as thin, tall, white, femme, young, non-disabled… well then how do those of us who aren’t inherently those things present professionally/prettily/etc? I have mentioned this on this board before, but the simple trick of diversifying who I follow on Instagram has been really great for me. There are SO many ways to be beautiful/fashionable/professional in whatever body you’ve got, but we aren’t used to seeing it.
anon
I’m afraid we’re a few years away from only being able to shop at Amazon.
Vicky Austin
Me too – I worry about this a lot.
anon
I’ve basically stopped shopping for anything on Amazon, and I’ll tell you, my life is so much better. Most importantly, I just buy way less crap!
Ms B
And yet the petite sizes run only up to 12, which measures as the size equivalent of a regular 10.
There is a long way to go on sizing . . .
trefoil
+1
Idea
Did you mean to sound just like a tweet from our current POTUS? Is this Ivanka or Melania (but they are not size 16…) Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is that you?
Anon
I’m not seeing this.
Also I’m not seeing anything above 16 so this is not expanding their sizes. If 50% of the adult female US wears a size 14 or larger, then they are not being “inclusive” by offering sizes 16 and smaller.
Anon
Huh? They have lots of items available up to size 20 and XXL. They used to go up to size 12, so yes, they’ve expanded.
Anon
I bought J.Crew 16’s online for years before I stopped shopping there altogether ~3 years ago, so while 2 sizes isn’t groundbreaking, it’s a definite start.
In response to this thread more broadly, the company is failing because the quality of their products fell off a cliff, and Jenna Lyons and Micky Drexler spent years trying to draw in a high fashion crowd while ignoring the upper-middle white collar subset who want quality pieces at reasonable prices, and who shop at their stores in malls.
Anonymous
Exactly! Suits I bought at Jcrew 5+ years ago still hold up. They were amazing for travel in terms of not wrinkling, having multiple pieces that go together, etc. Pants I bought 6 months ago are already looking worn. So disappointing.
RR
J. Crew sells clothes up to a size 24 and 3X now. As a bona fide plus size woman, I can confirm that they exist, they are sized to fit, and I now own several pieces. Kudos to J. Crew.
NY CPA
Wait did everyone know this? This is huge! I’m excited to shop their plus sizes! It looks like they have some nice classic pieces in my size. Thanks for the heads up.
Never too many shoes...
RR – can you offer some insight as to what the fit is like compared to other stores?
Senior Attorney
I love how this outfit is styled. I have all the pieces to copy it and can’t wait to bust it out!
Tall and Annoyed
Like all brands, J Crew needs to carry more styles in tall sizes. I am technically on their size chart but there are literally zero items for sale on their website in “my” size.
Anon
I have a pair of wool pants like this (lined, and from back in the days when Ann Taylor produced good stuff). I usually wear them with a fitted cowlneck sweater and get a lot of compliments.
ADD stigma
I have been having serious insomnia for weeks with less than 2 hours sleep every night. It did not improve over the holidays.
Went to the GP twice, gotten my bloodwork in and it looks great.
We came to the conclusion that my ADD has gotten out of control and the coping methods I had used since my diagnosis in college have stopped working.
Also I am in the UK, NHS won’t cover the costs without a long tedious battle, and GP won’t do a referral.
Next week, I am seeing a specialist at a private clinic to determine the right mix of pills and CBT.
Today, I was having a back to work catch up with my mentor at work.
I brought this issue up to give him a heads up that I am trying to fix a lingering insomnia issue and will be experimenting with different dosages of medicines.
We have a very friendly open relationship and I know he wouldn’t use that against me.
But now an hour later, my head is spinning and I am freaking out about possibly being skipped on staffing for good projects.
Anyone in MBB with a similar experience? Do you think staffers might consider an ADD diagnosis when assigning projects? I have always been staffed in travel projects with other offices and was hoping I’d get a local project so I can more easily go to CBT sessions if needed, but I never mentioned it.
FWIW, I have always been highly functioning. I recently went through a relocation, a family situation, and a tough project which is why I think my situation got worse.
I just don’t want them to think I want special treatment. I never used extra time during exams because I functioned OK at the time.
Anonymous
You do want special treatment. You want to be staffed on a local project so you can deal with a medical issue.
houda
I don’t see anything wrong with using the extra time at exams. I came from a country where they don’t have such provisions, and though it might seem like a form of cheating where I’m from, I wouldn’t care if that gets me a better fighting chance.
Also, my understanding of “giving a heads up” is: things will get wonky but don’t judge me like all other colleagues because I have a temporary medical hick-up… so you somehow want that factored in.
Now, I am not sure whether it would count in staffing but when I was at MBB, it was almost always about which partner/manager wants you on their team and less about your needs.
anon
The phrase “special treatment” has negative connotations and is frequently used in a derogatory manner to indicate that the requester wants to be treated with kid gloves, or held to a less strict standard, potentially to gain an unwarranted advantage over other people. What she’s asking for, if anything, is called a “reasonable accommodation.” At least, that’s what HR or any lawyer should be calling it.
Anon
In the USA though. I agree with you but don’t have UK advice.
Anonymous
In hindsight you should not have divulged this to your boss. Work is about competence. Anything that makes you appear less competent should be kept to yourself. He might not use it against you maliciously but will have it in mind now forever.
I had a wonderful boss and mentor whom I loved. He was kind and supportive. While we were eating lunch one day he asked me about project X. I said I hated to ask person Y to work on it because it was so tedious. On my review six months later he wrote to be forever enshrined in my file ” Has difficulty delegating unpleasant tasks”. Keep issues to yourself.
size statis?
Through life changes and office dress code changes (formal! bus-cas! cas! sloppy cas but need suits on occasion! lots of conferences where dresses were good travel choices!), I seem to buy a whole new wardrobe every 2 years or so (but I hoard, so I have about 3 lives of clothes currently). Which is exhausting, but I thought I was getting to the point of being done. And now, in my 40s, I need to shop again b/c I have had bronchitis+ bronchitis + pneumonia + treated it all with delicious panang curry. I feel much better now, but am a good size larger in the tummy/seat.
I’m grabbing all of the on-sale winter items that fit (the timing is great), but at what point do I commit to this larger size and start reshopping for spring and summer? Give it a month? Two? I know with pregnancy weight the mantra is 9 months to put the weight on on / 9 months to take it off. If I was sick for 2 months, reassess March 1-ish?
Anonymous
Omg stop shopping. You need to start shopping for spring after it’s been too hot for your winter clothes for a week. You don’t then need a full wardrobe of every imaginable item.
Anonymous
What? Her clothes don’t fit. Even if she starves herself back to her old size, it will be at least a month to lose a size.
Anonymous
Oh no obviously winter clothes! Yes! Just do t start buying spring or summer clothes until that season comes around.
Anonymous
When you need the clothes, if you don’t have clothes that fit, buy something. If you’re fine with the weight gain and your clothes don’t fit, then fine. Personally, I wouldn’t be fine with a non-pregnancy weight gain that caused me to grow out of my clothes. I’d be working extra hard to get back down to my typical size. But that’s all about personal preference.
Anonymous
Personally, you can jump off a cliff. It’s not about whether I’m “okay” with weight gain it’s about the reality of my life and whether I want to punish myself with ill fitting clothes because of smug self righteous jerks like you.
Anon
Are you the OP? Cause it sounds like there’s a lot more going on in your head than just oh I gained a size over the holidays, how much new clothes do I buy.
Anonymous
Nope. Just offended on her behalf.
Anonymous
Well that was unnecessary.
9:35 Anon
How is this rude or unnecessary? The poster noted that the size increase was due to poor eating during illness for 2 months. She further asked at what point she should “commit to this larger size” for spring and summer? She then compares it to losing pregnancy weight and asks if she should reassess on March 1, implying that she plans to lose the weight by then. Spring is 2.5 months away, while summer is 5.5 months away. My comment was that if it was me, I’d buy what I needed to get by now but work to lose the weight. I’m directly answering a question involving a sensitive topic that she brought up. I really shouldn’t be attacked for that.
Anonymous
“Personally I wouldn’t be fine with that. “
Girl. Don’t play. You know that wasn’t nice.
Anon
Oh yay, today is going to be a tone policing day here. How fun.
Anonymous
In my nutty SEUS pocket of the world, it was spring on New Year’s Day and I had to put the A/C on b/c it was 76 upstairs at 10pm just from the residual heat from afternoon sun hitting the windows now that the leaves down off the trees that used to shad them. You never know around here — we keep our closets stocked!
busybee
No, you shouldn’t be attacked. Your comment was completely fine; the commenter who responded really overreacted. Nothing about your comment made you sound like a “smug self righteous jerk.”
Anon
+1
Another anon
Agreed. The namecalling was over the top and uncalled for.
Anonymous
“Personally, I wouldn’t be fine with a non-pregnancy weight gain that caused me to grow out of my clothes.” What a cute sentiment.
Life is tough and you never know what will happen. Like taking a medication that allows you to function but comes with a 20lb weight gain. I waited 1.5 years to see if my weight stabilized and was bursting out of most of my clothing during that time. I just bought a whole new wardrobe and wish I had done it sooner.
Anonymous
But that isn’t OP’s situation. She’s asking if she can lose a size that she gained due to a poor diet in 2 months. If she tries, yes, she more than likely can.
Anonymous
A lot of winter items will be fine in spring/summer. As someone mentioned here recently, winter is a great time to stock up on dresses with sleeves – which I wear year round. I’d probably stick with a black/gray/navy palette and reassess when spring clothes go on sale. Dresses might also be more forgiving of size changes in those areas, too. I gave up on pants years ago because of size fluctuations in my tummy.
CHL
Maybe hit ThredUp for some cheap size up pants. Somehow I find it harder to lose weight if I’m uncomfortable.
Anon
I say it every time this comes up, but this is what I love subscription clothes services like Ann Taylor Infinite Style (and may RTR?) for. You receive 3 pieces at a time, which doesn’t sound like much, but I find that I can usually make an outfit with one well-fitting piece and my existing clothes. It’s great for these transition periods when you aren’t ready to buy new clothes or when seasons are changing but you don’t know what you really need yet. Plus, if you absolutely love something, you can keep it.
houda
I got a £200 Amzn gift card from work.
I have no idea what to get with it as I am on a no buy for clothes and cosmetics.
What were your best purchases around that price point?
I was thinking of one of those lamps to fix the winter blues
Anonymous
Well I’d go classic and use it for books or boring and use it for household necessities
C
I don’t buy clothes and cosmetics from that website, so I’d use it on basically anything else I buy from there!
Specific purchases: My dad really liked the fancy bluetooth headphones I got him for Christmas around that price point. I bought myself a roomba recently and love it- the one I got is a bit over $200 but you could use the gift card to offset most of the cost.
Cat
Just add it to your Amazon account and sit on it? No rule that you HAVE to spend it immediately!
Ideas, though — household appliances that could use an upgrade/replacement? Vacation items like sunscreen, goggles/snorkels, flipflops, hiking boots, ski gear? Tech like an Echo/Kindle/Fire Stick/smart accessories?
Beth
New vacuum cleaner! I love my Shark Duoclean (the battery powered one) as I can use it for both wood floors and rugs. I also grabbed an inexpensive handheld vacuum and that thing has been life changing for small messes and the car.
Other ideas: splurgy candles (I love the Aquiessence brand and they are available on Amazon); splurgy hairdryer/styling tools
Anon
I always get a large Amazon gift card from work. One year I got a nice new Delsey suitcase, and one year a new TV. This year I got a new Nespresso coffee maker and put the rest in my account to spend throughout the year. I also use part of my gift card to renew my Prime membership, as my membership expires near the beginning of the year, right after I get the giftcard from work. Happy shopping!
houda
Thanks guys, I didn’t know these cards don’t expire fast. I will put it in my account and wait. I already got a Dyson hoover, new appliances as I just moved to London and nice suitcases.
I was tempted to buy the Dyson hair dryer as I am currently borrowing my sister’s and it’s amazing for my hair type. But on Amazon, it is more expensive than on other retailers so I will wait a bit
Anonymous
Depending on what your current clothes are like (and your storage space), one of my all time favorite purchases is my Jiffy J-2000 Garment Steamer and at least the U.S. price point is around $200 USD. I hardly iron at all anymore and I think it helps clothes stay looking good longer. You will never get crisp cottons if that is your thing but they are great for synthetics and silk. You can also use it for some cleaning tasks.
Financial Planner
Reposting/rewording from posting too late yesterday:
DH and I believe we need a fee-only financial planner. We’re both 33 and have a 9 month old, with more kids in the plans. 2018 HHI was $300k, and we are likely to stabilize between $400k-500k depending on my trajectory. No debt but for a mortgage and small car loans. I’m in the financial services industry and am savvy enough with personal finance but am hitting analysis paralysis in making decisions. We have a stockpile of cash that’s doing nothing, I know we’re not maxing retirement planning, need to figure out a plan for kids, etc. I’m spread too thin and need a professional to kick us into gear.
What should I be looking for? One poster aptly pointed out that in their experience talking to the planner was no better than reading Boggleheads. That’s a waste of time to me given our baseline knowledge. Is that really what we should expect, or does that mean we need to find someone else? What else should be we asking/looking for in the introductory call or meeting? What else do we need to think about to make it worth our time? We haven’t ID’d a specific age to retire, for example. Do we need that?
