Thursday’s Workwear Report: Knit Twill Cropped Jacket
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Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.
It’s hard to get excited about blazers and jackets when you’re enjoying the summer sun, but this one from Banana Republic really piqued my interest. I’m often in situations where a suit feels too formal, but I do feel a little more put-together with a topper of some kind. This zippered, cropped jacket is the perfect solution.
I would wear this with high-waisted pants or a midi skirt for the days when you want to be on the more business side of business casual.
The jacket is $70 at Banana Republic Factory — with 20% off at checkout — and comes in sizes XXS-XXL and XXSP-XLP. It also comes in pewter gray.
Sales of note for 7/29:
- Nordstrom – The Anniversary Sale continues! Here's our big roundup of the best workwear, as well as everything we've selected thus far. Don't forget to check to see if their daily beauty deal is a good one for you –- e.g., 7/29 up to 40% off select lip products; 7/31 Bobbi Brown; 8/1 Jo Malone
- Ann Taylor – 50% off summer styles + 60% off clearance — readers love this blouse and I always love the variety of colors/textures for this jacket (it's a great separate)
- Banana Republic – 30% off your purchase (ends 7/31)
- The Fold – Up to 50% off, further markdowns + extra 10% off
- J.Crew – Up to 30% off
- J.Crew Factory – 50% off sitewide
- Me & Em – Sale! Up to 60% off (new lines just added, exclusively online)
- M.M.LaFleur – End of season sale! (Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off on other items)
- Nordstrom Rack – Clearance, new markdowns up to 75% off! Nice selection of Vince, Veronica Beard, Reiss and Rag & Bone, a ton of affordable work dresses from Calvin Klein, Maggy London, Eliza J, and Donna Morgan
- Talbots – 25% off your entire purchase
- Theory – End of season sale is on!
The property taxes for my town were released yesterday. My property taxes are going up 25%, which is just over $4200. I rent out half of my home already and passed on their half of the increase.
I’m a single mom with 3 children. I’m exhausted from being told I’m rich. I’m not. I have to figure out where $2100 is going to come from. Someone is going to go without and once again it’s going to be me.
can you fight your assessment value? might be worthwhile to look at a few comps and make sure yours is comparable
Does your jurisdiction limit the increase amount for existing homeowners? Mine does, and it is capped at 5% or inflation, whichever is lower. It only jumps the year after a homestead property changes ownership.
At least around where I live in MA, Prop 2.5 which limits tax increases is causing massive issues for towns given the past few years’ rates of inflation. A lot of towns having been voting on overrides and (depending on the outcomes) a few towns have started cutting services. The way yours is structured seems much more sensical.
Also in MA and our town just announced an override for September. I think our town has some waste in it, but not to the tune of the extra $7m we need. I think there are some really ridiculous positions that were added – rant for another day – but that’s like 2-3 FTEs and would be a drop in the bucket. I’m usually pretty override skeptical, but this time I’m just voting yes. There’s no two ways about it – stuff just costs more.
What services get cut? We already have volunteer EMS and fire. Do we disband the police next? I feel that we are mandated to have schools and that is the most expensive thing (but we are also closing schools because there aren’t enough children to warrant schools that are only 2/3 full).
Wait. Why should newcomers pay more? Light bills don’t work like that.
My utilities are billed directly by the utility company and are in no way associated with my property taxes.
Capping the property tax increase rate is one way to prevent gentrification from making homes unaffordable to people already living in them (see OP’s situation, for instance).
That shifts the cost to others though. It makes it less affordable overall, if we think that newer people may be younger, renters, etc. I feel that CA is an extreme example where you get more benefits the better off you are. If my housing cost is based on a house I bought 30 years ago and others’s costs are based on current prices, giving benefits to the first group at the expense of the second is flat-out regressive. Let them eat cake.
+1 to anon at 10:02. My parents house is worth 4x what they bought it at 25 years ago. Not only does this mean their neighbors are paying 4x property taxes for the same services, it also keeps my parents in a house that’s too large for them that would be lovely for a young family. Not sure how capping their property taxes has helped the community at all.
Where I live property taxes are tied to property values which means everyone pulls their weight and it’s not on new owners to subsidize infrastructure for the long term owners. Also helps facilitate turn over and allow for young families to buy homes rather than them being under utilized.
