Weekend Open Thread
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Something on your mind? Chat about it here.
I've liked J.Crew's Stevie boots since they introduced them a few years ago — but I do think their best selling Remi boot, with a sturdier heel, looks more comfortable.
They're calling it a square toe, which I suppose is technically correct because it has a squared toe at the very point…
The boots come in four colors, and are $298 at full price — but they're currently marked down to $176-$209, depending on the color.
Our favorite sleek but walkable boots for 2026 include the following… also check out comfort brands like Naot, Paul Green, Rothy's, and Dansko.
Sales of note for 1/15:
- Nordstrom – Designer clearance up to 70% off
- Ann Taylor – Up to 40% off your purchase, including new arrivals + extra 50% off sale
- Banana Republic Factory – Up to 50% off + extra 20% off
- Brooks Brothers – Extra 25% off clearance, already up to 60% off
- Express – 30-70% off all sweaters
- J.Crew – Up to 40% off peak-winter styles + up to 70% off sale styles
- J.Crew Factory – 40-70% off everything + extra 60% off clearance
- Lo & Sons – Winter sale, up to 50% off — reader favorites include this laptop tote, this backpack, and this crossbody
- M.M.LaFleur – Extra 25% off sale with code + try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
- Neiman Marcus – Up to 70% off select sale styles
- Talbots – Semi-Annual Red Door Sale! 50% off + extra 25% off all markdowns + Red Door Deals $24.50+
Hey! This is your reminder to Do The Thing! I just Did The Thing and I’m so glad to go into the weekend without it hanging over my head.
The best way to get the thing done during the workday is to make weekend plans. You can bet I’m busting my butt on this deliverable today so I can enjoy the massage I scheduled weeks ago tomorrow and the beach the day after that.
Long shot, but does anyone live in Lafayette, California? Thoughts on it as a town for families? Considering a work opportunity and I have heard good things but don’t really know very much about the area overall.
I live in Oakland, not Lafayette, but have friends there and in Walnut Creek and the surrounding area. It’s nice for families. There are lots of parks and outdoor amenities, plus a BART station for getting into Oakland, SF, or other areas. Lafayette has a cute downtown with restaurants and such. The Lindsay Wildlife Center is close by and a hit with kids. I don’t know much about the schools, but my impression is they are pretty good.
It’s the epicenter of family life in the east bay. Read the Bay Area real estate discussions over the last few days as Lafayette (also Orinda and Moraga) are squarely in that analysis.
Lamorinda (Layfayette-Moraga-Orinda) are really lovely family communities in the East Bay with excellent BART access to SF. They are highly desirable. Great schools. Powerhouse aquatics (many of my DI waterpolo teammates were from there). It gets HOT there in the summer (up to 100 in August), but there’s a lot of nature, great views, cute downtowns.
It’s pricy but a great place to live. HIghly recommend.
I grew up in Orinda! I love that area. It has a great downtown, lots of restaurants, and is super safe and quiet.
If you want to live among beautiful rolling California hills, look at housing in Orinda or Moraga as well (all three towns are very close – they are called Lamorinda as a trio). Lafayette has the most to do.
You can get to SF in 30 minutes on BART from any of them and can drive to Berkeley or Oakland in 20 min if no traffic. They are less culturally diverse and interesting than Oakland/Berkeley/SF, but definitely quieter/safer/sunnier.
Thanks for the replies so far. I like the sound of it. I’m somewhat concerned about home prices (budget would be $1.1M) but it’s tough everywhere in CA now.
You just have to adjust your brain to appreciate having a smaller house but access to amazing career opportunities, outdoor activities and cultural activities.
+1. This adjustment is the way to go in the Bay Area. I’m super happy with the trade off.
You need to double your budget to buy a home there.
For that price, consider a condo.
I live in the Bay Area, not Lafayette. Have friends there and in Orinda and Moraga. It’s very nice for families, very quiet, suburban, a lot of nature. Affluent, and home prices are expensive, and the area is affected by California’s insurance crisis, so factor that into your budget. If you have to commute out of the area, be prepared for the traffic.
Following up from the earlier thread – how do you use your fee-only financial planner?
We’re 41, have 2 kids under 7 (won’t have more and still have time to save more for college), have a 3.0% 30-year mortgage on a home we plan to stay in for a while, two good salaried jobs, no other debt. 401k is maxed and we’re on track, ahead of schedule actually per current financial planner. Emergency fund is funded and then some. 529s are good to go for their ages. $1.4m of cash and investments on hand, including retirement funds (vast majority is 529s and retirement funds). This does not include our home, of which we probably have $700k of equity (40%-ish LTV).