Anonymous
Seriously, click around some retirement planners (like on Vanguard or bankrate dot com). Put in savings rate, growth rate of savings, inflation rate, and when you might like to retire (start with 60, the #s on that and have to pay for insurance will be sobering); then test 65. Then see what you need to do to hit good #s at 65.
Then do the same with 529s (but only save for what a public college in your state might cost; I wouldn’t fund based on private schools out of that b/c it ties up too much $).
Make sure you have good life, disability, umbrella insurance.
Know your fees and fee rates.
If you can’t invest a couple of hours on basic interwebs, you will just waste time/$ when you go in to meet with a fee-only planner.
Anonymous
Well, you’re contradicting yourself. You know what you should be doing but need someone to hold your hand. Okay. That person isn’t going to be sharing some magical secret new knowledge with you because it doesn’t exist.
OP
Thanks for pointing that out. With that realization, I think maybe I don’t completely know what to expect from a financial planner. I assume at one end of the spectrum they will invest our money for us for a % of the total AUM. And at the other end, we have a once per year meeting where they provide opinions and suggestions based on our specific goals (which I am acknowledging we need to determine first). In this scenario – just having 1-2 times per year maintenance meetings – will they tell me where/how to invest if I want to retire at X years old, or have X saved for college, etc?
Anonymous
Sure! And so would a couple hours reading boggleheads. If you want to pay someone to do that work for you I think that’s totally legit. But just know that is what you are doing.
Anonymous
We’ve done this: And at the other end, we have a once per year meeting where they provide opinions and suggestions based on our specific goals (which I am acknowledging we need to determine first).
It was 100% not worth it, and I have WAY less knowledge of this stuff than you do. They basically told us, “You’re saving, great job.” I agree with the poster below that you need goals, and then if you don’t want to manage it, you need someone else to just take it all over.
Anonymous
We have one – my husband and I are in a similar income range (our advisor is through Wells Fargo Advisors). For us, we meet 2x per year to review the portfolio and discuss how our goals have changed. For example, we’re expecting our first child this year so we’ll have a meeting to discuss how we’re going to start saving for college, other child specific but financial related items to think about, etc. I see the adviser helping in basically three ways: (1) Personally, I worry every time the stock market drops a fraction of a point, so we see the fee as partly buying my sanity – someone with specific training is telling me that I am going to have enough to retire one day. (2) Even though I feel like most of this information could be learned online and you can manage your own portfolio, I don’t really want to devote my free time to working on this. That’s another thing I see that I’m paying for – someone to do the research and think about it for me. We have input if we want to invest in something else or if we want to adjust the strategy. (3) Finally, the advice we get is specific to us and our risk tolerance and our lifestyle (at our last meeting, we discussed how potentially in the future we might want to look at purchasing our own long term disability insurance – as most LTD stops after a defined period of time and certain standards change were you potentially could be facing a huge decrease in your income). I know that this is all information that I could figure out on my own, but I like having a second opinion and someone who answers *my* questions, not just questions generally.
OP
Yes. Thank you. We seem very similarly minded on this. A goal of mine for 2019 is outsourcing/creating more time for me and my family, and especially if it can free up head space. I stress about money and having someone validate (or redirect) choices is absolutely worthwhile to me. I’m in a law firm partner-like role, I guess? Client services, commission only, on-call 24/7 managing other people’s (niche, not liquid) investments, they say jump I ask how high but then I get compensated well for it. Since adding our daughter in 2018 I just.dont.have.time. … for anything. The second half of your #1 (someone informed is telling me to relax, we’re doing fine…) and your #2 resonate fully.
How did you hook up with your person at Wells? What do they charge? My 401k is through Vanguard. We use Schwab for checking and some savings. Other than that I don’t feel compelled to work with anyone else specific. Maybe fee-based/fee-only isn’t the right route? I have no idea.
Anonymous
Do you feel like you get honest and good advice from your person? I would always be curious about what else they might have to offer but wouldn’t because I’m not really rich or don’t use enough of their services to get the good deals / insight / advice. Or that they recommend X but not Y because of some sort of incentive (so they may get $ from $ they manage, but if I pulled out money to buy a rental property, they might disfavor that b/c it reduces assets and therefor their fee). And if I just wanted to invest in bonds, would they respect my risk tolerance or challenge it (perhaps gently) as not being appropriate given my young age / inflation risk?
Anonymous
I feel like we get good, honest advice. We met with about 4 or 5 different CFPs prior to settling on this one, all different recommendations from friends/co workers. We liked the people we met with at wells, we liked their investment philosophy (which had twp points that resonated with me – not all debt is bad debt, and to think about your goals (retirement, kids, travel, lifestyle, etc.)) and we liked that they know how to use technology and can respond to emails (that was surprisingly hard to find). Also, we started working with them when we had a combined HHI of $150, and in 2019 we’re on track to make over $400k HHI. I feel like we’ve gotten the same quality of service and advice the entire time, the numbers are just bigger now and there are some different things for us to consider/questions we need to be asking (like the LTD thing that we discussed at our last meeting and planning for kids financially). I don’t think we have overly complicated finances (no trusts, for example) but we just decided at some point that it was too much money for us to be doing ourselves. They charge 1% of assets under management, which we really like because if the best thing to do with a particular stock is leave it be and not touch it, that’s exactly what I want them to do.
January
Discussion below might be helpful:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/comments/a5l9m3/indexfund_friendly_financial_advisor/
Anonymous
You need goals. Their job is to talk to you about how to achieve your goals. What do you want to *do* with your money? Retire at 50? Hit a net worth of $X by 40? Save for a down payment? Build a vault to dive in your money Scrooge mcduck style? (Not gonna lie, DH and i once calculates how many pennies you’d need to do this).
I’m the poster that replied yesterday. I think you are in analysis paralysis because you haven’t yet ID’d what you want your money to be doing for you.
Anon
I was the other poster saying the same thing. I also don’t think you need professional help until your piles of money are in the 1M+ range. Before that, it’s pretty basic – pay down/off mortgage, then save extra in something like Vanguard after you have an emergency fund; also consider other forms of investment depending on your knowledge and risk tolerance (stocks, real estate, etc.). Most people are in pay down house, have emergency fund (this probably needs to be a bigger than you realize), and Vanguard territory. Financial planners aren’t going to have something more magical at your income level. What you have to figure out is what kind of lifestyle you want and how that matches your goals long term. Financial planners don’t do that for you.
Anonymous
Is there such a thing as a fee-only planner who charges by the hour, not a percentage of assets under management?
AnoninBigLaw
Yes. For the meet 1-2x/year planners, it is often a flat fee for the year. OP, it could be worth it to pay for one year, because they will walk you through the process of setting goals, make sure you are adequately insured, etc. After a few years where all they do is check in and give you updates on your progress, then it’s not worth it to pay for it anymore. But sometimes we need a little hand holding to get started with the goals. I also found the hand holding for the insurance to be worth the $.
Anonymous
Probably not if you actually have assets under management. But plenty will do fee only to provide non-management advice.
Anonymous
What exactly does assets under management mean? If I ask how to allocate the assets in my retirement accounts but do the actual rebalancing myself, does that mean the assets are under management or not? I basically want to pay someone a flat fee to advise me on which funds to purchase and what percentage to allocate to each. I don’t think that deserves a percentage of assets under management.
Anonymous
The idea is that as your assets under management increase, because of their choices, they share in the benefit.
Anonymous
I get that, but I don’t think someone deserves $10K per year on a $1m portfolio just because I need them to convince my husband to put everything in Vanguard low-cost finds and leave it there.
Anonymous
Under management to me means that you open your accounts through them (or move your accounts to them) and they are your broker. Telling you, for example, how to allocate your 401k that is held at a different institution is not under their management.
Anonymous
To the 12:55 anonymous, I definitely wouldn’t pay someone a percentage of my portfolio just to convince your spouse to go for low-cost Vanguard funds. Active mgmt is for more creative strategies. You’ve got a marital issue there, not a financial one.
Texan In Exile
Yes. I met with my mom and her financial planner when I visited her over Christmas. Her planner is fee only; she writes him a check once a quarter. They meet quarterly to review her investments and her insurance and other financial stuff. He does not have any of her money under his control – it’s with some big fund (can’t remember right now).
We talked about her goals, which are to be able to pay her bills until she dies and maybe leave some money to my siblings and me. (Which I do not want – I want her to spend it on herself.) He assured her she has enough money to buy a new car and to remodel her kitchen. He explained her long-term insurance policy to me. We did the math and decided that even if the premium triples, it would be worth it if my mom needs even one year of nursing home care.
He is a licensed fiduciary (registered?). When I was asking my mom for a list of her passwords, she told me, “It’s ‘REDBIRD!’ You know that!” Her adviser rolled his eyes and said, “By law, I cannot know that! You need to change it!” Which I already knew she did because it’s been her home password for a few years now.
Short answer – yes, fee-based advisers exist. They help you reach your goals. They do not tell you what those goals are.
Sarabeth
You do need goals, but maybe some of your paralysis is coming from thinking that they need to be super specific. In your case, I think you want to be able to tell a CFP things like:
-how many more kids you plan for
-whether you see yourselves buying another house (either moving or second home)
-roughly what your spending budget is each year, and whether you anticipate increasing it substantially as your income increases (beyond the expenses of additional kids – I mean stuff like the fancy vacations that you are holding off on now but have your eyes on as soon as you can afford it)
-whether you want to be able to pay for private school and/or college for your kids
-whether you are interested in having the option to retire before standard retirement age – you don’t need to ID a specific age, but a general sense of whether retiring before 65 is a goal for you
Honestly, given your background knowledge, I’d probably go through Vanguard’s service for this. They will do some of the legwork for you, but you don’t need much handholding, and that’s a lot of what you’ll get from a fee-based CFP.
MNF
You have a 9 month old, so I hope you’ve recently seen an estate planning attorney to update your wills. Ask them for a referral. These are the people EP attorneys network with and they know the difference between the planners who sell whatever crap investments their company is trying to offload and the planners who are autonomous and make the best decisions for their clients.
Texan In Exile
Yes to the will. I am shocked at how many of the people I know with minor children do not have a will. As in, they have not designated a guardian for their children. (And life insurance. Get life insurance.)
emma
I have personally not found any advisers to care about my assets as much as I do. The easiest/best thing to do (after maxing out tax advantaged retirement savings/matching) is open up a vanguard fund that auto buys a certain amount of stocks each month (I do btwn $500 & 1k adjusting 1-2x a yr for other life things going on), and barely touch it and it’s been a great savings mechanism (not the last few weeks lol, but overall, we’ve done great over the years). Later on, if you find a great fee based financial adviser, or want to learn more, you’ll have a great base to work with. FWIW we vacilate btwn $300k-$500k/yr & have about $500k in savings (only debt is mortgage, although we started out w/ tons of law school debt) in our early 30s. You sound like you are more advanced than this- but I set everything up based on the book ‘I will teach you to be rich’, automated everything, and just adjust 1-2x a yr. I like that the book has a weekly checklist of things to go through/learn.
Anonymous
Has anyone used Flytographer (or similar)? I’m interested in getting professional pics of our family while we’re on vacation and this seems like a very easy way to do it, but while searching for reviews off the site, I’m only finding sponsored content. It’s not very expensive compared to what we normally pay for portrait photog in our HCOL city, which makes me nervous about the quality– I don’t want to spend half a day of vacation doing it if our pics don’t turn out well. (I’m kind of a photo snob).
Anonymous
Half a day of vacation wasted on a photo shoot ? Why? What values is that teaching your children? Get a stranger to snap a pic. Love that picture because it’s your family happy and healthy.
Anon
+1 million.
anon
That’s a ridiculous criticism! Plenty of people do this and then use them for Christmas cards or whatever. Or perhaps they’re traveling with grandparents and it’s the only chance to get a pic of the whole extended family. Or perhaps they just want professional pictures! Back off, dude.
Anonymous
I totally agree with this…but also agree that half a day for a photo shoot is a little much. Most take an hour at the very most. More like 30 minutes.
Anonymous
Thanks, was just curious if anyone had used them, not whether I should or not. I know I’ll leave the trip disappointed if I don’t get a good pic of my family, and I’m pretty sure a stranger’s snap shot won’t cut it for me. You do you; I’ll do me; professional pictures bring me joy.
Curly
Yeah, I see this all the time, and it’s probably not going to permanently scar her children.
Anonymous
Gosh I can’t believe people are being so critical about this. Sometimes it’s really nice having photos with the whole family (not missing the person taking it), and it’s also great not having to rely on strangers to get everyone in the shot. I have had all of these things happen- people drop my phone, or they pretend to take a picture, or just take really terrible pictures. And you don’t want to ask them to do it over and over again. Sounds like it will be a really nice souvenir.
Anon
Also? It’s nice for both parents to actually be in the same photo. Pretty hard to do that if you’re expected to take all those candids (or your spouse),
Anonymous
I kind of agree if there are kids involved. Phone cameras are so good now, I’m sure you’ll get some great pictures on your trip anyway. And idk what ages are involved here, but if you have little-ish kids this plan would be a hard pass for me. Photo shoots can be really stressful, travel is already stressful, vacation can be tough for kids because they’re off their routine, I don’t think combining these things is a good plan for anyone. I’d feel differently if this is a bunch of adults who would see this as a fun outing — like if you’re traveling with mom and grandma and want to get good pics of all three generations, and you’re not really wasting a vacation day because the point of the trip is to hang out together not see All The S i t e s.
