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Thursday’s Workwear Report: Matte Jersey Woven Long-Sleeve Tunic

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A woman wearing a black-and-blue floral top and blue jeans

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

I’m absolutely loving the moody floral print on this blouse from White House Black Market. I would wear this with a charcoal suit on a formal day or tucked into some dark trousers for a more business casual look.

It’s described as a tunic length, which can be a bit tricky to style for the office, but the photos just make it look like a regular non-cropped blouse to me, so I’d be willing to give it a shot.

The blouse is $89 at White House Black Market and comes in sizes XXS–XL.

Sales of note for 5/19/25:

355 Comments

  1. I was gifted a three-seat couch in great condition. I am putting in my basement, which is mostly an extra seating area. It is an absolutely hideous yellow and orange and brown tweed (probably my least three favorite colors in the world). The couch has a high, stiff back and what I’d venture to guess an 80s print. It is not MCM style, it’s more – the couch my parents had, I guess, with wide, round shaped wood legs. I can’t afford to reupholster it but I’d like to cover it so it matches a bit better – honestly anything other than the current colors. I’m struggling to find a slipcover option that is meant for stiff back/arm sofas. Any ideas?

    1. May be an unpopular opinion, but if you hate it, don’t waste money on it. Look around for something you like better – the amount you spend on slipcovers (which are not cheap) could be put towards a couch you actually like. For extra seating, you could find cute benches or ottomans for less than the cost of a couch.

      I mean if you didn’t use terms like “absolutely hideous” and “least favorite colors”, I might suggest throw pillows or knitted blankets. But you hate it, and I get why you hate it. Get rid of it as soon as you find an affordable replacement.

      2. +2 – a great couch in article is $700, a decent slipcover is about $300, the delta isn’t that much.

        1. Hmm the only $700 couch I’ve had was a pretty mediocre one from TJ Maxx that fell apart within a couple of years. A couch from the brands I am most familiar with (Pottery Barn, Ethan Allen, Crate and Barrel, etc) can easy run you $3000 or more. And none of those are flashy brands like Restoration Hardware, nor am I one of the mega bucks earners on this board.

          I would definitely save up to reupholster the ugly but seemingly well-made couch you were gifted. Put blankets and throw pillows on it for now and reupholster it when you can afford to.

          Curious if others have had luck with couches under $1000? Maybe I’m the exception.

          2. Yeah a sofa that made it to 2024 from the 70s or 80s would cost >$3k today. It may well be worth reupholstering.

    2. You could just get a giant blanket, cover it that way, and wait until you have $$ to reupholster – this is what I did in college with a similarly hideous sofa! IME slipcovers that are nice will run as much as a new couch from Crate & Barrel or similar.

    3. A flat bedsheet will work as a cover, but you don’t have to keep it if you really hate it.

    4. Comfort works does custom covers I believe. Not cheap but I was pleased with the quality. Mine aren’t custom but they fit my pottery barn couch well. You might also try tucking a chic throw over the back and putting some pretty throw pillows on it and see if that helps. I’m partial to a big sheepskin throw real down inserts but that’s me.

    5. +1 — if it’s worth keeping you might want to call a local upholstry place to get a quote on how much it would cost to upholster, depending on how the couch is put together it may be the same as a slipcover. but if you don’t like the shape of the couch just go for a big blanket until you can get something better. Amazon has a zillion super cheap slipcovers that you can also use.

    6. If I’m picturing the right sofa, that thing is a beast and will outlive us all! A cheap reupholstery job near me costs a few hundred and so does a slipcover, so if you’re saving up I think I’d go with the big blanket approach.

      1. I’d go all-in on the 80s basement rec room vibe and have fun with it. Wood grain bar? Dart board? Stained glass beer logo pub light? All of the above? Yes please!

    7. Life is too short to put up with furniture you hate. Hit up Marketplace for a sofa you like.

    8. I bought a cover on the zon from H.VERSAILTEX. They have a bunch of different shapes to fit a variety of couches and all of the cushions have individual covers so they stay on really well! I hate the slip covers that are just a sheet and you’re constantly having to mess with them. It’s super easy to wash and I think it looks pretty convincing.

