ByElizabeth Hours Updated
Comments 179 Comments

Thursday’s Workwear Report: Tweed Cardigan Sweater Lady Jacket

This post may contain affiliate links and Corporette® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

A woman wearing a white cardigan top and soft leather pants

Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.

The lady jacket is one of my favorite fall looks, and this tweed-y version from J.Crew Factory really knocks it out of the park. If you need to look put-together for work but also need to feel a little bit cozy to convince yourself to get out of bed before the sun is up, this is just the ticket.

It comes in camel and black/beige, which are both perfect neutrals for just about any outfit.

The sweater is $69 at J.Crew Factory and comes in sizes XXS-3X. 

Sales of note for 5/21/25:

179 Comments

  1. I have worked remotely for almost a decade. I work far more than 40 hours per week and travel fairly frequently. Although we have a Slackish window that indicates whether I am in or out, neither my boss nor anyone else has ever indicated they are watching it.

    WHY, then, do I still feel guilty for running out to a midmorning exercise class once a week?

    1. Well there’s currently a massive propaganda effort to guilt trip anyone who wants to WFH, so if you’re at all in tune to media discourse, it might help to consciously avoid internalizing it!

    2. Don’t!! If you were at the office, you would be spending the same amount of time chatting with colleagues or going to get coffee or any of the myriad ways we waste time at the office.

      1. There are also definitely offices where people duck out to go to the gym once a week!

    3. Feeling guilty confirms that you are NOT part of the problem. I am “on call” while doing anything even on a slow day WFH, so I routinely bump the fun thing when work intrudes (even after hours; biglaw). IMO the problem is people refusing to be on calls because it seems like they are have yoga or are in a tennis league requiring multiple full mornings every week and refusing to yield to work during the typical workday hours.

      1. Serious question, Anon at 10:12: I have a 90-minute period locked out on my calendar at this time every week, so that if someone internal is looking at my calendar and wants to schedule a meeting, they will see it is not available. Does this make me an offender? If a client or someone external wants to meet during that period and it seems to work for everyone else, I will skip the class and schedule a meeting during my precious Thursday,

        1. No- you are not the offender, especially if you are willing to skip the class & schedule a meeting then. I would encourage you to try to reschedule it if it gets moved though. I’ve recently had to start blocking off exercise on my calendar so that I actually go do it.

          Also, I have a weekly standing therapy appointment- both my therapist & I move it if we need to, but otherwise it’s a block on my calendar. No one has to know why you are blocking time on your calendar.

        2. I think this varies by office norms and how hard it is schedule meetings at your company. It definitely adds work for me when I have to go around to all the participants and ask if their 1:00 is a real conflict or reschedulable, etc. And by the time you get a response, a /different/ participant is no longer available, etc. But the biggest contributor to the problem is people getting invited to and accepting meetings they don’t really need to be at, and don’t typically attend, not gym breaks.

    4. Stockholm syndrome?
      I skip out and feel zero guilt. They get that time back at 5am when I’m in an airport or 9pm when I’m on a call with California.

      1. own it. it’s a power move, says “I have my s–t done and priorities in order” i did it for years. it’s not practical now for specific reasons but i still try to walk out and take a walk in the middle of the day.

    5. I work in the office and I still go to late morning exercise classes if I can’t make my early morning class.

    6. I’m with you, but I try to manage the guilt. My spin class lasts 45 minutes. I won’t go if I’m wrapping up something urgent, but on a regular day, nothing I do cannot wait 45 minutes. As my boss likes to remind us, we are not heart surgeons, no one is dying if I answer an email an hour later. No one has ever complained, but people at my old job were neurotic and I internalized that a little bit.

    7. I think the issues with WFH and people stepping away really come not from salaried positions, as much as hourly, where people are getting paid for time they aren’t actually working. You’re on the clock, but you’re on your peloton at the same time.

    8. It’s the work culture right now. When I worked 80-100 hours a week, I felt guilty to even eat a regular meal during the day.

  2. I am behind on work. No clients are complaining – urgent things are popping up and getting done – but today I’m supposed to take the day for family (school field trip) and I feel guilty about leaving things undone, and guilty for being with family, and then guilty for feeling guilty about family time. UGH. I don’t know how to get out of this guilt trap.