Anon
The only person I know who did a professional photoshoot on vacation is narcissistic and absolutely insufferable, so I tend to agree with this. Totally different story if this is a family reunion or something and a rare chance to get multi-generational pics. But I’m rolling my eyes hard if this is just professional photos of your nuclear family in front of the Eiffel Tower. It’s so braggy as a “look, we went to Paris and paid for a full photoshoot!” holiday card. Just use a normal photo in a pumpkin patch like everyone else. (And no, I’m not a jealous hater, I travel all the time and my kids have been to Europe numerous times).
Anon
Yeah, people are going to roll their eyes at this, but sounds like that’s not OP’s concern anyway. But I do agree — iPhone with portrait mode will get you some pretty good pictures!
Anon
Or just buy a real camera. There are very decent ones for <$300, which is about the cost of a single professional photography session in my area. I'm aware iPhone pics are not great quality for printing, but a real camera takes photos that print and blow up just fine.
Suburban
you do you, op.
FWIW, I’m into professional family photos (once or twice a year). I also don’t chase my family around and force photos very often, especially on vacation. I just find that posing my photo-adverse family ruins the moment. So while the poster above would hard core judge using half a day for this, at least I’m not forcing photos when the kids just want to play.
Memories!
my family and I searched blogs on google with key words to find a local photographer who spoke english and then schedule a photo shoot at the Eiffel tower last spring. it was wonderful and I really cherish those pictures. it was our big family photo shoot in two years and my toddlers look SO adorable in front of the Eiffel tower! it might be cheesy, but I loved it. would highly recommend doing it if you are visiting a location you’d love to see every day in a photo.
Anonymous
I’ve just gotten a well-reviewed photog in a location to take extended family pics on vacations (only time we’re all together AND I’m in front of the camera, not behind). It takes about an hour when I had it done for my extended family of 12, mostly for doing “small family groups” and “children solo” and “children with grandmother” and “grandmother with her kids”. The big group shot was a piece of cake.
IMO real estate agents who do vacation rentals have good referrals.
Anon
I used to work as a photographer and these are the desperate to break in people. I’d skip them and find a local wedding/family photographer. I’ve done this on vacation and it’s an awesome way to remember your trip. I find people on Instagram, and plan for a time when we are going to be dressed up anyway. Personally, I like before dinner – I only book out about an hour tops for the shoot and plan it close to where I need to be as is feasible (and plan dinner around the shoot).
Anonymous
Consider what the light is like at different times of the day. In the summer, we take pictures after dinner (so it is: quick dinner, wash faces, style hair, put on decent looking clothes semi-coordinate in advance so Nephew is not wearing a football jersey and Cousin is not in something with sequins and Auntie isn’t wearing her party sweatpants) (FWIW, you can convert any picture to black and white and that cuts down on any loudness you get stuck with, color/pattern-wise).
Anon
Yes! I should have specified golden hour/right before – we tend to eat late.
Anonymous
Thanks, this is helpful and what I was concerned about.
Anon
No problem, enjoy, have fun and ignore the haters
TheElms
My neighbor did it when they took their 2 year old to Spain. It was the first family vacation and they wanted some good photos for memories. If I remember correctly they emailed with a couple different photographers, got links to their portfolios and picked the one they liked best. I think they only did a 2 hour session and only got about a dozen photos. The photos they got were wonderful and they were very happy.
Anon
It’s just sad to me that we’ve become a society that has to have picture perfect, airbrushed photos of every single milestone and moment. My family took tons of vacation photos when we were kids, some of them were great but some have scowling kids, kids with giant grins but ice cream all over their clothes, teenagers with zits, etc. I love them because they bring back great memories and authentically reflect our family travels, good and bad moments included. This is not a judgment on your friend in particular, I know professional photoshoots of everything is super common now in the social media era. It just makes me kind of sad that we now spend so much of our lives working on getting those gorgeous, perfect photos.
Anonymous
Yeah I find it heartbreaking. My mom died recently. She had one professional picture in her life, at my sisters wedding. All of the pictures of our family are beautiful because she is in them. We aren’t models. Our pics don’t look like a Hannah Anderson ad. It doesn’t matter at all. So sure you do you but your values are not good.
Anon
Well I completely disagree with you. Who says the OP isn’t also taking candid vacation photos? These days with the ease of digital no one prints those out and they get lost forever. With a professional shoot you’re a lot more likely to have that photo in a decade or two. You do you but yuck to your judgmental attitude.
Anon
I completely disagree that no one prints personal vacation photos anymore. I have a physical album from every big trip we’ve ever taken. And yes, you can do a professional photoshoot and still take candids, but getting the professional pics is a big investment of time (half of a vacation day!) and money, and I just think that it’s sad that people feel pressure to create those perfect pics of their child’s first vacation, instead of just being in the moment with their child on their child’s first vacation. The rise of these constant professional family photoshoots coincides almost exactly with the rise of social media, so I don’t believe most people are doing it because of their own personal desire for nice photographs – they want the professional pics for others to see on social media and that’s what I think is sad. It’s all about keeping up appearances for other people.
anon
” So sure you do you but your values are not good.”
Seriously? What a rude, horrible thing to say. Do you (and the Anon below) think taking candid shots and hiring a pro for a few hours are mutually exclusive? Good grief, why be so nasty? You’re imputing a lot of motives and values on to OP based off of a few sentences, and then judging them, which is really disturbing. Maybe she doesn’t feel *pressure* to take pictures, she just wants them? I love art and photography and sometimes it’s just nice to have excellent, gorgeous photos of your trips and/or loved ones. Why do you assume that OP won’t be ‘in the moment’ during her vacation, or even during this photo shoot? Why do you assume she’s doing it to keep up appearances? I love to take pictures– it’s part of how I experience my surroundings and feel integrated into my travel experiences. You’d look at someone like me and accuse me of not ‘being in the moment.’ I would totally consider having a pro take pics for a few hours, and I don’t do any social media at all. God, what an awful, judgmental pile of crap to load onto someone else. Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to say anything at all if you can’t say anything nice?
Anon
Oh, stop. Were most of us not dragged at some point (or many points) as children to some weird photo studio in weird formal clothes and matching denim and funny hats with bowl haircuts, to pose in front of unnatural backdrops with awkward props, so someone with a nice camera could take a picture our parents could get a bunch of copies printed of and sent out to family? There are literally websites dedicated to Awkward Family Photos resurrected from the time before social media. For pete’s sake, we used to have to go get a family photo taken yearly for the church directory. I am not from the South.
Yeah, phone cameras are OK but try printing those photos in 8×10 to give grandma and grandpa and you see really quickly the difference between even a mediocre real camera and a phone camera. And while I hope OP spends an hour and not half a day doing this, simply because I wouldn’t have the patience for that myself, what on earth is sad about wanting a nice family portrait in a great location? As an adult, I’d rather have more of those and less awkward studio photos holding a bear that wasn’t mine from when I was a kid.
Suburban
Not sure if my prior reply will post, but find it hard to believe that an annual photo shoot speaks to poor values. Personally, I do it in lieu of daily forced “candids” or paparazzi-style surveillance of my young child. We’re not on social media, so everyone we care about gets one cute photo of us a year. And yeah, my dress is cute and my hair is done. Is that more vain than posting 100 selfies over the course of a year? I don’t think so.
Also, your vacation photos are inherently show-off if you posted them on social media or used them for your holiday card. The lighting is just worse when they’re candid.
Finally, it amazes me how bad a “good” iphone picture looks on a holiday card.
Anon
Ummm how are you more likely to have a digital professional photo than a digital personal photo? That’s a bunch of baloney.
Anon
Because people usually print professional shoots
Anon
Maybe y’all have husbands willing to take photos but I don’t and my Mom didn’t. She is in literally ONE childhood photo with me while I have tons with my other relatives. This makes me so sad, I would have loved to have some photos with my Mom even if they are staged. It’s very difficult for me to recall any of our vacations from when I was younger because my biggest memory is Mom but she’s in none of the photos so the photos don’t connect with my memories.
Anon
Why is everyone assuming OP is finding some professional photographer in Europe? Maybe this is a SEUS thing, but I feel like lots of people I know have gotten professional photos done at the beach. Normally, the whole extended family is there in a big house. I know people that do these big family pics every year.
Anonymous
+1
If we didn’t have these, we’d only have family pictures from our wedding. Some of the older people don’t like pictures or being in pictures but it will be the only pictures my children ever have of their cousins, aunts (who hate being photographed), uncles (who hate to miss beer time on vacay), and grandmother. It is understood that you will submit to beach pictures. And you will bring something presentable with you or else find a replacement locally.
There is no airbrushing. There is minimal primping (like eat the pasta with the red sauce, THEN get changed). It is mainly for grandma and for us to have pictures of our family that I am in (as opposed to taking). The photographer handles making sure the lighting is good, people listen better to a stranger giving direction, files are processed, and can make sure all eyes are open in the group shot.
cbackson
It is very much A Thing in the SEUS but hasn’t been other places I lived. I think I am the only partner in my office who doesn’t have a photo of my entire family, dressed in khakis and Lilly Pulitzer, holding hands on the beach at Sea Island.
Anonymous
It’s almost like all my judgy stereotypes about the south are true.
Anonymous
No — we just do at the beach what the rest of the country does either at Olan Mills or in the church basement. You can almost tell when my family migrated south — the pictures go from the Olan Mills inside ones to the beach / outside ones. But there were always at least annual family pictures and then all of the unfortunate school ones.
But without Olan Mills, I’d never have had pictures of my parents. And my mom always used to partially decapitate people in the pictures she took.
cbackson
My parents were from Texas* and thus this custom was foreign to them. We were dragged to the Olan Mills at least once annually for photos, though.
*In the great “is Texas the south or not?” debate, my family falls on the side of “everything from Dallas east is the south; the west starts in Fort Worth.” And my family is from Fort Worth.
Gail the Goldfish
I’m originally from Georgia and OMG so true. Don’t forget giant bows on the young girls.
Curly
I guess that’s why I’m so confused about the backlash up thread. I am from the South, and more than half the people I know do this if they go to the beach in the summer. It just seems like the same thing as having any professional family photo done at any other time of year. And it’s not like taking a professional photo prohibits you from taking other photos while on vacation– there’s no limit on how many times the kids can have their pictures taken in a week!
Anon
“there’s no limit on how many times the kids can have their pictures taken in a week!”
You must not have kids…most kids definitely have a limit for how long/how much they will tolerate posing for pictures. Half a day would be way too long for most kids under 5 (and probably plenty of older kids as well). And if they’d spent a large chunk of one day just taking photos, you better believe that for the rest of the week they’d be whining any time they had to pose for mom or dad to take a photo.
CHL
I have found local photographers by asking at the hotel where we’re staying (or if you’re airbnbing or something maybe reach out to a local hotel?) they had a few great suggestions.
Anon
I’ve used Flytographer in the past. We were in Mexico, and we took family photos/infant photos since I hadn’t done infant photos for my daughter yet at home. Since we weren’t staying a resort or hotel where I could have potentially used the services of a concierge to locate someone, I tried Flytographer. I liked the photos but didn’t love them, and have gotten better results at home with a local photographer. The photographer himself was nice and personable, and easy to work with. The website and logistics arrangement was very user friendly, and I don’t have any complaints about pulling the time and place together.
Anonymous
Super helpful, thanks.
Anon
Is anyone else getting really frustrated by smokers, especially young ones? In an age where everyone knows the harm smoking causes to others, it seems so selfish to continue prioritizing your ability to puff on a cancer stick over everyone else’s right to clean air. I would be all for letting smokers smoke their heads off within hermetically sealed bubbles, but in reality, they’re smoking in my apartment complex (which is full of kids) in defiance of the lease regulations, they’re smoking while walking down the street so the smoke billows behind them and hits everyone else, and their outerwear smells like acrid, stale cigarettes next to me on public transit where we’re all trapped like sardines and there’s nowhere to move away.
Seriously, is anything going to make smokers stop? I understand addiction – I work in health care. What I don’t understand is why young people start smoking and why many smokers make zero effort to minimize the harms of their disgusting cigarettes on others, especially children. I’d love to tax cigarettes into oblivion but even that won’t change behavior for those who get their hands on cigarettes.
Anonymous
Nope. Smoking has dramatically declined! Huge massive improvements.
Anon
I do think it’s getting better. I am allergic to cigarette smoke, and the allergy was much worse when I was growing up (15-20 years ago). I remember being told, even by my school on trips and my parents, that I just needed to deal with it and get used to it.
Anonymous
This was one of the factors that drove me out of condos even though I hate having a yard. I want to be able to open my windows! Honestly I would prefer if the smokers would smoke in their own apartments rather than on their balconies where it’s going to waft into my open windows.
To answer your question though – people smoke because they’re in denial of the risks. If you aren’t concerned about the risk to yourself you’re certainly not concerned about the risk to other people, especially when they’re only getting it second or third hand.
Equestrian Attorney
Yes, it seems every time I’m on my balcony my next door neighbor comes out to smoke. It wafts back into my kitchen and smells terrible. I wish people wouldn’t do this. But I generally agree smoking is rarer than it was a few years ago and hopefully will keep going down.