I’m empathetic to both sides. I don’t think the government should be able to increase your cost of staying in your house by 25% in one year. Most areas have protections for renters; a LL can’t increase rent by more than 20% in a year, so why should the govt be able to increase the LL’s costs by more than they can pass on to a tenant?
But I also think it should catch up over time so you don’t have a huge discrepancy between people who’ve always been there vs people who are moving in. If an increase is capped at 5% per year then by year 5 they should be up to that 25% (by which time there will be more increases I’m sure).
Most areas do NOT have protections for renters, so they will have to leave if it is too expensive.
Cities have to have balanced budgets, so they have to pass that on in taxes. They aren’t making money by passing along increases. I doubt that the trash collectors, if that is a city service (it’s not where my parents live — they have to pay for that on their own or drive their trash to the dump and pay per trip), are getting anything but a COLA and having to pay more out of pocket for heath care, if they have that.
If assessment increases on existing homeowners are limited and localities can only step up assessments to the actual market value when the property is sold, then the overall property tax rate (% of assessed value) will have to be higher. This means that existing homeowners are not saving quite as much on taxes as they might assume. It also distorts both the buying and selling decisions.
I totally empathize. My husband lost his job this spring on top of skyrocketing costs of everything, utilities going through the roof, and a pay freeze for me at work. My kid unintentionally got a ’90s summer’ because we had to cancel our vacation plans. Thank goodness my tween/teen are ‘CITs’ this year so camp was a nominal amount per week vs. the thousands we typically spend. We also cut our discretionary spending back tremendously. I truly don’t know how families are going to keep swallowing these costs.
Our household income makes us “rich” too but as someone online said, “I thought it would feel different than this.” In my city, $120k combined income qualifies you for low-income housing support.
I’m surprised your tenants can absorb $2100 as well. I assume your lease with them allows this, but holy moly, that’s a lot for them too. If you get a reduction via some of the methods listed below, make sure to adjust their surcharge. Sorry you are dealing with this.
This is unnecessary.
Is it though? I rent and would be shocked to get hit with this. The house isn’t my “asset”.
You did not need to make the comment here in this context. She freaking knows.
I agree it was unnecessary. We have no reason to doubt the OP and tenants know their lease, or that the OP wouldn’t pass along the tenants’ proportionate share if there is a reduction.
Eeeh, this is tame. There are so many out of pocket things said here this doesn’t even register.
Also being concerned about the lower person on the socioeconomic ladder is a good thing.
Yeah no kidding. I’m very sympathetic to OP, but “their half”? They aren’t the homeowners. They don’t have equity in this home. They are paying a percent of OP’s mortgage.
Sounds like you’re not too sympathetic then. Did you read the part about being a single mother?
No, I am sympathetic. But OP being a single mother doesn’t make what I said any less true.
It’s not a competition though. Who knows that the tenants are better or worse off before this?
But if you are month to month, this is a risk you run. Commercial leases tend to pass through everything in real time. In residential, it happens one way or another, but often with a lag for tenants with fixed rang for an initial term.
Is that an excuse to abuse her tenants financially?
Tenants end up paying property taxes indirectly via rent. This is how it works. If property taxes go up, landlords raise rent. It’s utterly insane to me that people don’t understand that the way rent is priced is basically costs + small margin for profit.
thisssssssssssssssss
Ok, we know that—so an extra 200 dollars a month, not a 2k bill up front.
Since rent is set by supply and demand, whether OP can pass on this expense and keep the tenant long-term depends on several factors we don’t know–whether the tenant is paying market rent now, whether the tax increase affects the whole community or just OP’s, whether there’s a nearby community with cheaper rental properties, etc.
If you’re a landlord, though, the rent for each unit should cover its proportionate costs (by square feet), including taxes, insurance, maintenance, and loan payments (allowing for vacancy). $2100 is a lot for anyone to absorb, but if everyone’s property taxes are going up, the tenant will either pay them indirectly through rent or move to a community with lower taxes.
Not the OP but I got my tax bill just now and it’s due in January. IDK that I could recover that difference between now and then. BUT this is why mortgage companies escrow for real estate taxes and round up and make sure there is a cushion. People should do this also if they don’t escrow for taxes. It’s hard to come up with $$$ on the fly but not if you have 12 months to work in a cushion.