    1. I am also behind (and covering two jobs right now, so YMMV, but this is my ethos regardless). I frame it like this: I spend a lot of hours at work, and am often working long beyond the hours that are expected of me to handle the volume of work. I’m dedicated to my job and clients and my coworkers.

      But if I burn out, it helps no one. And if I were to leave or die, my firm would be sad, but they’d replace me. There is no replacement for me in my family, and my time with them makes me a happier and more well-roudned person, which bleeds over into the work I am doing for my clients and the firm.

      That’s a long way of saying: I see you. But you are more than your productivity, and you’re doing important stuff today.

    2. One of the best things I did for myself was let the guilt go. I will do things when I do them – guilt does not change any of that. Enjoy your family day!

      I let things go during the pandemic because my life was actually impossible, so I don’t have advice about how to do that in a normal world.

    3. Go on the field trip! Enjoy it. Your kids will remember it forever. No one on their deathbed every said “I really regret not working that one extra day to get caught up in 2024. Do your best and do not feel guity about not hitting some hypothetical level of success.

  3. Pulling out all of my cashmere sweaters and noticing all the pilling. Can anyone recommend a sweater shaver?

    1. Following.

      I am having pilling on the chub-rub area of my pants (pants that fit!). Is this just how tweedy wool pants are (vs worsted tropical weight wool)?

    2. I like a thing called The Gleaner. It has several shaver attachments of varying fineness, like sandpaper grit. And I’ve found that no matter what tool I use, the keys to success are a) stretching the sweater tightly while shaving it, and b) accepting that it takes much longer than I want to get the sweater looking as good as I want it to.

    3. I have one that looks like this. Amazon has a bunch of them under different rando brands.

      https://a.co/d/2Ds2vRN

      There’s another thing called a Sweater Stone that is good for large pills like you get under the arms of a bulkier knit. As a knitter I prefer that to cutting the fibers, but I’m not sure I’d use it on a fine knit like cashmere.

      1. Sweater Stone is great! For finer knits like cashmere, I like The Laundress’s Sweater Comb.

    4. I have a Conair fabric shaver. I take the batteries out to store it & have had it for several years of occasional use. It’s pretty foolproof.

      1. i really can’t understand how someone can say it’s not a big deal. one thing to say you don’t believe in it but to suggest that having a kid you don’t want is simply no big deal is completely insane.

        1. If I recall right, they thought it was no big deal because (1h women could just travel and get an abortion in another state and (2) they would never need an abortion.

      2. I’m like 90% convinced we have some regular bridge dwellers, particularly on the PM threads & later comments on the AM ones.

    4. I note the irony of people complaining about double rooms, suggesting hospitals make all rooms negative pressure rooms to avoid illness/COVID, retrofit existing rooms to single rooms, yet there was just a discussion the other day about how out of hand hospital costs are and what you can do to avoid paying or reduce your co-pay. The average cost to build a new hospital is $70-$190M, and yes, a new bed tower is not the same cost as building an entire hospital, but it can even exceed that if you have to relocate utilities and loading docks etc in order to make room for the bed tower.

      1. We need to expand hospital capacity anyway. I don’t know why today’s wealthy aren’t building new medical schools and hospitals the way they used to. And if hospital stays are expensive, then we need better infection control. Hospital acquired COVID has much worse prognosis than community acquired and leads to longer hospital stays.

        I know one thing that drives up costs: when a private equity firm buys the hospital, sells the land out from underneath it, and then collects rent!

          1. They clearly won’t; we’ve obviously let up on whatever social pressure led them to give back to communities in the past. So we need public investment in expanding hospital capacity and training up new staff.

  5. An older relative just went to the ER, then the hospital (double room with thin curtain and two TVs), then a nursing home (same). IDK how Gen Z will do when this happens to them since they seem to not be used to live human contact, much less live human contact 24/7, including shared bathrooms and bedpans. For my relative (long married, never lived alone as an adult, had in-person job for 40+ years), it was a shock. [For me, I guess at some point you don’t care, but my relative did when he was locked out of a shared bathroom or less lucid residents wandered into his room and wouldn’t leave and he had to call for help.]

    1. It’s a practice that needs to end anyway; there’s no way a thin curtain prevents hospital acquired infections that are airborne. It will take a while for laws and regulations to catch up with the science, but hopefully unsafe practices will also become liabilities in time.