Anonymous
I live in a suburb of MA. My six year old asked me for the first time what a cigarette smoker was doing because it took this long for her to have any real exposure. I think that’s awesome. We are having a major reno done on our house and of al the contractors and subcontractors we’ve seen in the past 5 months, maybe 3 of them smoked. It was amazing.
On the flip side, I turned 21 just before smoking was banned in bars. I would have gone to far fewer bars (and drank much less alcohol) if smokers were there…so I’m pretty curious how alcohol/bar drinking has changed in states like MA that ban smoking in bars. I turned 21 in a bar that allowed smoking and it was so, so gross.
ANon
Vaping is a GIANT issue in my suburban town’s middle school, let alone high school.
Anonymous
I don’t see anyone smoking cigarettes anymore. I had to roll up my car window b/c I was stuck at a light behind a vaper and the stench was awful. Vaping makes me stabby and people think they can do it everywhere (like inside b/c they are not technically “smoking”).
Anon
It’s also way more addictive — you get WAAAY more nicotine from vaping than from smoking a cigarette.
Anonymous
I share your frustration. My husband and I would dearly love to trade in our single-family home for a townhome, but we don’t want to risk sharing a wall with smokers or vapers. And now many states are allowing people to smoke additional substances, which is a move in the wrong direction. If people want to consume nicotine and other substances, they should do it in a tablet or gum or a brownie. Not through smoke or vapor that affects others.
Anon
Wow, you sound fun.
Anonymous
You can have all the fun you want as long as I don’t have to breathe it.
Anon
Yeah, worrying about being exposed to something that can give you and your kids cancer or asthma really makes you a boring ol’ buzzkill.
Idea
I guess I know enough smokers to think that they’re fine with making their choice. I eat too much junk food. Some people are addicted to opiates. We all have our vices.
As I tell my kids, we don’t start smoking because then our bodies won’t let us stop, it’s called addiction. From what I’ve heard it is THE hardest addiction to kick. So, be nice to the smokers in your life if they’re not smoking around you. It’s ok. Maybe this is the only buzz they get in life.
Anon
Did you read the post? It’s all about how smokers pass on the harms to those around them. Taking pain medication is in no way analogous. It’s not just a “vice” – it’s a dangerous action that causes cancer and respiratory problems in others through secondhand and thirdhand smoke.
busybee
Eating junk food is a vice that doesn’t affect others, though. Smoking affects people around the smoker, whether it’s children in the smoker’s house or a commuter sitting next to them on the train and having to breathe in the odor cloud that always surrounds smokers. It’s actually not ok; smoking is a really selfish act. I’m not interested in getting damage done to my own lungs just because someone stupidly decided to start smoking.
JuniorMinion
It does if you are also sedentary, high bodyfat % / class 2 or higher obesity and on my corporate health plan
Anonymous
Idea, I’m with you. My MIL smokes. She’s 60 and well educated. She knows it’s terrible for her, but she smokes anyway. As long as it’s available, people are going to do it. I support my MIL when she has tried to quit in the past, it just hasn’t worked out. She’ll be the first one to tell her future grandchildren how terrible it is. Maybe they’ll inspire her to quit. But, for now, she’s a smoker.
Cb
Ugh, this is a huge pet peeve of mine. I live in a busy city and take public transport and I’m so sick of someone blowing smoke in my face at the bus stop or flicking ash next to my toddler.
Anon
I’ve noticed more smokers recently in downtown D.C. – and they’re often 20-somethings. Completely baffling, but I’ve definitely noticed an uptick within the last year or so.
PolyD
Are they maybe smoking pot? I’ve noticed a lot more pot smoking in DC.
Which is also gross – pot stinks so bad and the smell just lingers. Ugh. I also hate vaping – I wish it had only been approved to be prescribed to smokers who want to quit. I hate seeing young people with those stupid vape sticks or whatever they are called. Fun fact – the “flavors” they use in the vaping stuff were approved for consumption, but not inhalation. So we really don’t have a good idea of what inhaling those things will do to your lungs.
Anonymous
More GOP workers now in DC is my guess.
Anonymous
…what does that have to do with anything?
emma
YES! I have a house in dtdc (I know privelidged) but people’s cigarette butts on our front lawn where my 3yo is jumping through is just infuriating. We also can’t often leave our windows open because people will smoke in front of our house & talk on their phones regularly. We moved from CA (where weed smoke is prolific, but not tobacco), so this is definitely a cultural shock for us.
Anon
Oh cool, another thing old people caused and are mad at millennials for. Thanks!
PolyD
Nope, I’m mad at the old people who thought it would be just dandy to market an addictive nicotine delivery device to millenials and younger.
Anon
I have a friend problem. One of my closest and oldest friends says things of a racial nature that I’m really not cool with, and I don’t know what to do about it. She’s white, I’m black. She also fancies herself as woke (being a far left progressive is like a religion to her) and she’s a very kind person who tries her hardest to understand things like when I tell her to stop saying that black culture is just loud or more expressive or whatever. She also does things like going out of her way to tell me that she’s teaching her daughter to hate cops and think they’re bad people with the expectation that I’ll be proud of her and that she’s doing the right thing. As a side note I think that she really struggles to understand others as individuals rather than sweeping generalizations based on group membership, and she sees herself this way too, which I think is part of the problem. I talk about these things gently when they happen (though not all the time) and she takes my criticism so, so well and it seems like she tries her best to understand and change. And o believe that this does matter a lot to her. But she still does the same things, or she’ll agree to stop saying things like black people are loud but honestly doesn’t understand how that’s not true or a problem (she talked about it as something she thought was a positive and fun) and so related things keep happening because she doesn’t quite get it.
This is a good friendship with a kind person, but I’m at the end of my rope with this. Like, I know she tries so hard, but it’s really not rocket science! I don’t know what to do and am super annoyed.
Has anyone ever been through something like this?
Anon
Ugh, that does sound really annoying. I’m not sure what you can do, though – you’ve already talked to her and it seems like she just doesn’t get it and it isn’t sinking in. Some people are really prone to generalizations and stereotypes (does she do this on other issues too, like sexist stereotypes?). If so, it may be impossible for her to change and you might have to decide whether the friendship is worth this major downside.
Anonymous
Yeah your friend is ignorant, racist, and arrogant enough to not want to change. I’d move on from her. It isn’t hard.
Annonnnn
+1 Your friend is racist and is perpetuating white supremacy, and she doesn’t want to change. It’s not your job to educate her, nor should you have to. Tell her to do the work on her own and utilize the MANY resources available to her via educators such as Rachel Cargle, Layla Saad (the Me and White Supremacy Workbook is something she should absolutely work through), Rachel Ricketts, Ericka Hart, etc. I am probably telling you things you already know, so I apologize if this comes off wrong.
Anon
It sounds like the problem is the friend is someone who probably has all this stuff and is just trying way too hard to be woke. I don’t think giving her more is going to help. Personally I find this type absolutely insufferable and don’t spend time with them.
Annonnnn
I am 100% with you, I wouldn’t spend any more time with this person either, but that doesn’t seem to be the answer the OP wants.
Anon OP
I do think about this, but I’m really hoping there’s another way. I posted a kind of long response earlier, but I think it got eaten.
She is super prone to over generalizations about literally everything, which makes it hard to address things like this. Normally I would turn it around and pose a question about white culture, which with most people makes the point well. She just sees everything in terms of labels and stereotypes and stuff, including herself.
I don’t think I’m as open talking about these things as I could be. Like I feel like I say enough to get the point across, and in some instances I’ve made my personal displeasure super known and we have talked through it. Other times it may not be as obvious to her where I stand. I’ve been told that I have a gentle way of posing counterarguments that may not make it clear that I super disagree. I tend to take that approach with more sensitive things, like the cop one. I don’t want her to feel like I’m saying she’s raising her daughter wrong and that this is completely insane. Which is what I think, but no need to be a jerk about it.
Anyway. Maybe some thoughts on how to navigate these things delicately would be helpful.
Anon
While I agree in theory that it’s no one’s job to educate someone else, I am a personal fan of talking about my point of view in response to people who say crazy things, no matter what the subject is. OP if you want to invest in this person, I would just talk about how you feel. I don’t approach things as speaking on behalf of my group, I’m more likely to say “that’s ridiculous, I think X”. Maybe the ridiculous is OTT but I have candid conversations.
...
lol, i’m sure this friend would just die if she knew she was being called a white supremacist, given that she identifies as “woke”
Equestrian Attorney
This sounds annoying and hard. If you want this friendship to work out, I think the best thing you can do is just call it out when it happens – as in “hey remember when we talked about not generalizing on black culture? Well you just did that by saying XYZ”. But if she genuinely doesn’t get it and pushes back every time, you are justified to cut ties – this might not be the friendship for you.
MKB
That sounds really painful and irritating. Could you suggest that she read Oluo’s “So You Want To Talk About Race” (or even gift her a copy)? It sounds like if she doesn’t take some steps to improve things, it won’t be worthwhile to maintain the friendship anyway, so if she responds poorly maybe that’s ok. So sorry you’re dealing with this cluelessness.
Candidate
I’m a white far left progressive who tries really hard to educate myself, and I learned a LOT from the Code Switch podcast. You could recommend some resources (books/podcasts/articles/etc.) where she could do her own learning, that don’t rely on you to explain, and see if that helps her?
Potato
Do you enjoy the friendship otherwise? Can you just avoid the topic? This person’s understanding of race is clearly off, and it can be either seen as a moral failing or an intellectual one. To me, it the degree of her misstep would be the deciding factor (since none of us are perfect), but this is a personal thing. If you find it to be a major moral failure then I don’t see how the friendship can continue. If you find it to be a failure of imagination on her part then I’d just avoid the topic and enjoy the parts of her that you do like.
Your friend doesn't care about your feelings
What about this friend makes you want to stay friends with her? It’s understandable if you are old friends with a history, but I’m sorry, your friend is saying racist and bigoted things, and keeps saying them in front of you after you have corrected her about what she said. She isn’t making an effort to be a better person and in fact seems to be using her “wokeness” as a screen for terrible ways of thinking. I mean “black people are loud”? That’s the most basic stereotype of that group that is consistently pushed back on and she keeps repeating it and can’t understand why it’s negative after you pointed it out? She’s not trying and honestly doesn’t seem to respect you enough to listen to you or at least not say these things around you. I’d distance myself from this friend – you’ve done enough, it’s not your job to educate her more than you already have, and she sounds exhausting.
Dolce
Those who own horses, how often do you ride? I just bought my first horse and am trying to juggle time at the barn and my other obligations. Is there or four times a week too few?
Anon
This isn’t specific to horses, but I heard on a podcast that the optimal number of gym trips for a specific hobby (in this case, it was referring to rock climbing) is 4. This podcast argued that 3 isn’t bad either, but 4 is the sweet spot to see improvements in strength and gains in mastery. Based on my experience, I improved way more at sports in high school with 4-5 practice days per week than in ones that only met once or twice.
Anon
Back in my riding days I would usually go twice during the week and once on the weekends. One of the staff at the barn would lunge my horse in between or sometimes ride him so he would get some exercise.
Equestrian Attorney
Same – I used to go three to four times a week when I owned my own horse. My horse retired and I got a half-lease because of career constraints, so I go once or twice a week now. I really depends on whether your horse gets turned out every day and/or if someone else can ride him.
CorporateInCarhartt
I go about once a week. For a while it was due to time constraints (I rode more often in law school, since my schedule was flexible, but dropped to once a week when I started my law firm job), now it’s because he has chronic navicular that’s pretty manageable but I don’t push him beyond one ride a week. He’s super sane, though, and is the same horse even if I only ride him once a week (or once a month … there have been those times). If he were the kind of horse that needed to be in more work, not sure what I would have done, maybe have a pro come ride him once a week or so. If he were sound now, I’d go more often because I’m at a point in my career when my time is more flexible, and I could ride in the evenings in the summer after work, etc.
Anon
Depends on a few things, including your horse’s age/temperament/energy level, if you’re training towards any goals or competitions or just riding for fun. 3-4 should be just fine, but try not to miss rides. I’ve been there where life happens and 3 becomes 2 and suddenly it’s 5 days since your horse has been ridden. Ask the people who are interacting with him everyday whether they think he has a lot of excess energy or needs to be worked more.
Also evaluate the barn dynamics and how your horse responds to them – like the person above said, can they lunge a couple times a week? I once realized I had to ride my horse more often when he was moved from a really long, narrow pasture where he liked to run up and down into one that was the same size but an odd shape, where he couldn’t run as freely.
Aggie
I’m in the barn at least twice a day and will usually ride in the mornings in the winter. (We jump in the summer in the late afternoons.) My children have lessons twice a week and I will gauge each horse’s energy level before their evening feed. This is really a know your horse thing.
CountC
It depends a lot on your horse. Mine is extremely laid back and well trained, so he only needs two – three times a week to maintain the appropriate fitness level for what he is doing (not currently showing). If he gets ridden more than three times, he gets cranky. He only gets jumped once out of those rides.
There are quite a few horses in the barn that need to be ridden 5 – 6 times a week, not only to be kept fit for regular horse showing, but also because of their personalities and demeanor or because they are green and need the training. We absolutely do not jump every time we ride, so even the horses going 5 – 6 times a week get jumped twice a week in lessons and then hacked the other times. If you have a trainer, it’s best to talk to your trainer to determine what would work best for both you and your horse and if you need to find a kid to hack yours another day a week or whatever.