We have an Ameriprise advisor we pay something like $3k/year for. That gets us one annual meeting where we go over goals but nothing else really (spoiler alert: we’re on top of them, so I don’t get much from these meetings), on-call help (recently changed a job and helped me navigate some fringe retirement benefits that were new to me, for example), and that’s it. We might call her if we were contemplating a big home reno or something and wanted to talk through the most efficient way to pay, but that’s not an every-year thing. This person was worth her weight in gold starting out about 8 years ago when we had a very different overall profile and we needed estate planning, life insurance, goal setting help etc. At this point I feel like we’re paying too much.
I’m very conservative by nature in terms of finances – too conservative (I know!!). I would hoard cash if I given the choice. I had a commission-only job for a long time that I’ve recently left, so some of the cash hoarding was justified – I needed a reserve much larger than just a typical emergency fund for over a decade, but that’s behind me now. I’ve never purchased an index fund in my life. I know all about them, I just don’t know how to start. Could fee-only serve me well here? I know my amerirpise advisor is scraping fees elsewhere, I just don’t know exactly where anymore (lost track…).
My husband had an Ameriprise planner when we got married. We paid for one visit after we were married. I learned that the planner did not have a fiduciary duty to us and was receiving a commission on the investments he recommended. We broke up with that planner and my husband moved his investment accounts.
Where I live in the Midwest a good fee-only financial planner will charge around $700-$900 for the first session and then $400 for follow-up sessions. We have a session with him once every few years to check on things, give us an opportunity to ask questions and make sure we’re still on track for our financial goals. It sounds like he gives very similar advice to your Amerisure advisor (helped us with tax-efficient investing) but charges a lot less. You should try a fee-only advisor.
Yes, your instincts are right. A good fee-only planner is the way to go. Yes, you are surely losing much more than $3k a year with Ameriprise.
I found my financial planner among the highly recommended advisors mentioned on the Bogleheads discussion boards. I was most interested in talking through my retirement goals, optimizing my investment plan, minimizing my taxes due to my investments, and not wasting any $ on fees. My advisor is not local, and all advising is done over the phone. Just fine. I spent around $950 for the first meeting to go over everything and he wrote up a detailed plan for me telling me exactly what to do. And now I pay $450 per hour as needed for follow-up questions.
Here’s why you shouldn’t pay a percentage (unclear if you’re doing that) https://finance.yahoo.com/news/money-expert-ramit-sethi-why-150017034.html
You can find CFP’s on their website, and they do have a fiduciary duty to you. (Certified Financial Planners are often hourly!)
To learn how to invest in index funds, also recommend the Boglehead forums. Remember that cash loses value with any amount of inflation, so you should read up regarding risk and diversification and INVEST.
You sound like you’re mostly in great shape though.
I have similar stats to you and we’ve never paid a financial advisor. Retirement funds are almost all in target date funds, which is a pretty conservative option and if you’re extremely conservative you can choose an earlier retirement target date, which will tip the balance more towards bonds (safer) than stocks (more volatile). Paying $3k for what seems like a very straightforward situation is crazy to me.
Ameriprise is taking you to the cleaner.
Admittedly, I am biased against that company after my firm hired an office manager who was previously an advisor there, then fired her once we realized what a complete sleaze she was. She went back to her role at Ameriprise. If that’s the type of person they hire twice over, that’s not a company I want to overpay to help me with my money.
One distinction is that fee-only refers to all models of advice in which the planner or advisor doesn’t earn a commission from selling specific products (so includes paying a % of assets under management, paying a flat fee for set regular advice, or paying a flat fee per hour on a more as-needed basis).
In this case, it sounds like you’re doing fantastic financially & in terms of your estate planning, etc. To me, it seems like the question is whether to use flat-fee/hourly fiduciary advice or not. I could see it being helpful to have periodic conversations to check asset allocation & how to maximize tax efficiency for the upcoming year. NAPFA and the Garrett Planning Network are good places to start searching for “hourly” or “flat rate” advisors.
For the poster looking for makeup advice in Philly… I left you a response last night on your original thread!
On the hunt for basic long-sleeve staple t-shirt recs. Must be all cotton (no modal blends). Not baggy but not clingy across meno belly. Budget. My favorites are actually the Sonoma T from Kohls for softness and drape but according to the reviews they are no longer 100% cotton. (Anyone purchase these recently?) My current Kohls t’s are going on 10 years and very soft. I tried some from Amazon essentials and while they say 100% cotton they are like cardboard. I want that soft feeling when you put them on! I’ve tried Old Navy but theirs are super thin and lose shape in the wash. Do these exist or is this another thing that has gone the way of the dinosaur?