      1. My mom got facility acquired COVID in a private room, so as long as humans are moving back and forth and doors are opening, germs are going to germ.

        1. If the hospital chose to forego airborne transmission prevention protocols, this is expected. There’s no facility acquired COVID in the TB ward, because the HVAC system is set up to minimize the risks of things like doors opening, and the staff are wearing respirators, not procedure masks. Procedure masks are known to be inadequate source control and current CDC guidelines state this clearly, but there’s currently no enforcement.

          The issue with shared rooms is that patients can’t be expected to mask consistently the way staff can.

          1. It is not just a HVAC system for Tb isolation. It requires negative pressure which is more complex and require physical differences (some need anteroom)

          2. Negative pressure can get transmission down to zero, but even just isolation of + patients and consistent use of respirators can get transmission down to a rare phenomenon instead of a common one. We have studies on this by now.

      2. A big problem is that facilities are already built, so IDK how you retrofit for that. Do what hotels do with dividers? But shared baths between rooms are hard to move. For maternity wards, those are largely new builds in my area (high growth); IDK how you do that in a dense older city like NYC or Boston.

        1. Maternity rooms used to be shared in my east coast city, and all of the hospitals just did remodels so they are all single rooms now. Hospitals could do the same for all rooms, but I don’t see that happening because of cost issues. Maternity is one of the few areas where people pick hospitals based on things like what the rooms are like

          1. Agreed on maternity — often, it’s “we deliver at Hospital X”, so you check that out and people really won’t pick a double. Otherwise, how many hospital admissions are planned? In our family, everything has been outpatient/planned where they won’t keep you or an emergency where you may not even be in your city and are initially happy just to be alive.

    4. my girlfriend (millennial) is a frequent flier in hospitals due to chronic stuff; in her last stint her roomie drank a melted ice pack for attention :D

      1. Oh, no. This is not good. When my dad got discharged from a hospital to rehab, there was one person on his hallway who was just yelling incoherently. That was really distressing (to him, to me, likely to staff). At least no one was violent (which I understand can happen and even with dementia patients, they can get violent and it’s not their fault but it becomes everyone’s problem).

    5. What? You’re worried about how gen z will fare in 60 years when they’re in the nursing home? Like really you seriously spend mental energy on this?

      1. OTOH, at work, they complain that calling them when they WFH is too intrusive and that we need to text first, so there may be something to this.

        1. In my experience, is common office courtesy to ask someone if you can call them before doing so (if it’s a Teams call). It’s not a Gen Z thing.

          2. Yeah, I agree. “Do you have time for a quick call?” was *very* much a thing when I was in Big Law more than a decade ago, working with primarily Gen X associates and Boomers partners (I’m a very elder millennial).

        2. I don’t think this is a Gen Z thing. It’s become routine for people of all generations to send a quick Teams message saying “hey do you have a sec for X topic” rather than cold calling.

          1. Cold calling is something else entirely though.

            This is just “calling”, which we have to do now that no one is in the office.

          2. The people who call without a Teams message first tend to also be the people who don’t check to see if you’re already in another call before calling.

        3. I’m an elder millennial, and I prefer when people ask me if I have a minute before calling me out of the blue. It’s even better if they tell me what they want to talk about first. I like to take a minute to finish my current task or make a note of where I’m leaving off, pull up my notes or documents on the topic to be discussed, and turn to a fresh sheet of notebook paper. (This takes 2-5 minutes.) If you call me while I’m really focused on Task A and launch into a discussion of Task B, chances are good that for the first couple of minutes, I won’t process anything and, if required to speak, will ramble incoherently.

          That said, I always pick up the phone when someone calls and would never dream of telling my boss or anyone outranking me that their call was too intrusive. I just do my part to influence my workplace culture by giving a heads up before calling people.

          1. I have tried “can I give you a call about X this afternoon,” and often get “I’m busy” whereas if I call, the phone gets picked up (so it’s more of a preference vs an “I can’t.” But TBH it’s work and if I need to talk to you about this this afternoon, trust that I need to. What I hate, is people ducking e-mail responsiveness and also ducking calls (so our work is counseling many people out at the moment and talking to our HR screeners about tightening things up for hiring and never hiring anyone where we are their first job b/c some of these kids just don’t get it; sure, they’ve been an “intern,” but even waiting tables or at Walmart would have informed them better about how to be a worker better).