Is it Friday yet?
Depends on what you’re looking to do with the horse. If you’re happy to just hack around and take some lessons and the horse is quiet and safe for you to ride with that amount of exercise, 3-4 days a week is totally fine. If you’re looking to show or do endurance rides or something that requires more fitness, the horse needs to be worked more often (and you need as much saddle time as possible) – but there’s nothing wrong with paying a trainer to (or letting a friend, or someone who’s a nice rider and doesn’t own a horse) ride on days you can’t make it out. When I was showing extensively, I had my horse in full training (so six days a week plus coaching at events). On days I could make it out, I had a lesson. On days I couldn’t, my trainer rode – and my horse always felt great the next day. :)
Right now, I have two horses but only really make it out on weekends. I’m not showing, but I pay to have someone hack them a few times during the week (like April – November, they’re kind of getting the winter off-ish) so they’re not insane when I do ride, and they’re fit enough for hunter paces and long trail rides. I’d LOVE to find someone to half lease one or both but they’re both… persnickety (and also probably more horse than anyone at my current barn wants to ride). I’d also love to ride more often (probably the only thing I miss about my prior toxic firm job is that the hours were more flexible), but unfortunately that doesn’t fit with my current lifestyle. My feeling is that as long as the horses are happy and well cared for, that’s the important part.
Gail the Goldfish
Hi, fellow new horse owner! I’m aiming for 4-5 days a week, weather permitting. She only got ridden 3 times when I was gone for a week over Christmas and my first ride back was… energetic. She seems much more settled on 4-5 days a week.
Related question–how frequently do people jump their horses? Mine’s still pretty green so we’re not doing anything crazy, just low hunters. Twice a week?
Mary Ann Singleton
If you are not able to exercise your horse enough, consider getting someone to half lease it. I have someone riding my horse 2 days a week for $250 per month, and that helps with the board costs etc plus it has the benefit that the horse gets exercised and doesn’t turn into a fire breathing monster.
Beth
Can anyone recommend a facialist in DC, Arlington, or Alexandria? I prefer a “working” facial as opposed to a relaxing one if that makes sense, and I’m looking for someone I can make monthly appointments with rather than a one off. Primary skin concerns are anti-aging and large pores prone to blackheads.
Anonymous
Adrienne Shostak. Amazing facials – they’re expensive, but tip is included.
anon a mouse
Pure Aesthetica in Del Ray. Jodey is great but anyone there is good.
Flats Only
I had a nice facial at Pure Aesthetica in Del Rey last year. I don’t remember who the person was who did it, but it is a nice salon and getting an appointment was not a problem. They had a wide variety of “active” treatments vs. just relaxing. As I recall they had an introductory special.
Out of Shape
I’m looking to get an exercise machine of some sort (in January, I know, such a cliche). But I know me, and that I would be more likely to use it in short bursts when I have a minute or two, and I’m a lot less likely to use it if I have to fuss with changing clothes or putting on shoes. So, is there a good option that I could use without shoes, and without requiring a special bra? (I’m really small, so I usually don’t wear a supportive bra around the house.) I’m thinking maybe a rowing machine, but I’m looking for suggestions.
FWIW, I’m not really looking to lose weight, more build endurance and generally get “in shape,” whatever that means.
Anonymous
No sorry this isn’t a thing. If you are just going to do a minute or two stop and do jumping jacks crunches or push ups. Don’t waste your money on a machine. Absurd.
Triangle Pose
Agreed.
Anon
Get a pair of Sanuk or similar slippers to wear – you really don’t want to be shoeless around machines unless you won’t miss your toes. I’d do that and get a rowing machine.
Anonymous
If you literally want to exercise for a minute or two at a time without putting on shoes, I would not get a machine. Just run up and down the stairs, do some burpees, run in place, etc. There is no such thing as a cardio machine that is safe or comfortable to use without shoes.
Flats Only
I have an elliptical at home. With the right settings it can kick my but in 5 minutes! I find that I don’t need a particularly supportive bra, and generally wear one that I would wear to a yoga class (I am 38C). For shoes, I think you could get away with some sort of slip on sneaker type thing, since your feet don’t move around much on the pedals.
Equestrian Attorney
I also have an elliptical and like short sessions on WFH days – I don’t need to shower after a short session but I do change into workout clothes and sneakers then do it for 15 minutes or so. I’ve tried socks only but the steps are not comfortable enough – this may vary across models.
Anonymous
Why not just do a few sets of stair climbs every so often during the day? What you’re describing, candidly, seems like a prescription for buying equipment you won’t use.
Erg
I would not get on an erg without shoes on.
trefoil
+1 – but i keep my rowing shoes underneath it so having to put them on isn’t a reason to skip a workout.
I wouldn’t recommend an erg for a minute or two here and there, either – i like it best as a “i’m doing 5k” (no matter how long it takes–so out of shape this winter) rather than “i’ve got 5 minutes.”
Anon
Pilates reformer?
Anonymous
What about a kettlebell and do squats/lunges/etc?
Anonymous
I recently bought a set of free weights that has multiple small weights (up to 20 or 30 lbs per side I believe). it doesn’t take up much room, very easy to do for one or two minutes and you don’t break a sweat, don’t need a different bra, don’t need special shoes, and you could always alternate with 60 seconds of bicep curls followed by 60 seconds of mountain climbers if you really wanted to put cardio. Not the endurance type you’re looking for, but I wouldn’t say less than 5 minutes on a cardio machine will do a time to help with endurance.
Need leggings advice
I’ve recently gotten into exercise and am in the market for leggings. But I’ve never been a leggings wearer, and the first pair I bought turned out to be too tight and too thin and a lint magnet. Shopping online, I see most leggings are made of majority cotton, majority polyester, or majority nylon. Experienced leggings wearers – what are the pros and cons of each? Any other advice for picking the right leggings?
Anonymous
Zella live in leggings.
Anon for this
I don’t like Zella; they roll down on me — my favorite are the compression high-waisted ones from Old Navy. Look for the ones with pockets! Amazon Core 10 also good if they’re on sale — nice, thick, opaque, not linty.
Anonymous
Zella rolls down on me too, and I also love the Old Navy compression leggings. My very favorites are any of the “blackout” leggings from Gap. They fit perfectly, are never see-through, and feel really smooth and nice.
Anon
I love Gap leggings.
CPA Lady
Cotton leggings are soft, but they hold moisture. I don’t like wearing cotton leggings if I’m doing something sweaty. I like these leggings best for lounging around the house
Synthetic leggings made from “performance” fabrics tend to wick moisture, which means they pull it away from the body and help it evaporate faster than it would from cotton.
Nylon: typically softer than polyester, but also a bit more staticy. good sweat wicking, but stays wetter longer than polyester, so it feels colder when you’re sweating. colors may fade slightly.
Polyester: A bit better in colder weather, most sweat wicking. tends to retain odors the most. you can mitigate this, but it can be an issue. Colors will not fade.
Kelly
Old Navy and Lands End – I esp like the way the Lands End are not slippery.
Nike
I do powerlifting and use Nike tights religiously. They do not pill or get linty, the are not transparent and they hold up for years.
The problem is that a ton of “leggings” nowadays are for athleisure and not actually working out. If I want to wear tights for kicking back I use mine from Old Navy or Target. While my workout tights are comfortable, I do not enjoy wearing them anywhere other than the gym because they’re not “cozy” fabrics. They are meant to wick the sweat, hold up while I squat, etc. Nike Running tights are a great place to start. Underarmour also has some great ones. Anything that is geared towards running doubles well for workouts.
Anon
I have a couple pairs of Nike running tights from Nordstrom Rack that are great. I also am a huge fan of the Old Navy high rise 7/8-length compression leggings for working out. I don’t find them to be transparent, but I pair with black C9 athletic underwear from Target just to make sure.
Old Navy has started to label the varieties under the “Active” section better – the athleisure pairs are marked “street leggings”, the ones designated “yoga” are softer and offer less “hold you in” power than the compression ones do, but are great for actual yoga or lounging. Be sure to get the ones marked compression for actual workouts – they’re tight in a good way, I feel supported and smoothed out, but not restricted.
Anonymous
Go to the stores and try on Athleta, Lululemon, Zella, Old Navy, and C9 (Target). Each brand fits differently, and you won’t know which fits you best until you try them all.
I would not mess with cotton leggings or weird internet brands. If budget is a consideration, focus on ON and Target.
Gail the Goldfish
I’m an Athleta fan, but you’ve got to find the right style so try on different ones. I used to have a bunch of Old Navy and C9 because I thought it was absurd to pay $75 on workout pants, but someone gave me an Athleta gift card one Christmas and now I can’t go back; I find the quality is so much better that it’s worth it (although I do stalk their sales and won’t pay full price).
Anonymous
Whatever Athleta Salutation Stash Pocket Tight In Powervita are made out of (Nylon/Lycra). I am an expensive legging convert after spending some pretty satisfying years in Old Navy and Target Champion leggings, and I particularly like these because they wick, they do not budge no matter what I’m doing (weight lifting, burpees, running on the treadmill, crunches – my advice is get high waisted depending on what you are doing), and they seem to wear like iron (wash after every wearing, cold water, hang dry).
Anonymous
The only ones I find not to be transparent are Victoria Secret knockout leggings and Lululemon luxtreme fabric ones, either Wunder Under, fast and free, or train times. Idk if it’s my height throwing off the opacity (I’m 6′), but everything else in Old Navy/Champion/Gap is too short in the rise, rolls down, or too see through. I have VS leggings that are 4-5 years old and moderately pilled in the crotch, but still very very wearable.
Anon
Lululemon the brand is offputting to many, but they really do make the nicest leggings. The fabric is wonderful and they’re not too tight anywhere, nor do they show panty lines. If you don’t want to try them, try Athleta. I have a pair of Zella leggings because I was trying to be (relatively) thrifty, but they were cut weird and are ran short. I really dislike the cheaper fabric that you get with Old Navy and Target, it’s just not as nice. Even Zella’s fabric was not as nice.
Small Firm IP Litigator
I think what you want are exercise-specific tights, not leggings. You don’t need underwear with exercise tights, and they are made of thicker material that doesn’t look see through. They should also be synthetic to be sweat-wicking (not cotton).
My favorite brands are Asics, Roka, Sugoi, Zoot, Brooks, Under Armour, Nike Pro, and the REI house brand. I really don’t find the women-specific brands to be very well made, particularly for the price. They are often more geared towards fashion rather than function. If you are looking for cool looking tights that are high quality and not a super high price, I’d check out Zoot and Asics. If you want plain tights, Under Armour is a great budget option and has a variety of weights.
Anon
I vote for a good pair of jogger sweats. They are so much easier to size than leggings, are not transparent, don’t roll down, etc.
Career advice needed
I’ve been a lawyer at my firm for about a year. I am a star here and love it in many ways, but am starting to question if I should look elsewhere. The named partner of the firm has especially taken a liking to me and is really dedicated to my professional development, he seems to consider me his protege, I should consider myself lucky in this respect. HOWEVER, he is, objectively, not a good lawyer and difficult to work for. He inherited the firm from his family members, so he didn’t work his way up to partner or start from zero. He likes to make enemies for no reason, grandstand, pick stupid fights, use underhanded and sneaky litigation tactics unnecessarily, etc. He interferes with my cases in very negative ways. I have had many opposing counsel tell me, off the record, that I should look for a new job. That never happened even at the really toxic firm. The turnover here is like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard of before, well over 100% in the year I’ve been here. Maybe even over 200%. I’m worried about ruining my reputation and limiting my growth because he wants me to do as he does. However, he is introducing me to big clients, staffing me on big cases, and will be retiring in the next 5 years. Stick it out or move on?
Anonymous
I would think that named partner’s bad behavior is hard to tolerate and his firm’s reputation may be tarnished. I would not want to be in the shadow of that individual, would not be able to easily tolerate his behavior and would want to distinguish my personal brand as much as possible. You said the turnover is over 200% – you are not immune….eventually it will catch up with you….move on….
Anon
Leave. You’re not going to pick up anything valuable from someone like that and the point of being at a firm is to learn. He’s just buttering you up by calling you a star or whatever because he must be aware of the turnover issue.
Anon
Leave. My guess is that named partner has taken a liking to you mainly because you’ve stayed for a year, and no one else has. It’s also not like you’re super invested in this firm– you’ve only been there a year. I also think it must be especially bad when people are actually telling you to leave… There are firms in my city that I think are terrible and can tell the people that work there are miserable, but I can’t even imagine how bad it would be to just go up and tell someone they needed to leave as unsolicited advice.
CountC
+1
Anon
I can’t imagine you have much future in the broader legal community if you’re seen as this guy’s protege. People obviously know his reputation and will transfer it (rightly or wrongly) to anyone who works closely with him. Get out now.
anon
+1,000,000
Anonymous
I was in the same boat and moved on as quick as I could. It was the best career move I’ve ever made. I suggest you do the same.