    9. I eked out a few years of less-ugly use from a similar sofa with a super-stretchy, very cheap slipcover from Amazon. I picked a solid color that I didn’t hate and told myself the nicely-colored wrinkles were better than the fugly fabric underneath. And tucking the extra fabric meticulously actually made it reasonably presentable for a while with genteel use, at least until my spouse dragged his bum across the cushion and pulled it all out of alignment when getting up.

    10. I saw an Insta ad recently for slipcovers that are basically super stretchy so fit lots of different styles and sizes – that’s vague but my guess is if you start googling this you’ll get the ads

    11. I am going to disagree with all the people saying if you don’t love it you should trash it. While a new sofa is not terribly expensive compared to the cost of slipcovers or re-upholstering, it will not be anything near the same quality. I suspect the sofa you have has solid wood construction and will last forever. My experience is that a new one will fall apart within a few years unless you shell out thousands of dollars.

      Am*zon has some twill slipcovers that last well, are neutral in color, and will do the job while you decide. I layer mine over a really cheap poly cover (from the same site) that helps hide the color (and protects the underlying fabric from my dogs when I am washing the main cover).

      My top cover is the Classic Slipcovers Brushed Twill Classic Slipcover (which I highly recommend) over the PriceDeco four piece stretch velvet (which is trash and I will try something else when this one dies).

    12. I have reupholstered sofas before and a big variable cost is the fabric you choose. If you’re not trying to fix the springs or anything, it may be more reasonable than you think. You could look for vocational schools who might do that work to save as well. However, if you don’t like the form itself, definitely don’t recover it because you don’t like it. I would just cover with a blanket.

      Unless this is a sentimental piece or from a loved one who will care, sell it on marketplace or to a used furniture store. Or donate it. No sense keeping something you don’t love even when free.

    13. I would sell it or give it away on Facebook Marketplace, and then buy a used one on FB marketplace. Have it professionally cleaned–they are so inexpensive second hand as most people don’t want used upholstery. But ask some questions as to how the couch is used, why they are selling, and get it cleaned. You will be happy with it!

  2. In the last six months or so, my partner has started drinking much more often and much heavier. I don’t know how to address it with him. He’s an adult – but I don’t enjoy being around him when he’s drunk. How can I bring this up in a kind way? If it continues, it’ll be a deal breaker – but I don’t want to shock him with an immediate ultimatum, like you have to stop drinking tomorrow or you can only have one glass of wine.

    1. I think you have to tell him what you said here. You’re concerned about his drinking and you don’t enjoy being around him when he’s drunk. You can encourage him to get help – maybe his work has an EAP with resources for therapy or AA. Tell him it will be a deal breaker if the behavior continues. You can give it some time and see what happens. But he’s not going to change until he decides to do it on his own. Consider Al Anon for yourself. Also, sorry you are dealing with this. I hope things work out for the best for you and your partner.

    2. I’d start small. “Hey babe you were really drunk last night! Not sure if you noticed but it wasn’t fun for me because x, y, and x concrete facts.” See how he responds.

    3. The usual advice for hard conversations applies here I think – pick a time when you’re both relaxed and in a private spot and ok enough moods. I’d frame it in I statements – you can’t control his behavior, only your reactions, and the last think you want is to police his drinking. So something like ‘I’m uncomfortable with your behavior when you’re drinking and I don’t enjoy being around you in that state. I won’t be (staying over, continuing to go to concerts/shows/restaurants/etc) with you when you’re drunk. I’d be happy to support you in finding a therapist or someone to discuss this with, or talk about any stress’.
      That’s it – you communicate what you’ve noticed, state your limits, and decline to police his behavior. Don’t take any blame for his drinking either – this is his issue not yours. I’m sorry – this is tough and it’s really hard because lots of careers/activities make heavy drinking such a part of the culture that people can’t see when it becomes problematic.

    4. This will probably be multiple conversations so don’t feel like you need to do it all at once. If just start when you’re both in a good mood and say listen I’ve noticed this and it makes me concerned/uncomfortable/whatever, and I wanted to be sure you know that even though this feels hard to talk about – focus on yourself and see how he reacts. Hopefully he isn’t defensive (or is but moves on quickly) and then if you don’t see change you bring it up again and say you’re concerned and this isn’t something you want long term, is he open to making changes or getting some support to figure out what’s going on?