      1. I’m a millennial who had a 3-night stay in the hospital for pneumonia. My roommate was there for lord knows what but was taking daily doses of a medicine used for people in withdrawal (can’t remember the name now and not searching for that on my work computer…) and had all the figurative baggage that one might assumes with a patient under that level/type of care brings with them, including choice visitors. I don’t think anyone gets used to that. It’s not a generational thing, OP.

      2. Yup. I’ve always lived with either a family or roommates in a variety of iterations, and sharing a hospital room when I’m unwell sounds awful.

    7. my mother had this in a rehab facility and it was miserable until we were able to get her moved to a private room. germs aside, i also think that HIPPA violations must be happening left and right bc whoever you share your room with can hear anything your medical team says to you.

      1. In my dad’s case, to judge by the TV volume, no one can hear.

        OTOH, lots of local family visits by your roommate’s family can be good for the roommate but drive you nuts, especially if you have the side of the room that they have to go through to get to their person’s side of the curtain.

        We didn’t think my mom would live very long, so we opted for a private room, which was double the single rate (because the business model was for both sides of the room to have a paying person in it).

        1. i’m the Anon at 10:23 and my mom wasn’t super elderly. she had brain surgery and had some mobility limitations bc of where the tumors were located and so she had to go to rehab after. This is also common in NYC for women delivering babies, to have to share a room. I promise they can hear. or even if the patients can’t, their visiting family members can

          1. I can’t imagine birthing a baby with non-participatory non-medical strangers.

            FWIW, I have a POA and am the person for medical decisions with full HIPPA waivers and even then, I get “but it’s not on my form” or disregard of an advance directive (in NJ, it also needs to be on a POLST because no provider will look up or read an advance directive and I swear a glyph would be better than the system they have now).

      2. It’s HIPAA, not HIPPA. But there’s definitely no privacy. It’s embarrassing that HIPAA has had a chilling effect on medical collaboration while random community members still get to hear all the gory details of our medical history!

    8. aren’t the youngest Gen Zers not even in college yet? worry about that first. lots of togetherness there, too.

      1. While I know there are horror stories, I think shared dorms in college is a lot easier because students have more in common (shared age, shared goals, shared lifestyle to an extent) and are generally in college because they want to be. (And when things go very wrong often it’s because one student is an outlier in one of those areas.) Students also have RAs and housing administrators to help resolve issues when they do arise.

        I remember some friends going through a bit of a rough transition from dorm mates to roommates because roommates were more of a wild card in comparison!

    9. I was in the hospital for three days a few months ago. I felt like hell, and was in a double room where I had a rotation of three different roommates. It was extremely noisy and uncomfortable, and I couldn’t even use our shared bathroom because two of them were incapable of hitting the toilet apparently.

      There has to be a better way.

    10. I agree with you, the younger gen is in for a wake up call if they have to lose their physical privacy. I’m a millennial and went through this myself. I was an only child, always had my own things and physical privacy. Going to college was a wake up call for me- roommates, shared bathrooms, noise, people eating my peanut butter. Then I went to visit the country where my mom was born and the public bathrooms were shared, and barely more than pits in the ground, no dividers. It wasn’t until then that I realized that the physical privacy I was used to was a massive privilege.

  6. I am an Old. I finally heard Paris Paloma’s Labour and OMG it just hit me hard (eldest daughter and granddaughter, BigLaw Equity partner mom of two teen girls). I saw the video and my mind instantly went to QE1, who may be the OG for a woman who opts out of marriage and children because she has really seen how there is likely nothing but downsides in it. [I married fairly late and spouse is a solid B+, so it’s not a complaint personally, more like how our fates are so wrecked by choosing the wrong partner and becoming a parent with the wrong person and even being a parent is such a limiting factor in what ever else is able to happen after.]