Gap but go in person to verify. I think they’re called modern tee. Super quality for the money.
Pima cotton may be a good option. LL Bean and Talbots (which has frequent sales) have long-sleeve options.
Banana Republic men’s 100% cotton. My elementary school aged child has decided this is what she is wearing because they are soft. I got her the short sleeved xs and got myself the long sleeved ones.
They might have the same material for women, but I was on the men’s side and they are good quality. I paid $60 or so. Washes well. The lady who helped me said the new collection due to arrive in Feb is better than their current collection and to not buy the womens tshirts now.
Great info, thank you!
Lands End pima cotton, I like the v-neck ones.
I like these but need to size down and they still are good for my post-menopause body.
I was pleasantly surprised by the t-shirts at JC Penney. I had been looking for some thicker shirts for a while, and went to JCP on a whim. They’re like the pre-“tissue t” heft all t-shirts used to have.
+1. A million colors, v-neck and crew neck available, and available in long, short, or 3/4 sleeves.
I am giving myself the gift of a career coach and want to ask if anyone here has a good recommendation. I’m about to start a new job where I’m going to be a manager of managers. I’m 4 levels down from the CFO so firmly middle management.
It’s been a while since I’ve managed people and historically I’ve been horrible at building relationships at work that carry over in my professional life. Once I leave the workplace, I struggle to maintain the relationships.
I’m also looking at improving skills such as presenting and communicating in general. My goal is to go back up to senior leadership but this time do it properly with the needed skills developed.
JWP Coaching – Debbie helped me with people management, clear communication, presenting to executives, and navigating corporate politics. She is very versatile.
My dad is going to have to move into a nursing home. Asking for advice and support:
My very elderly dad lived until 3 months ago independently. A cancer diagnosis turned everything around. The illness is under control, but in just weeks everything has changed. Old age, frailty and the beginning of dementia have set on a downhill spiral. It happened must faster than we can understand. There is so doubt he must move into a nursing home.
I am reeling from the work, the tasks and from trying to get my head around it.
I would apricate advice about making a good transition for him but also about the process of clearing out his home. The home that also was my late mother’s last home.
I have siblings, which is a big help in the transition, but also brings its own can of worms. Please help
It would help if we had an idea of what kind of finances you are dealing with. We hired an estate planner who put funds in a trust so my MIL would not lose her home as her primary asset. You also want to make sure that you are all on the same page in terms of hospice. The medical professionals are terrible about being direct with an estimate on how long an elderly person has to live and will poke and prod until the last breath if you let them. Get a case worker or social worker on board. You don’t have to clean out the home all at once as long as you don’t hace to sell right away. I put a lot of my mom’s things in storage after she passed until I had the emotional capacity to sort through it all. It helps to have a person who is not emotionally invested in your family to help go through the things. With my MIL, that person turned out to my my husband’s ex-wife’s sister! She was still close with MIL but not entrenched in family feelings. Sending hugs.
I’m so sorry, I know this is terribly difficult. Be gentle on yourself, especially when setting timelines. The process of cleaning out a family member’s house took so much longer than I anticipated. I haven’t done what you’re doing by my top two tips are:
1) Don’t start with clothes. Obviously, take what your dad needs for his day-to-day living. But if your mom’s clothes are still in the house and you’re dealing with his excess clothes, that can bring up a lot of memories and that might be harder than you need right now.
2) Vet any vendors (e.g. estate sale agents, landscapers) carefully. Unfortunately, people are all too willing to take advantage when we’re going through difficult situations. Check references and the BBB. Followup to ensure you’re getting payments (for estate sales) within stated deadlines.
Thinking of you.
FWIW, we hired out the clearing out of the house in a similar situation. We had an estate sale company clear out and sell everything, there was nothing we wanted to keep that didn’t move to the facility. It was great not dealing with it directly.
I agree with this. We hired a company that helped us sort and put tags on everything in three categories: Trash, sell/donate, and move with Dad. It was the best money we spent.
help me shop – I would like to add a (blanket? comforter? quilt?) to my bed setup as something to fold neatly across the foot of the bed, both for additional warmth but also (primarily) to keep from having to wash the duvet when the dog gets occasional smudge on the bed. we have a king size bed. what kind of product am i looking for? The “waterproof dog blanket” we bought wasn’t large enough but honestly i think i just want something that looks nice yet is easy to wash.
I think a thin bedspread would be easiest to washand dry, unless you want to get a fleece (synthetic) blanket; synthetics dry really fast.
FWIW, you can definitely get a larger waterproof blanket; we got one big enough to cover our queen-sized bed when we had a cat with issues. But the waterproofing makes them harder to dry as it tends to trap the moisture.