      1. Asking your partner open ended questions about why he’s drinking more is a great place to start. Don’t accept blame! I went through a period when I drank more than usual, some of which was an unhealthy response to stress in my marriage. BUT, it was not my partner’s fault. I had control over my own actions.

    5. are you involved in planning for date nights/travel or purchasing decisions for groceries? i find that if i stop buying stuff for my husband, so he has to go to the store himself, that cuts down on his drinking.

      i’d also ask if he has a new friend who is his new drinking buddy, or if he’s in a new job or something with a culture of heavy drinking.

    6. I’d start more open ended and see how he responds. The goal is to get him to talk about it so you can assess next steps. If you start with a tone that sounds like, you’re doing something wrong, he is more likely to shut down or get defensive. “Hey I’ve noticed that you seem to be drinking more lately, have you noticed that too? Is everything ok?”

      However. If he did something unacceptable while drunk then that deserves a very different conversation. Don’t let things slide just because he was drunk. Recognize boundary pushing behavior for what it is. My alcoholic ex started with more excusable things like being generally obnoxious, or refusing to leave a party and causing a scene when I said I was ready to go, or belly flopping on me while I was reading a book. It progressed to him name calling and going on crazed rants and finally throwing things at me. I have no doubt he would’ve seriously injured me if I’d stayed. I wish I hadn’t dismissed his earlier bad behavior because he was “just drunk”.

    7. Partner or spouse? If the former, don’t throw good money after bad. If you’re married then I’d take approaches others have suggested.

      1. Omg, get out of the fifties, there’s plenty of people who are in a committed relationship and not married. We aren’t all J.Jill wearing, middle of America, minivan driving women who desperately need a wedding to feel like we’re in a grown-up relationship.

        2. Cool. But one is messy and legally entangled and one is not. If OP has the fortune of not having married this guy already it’s a lot easier to end things and I don’t think it’s worth trying to make a relationship work with an alcoholic. It’s not 50s, it’s pragmatic.

  3. What are we wearing at JPMorgan these days? I haven’t been since 2019. In house biopharma – is a suit overkill?

      1. I am guessing she is talking about the JPM healthcare conference next week. My husband is going, I have no idea what he or other are wearing though.

        1. For any legal adjacent conference, I personally am doing wide leg pants, loafers and a blazer, presuming I’m not speaking. Conferences are always cold and lots of standing time. I’m past the days of wearing anything uncomfortable.

          1. +1 to cold. I bring silk long underwear to conferences now after freezing far too many times.

    3. the OP is referring to the JPM healthcare conference in SF every January. Not in reference to visiting a JPM office.

      1. So not clear how that was to be divined from the original post. With the detail that it’s in SF, a suit would be overkill. You will probably see a lot more rag and bone style blazers next to puffer coats and vests.

        1. Because the people who know will know, and that’s who she wants answers from anyway!

          1. Yeah, it’s the biggest event of the year in biotech/pharma. I know we’re technically a niche industry, but we’re increasingly larger players in financial markets.

    4. I have no idea about the wardrobe question but I am glad you will get to spend a few days immersed among people in your industry. I t definitely seems like you need to be more saturated with insiders in your sector and industry speak.

      1. Damn, she just asked a question about what people are wearing to a conference. No need to be so snide.

      2. I found this response unnecessary and catty. I’m not in this space and I totally understood the ask.

      3. When something is not for me, especially so obviously, I usually just ignore it rather than get huffy.

      4. Ouch, that “gotcha” wasn’t necessary!

        Many of us are typing here on our phones during a bathroom break or commute. Typos or shorthand are to be expected.

    5. I’m going. In BD in biotech and not legal. I think men are wearing suits still but I always go with a dress and a blazer or slacks and a blazer. So not a formal suit but suit separates. That said, I wouldn’t bat and eyelash if someone showed up to a meeting without a blazer…

    6. I’m just glad it’s coming back. Full calendars this year.

      Are your teams doing HLTH too, or as an alternative? I’m hearing HLTH > JPM.