    1. 100%, I think the country is in for a serious reckoning as the Baby Boomers age – the labor of women/daughters is not the same as a functioning social safety net and there simply is no plan in place for many elderly people other than ‘pay through the nose’. Millenials/Gen X are already dealing with this and I would not be surprised if our own children see what we’re going through and then opt out of having children altogether as it is just so, so hard on so many levels in a way it really shouldn’t be.
      I’m in my 40s and have two teens (elder millenial, young Gen-X with boomer parents on both sides). I’ve already had to take leaves of absence to provide emergency respite care for parents and my SILs have had to do the same. I have worked since my children were born at a ‘medium’ job and feel like a freaking unicorn – there is literally not one single full time working mom (who has worked the whole way through) in either of my kid’s classes as it is just so freaking hard to balance it all.

    2. Back maybe before the 1960s, I think that the nuns of the world were also a bit onto this. It was that or stay home and care for your parents the rest of their lives if you didn’t marry to get out of the house.

        1. And how do you even get pushback when it’s G-d calling you? [OTOH, not all religions have nuns. IDK what women in those religions / cultures / regions did.]

      2. I honestly think the religious life is a little underrated. It makes me wish the nuns who were trying to bring reform to their religion had been more successful so it were a less untenable possibility for people today.

      3. I’ve always thought it seemed like a decent option. You could be interested in history or art or medicine or something, and wouldn’t have to marry, and it was perfectly socially acceptable.

        1. The book ‘Matrix’ was a really interesting look into the power than nuns and abbesses had at certain points in time. Unfortunately they were then often targeted by royals or bishops as the wealth/lands/crops were seen as easy pickings.

          2. Yes, recommend! This book was strange and illuminating. Lauren Groff is maybe a genius? I don’t like all her stuff, but girl can WRITE.

        2. I work in humanitarian aid and I’m kind of jealous of the nuns who work at the border. They get to fully focus on the mission and not worry about a spouse or kids or a house or bills back home. It’s cool to be able to fully give yourself to the mission

          Unfortunately I’m not that religious (and my denomination (not Catholic!!!) has nuns but they’re rare and thus don’t have the support, funds, or resources of Catholic nuns

      4. I just finished reading/ listening to The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott. They kind of cover this a little – it’s not parental care, but fear of marriage/childbirth she mentions, and her book is set during an era when women had few choices other than marriage – possibly to a brutal man or a man that would continuously impregnate you until you died in childbirth with your 8th, 9th, 10th baby.

        But the orders of nuns who served the poor did a lot of the dirty work of nursing the infirm, so it doesn’t sound like it was a great alternative to having to care for aging parents. Unlike the priesthood, nuns are expected to be constantly in service and not just contemplating the glory of god.

        1. This varies wildly depending on the order. There are plenty of orders of nuns who dedicate their lives to prayer. Just as there are priests (and monks) who dedicate their lives to service rather than prayer.

  7. DH and I are looking to hire a nanny for when we both go back to work, likely in May 2025. Any recommendations about where to begin, how to start looking, what to ask, what to expect in terms of cost and services, and more? We’re in northern NJ.

    1. Cost varies quite a lot based on hours, benefits you offer, if you pay in cash vs. payroll, and number of children. I’m in the Boston suburbs, we have 2 older kids (teen, tween) who aren’t driving yet and pay $26/hr cash for a guaranteed 25 hrs/week, and typically give a dollar/hr raise every year. The sitter is more of a house manager now (runs errands, does laundry, takes in packages, feeds pets) as the kids are older. In terms of benefits we provide a car and pay for gas, offer all federal holidays off (when we’re off the sitter is off but she works random school holidays), plus a week at christmas and 5 sick days. We also give a week of pay as a Christmas bonus. We pay in cash, otherwise we’d have to go up to at least $32/hr.

      1. +1 to this. You can search on local Facebook groups for nanny recommendations. Families often age out or move and want to help their nanny find a new job.

        Re timing, it is much too early to start looking now, unless you find someone who is moving at the end of the school year and giving up their nanny then.

        1. +1 – we found our sitter via a ‘sitters of my town’ facebook group. We did in fact get her at the start of the school year as she was leaving her previous family in August. Longevity was a plus – our current sitter was with her previous family from when the kids were 4-18 (and helped move them into college) so we trusted that she had LOTS of experience with all ages.

    2. How familiar are you with wage and hour laws? And workers’ comp obligations as an employer? I recommend using a payroll service vs trying to do that yourself. I used the one through care dot com (affiliated company).