Anon
While agreeing with many of the comments here, I’ll make a different suggestion only because of the possible opportunities down the road. Speaking as a Biglaw partner, inheriting a practice is a great advantage and it’s so much easier than building it from the ground up. The question is, would you be tainted after he leaves? People (clients; peers) are not stupid and can and will judge you on your own merits. If you can wait out a few years, you can blaze your own trail. I can think of many jerk lawyers who’ve been succeeded by perfectly nice people. I would try to discuss the pros and cons candidly and confidentially with colleagues you can trust (at your and other firms) before leaving.
Horse Crazy
Paint color question…I’m moving into a house with dark wood paneling on some of the living room and dining room walls. Per the landlord, I can’t paint over the paneling, but I can paint the other walls, so I’m looking for help choosing a color. The paneling looks similar to this (this is not my question on Houzz): https://www.houzz.com/discussions/650473/i-need-ideas-for-a-dark-wood-paneled-wall-in-living-room. We have a dark grey couch, a large light grey area rug, and a dark wooden entertainment center. The floors of the house look like this, but less shiny: https://www.homeadvisor.com/r/insulating-a-wood-floor/. Sorry for the links, but I don’t know how to describe the wood otherwise. Specific brand/color suggestions for wall paint would be greatly appreciated!
Anonymous
Get large mirrors or light-colored paintings to hang on the walls with paneling. Get as much white furniture as you can. Paint the non-paneled walls something light – white or light grey or very light blue or yellow. Personally I would probably do yellow – something like Pale Straw by Benjamin Moore.
Scarlett
I’d do white. I just did our place in simply white by Benjamin Moore and I love it. It looks fresh and clean and I think would modernize the wood. Check out the blog Remodelista for a round of of white paints and how to work the look.
Anon
Google Nina Farmer House Beautiful to see how she brightened dark wood. It’s amazing!
Anon
So, this is not a paint color suggestion, but there may be solutions to cover that wall that are outside the box. I have a wall in my house that I curtained. I hung curtain rods at the very top, and got linen panels from Ikea and ran them across the entire wall. The reason I did it (it’s a bedroom wall, but I could see this working in a living room space) is because the window is in an awkward place, the regular trim is white, the window trim is original and beautiful birdseye maple, the floor is regular unstained maple in a different tone, and the antique-style bed in an entirely different wood tone, when centered on the wall to give access from both sides, overlapped the window slightly. There was a LOT going on and just running curtains across the whole wall settled everything down and created a much more serene space.
Anon
I think it would look really nice in a white room, especially that kind fo Californian modern bohemian style with lots of different textures in whites throughout the room.
Advice please
Need advice please for a resignation/transition situation….first, this hive has been so helpful to me throughout this process last year and now so thank you thank you thank you in advance. OK I need to resign by Friday from current big tech employer (been here 10 years) to go to competitor/partner big tech employer. I am booked to go to same tech conference in 12 days with both employers so I need to make one the former employer and one the new employer. New employer is taking a little longer than I would like to confirm start date, but that is coming, but may not be in time to go to conference (not a big deal). Good colleague who works at new employer says rip off the bandaid and take the leap, resign now. I have weird reservations (anxiety) that everything will backfire and fall apart…..I should note that I have accepted formal offer, am on the email distribution lists, they ordered my laptop and are extremely welcoming for all upcoming activities. Just need the security of a start date I guess…anyone else resign in such a situation?
Idea
Do. Not. Resign. Until. Start date. Confirmed. Especially! to go to a competitor.
Never been in this situation but oy! read about it enough.
OP
OK, OP here….thank you….that has been my policy/gut instinct until good colleague encouraged me to “rip off the bandaid”…curious, what have you heard about similar situation?
Anonymous
That people quit and then don’t really have a job lined up and wind up unemployed.
Cat
DO NOT RESIGN yet. I know you’re bursting to stop keeping the secret, but the conference is only 12 days away. If you were going to start at new employer before then… you should really, really, know that by now. Don’t risk a behind-the-scenes problem (budgeting mistake? did your new boss forget to put your comp in his 2019 budget request and they’re trying to iron it out?). Worst case of NOT resigning is ants in your pants. Worst case of RESIGNING is the risk of being out of a job altogether. Your anxiety is appropriate!
SC
+1. A good friend of mine resigned from a job while he had a written offer but no confirmed start date at another job. They said it was just a matter of background checks, formalities, etc. The whole thing fell apart, and he was left with no job for 6 months.
(This was a law firm setting. It turned out that the partner who hired him jumped to another firm in another city, and the firm that gave my friend an offer wasn’t going to have the business/work for my friend without that partner.)
Anonymous
Woah you are working for the new company if you’re receiving emails already. This is wildly inappropriate for you to be employed by two competing companies!! Yes you need to resign!
OP
OP here – yes, Its terrible timing and an ethical dilemma – which is worse….(1) attending the conference as delegate of current employer when you know you are planning to resign? or (2) resigning on short notice in order to attend a conference as delegate of company that you think you are joining but it hasn’t been able to firm up start date in advance of conference? I think #2 is dumb.
Anonymous
Omg no. Do not resign until you get a start date. Absolutely not.
Anon
No advice but I can’t help but imagine an amusing Mrs Doubtfire situation where you go back and forth between employers at the conference.
Anon
That’s what I was visualizing too, ha!
Anonymous
Sounds like this is when you put your foot down about the situation. If they want you at the conference, you need to start before (or at) it. To give two weeks (although if you’re going to a competitor, you likely will be relieved of your duties immediately), you need your start date ASAP or it isn’t going to work out.
op
OP here…Thank you – this is it. Your advice helped me – I just called hiring manager and left vm, and text and restated that I need start date in order to attend conference with them. I am staying put until they give me start date. And to the other poster…yes, this is wildly inappropriate to include me on emails and do all of the other stuff to prepare for my arrival without a start date. Enough is enough and my anxiety is warranted.
houda
I am very risk averse. You still have bills to pay and you are on employer 1’s payroll.
My understanding is that in the US it takes you 2 weeks of notice to be out the door, not 3 months like my 2 previous experiences. Why take such a big risk for 2 weeks?
Just wait until you have a start date and work backwards to hand in your notice with a couple days of rest in between
Hi Hi Hi
Do not resign until you are 100% confirmed at new place. Had an associate on my team resign, and then two days before her “last day” she told us that the new job fell through and asked to stay. Felt awful for her. (We let her stay.)
Anon
I think you need to talk to your hiring manager or HR at the new place and ask specific questions with specific answers – like when your start date is. Per a previous poster, be very leery of acquiring information from a competitor (eg email) while employed in your current situation.
You need to look out for you.
OP
Thank you – I have asked VERY specific questions about my start date and have been advised by hiring manager that he is working to confirm. So I am going to wait until further notice – no resignation here, no way. Thank you Thank you Thank you
anon
I will be transitioning back to a student budget later this year (yay grad school). Any financial tips for making that transition successfully? I currently live a decent life (take trips, eat out pretty frequently, shop occasionally for wants and not just needs) and am trying to save as much as I can in these last months before I will be a student. How did you save money as a student? What free/discounted community resources or other students perks would be good to know about?
Anonymous
I stopped eating out basically entirely, didn’t buy any new clothes except a suit, didn’t travel for fun at all, and walked everywhere.
Anonymous
When I was a student, food was an easy way to save money (especially if it is just you and you don’t have a spouse or kids who are picky). I also saved a lot of money by decreasing my hair maintenance (no more regular colors – just when I was interviewing for jobs). Does your school offer health insurance that you can buy? I got pretty good insurance through my school (which has a big medical school/hospital).
Annie
Just don’t do ANY extras: no buying a random lip gloss because you left yours at home, no buying coffee on your way home when you could make it when you get home etc. Carefully think about and weigh every purchase no matter how small and try either or — either meet friends for dinner or meet them for drinks, don’t do dinner and drinks. This is a matter of personal preference, but in grad school I preferred to spend my limited fun money on experiences out so I’d rather buy a few drinks on a Saturday night then have bought those random items throughout the week.
givemyregards
+1 to everything Annie said – I also went from a semi-comfortable salary to a grad school budget in my mid-20s and it was actually easier than I thought it would be because there just wasn’t money in my account to spend. I know that sounds overly simplistic, but I think just not seeing any cash in my account was enough to curb my desire to spend money because I was already so stressed about taking on student loans that I didn’t want to add credit card debt to the mix. One thing that helped me not feel deprive was that I basically did all the things I did pre-grad school, just on a smaller scale. So I still shopped for clothes occasionally, but was much more intentional about what I was buying, finding stuff on sale, etc. etc. I still went out to eat every once in a while, but it was for lunch instead of dinner, or for just one drink during happy hour and then I went home for dinner.
I also don’t know where you’ll be a student but where I went to school, public transportation was super cheap for students, which was a big help. Other than that, meal prep was huge for met. Some days I had classes at weird hours and would end up on campus 8am-8pm, so I always had a lunch, some snacks, etc. etc. to help me avoid buying stuff at the snack bar.
Kelly
Our postdoc listserv puts out a monthly email of free/cheap student & family activities for the month – movies, music in the gardens, museum exhibitions etc. Always lots of free events on a campus! Also, I had no social life as a grad student – and that was ok. I have always cooked at home so don’t worry about $ for meals out. Friends had a weekly potluck at their house for grad students – enjoyed that as a study break…
C
A big mental shift for me was no longer thinking of things as replaceable. If I rip my jeans, stain my blouse, or get a massive hole in my bag, I either try to fix them, or I no longer have the jeans, the blouse, or the bag. End of discussion. Buying new ones is not in the cards anymore. I ended up learning how to treat my possessions with a lot more care since I knew that I didn’t have the budget to replace them. And it’s a lot more sustainable overall, since I don’t buy new stuff because I was careless with the old stuff.
This also applied to house stuff- previously, the rug would get a stain and I’d try to get it out but start thinking well… this rug is kind of old… the stain might not come out… I’d really just rather buy a new rug anyway… and suddenly it’s the perfect time to get a new rug, but then the old throw pillows don’t match, so I’ll need to update them too, and wouldn’t some new artwork freshen up the whole room? Once the grad school budget hit that type of thinking was out the window. The rug I owned was the only rug available and if I ruined it, I would not have a rug at all anymore. It’s amazing how much money we spend to replace stuff that could still work just fine if we either put forth a little effort to fix it or if we learned to live with things that weren’t 100% picture perfect.
givemyregards
This is really good advice and something I’m trying to continue doing even though I’m not a student anymore. It’s so easy to go down the rabbit hole of replacing stuff. Of course, sometimes I veer too far the other direction and realize too late that I need to have gotten rid of the suit I’m wearing like two years ago.
Anon
This is really important to do and not just when you’re on a budget. It’s amazing how much stuff we can live without when we don’t default to “replace” or “upgrade.”
Original Moonstone
1) Public library for ebooks, audio books and streaming media, or at least cut down to one streaming service (Netflix, Amazon Prime) 2) Box wine.
anon
OP here – thanks! My biggest weakness is food. I’m an incredibly picky eater and pretty mediocre cook, so I waste more than money than I should on takeout. Looks like that’s one major thing to get better at. I’m pretty good with not needing to replace everything just because it broke and I don’t drink alcohol for personal reasons so I’m not as worried on those fronts.
Betsy
One thing to keep in mind is that you are probably going to be way busier than you realize once you start school. When I started grad school last year I had this fantasy that I would somehow have time to cook wonderful from-scratch meals every night and save so much money that way. Ha! I did not, and it was hard to find the time to meal prep each week because my normal working meal prep Sunday afternoon routine was replaced by homework. If you have time before you start to create several weeks worth of meal plans that you could rotate through, or even better do some meal prep and put things in the freezer, you’ll be in great shape. And try to come up with something you can keep on hand to pull out for an easy meal on nights when anything that takes more than 5 minutes seems impossible, so you have an alternative to takeout. My first semester that was boxes of mac and cheese, and my second semester I went straight up student stereotype and kept ramen on hand. I also keep some bags of frozen veggies in the freezer, so on desperate nights I would doctor up mac and cheese or ramen with some veggies and call it good. The other way I saved a lot of money was by buying one of those big travel mugs that keeps things hot for like 14 hours so I didn’t spend a ton of money on campus coffee. I drank so much coffee during grad school and I would drink my first cup out of my regular mug and then sip on the travel mug for the rest of the day. Good luck!
pugsnbourbon
We are paring down expenses ahead of some job changes and this is great advice. If you have an Aldi, they usually have frozen, steam-in-the-bag veggies for 99 cents – they can be up to $2.50 at conventional grocery stores.
If you could roast a couple chickens over the weekend and make a batch of rice, you can have a decent meal in 5 minutes by mixing in the veggies. It’s not gonna win a Michelin star but it’s reasonably healthy and cheap.
Anon for this
Piggybacking on the exercise machine Q – does anyone actually own a squat rack for a home gym? If I’m still a beginner, but uncomfortable doing squats and calf raises with 50+ pounds because I can barely get under two 25# dumbbells, is squat rack the answer — or one-legged exercises with less weight?
Anonymous
When you say get under- how are you holding your dumbells (that description makes me think you are putting them on your shoulders?) Can you work on your grip strength? Do goblet squats? Add lunges or step ups to a bench? Glute/hip bridges are great as are deadlifts.
If your goal is to squat heavy, then yeah, a barbell in a squat rack does make that easier and you don’t have to worry about grip strength. If you have the room, go for it. But, I think you can get some good results from other exercises without going that route.