I assumed OP was “passing on” the $2100 in the form of a monthly rent increase, not a request for a one-time payment. Reading the original post, that’s less clear. I’ll trust that OP knows the terms of her own lease, but a residential lease in which the tenant directly bears risk for taxes, insurance, etc. (like a triple net lease) would be very unusual.
The escrow cushion is a good idea, though my bank automatically calculates a 10% cushion and sends me a check if there’s extra when they run the escrow analysis. A 25% increase in one year is a big jump.
Ouch! Please research how to appeal your assessment and appeal the valuation if you can find something to go on. I am in the process of appealing mine. The assessors’ office has already met me in the middle, but I was so convinced by my original appeal that I appealed again for the full reduction I requested. That one is still pending.
Houses in my rural area are all vastly different combinations of finish levels, square footages and lot size, so I made a simple spreadshet showing the assessed values of of my continguous neighbors improvements, calculated per square foot, and of all the lot values that were 5 acres or more, calculated/acre, and just averaged them. My sq. ft and per acre assessment was wildly out of line, so I requested a reduction to average. Going through online property tax records, you can easily see who has appealed and who has not-the outliers clearly have not appealed.
Even if you have no grounds to appeal, that’s a crazy increase. I am a big fan of local government generally, but a lot of them really, really need to reign in their spending.
+1. We have appealed several times when the calculation seemed outrageous, and it’s been granted each time.
This. We fight our assessment every year. After about a decade, it’s kept our assessment about 20% less than our neighbors that don’t appeal.
oh look, the engagement rage bots got loose again
+1 three kids and an income producing two family home? That’s rich people stuff. And the taxes are somehow under 5k? In what world could or should they be that low? Everyone says you’re rich but you don’t have a few grand to spare? Okay…
I need a small and ideally all wood bookshelf for children’s books to keep in the living room. Any recs for something attractive that isn’t a total POS quality wise? Been striking out at estate sales and FB marketplace for two months so it’s time to buy new.
This? Any amish made local furniture place would also likely be a good bet:
https://www.thewoodlandmills.com/bookcases
I would look to Amish businesses for this. On the off chance you’re in northern NJ, I recommend Derbyshire’s solid wood furniture in Wayne. We bought some excellent quality bookcases there over 20 years ago and they’re still going strong.
Is AptDeco available in your area? All my bookcases are from room and board and purchased through there. I have bought from room and board directly for a few items and they are amazing, but bookcases tend to be readily available used on aptdeco in my city.
The Ikea Hemnes line has been my go to for years. Quality is good, lots of pine, and not terribly priced. I’d do the cabinet so you can shut away the toys. It paints fairly easily if you decide you’d rather have a pop of color.
Greece recs in Athens:
Restaurant Atlantico (the freshest seafood I have ever eaten)
Monastraki Flea Market ~ blocks of local goods & foods
Greece OP here – thank you!
(In case anyone else cares for recs themselves, on our prior trip, we adored Thes Greek Creative (and based on Google reviews, it has *really* held up over time – we are going back) and also had a great meal at Mani Mani, which had been written up in either the NYT or WSJ shortly before our trip and lived up to the review.)
What would be a nice couple of weeks getaway for a mid-50s couple coming from Louisiana and staying in the US? I am day dreaming of places my husband and I could spend quality time together. I don’t want to go anywhere that I would have to worry about ticks or traffic. Someplace relaxing with good food, easy nature hikes, and some neat things to do like a cool museum, botanical garden, some water would be nice but not required. Have done Florida and Alabama beach trips many times. I always daydream about going to Maine, Vermont or Rhode Island but I am afraid of ticks. Flexible on time of year.
Asheville? I’m not sure what it’s like there now post flooding. If you haven’t visited Georgia or Charleston yet that seems like low hanging fruit.
I adore Vermont and Maine, and ticks really aren’t a huge deal as long as you check yourself after outdoor activities and wear reasonable clothing when hiking (long pants, long sleeves, socks over your pants) – which trust me, you’ll want to do anyway to avoid bug bites.
Can confirm have hiked and camped a lot and no ticks in the area around Asheville. They need tourists! Fall will be high season, but it is pleasant now. Biltmore Village is cute and walkable. I like Brevard, with a chill walkable downtown with lots of restaurants and shops. But there are lots of places around Asheville. The Charlotte airport has a lot of flights and you’ll need a rental care anyway; Asheville has a smaller airport also.