    4. Search on Facebook for your local childcare group — rates vary greatly based on town, number of kids, number of hours, and whether you are paying OTT.

    5. We are across the border from you (Rockland County, NY) and we pay $39.50/hour (on the books, non-negotiable due to both of our jobs, and it was surprisingly difficult to find someone willing to be paid on the books). 40 hours/week. Two kids – one just started pre-school in September so she’s really watching one kid full-time and one kid for 2 hours/day and on days schools are closed. 10 days holiday, 5 days sick. Plus any days we take off she gets off. No driving. We used two nanny agencies and looked on care.com and ended up finding her on care.com. We use their affiliate (homepay) for payroll and taxes. She takes care of the kids and does kid-related stuff (laundry, dishes, food prep if needed although i like doing that myself so it is rarely needed), organizing books/toys, and will do other things if they need doing (like vacuuming – we have a lab who loves to shed).

    6. It depends largely what you’re looking for want a nanny with an ECE diploma, working on the books, teaching your kid a second language? That’s going to be way more expensive than someone who just wants cash and doesn’t have credentials. One is certainly more ethical than the other.

  8. uggggh huge headache today. for those of you who suffer more frequently, how do you get work done?

    1. Two excedrine migraine pills, large fountain coke (full sugar) and either McDonalds fries or whatever salty carb sounds best (Lays potato chips are my backup). If you can – close your eyes in a dark room while you wait for the meds to kick in – 30 minutes usually does it. If you have naseau too, bonine (1, not 2) will help without too much drowsiness.

      1. Excedrine is the only thing that works for me. I need it once a day for half of my cycle.

    2. I woke up with a monster headache today too. Mine are mostly under control at this point (new gen migraine meds have been lifechanging for me), but when I got them more frequently, I would make a list of the absolute bare minimum and only worry about getting that done. Try to be kind to yourself.

    3. How frequent are yours? I have chronic migraines and I haven’t been able to find a reliable relief yet. They are particularly bad during my periods.

      1. Do you have a headache neurologist yet at a major medical center. Get on a waiting list now if you can. Life can be better.

          1. Sadly there are many not great doctors. keep trying (new one), or travel to see an expert, and keep rotating the meds.

      2. Have you tried any of the injection meds? I just posted above, and I know it doesn’t work for everyone, but Ajovy has taken me from 15 headache days/month down to one headache every few months. Never thought I’d be here.

    4. I’m with you. I’ve had a headache every day for a week. I think it’s the change of seasons.

      I have occasional migraines with aura but this isn’t it. I finally took one of the Ubrelvy tablets I take for those. Nothing else has worked.

      1. Do you notice anything different when you have an aura vs. not? Perhaps severity, pain location, etc.

        1. Yes I have more light sensitivity and loss of mental sharpness with an aura migraine, and honestly they don’t last for days, though I might feel sort of hung over the day after an aura migraine.

          Those are no fun, but this 7 day headache business is for the birds.

  9. Just scheduled my first mammogram (yay being 40) and they warned me that my insurance will be charged both by my provider and by the hospital due to the kind of medical facility this is. People with more experience: would this be true if any facility that’s doing mammograms (because the equipment is hospital-based) or should I look into other options that might not drain my insurance so much?

    1. I’d look into other options. My obgyn offers mamograms and ultrasounds in office so I do them both with my yearly appointment. It takes nearly a full morning but at least it’s just one place to go.

    2. I’ve never gotten a bill even (city where most practices are hospital-owned and the mamo place was an outpatient xray place affiliated with my OB and owned by the same nonprofit hospital chain). It helped that my provider was able to pull it up on MyChart, so make sure any other place talks to the EMR system your OB practice uses.

      1. +1

        you should be 100% covered since it is preventative care guaranteed by the ACA. Doesn’t matter where it is done or how they bill.

    3. Your mammogram should be fully covered by insurance without you having to pay a copay or deductible. Your insurance company will have allowable amounts worked out with both the provider and facility as long as they are in network. Is there a reason you’re worried about draining your insurance company?