Anon for this
Um… you may be about to blow my mind. Aren’t you SUPPOSED to put the dumbells on your shoulders? Have I been doing it wrong the whole time? (What about for calf raises?) I do do goblet squats (25#) but the adjustable barbells aren’t “comfortable” — too bulky or something to get a good grip? Or my wrist is too weak?
Anonymous
Dumbbells to shoulders is one variation- certainly not wrong, but it sounds like it’s hard to get the weight up without a spotter.. Or you can hold them by your side or even do squats with them in an overhead press. For calf raises, are you doing them flat on the floor? Would dropping your heel off a box/step be an option?
Abby
Not the poster you’re replying to but yes DBs on shoulders for squats, calf raises I leave them at my side. I think barbell movements are way easier than DB, especially with getting weight up. I can frontsquat my bodyweight easily, but ask me to get 2 35+ dumbbells up to my shoulders? I feel weak! But if you’re a beginner at weight lifting, I’d get a personal trainer or I started learning through Crossfit and now lift on my own. You want to make sure you have good form so you don’t hurt yourself!
Anonymous
I do! I love our squat rack and free weights. You don’t need to start heavy. The lightest training bar is 15 lb and the regular women bar is 35 lb. My husband and I use our home gym everyday, especially when baby is napping.
I ordered all my exercise equipment on rogue, but they can be pricey. I would also check out nextdoor and/or craigslist to get a second hand one if you have a vehicle that can transport it.
+1
If you have the money, Rogue is work it. They have folding racks that fold flat if you want to free up garage space, as well as a million other options that take up varying sizes and space. I highly recommend Street Parking programming for home gyms. You can find them on Instagram. It’s super affordable and has everything from tiny beginner to competitive athlete.
pugsnbourbon
We built our garage gym for about $3k. I can’t remember the brand, but we purchased a $1400 equipment package that included a power rack, bench, olympic bar and plates, slam ball, med ball, kettlebell and plyo box. Delivery and assembly included. All of it in good shape 4 years later.
We built a lifting platform using plywood, industrial adhesive and stable mats from Tractor Supply -about $400 for materials.
We picked up an erg on Craigslist for $600 (great price for a concept 2).
We bought additional #45 plates from a resale sports shop. They usually go by the pound.
All this to say that yes, a rack is an awesome investment.
AFT
Agree with a lot of this! Husband just purchased a squat rack – also from rogue! – and uses it every day. It arrived in a ridiculously large number of separate pieces (maybe 9 different boxes over several days?) but he was able to assemble it solo.
Midlevel Associate
I am looking for tips and any other helpful things/words for working with a team that is all dudes, as I step up from newbie associate to a more midlevel role. In my case, we have lots of female associates in our group, but the actual work I do day-to-day is primarily for one rain making male partner. I love working with him. Though he can be a bit gruff and short (and harsh with feedback), he will spend a ton of time teaching me every point of the transaction and is very intentional at giving me work I really enjoy. I came in at a time where his rockstar, go-to associate was soon-to-be up for partner and he has now made it. It’s been talked about before, with me in the room and without, that I would be following in that pipeline of work and hopefully a similar trajectory to now-partner guy. I work at a place that this is a real thing and people who do good work make it often and early. I also went straight through to law school, so I am very young.
With that novel of background, I have recently found myself with more responsibility and being client facing. In our type of deal work, that means I am the only woman and an under represented minority. I don’t so much have doubts that I belong, but I am worried/hesitant to speak up, terrified of messing up, always worried that I am not doing this right. I have worked a lot on weaknesses the past year, but I worry about me being the only associate on a lot of these matters. I have a lot to learn and realize that, but what are some good tips for not always feeling like “I am the only woman here and significantly younger than all of these guys, so I don’t know anything.” Also, generally any tips about moving up from newbie associate to midlevel associate/being the only associate on a matter?
Anonymous
Attending a women’s college fixed this for me :)
Anonymous
Really? I worked at a women’s college for several years and attended classes through the college’s postbaccalaureate program, and was shocked by the students’ general lack of assertiveness during class discussions. In contrast, in my coed undergrad and graduate programs, at least some of the women stepped up to the plate to compete with the men. I had previously been 100% supportive of single-sex education, and I still think it’s a good idea for girls in elementary and middle school, but because of my experience I’ve been discouraging my daughter from looking at women’s colleges. She is planning to go into STEM, and she will be ill served by an undergraduate environment that allows her to succeed without being assertive.
Anonymous
Yup really 100%. I loved it. I didn’t have to be assertive and compete for 4 years I just learned. I was plenty assertive in law school. Obviously there are tons of good options for school, but I wouldn’t write off women’s colleges entirely because of your experience at one.
Vicky Austin
I’m not sure how this is helpful for somebody who is out of college (and law school!).
Anonymous
Go forth with the confidence of a mediocre white man.
It is not the critic who counts
+1
OP, sounds like you’re doing awesome. You’ve earned your right to sit at the table, and your colleagues value your contribution. “I am a woman” does not mean you know any less about anything. And whenever you need to hear it, repeat Teddy Roosevelt’s “daring greatly” speech to yourself, until you’re ready to jump back in the arena.
Anon
I’m the only female associate in my practice group. Instead of focusing on being a woman when I’m at the table, I focus on what my role is and the role of the others present and behave/speak accordingly without regard to anyone’s gender. Try reframing you thoughts to “I’m an attorney/associate” and spend less time putting pressure on yourself because of your gender. As stated above, in the mind of a mediocre white male associate, there is no doubt to him that he belongs. Try to adopt that mindset. You also work for a tough to please partner and I’m sure everyone is aware that he is demanding, so if he treats you with respect and has provided you with these opportunities, this should shut down many questions of whether you “belong” there.
Commuting bag
I know this question has appeared before – hoping for some new answers.
Looking for a professional bag that can be a single solution for commuting with a laptop, light gym stuff (sneakers, water bottle), and lunch. A longchamp le pilage is big enough for me but I’d like to upgrade to something a little more up to date.
Considering Tumi but it’s a little expensive / fancy. Also considering a backpack, but some seem a little small and the bigger ones seem a little too college student. Finally considering a small gym bag but would like something that a laptop would be safe in.
CHL
I like my Everlane backpack and get compliments on it if a backpack is what you want.
Anonymous
It’s not super fancy, but I have an Amazon Basics backpack I use for this and love it. Separate laptop and work file sleeves, front pocket for wallet/keys/lipstick, plus a large area where I toss in lunch, clothes, etc.
Bagged
I love my basic “entry-level” Tumi backpack (and there are plenty of similar cheaper options). It’s professional enough to be appropriate in most situations, but I also don’t worry about putting on the floor of a bus/taxi/etc. I’ve used it for weekend trips, so if you’ve been using a longchamp, it should be the right size. That said, it’s not build for the gym (no shoe compartment or gym-ready internal organization).
Solo-Travel
Looking for elucidation. I was wondering for those mothers who have traveled without their partner + young child (5 and under?) but with a friend or solo on “special occasions” — birthday, milestone birthday, mothers’ day, and such, what’s your rationale?
Someone I know is having a milestone birthday and left her kid (in diapers) and partner to take a week long, not baby friendly trip with a friend. I’m all for independent travel and I think it’s perfectly fine, and important, to do fun trips without your partner and kids but something about this combo of milestone, no kid and no partner and a week long strikes me as odd. I don’t know if it’s because I’m struggling with the expectation that as an older parent, why would you want to leave them at this special time? I’m not close enough to the person to chat about it and I know she’d be defensive, it’s her personality.
Anonymous
Because a milestone birthday is about YOU, not your partner or your child. I travel a lot for work and always ensure that I am home for my kid’s birthday and my wedding anniversary, because those occasions are about my family. But your friend is entitled to celebrate her own birthday with whomever she chooses. Kudos to her husband for giving her the space to do that without guilt.
Anon
There was a thread/a bit of a flame war about this topic on the moms s!te yesterday…
I wouldn’t want to be apart from my kid on a milestone birthday. But I realize not everyone feels that way. You also may not know her well enough to know the full reasoning behind the trip. Perhaps the friend she’s traveling with recently had a health scare and your friend is feeling really grateful that she’s still around and wants to celebrate with her this year. I don’t know if you have kids, but a child in diapers probably has no awareness that it’s their mom’s birthday, certainly not that it’s a milestone. I think it’s a bit weirder when your 7 year old or whatever can ask why you don’t want to spend your big 40th birthday with them. A 2 or 3 year old will miss their mom while she’s gone, but will absolutely not attach any significance to the date.
There are also people like my husband who don’t believe that your 40th is any more significant than 39 or 41, and don’t care much about birthdays in general. To my husband, his birthday is just another day and I can totally see him going off on his own if he was interested in solo travel, which he’s not.
Anonymous
Even on my 40th, my 7 year old was only interested because he wanted there to be cake. He attached zero significance to the number/milestone.
Anon
Exactly. The kid doesn’t care if it’s your birthday.
OP Anon
Thanks for the thoughts. I like best the idea, that she wants to do something fun and kid can’t realistically be a part of.
Anon
Because I didn’t die when I got married.
Because I didn’t die when I had a kid.
Because I want to.
Because my spouse supports my independence.
Anon
You didn’t die, but surely your spouse and children are the most important people in your life? Why would you celebrate a milestone occasion by choosing to be away from the people you love most in the world? (And yes I know not everyone cares that much about birthdays, but if you are traveling somewhere with a GF to celebrate, surely birthdays are at least somewhat important to you. So I don’t think the ‘oh it’s just another day’ argument applies.)
Anon
Parenting is not about being there on any one particular day. It’s about always being there. I don’t fret about a particular birthday, milestone or even holiday because every other day of the year, I am doing the hard work of parenting.
Anon
I’m not saying she *needs* to be there as part of her parenting job. The child obviously has a capable father and I don’t think her child will be scarred because she wasn’t there on this one particular date or anything. But it’s baffling to me that someone would want to celebrate by being away from their family. I love my friends. I love traveling. But I can’t imagine wanting to celebrate a special occasion by leaving my husband and kid behind to go travel with a friend.
Anon
Ok, you’re baffled. Nobody cares. Be baffled. I’m baffled by busybodies who have nothing better to do.
Anonymous
If she celebrated with her family, she’d end up spending the whole time catering to everyone else’s needs. Let the woman have a little time to herself.
anon
OMG stop trying to imply that she’s a bad mom or bad spouse or bad person or bad family member or that she doesn’t care about her family, or that she doesn’t care *enough* such that she’s abnormal. Stop it stop it stop it. She doesn’t want to celebrate by escaping from them. She wants to do another fun, awesome thing, that they can’t realistically be a part of. Why is this hard for you to understand. PS maybe ‘her personality’ is defensive around you because you’re itching to judge her all the time?
Anon
Some people don’t care as much about their birthdays to HAVE TO be with the most special people in their lives and instead use them as an excuse to do something fun and challenging. Never cared about my birthdays but it’s my free ticket to whatever I want that’s outside the norm. If you attach so much significance to your birthday you feel like it’s incredibly important to be with the most special people – that’s just a different point of view that I don’t get either. But let’s all be cool about our own traditions.
Anonnnnnnnnn
Because that’s what she wants to do! If you wouldn’t, fine, but knock it off with the ugly judgment. You don’t have to understand her decision because it’s hers, not yours. Repeat after me, good for her, not for me!
Anonymous
Are you really this dense?
K
I’m not married so this might be different for me, but I would happily travel with my best girlfriend on my birthday.
I see my boyfriend all the time and don’t see my best friend nearly enough because we live far away from each other. If the opportunity came to travel with her for a special occasion like our birthdays, I would be over the moon, and would be very upset if my boyfriend didn’t want me to do that. You’re allowed to have important people in your live that aren’t your SO.
Anon
Again, because I want to. And my definition of having my family be important to me means that I stay a unique individual with a life who brings that to our home. You don’t want to do it, don’t, but this isn’t rocket science.
anon
You’re being really judgmental. Why do you even care what this woman- who is not you and is not your spouse- is doing? Maybe they’re doing a separate celebration before or after she leaves. Just because your spouse and child are important– or the most important people– doesn’t mean they get the number one slot for each and every occasion. Maybe she’s always wanted to go to X location but can’t easily just up and do that since she’s got a kid in diapers. Maybe she wants to honor and celebrate that part of her life– which didn’t just up and vanish because she got married and had a kid. Maybe her husband’s gift to her is to facilitate this dream by taking care of their kid for a week and supporting her. She’s gone for a WEEK, she’s not ‘leaving them during this special time’ (and honestly she probably needs a break from caring for a young child, which has likely been consuming most all of her time and attention outside of work since he was born.) Kid will still be in diapers when she gets back. Your spouse and kid might be the most important thing in your life but they are not the only important things, and it is healthy and normal to make space for the other incredibly important parts of your life as well.
K
+10000
Anon
Why do you have to celebrate with your spouse and your kid on your actual birthday, though? I know some people are really into birthdays, but it’s just a day, and you see your spouse and kid literally all the time. I think it’s immature to care about celebrating your birthday on the exact day, like you do it for a kid, but what does it matter? Surely when you’re celebrating an adult family member’s birthday you all do it on the weekend anyway?
Never too many shoes...
I was going to type a response, but this is perfect.
mascot
There was a long post on this topic yesterday on the mom’s site.