Maine. I live in the woods along the coast here, and hike regularly with my dog. Tick season is almost over, and even so, I don’t get any ticks when I either wear insect repellent clothing or put on bug spray (I like the newer picaridin bug sprays), even in the height of tick season. I haven’t found a tick on my dog in weeks, unlike earlier in the year, so I know they are really dying off. There are great coastal hikes in Camden and York as well as Acadia, and the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden is a magical place. Come the first few weeks of September and you hit a bit of a lull between summer tourists and leaf peepers. If you are looking farther out, come the last few weeks of May or the first week or two of June – the ticks aren’t out yet, and neither are the tourists (at least not en mass!).
+1 on ticks. I’m in MA and it’s just part of life. Bug spray, tie your hair back, and wear appropriate clothes. We’ve only found one tick on a kid this year and that’s 1 more than last year.
Napa or Sonoma? Sedona?
Acadia in Maine should work if you stick to the carriage paths, though. They’re wide and well-maintained and you’re walking (or biking) on stone dust. Not zero tick risk (nowhere in the mid-Atlantic or Northeast is), but I think the risk is negligible if you take common-sense precautions. It sounds like you’ve always wanted to visit Maine and it checks all your other boxes, so why not? Fly into Portland, have some great food, walk around the Head Light, take the mailboat around the harbor, and then head up to Bar Harbor.
Saugatuck, Michigan
Do you care about mainland US? Don’t forget about Puerto Rico (combo of Vieques + San Juan would get you quiet nature and beaches plus city and history), or the USVI.
If you always daydream about Maine, Vermont, or Rhode Island . . . go there. Find a time of year where ticks aren’t an issue, and move the day dream to reality.
Santa Barbara, but maybe not for quite that long. If your hotel budget is big enough you can stay right on or near the beach and walk to restaurants, wine tasting rooms, and shopping. Some of the hotels also have bikes you can borrow. I spent a week there for work and never got in a car.
Austin, TX fits the bill but I’m not sure about a couple of weeks.
With a few weeks, I’d do a national parks road trip out west in either late spring or early fall (so when school is in session). Start in Jackson hole, WY with the Tetons. Go to Yellowstone for a week or two. Then up to Glacier NP and stay in Whitefish.
Somewhere in California? There are ticks in CA, but it’s a lot easier to find places to hike without them and they’re much less likely to give you Lyme disease than in the NE. I spent years hiking in CA and only got ticks once or twice, so I think you can easily avoid them if you stick to the beach or the desert or anywhere with well groomed trails (but not Pinnacles National Park, I’ve never gotten so many ticks in my life as I did on a creekside trail there). Or go to Maine or Vermont when it’s nice and cold in the winter and they definitely won’t be an issue.
This is Northern California, I’m partial to the russian river towns and the Mendocino coast. Napa and Sonoma also work and with a few weeks you could bounce around and do all of it. I’d also stay in SF for a night or two, just take Waymo or Uber and you won’t need to think about traffic or parking. Stay at the Huntington Hotel on Nob Hill and take a spa day.
The NY Times just had an article about cities with Botanical Gardens – maybe see if one of those cities appeals? I also like their 36 hours columns for ideas of what a city might hold.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/travel/botanical-gardens-us-cities.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1lA.3lrs.46d_4T1sXXph&smid=url-share
Current Sienna owners: what trim level do you have and do you think it is the right balance of fancy and functional?
Not a current Sienna owner, but when I bought one, I got my preferred level of trim by adding dealer-installed leather seats to a lower trim (an XLE, IIRC). The only 2 features I cared about were an electronic sliding door, AWD and leather, and this was a much more economical option (at the time) than getting the level that included factory-installed leather. This saved me thousands that I did not have to pay for features I did not care about.
I have the XLE, and think it was the right choice for me. The 360 camera in the platinum would be nice, but I didn’t want the fridge or the vacuum. The woodland and limited were not really available in my area, but didn’t seem to have anything over the XLE that I would want.