      Whether the mammogram has one or two charges doesn’t really matter to your insurance company. Typically, the imaging center charges for the technical component, and the interpreting provider charges a professional component. If your doctor’s office does the imaging and a doctor in that practice does the interpretation, they bill it as a “global” fee, and the amount they get paid is the sum of the allowables for the technical and professional components. The main factor that increases the charge to the insurer is the type of facility the imaging center is. Reimbursement is higher for an outpatient department of a hospital and for certain types of facilities (rural hospitals, critical access hospitals). But again, none of this is likely to affect you personally because a screening mammogram is fully covered without patient copays or deductibles. Go wherever is most convenient for you.

      1. Not worried about draining insurance company, sorry wasn’t clear. Worried about being double charged for the doctor plus the coinsurance on the hospital (I pay more for hospital visits). I wasn’t remembering that this was free preventative care.

    4. Screening mammograms are covered with no cost-sharing by (nearly) all private health insurance plans, Medicaid and Medicare. I would push back to ask WHY they are charging since it’s really not common. Are you getting a different type of imaging? Breast MRI, ultrasound, etc do come with cost-sharing, but a “regular” old mammogram should not come with cost-sharing at all, no matter where it happens.

      1. It’s not uncommon. I think there’s more press about it when it comes to preventive colonoscopies, which are also supposed to be covered with no cost sharing.

      2. Just a basic first time mammogram. Maybe what they were telling me was just boilerplate for any visit to their facility and it wouldn’t apply in my case…I will check.

    5. You should be able to get a mammogram without paying a facility fee (I did). Facility fees are a sneaky workaround to charging for preventive care that the ACA requires to be covered at no charge, but it’s not a universal practice.

    6. I have had success getting BS fees to disappear by asking “Since the ACA mandates this service be covered free of charge, can you share an itemized list of the costs you are referring to?”

    7. As an aside, go to the best place near you for mammograms, that have the best equipment and radiologists. Ideally, this is an academic hospital that is a cancer center. Have them done at the same place, same equipment every year.

      It really makes a difference.

      1. In what way does it make a difference? Do they catch things sooner than if you go to different facilities? Just make for a more comfortable experience?

        I have had three different mammograms at three different types of facilities and individually, each visit was fine. Scheduling is so tight that I just pick whatever one has an opening when my next appointment is due, and I’m wondering if I should instead spread them out further to keep it at the same place.

        1. Yes, things get caught sooner and follow-up care can often be quicker. it is much harder for a radiologists to compare prior scans if done on outside machines which may be different quality.

          i literally schedule my Mammograms a year ahead of time to make sure they are done on the same machine in our Womens Cancer center.

      2. You want to be able to compare them from year to year, so at minimum you need them to have access to the previous images. You also definitely want a 3d mammogram. After that, I’d say it’s probably more important that you just get them, but if going to a top cancer center won’t cause you to delay, then I’d probably do it (this isn’t feasible in many places, obviously).

  10. I’m bra shopping after losing some weight – any new smaller brands I should still consider, or should I just go straight to Natori?

    1. If you are 32 or smaller, specialty bra shops actually had ones to try on vs mall shops (often starting at 34).

    3. Measure yourself at home using the abrathatfits calculator and order multiple brands online.

        1. Bravissimo starts at a D cup, so not the place to go for small cups. Small backs, yes, but not small cups.

          1. But I am a 30D and I promise that I am not well endowed and practically flat. A big cup start sooner with a small band.

          2. True. I was surprised to learn that I was a DD cup once I was in the right band size though!

    4. Natori is infamous for shallow cups so it depends on your shape. I’d do the calculator at redd1t a bra that fits.

      1. I’d call them famous for this! But you are right that shape is key and that reddit calculator was how I correctly got directed to Natori.

  11. Recommendations for neck creams? Are there any firming creams that can help the appearance of sagging jowls?

    And has anyone done thread lifts?

    I talked to the plastic surgeon who does my Botox injections. He said my neck lines might look better with filler but it would be $3k and probably not give me the results I’m looking for. He suggested filler on either side of my chin to reduce the sagging appearance of jowls – but I feel like that would just make my face look puffy. He said next after that is a thread lift or face lift. I’m definitely not interested in a face lift, I’m only 40. He said my skin has good elasticity and I don’t have fat under/on my chin for something like kybella to make a difference. Anyone in a similar boat?