Why would you want to leave at this special time? Well, maybe that’s how she wants to celebrate. A baby in diapers may not fit into that plan and maybe her husband, and presumably the father of the child, is the best person to stay back for childcare. She didn’t give up her identify and interests when she became a parent. If it works for them, that’s all that matters.
Mrs. Jones
+1.
I can’t imagine anyone being bothered by someone’s wanting to travel with friends instead of family sometimes.
tesyaa
It’s perfectly fine and it’s only a week, it’s not a problem in any way.
Anon
Of course she’d be defensive – it’s not her personality, it’s your misplaced judgement of her choices. MYOFB. There’s no need to struggle.
HSAL
Yes, I had a longer post but basically this. You think it’s odd? Don’t do it, problem solved.
Anon
I have no idea. Travel is by far my biggest non-family passion, I’ve been to 50+ countries and my husband and I occasionally leave our daughter with her grandparents to do some travel that’s essentially impossible with kids. But I can’t imagine choosing to celebrate a special occasion in my life without my daughter there. It wouldn’t be a “celebration” to me if I didn’t have my family with me.
Anonymous
I agree. I also think it’s interesting to see the double standard here. A few months ago a poor woman wrote about how her husband would go on golf outings on the weekend leaving her with a young child and everyone was up in arms. And now here is a woman going off for a week leaving a kid in diapers and everyone is like — go girl? And on the mom page yesterday, the woman was leaving her kids with her husband for 2 WEEKS!! I mean, come on. Have your celebration, go away for a day or two, but 2 weeks is excessive.
emma
I travel for work a lot (usually a week- sometimes 2). We have a 3yo and my husband is happy to spend the time solo with our daughter. It’s special bonding time for them and he knows that the time for me to get done what I have to get done is important too for my career and our family. Once a year I go on a girl’s weekend trip with my bffs from law school as well. My husband is totally welcome to do the same, but he’s just not interested. The only thing that matters is that the 2 spouses agree on this, not what we think. Different strokes for different folks.
Anon
I thought of the woman whose husband golfed all the time too.
JB
1. Why do you care?
2. Maybe she wanted to spend more time with the friend. Maybe it was also a milestone for that person. Maybe her partner couldn’t take the time off or wasn’t interested in visiting that location. A 5 year old doesn’t carry about his/her parent’s birthdays or any other milestone.
Anonymous
Of course she’d be defensive you’re being judgmental and asking her this is rude. Life is long and there’s plenty of time to love your family and spend a week doing something without them. It’s baffling to me that you need explanation of this
LLBMBA
I have 2 kids – 4.5 and 1. They are the loves of my lives and I dedicate so much of my life to them and their happiness. But if I had the opportunity to celebrate a milestone (birthday or otherwise) with a friend, I would jump at it. Room to sleep? Think? Have adult conversation without the baby throwing things on the floor, falling over trying to walk, knocking over his brother’s towers, ripping pages in the book we are trying to read? Time to put myself first instead of my kids, for a short burst? Planning a day of things that I want to do without regard to nap schedules? Sounds like bliss.
anon
I haven’t done it personally, but I don’t think there’s any rationale needed. I know a few people who have taken birthday trips, and for them, it’s less about celebrating a birthday and more about having a “good” reason to travel somewhere they’ve always wanted to go. A child in diapers doesn’t care about a parent’s birthday, anyway.
Frankly, I was sort of floored by the judginess in yesterday’s post. Definitely did not expect that from this community, which seems very pro-independence. I feel like my mom stepped into this group or something.
Anonymous
Why is it any different because she’s an “older” mom? Are older moms supposed to be even more selflessly devoted to their children?
CL
Sounds like OP has some hang up or jealousy towards this woman. That’s biz only between said woman and family. I’m guessing you don’t study various dads with the same microscope.
Falstaff
Any time spent with a small child is work. Even when it is fun or sweet or rewarding, it is still work. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate a special occasion than taking a break from work.
asdfjkl;
I have a kid in diapers. I love kid and my spouse dearly but right now home life is a lot of work and not much relaxation. Honestly, for my birthday I almost asked if DH could take solo parenting for the night while I met some friends in a bar.
Annonnnn
You should still ask for this.
asdfjkl;
I did, and he did it (and the cocktails were awesome). But I didn’t ask for it on my birthday because I didn’t want to send the message that friends are more important to me than spouse and kid. They aren’t, of course, but the reality is that I get lots of spouse/kid time now and while friend time is in short supply!
Alana
It’s wonderful that you were able to do what you wanted and avoid what you didn’t want to do.
I think some people are forgetting that friends are more likely to keep plans or make an effort for a birthday or milestone birthday than a typical Saturday, so perhaps the trip is happening during a milestone birthday because it was easier to convince the friend to go along.
Anon
I did this. It was glorious. He even let me be hungover the next morning (3 glasses of wine between apps, dinner and dessert! wooo!). I also told DH I didn’t want to wash a single bottle or change a diaper on my birthday. So I didn’t. Sometimes you need a break. From work, from spouses, from friends, from life, from kids. Mental health is real and stepping away to hit reset and make you better in the long run is applauded.
Also, OP, MYOFB. Your comment is laced with so many judgments that I can’t even begin to dissect it.
Anon
Would you be posting if you saw this woman’s husband go off for a week on a trip, leaving his wife at home with a child with diapers? I’m thinking no.
Anon
Not OP, but I’d absolutely have the same reaction if a guy did it. If anything I’d judge a guy harder, because I’d assume he’s (likely) carrying even less of the load at home on a daily basis and so he has less justification for needing a break. Not everything is about sexism, and not everyone who thinks parents should prioritize their families is perpetuating a double standard between men and women.
anon
Your comment (and OP’s ‘bafflement’) assumes without showing that taking a trip that happens to fall over a birthday constitutes “not prioritizing your family.” It’s a myopic and narrow-minded way of thinking.
Anon
OP, I completely agree with you and I’m sorry you’re getting jumped on. But think about who the audience is here. Most people here believe it’s normal for both parents to work outside the home 60+ hours per week and for their kids to be raised by a combination of nannies and au pairs. Of course they think parents should take luxury child-free vacations all the time. The women who read here are not representative of most moms. Nobody I know in real life would dream of doing this.
anonymous
just lol @ the mommy martyrs.
Anon
You sound fun. You’re going to make an exceptional mother in law one day. Now excuse me, I have to go actively ignore my kids and selfishly pursue my career.
Anon
You seem to be saying that just because something isn’t “normal” (making lots of money, working 60+ hour weeks, taking luxury child-free vacations) means that it’s also “wrong.” Do you really think people should aspire to be “normal”? People should do what works for them and not worry about what’s normal.
Anon
Lololol, do you even go here?
Anon
“I’m not close enough to the person to chat about it and I know she’d be defensive, it’s her personality.”
Maybe ask yourself why you are wasting so much headspace speculating about the motives of an acquaintance who you clearly don’t like for whatever reason.
Anon
Hoooolllyyyy crapppp I don’t even know where to begin with this question.
Anonymous
I’ll do better than your frenemy who left for a week to celebrate her birthday: for my 30th birthday I dragged my husband and 10-month-old son to Vegas to meet up with my oldest, closest friends and stuck my husband babysitting one night while I went out to bars with my friends until 4 a.m. Then got on the plane home seriously hung over and nearly barfed all over my kid in the Ergo carrier during takeofff. How’s that for selfish? Takes the cake, huh? I think I can see you recoiling through my computer screen! Honestly, it would have been better for me to have left my husband and son at home because the trip was really for me, not for them. (I will just say, my husband said he actually had a great time – he said he had a much better evening putting our son to bed and watching HBO instead of going to the clerrrb with me and trying to dance and dealing with drunk idiots.)
We have referred to business trips as “working mom vacations” on this site before so I’m not understanding what is so difficult about this concept. Case in point, I just went on a weeklong family vacation and came back more tired than when I left because when we are on “vacation,” we stay in rental houses/condos so I still grocery shop, cook, do laundry, argue with my son about screen time, clean up the rental condo, etc. I am also the default event planner and attraction researcher and yet somehow, we always end up at a virtual reality game center instead of at the art museum. I’m going on a business trip over a weekend later this month and I cannot wait. Four days with only myself to manage? I can eat out and expense all my meals? My company-paid hotel room comes with free housekeeping? OMG I’m in heaven. THAT, my dear, is why your friend went on vacation by herself. Because she is probably waaaay over taking care of and catering to other people and wanted some FREAKING TIME to her FREAKING SELF to do what SHE wanted without having to argue with, cajole, or persuade anyone.
By the way – do you have her number? She sounds cool. I’d like to give her a call. Maybe she’d be interested in taking the trip to L.A. with me to go to art museums and cool funky restaurants that my husband and son won’t even consider.
pugsnbourbon
I like the cut of your jib. I love going to art museums, all by my selfish self:)
Chanelling Ina here
I would like to invest in a quality white poplin shirt. kinda like the ones Ina Garten wears. Club Monaco ? Ralph Lauren?
Miss
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/30/movies/female-movie-critic-metoo.html?action=click&module=Features&pgtype=Homepage
I just read this article in the New York Times and am curious what other people think. Last year I made the decision to focus my entertainment choices on stories that feature women. Unless something is truly exceptional I won’t watch a movie or tv show with no women in key roles (not just token girlfriend/spouse, but a personality and a storyline). I also read almost all women authors.
Anonymous
The author sounds lazy.
Mme Defarge
I love me some Agatha Christie!
But I watch a lot of ID while I knit. Women are, in this order, victims, mothers of victims, sisters of victims, daughters of victims, prosecutors, medical staff, police, perpetrators.
Anon
I never read male authors. I read plenty of them in college, I don’t need another white male’s viewpoint. Even when it comes to fiction, I don’t enjoy male authors as much.
anon
+1
Anon
I exclusively read books with female main characters. I just don’t care about men. I also don’t really watch movies without major female characters in them. For example, I hate Lord of the Rings because it’s a universe of men.
Anon
A random question for any finance/legal/credit card point gurus here. My boyfriend is pushing me to get a Southwest Business Credit Card for the points and companion pass for two years. I have a small passion project/side hustle sole proprietorship remote consulting practice (brings in ~$1500/mo), and have almost zero business expenses. He claims I can put all our personal spending on the business credit card linked to my business checking account to accrue point bonuses, and write my business a check from my personal account to reimburse to keep it kosher. This feels a little skeevy to me. Any advice? Am I being a prude? I have not incorporated to LLC, have no employees, etc.
Annonnnn
You need to set up an LLC to protect yourself and your assets. It costs around $100 dollars in most states and is incredibly easy to do. You don’t need a lawyer. Use your state’s forms – very easy.
I would never in a million years comingle business and personal funds or expenses. I am risk averse, but there is no reason to open yourself up for additional liability by comingling. I would definitely not use my business card for personal expenses to be reiumbursed out of my personal accounts. If someone sues you for something related to your business, they have a MUCH better argument that your personal assets are comingled and they can go after those too.
Anon
He claims you can put all of “our” personal spending on the card?? Regardless of whether you get this card, I would not put any of his personal spending on your business card.
cbackson
Be aware that a small business credit card does not necessarily include the consumer protections that you are used to having on a personal credit card. It may also complicate your tax filing (if you have difficulty tracking what spending was for your business and which was personal). It’s also technically a violation of the cardholder agreement for the business card, although it’s unlikely that the bank would realize you were doing it.
emma
I am an avid (like 10 yrs running) companion pass holder and sw card . I wouldn’t co-mingle funds w/ a business, but you can absolutely apply & get a business card as an individual. That said, I work for a company and do charge my expenses to my personal card & then they reimburse me. It’s super easy to get to companion pass status w/ the promos- It used to take me about 6 months, but now w/ a kid & daily life adult expenses I get there in about 3 (or last year, without promos at all *cringe*). Just know what you are doing and research it first because the timing is critical as well as a few other important factors (how many other cards you’ve opened in the last 2 yrs, which cards, etc). The points guy is a great resource. Your bf can do this in his name instead as well if it’s his thing and you aren’t into it (& then add you as his companion).
Sleepless in DC
This is not work-related, but sleepwear affects our working lives, right? Does anyone have a recommendation for pajama bottoms that are tight at the ankle — either that have elastic bands at the ankles, or comfortable sleep tights? I splurged on pajama pants from Boden a few years ago. I love them and they’re super durable, but as soon as I get in bed, they end up crunched up around my knees, which is less-warm, and mildly annoying. Thanks, all!
lsw
I am obsessed with waffle knit leggings. I don’t find regular leggings comfortable, but these are more like…tight joggers. I got three pairs from Old Navy 5-6 years ago and I wear them all the time. They look like long john bottoms.
Anon
I have some from The Gap that I like.
EM84
This is my nightmare and a reason why I wear exclusively comfortable breathable 7/8 or full-length leggings as bottom part of my sleepwear. I like Gap breathe leggings (have also seen they have sleepwear joggers with elastic at ankle) or my merino Icebreaker leggings. All year round.
Greensleeves
I’m not sure if I’m too late, but I just got several pair of very comfy jogger-style pajama pants from Target!
Anon
This isn’t AAM, your comments don’t have to be work related.
Sleepless in DC
Amazing, thanks for these great ideas.
reui
Burt’s Bees Baby Women’s Pajamas.