  4. I work as an in-house attorney for a health system. My boss said that his boss is asking everyone to come up with a few goals for the new year that they want to achieve to improve the organization. As my boss pointed out, that’s a harder ask for as the legal team, as we are largely reactive -people come to us with questions or problems, we help guide them; we don’t really initiate or lead much on our own. I assume this is the same for most in-house legal, at least in highly regulated industries like this.

    So, anyone with in-house or similar experience have suggestions for goals to offer? (I think organizational or team goals, not personal achievement type.) I’m angling for some advancement, so I’d love to make a really good suggestion here.

    1. I’d focus on how you get things done – a large health system probably has a lot of bureaucracy and legal is often tied up in it. Are there places you can revise your process to be more effective and efficient?

    2. Is there anything you could propose that will better position the system in audits, especially those areas that fall into your purview?

    3. In house counsel here. Do you currently do any trainings? like best practices, common questions…. I would put that as a goal, it encompasses a lot (tech, power point, meeting new people, talking in public etc). Also is there anything you currently outsource to a firm that you think you could reasonably learn more about and take it on? Like if you currently outsource union mediations could you take a CLE an try to do one yoursel? I at various points have had goals around being senior leadership/ C suite or whatever…. not specifically lawyer

    4. One of the ones I did was to identify a department that had very little integration with Legal but needed it (high margin, high volume, considered to be strategically unimportant because it was secondary to the company’s mission). I paired with a business Sr VP to identity strategically important clients in the department, cleaned up our legal situation with them (everything was a battle of the firms contractually, some of it was expired, etc.), and initiated monthly meetings and trainings with the under-resourced department so they could offload a bit of their work onto me. That work should have been in Legal anyway.

    5. AI is so hot right now. Does it make sense to review vendor contracts with an eye to data protection (not necessarily PHI but even business-related data) in this regard? Any regulatory issues potentially creating a challenge (like practices around the 2 midnight rule or something?) What’s hot with the AHLA right now—any areas there worth mining?

    6. I would go for training on topic areas relevant to your role and/or systems improvements that will support better efficiency or security.

    7. What about an initiative to make yourselves more visible and increase likelihood that people come to you with small problems, before they get big? Like helping the team be more proactive and less reactive. I know some in-house counsel do office hours or lunch with the lawyers or what have you.

    8. These are all good suggestions. Another is to do a risk review or root cause analysis of legal costs (settlements included) to see whether there’s a project to improve the way something is done, which lowers legal risk to the company.

  5. I am debating between braces and Invisalign. Price is about the same. Braces seem like less of a hassle but I am worried about the looks. I am in my late 30s and appear in court a couple of times per week. I also have a 7 year old so I am trying to figure out what would be easier. Please share your teeth stories! TIA.

    1. I did invisalign at 43 even though my orthodontist would have preferred I do braces. I chose it mainly because it was less visible than braces. It worked out well and my orthodontist was happy with my results. Yes, you do have to take out the trays to eat or drink anything other than water and brush afterwards. The upside for me is that it made me really mindful of snacking. When I first got them my mouth was very sore and I felt self conscious about my speech. I wondered if I made a big mistake but my friend who got braces a few years before I got invisalign told me she went through the same thing. I adjusted quickly. The treatment took slightly longer than expected but the results were worth it. I would do it again with no hesitation.

      1. I did invisalign at 40 and had largely the same experience. It takes a bit longer (2 years for me vs. the 15 months they quoted which I’ve heard is pretty common). I’m done now and have a night guard and a permanent retainer to ensure my teeth don’t shift. Results are great, I’m still caught off guard in photos/mirrors with how pretty my smile is now!
        As an FYI I also took them out during the day for big meetings/conferences with my dentist’s ok. I’d pop them back in after an early dinner so I still got a solid 12 hours nightly.

    2. I’m also debating this, so curious to see feedback. I’m especially interested to learn from those with Invisalign if they had a lisp at first and if that went away.