    1. Did he not mention sofwave or ultherapy? If you don’t want a facelift (or a lower facelift) those are both supposed to help with laxity and tightening. I’ve heard horror stories about threads so I’d avoid those.
      I’m on my second round of sofwave plus RF microneedling and it’s a really good minor tweak – I definitely notice a difference but it’s more ‘take 2-3 years off’ vs. a dramatic facelift style difference.

    2. One woman’s opinion here, but this is my approach: Step 1 is daily SPF, avoiding the sun, and tretinoin. Step 2 is botox. Step 3 will be lasers. Step 4 will eventually be a face lift, neck lift, or upper bleph if needed. Obviously surgery is a big deal and you need to weigh the risks. But I’ve seen too many cases of fillers gone wrong. You might look puffy and weird right off the bat, or it might look good at first but migrate over the years. That’s how you end up looking like scary real housewife. I don’t consider fillers a long term option.

    3. is it wishful thinking that extra moisturizer and weekly use of trentinoin will help? i usually mix the trent with moisturizer for my neck. and daily sunscreen on my neck and clavicle area.

      1. I mean, what you are doing is great. Then look at your Mom’s neck. That is likely your future.

    5. Skin cream with peptides for the neck. Don’t go with the fillers, stretching your skin out isn’t going to end up well.

  12. Sigh. Just a sad head shake after hearing yet another interview with a voter who’s voting for Trump because “the economy was better under Trump.” I wish more people understood how slowly the economy moves, how major businesses make decisions, how the government doesn’t wave a magic wand and make things happen, etc. A car company isn’t opening a new factory bc Trump is the president; that decision was started a decade ago. Just sigh. That’s all.

  13. Anyone voted yet? I think I’m going next Tuesday or Wednesday. Polling opens on Monday and I am nervous but also I want to get it done.

    1. Yes, permanent vote by mailer and it was so nice to just seal up the envelope and put it in the mailbox. The local elections in my town are really chapping my hide, it feels more personal and somehow uglier than the national stuff. Don’t get me wrong, the national election is also nerve-wracking, but the attacks on my friends and neighbors just keep coming.

    2. No early voting in my state, but I already submitted my mail in ballot as I’m on a 2 month work trip.

    5. I’m traveling during early voting, so Election Day for me, but our whole town is 1,800 people and you vote at town hall, so I think the crowds will be manageable ;)

    6. I was on work trips etc the last couple elections, so I don’t think I’ve ever voted in person on election day for a Presidential election. So I’m excited to do that.

    8. Our ballots arrived last week, but we took a weekend trip, so we’ll sit down to fill ’em out this weekend.

    9. I will be soon. I am a permanent vote by mail voter and have my ballot already. I am just not fully versed on local races and measures yet so not ready to do the whole thing today. Will soon!

    10. Yes, they expanded early voting to more locations and times this year, so I did it on my way home from work this week. I wish that meant I could stop thinking about it, but doubt that’ll be the case.

    11. I vote by mail and dropped my ballot off Tuesday evening. I had an email this morning that it had been scanned in.

  14. We talk about lasers often so I’m wondering if anyone with rosacea has done an Excel V treatment? My doctors (cosmetic derm and vascular surgeon) both recommend it for redness/broken capillaries/spider veins but it isn’t cheap so I’d love some IRL feedback.

  15. Is struggling with sleep right before your period a thing and why does it happen!? I noticed a pattern with early morning awakening at 5 am right before my period

    1. It is for me! And I also feel hot for no reason with no fever and often have diarrhea. Hate it all.

    4. Yes, it’s related to low estrogen at that point in your cycle! The decrease in estrogen is also why it happens in perimenopause/menopause

  16. Someone here recommended the podcast Dead Eyes, and it is very charming and low stakes. Many thanks for the recommendation!

    1. Agree! I am also listening. I think it was Senior Attorney’s rec.

      if you enjoy the style of that podcast, you may like Heavyweight.

    2. I love Dead Eyes! It is actually pretty deep, with themes of dealing with failure and how serendipity can shape our lives. I thought he took an absurd premise and did a lot with it. Happy listening!

    3. On the podcast topic, someone on here recommended Project Unabom and I just finished it. I thought it was really well made. Highly recommend.

  17. Anybody want to share their thoughts about the Harris interview with the Fox host/network?

    1. does that guy have any bonafides? he always seems like the definition of a blockhead to me.

Comments are closed.