I haven’t bought a TV in 11 years. There’s nothing “wrong” with my current TV, but I’m thinking about an upgrade anyway. I’m leaning towards a Samsung Frame TV, but I’m reading mixed things about it. I’ll admit here that I’m mostly doing this for aesthetics. I don’t care about having the best image or some crazy sound system. I live in a small apartment and I want to make my TV area both more attractive and a bit more streamlined. So does anyone have the frame and do you love it/hate it/totally meh on it?
We have the Frame and I love it. I had to fiddle with the settings a bit to get rid of the weird home video look, but now that I have that ironed out the image quality is fine. The Frame is so much sleeker than a regular TV. The best part is that all the cables (power, antenna/cable, streaming stick, BluRay player, soundbar) connect to a box that you can hide in a cabinet. The box connects to the screen with one very thin, unobtrusive cable.
The audio from any flat TV is going to be terrible without an external speaker system. We paired our Frame with the Sonos Beam soundbar, which is not huge but produces decent sound. We don’t actually watch the TV much and use the Beam more for music.
I love my frame TV! It looks gorgeous in my living room, I always get compliments. I also don’t care about the latest tech/sound quality etc, but I will say my movie buff husband is perfectly happy to watch movies on it every Friday night.
I have one. We like it a lot.
I’ve heard a couple influencers comment that when it is on art mode, it looks less like a TV in photographs than in real life, so in instagram, store website pics, etc they look nicer. That ties to my impression when I am visiting friends who have them – it looks like nice art but definitely still a digital screen. All that said, I still want one for my next TV :)
We have one and we’re happy with it. Full disclosure – it is not our main tv, but it does get used regularly. I like the option to display art so it doesn’t look as much like a tv when it’s not in use. There are a lot of options and I think you can also upload photos. We’ve been happy with the picture. We did add a Sonos soundbar to improve the sound and it is definitely better, although I don’t know that I would have done that if my husband hadn’t wanted the improvement.
Have it and love it because it’s pretty. TVs are eyesores in small spaces and this is 1000% worth it.
Looking for two NYC recommendations: somewhere near MSG for a pre-concert dinner, and someplace for a fun breakfast or brunch the day after in the same general area. The group has one picky eater and some folks on a budget. Ideas?
When I was a teen with a new license, I yearned for a VW Cabrio. I never got one — first new car was a minivan that has been going strong for about 20 years. Now, I have a choice for my next car. Another minivan wouldn’t be a bad choice — more safety features and more reliability than the current one, but without the stains and cracking seat leather. I miss the absolute devotion I had to the Cabrio — locker pictures, having the brochure from the dealer, envisioning my picture-perfect life. In 2026, what cars make your heart skip a beat? I want to plan some test drives and see what is out there. Midsize SUVs would be OK, but no giants. And no super-low cars — elderly parents can’t easily get in or out. I saw what I thought was a Thing or a The-Gods-Must-Be-Crazy Range Rover and wondered if there’s a modern equivalent.
If I didn’t care about price, gas mileage, or fitting it in my garage, I think a 4Runner would be fun.
I don’t love cars like this. But I share your affection for convertibles. A little mini cooper might be in my future as a third car. My current mom car is a Lexus rx 550. My beloved bmw x3 caused too many mechanical problems when it got old so I was relegated to Japanese cars by my husband. Anyway this car was an attempt at a somewhat stylish mom car. It’s not as cute as a Range Rover in my opinion and I miss the bmw handling. My friend says her x7 handles like a dream.
Isn’t it weird how cars can feel stylish? My mom is always driving car that I think are painfully dorky. Currently it’s some kind of electric Cadillac that looks like a rav4.
I have a mini cooper and love it so very much, they make a small SUV version called the countryman that would meet your needs and are very fun cars.
It’s not a pin up car, but I really do love my BMW X3. It has all the get up of a fun sporty car but is comfortable for my middle aged self to drive and get in and out of. Never what I thought I would buy. Always thought it would be a mid-life impulsive mustang purchase (which I had fully spec’d out).
Reposting to avoid mod.
I just found out (in the newspaper) that my psychiatrist of nearly 20 years has lost her medical license because she had an inappropriate gardening relationship with a patient, whom she started treating when he was a minor. I had an appointment with her a month after her license was suspended in state A and she did not mention the suspension (she is also licensed in state B where I live).
I fully recognize this is not about me, but I feel horrified and deeply hurt and betrayed. Any tips on moving forward emotionally and logistically? I will, of course, be finding a new provider