    3. I’m not sure what about Invisalign you think would be a hassle. After the adjustment period (which is longer than the 3 days they’re going to tell you it is…more like 2-3 weeks), it’s really no big deal. I went to the dentist for a checkup and new sets of aligners I think every 12 weeks. I remember my brothers with regular braces as teens going to the orthodontist monthly for adjustments (I never had braces as a teen). Yes, you need to take them out to eat and ideally you would brush your teeth before you put them back in, but honestly you get used to it really fast. Flossing is normal with Invisalign, but requires you to thread the floss under the wire with standard braces. It was also nice to be able to take them out for a few hours or even overnight if I felt like I needed a break. My aligners were changed every 2 weeks and I honestly felt like I could have gone to the next one by day 11 or 12 with most sets, so I don’t think any of my breaks set me back at all. And even without breaks I was wearing them closer to 20 hours a day instead of 22 because that’s just how long I had them out for eating and such.

      As an adult who did Invisalign and knows many adults who did as well, Invisalign all the way. And this is totally a “me” thing that I will own, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks adults with regular braces look weird.

      1. This wasn’t my experience at all with Invisalign, and I was seeing an experienced orthodontist (in fact, he regularly does speaking with industry groups). I had a minor issue (hadn’t worn retainers after braces as a teen) and was initially told it might be 2-3 years of treatment. It ended up being about 5 years of treatment. Typically, I was having to go in for check-ups every 4 weeks or so. Sometimes it was longer but not usually. Honestly, there is no way I could have stuck with it with my past two jobs. I was incredibly lucky that I was in an early career job working close to their office at the time. It was a HUGE hassle and no way would I do it ever again. I actually don’t think my smile looks any better now. The lower teeth are straighter but they had me do rubber bands and it brought them up higher than I like. The rubber band thing was also not something I was told about in advance. It wasn’t necessary the whole treatment time, but it was definitely a few months. Think really carefully before you go down this path. I would have saved the pain and huge time suck if I had any idea or at the least would have just gone with braces, where treatment would have been much faster.

        1. That sounds awful! And maybe you weren’t a good candidate for Invisalign, if it was going to take 2-3 years anyway. Mine was done in less than 8 months and the dentist was able to tell me that after they did the initial scans and got the treatment plan from Invisalign. I get that sometimes patients need some slight corrections after the initial treatment (I probably should have done another 1-2 trays to get one tooth 100% in the right spot but it’s 98% correct and I’m ok with that), but they really should be minor and not double the initial estimate! That’s a terrible bait and switch and I’d be annoyed too. I wonder if the technology or process has changed at all since you did it? I started mine in 2021 and finished in 2022. I was able to see a digital view of how each aligner would move my teeth and see that they would reach full alignment in the treatment plan before I ever spent a cent. I’ve also heard others say they had to go in monthly for checkups when they did it awhile ago, but again maybe that’s something that’s changed? Or maybe my dentist just didn’t feel it was necessary in my case and I got lucky. Definitely questions worth asking, OP, if you are considering doing it.

    4. I had minor teeth crowding on my lower teeth. I spent years with Invisalign and ended up having to do braces as well in the end. The trays gave me horrible TMJ and I didn’t have that before. I consider it one of the worst decisions of my life. I had a friend who was also early 40s who had the same experience.

      Go with the braces. You’ll save yourself a ton of time (so many appointments with those stupid trays) and grief.

    5. I didn’t have a choice because my specific problem was not correctible with Invisalign, but I did braces in my mid 30s and found them much less annoying than I expected! I got clear ones that were self-ligating, which I think is a more subtle look (no rubber bands adding volume). When I look at photographs of myself with them on, they’re really not where the eye immediately goes.

    6. I hated, HATED Invisalign. If you are at all a snacker/coffee drinker it will be painful to keep them in for 22 hours a day. They sold me on them by saying “oh, you can eat anything!” which is technically true but it wasn’t clear to me that you could only eat with the trays out. They never felt comfortable, I always drooled when taking them in/out, and it was very easy to backslide and lose ground if I forgot to wear them for a few days. Which eventually meant I just quit. I wish I had just gone with metal braces; I would be done by now. They do make tooth-colored braces (ceramic, I think?) which may be slightly better than metal.

    7. I started Invisalign in early November and am supposed to finish in June. I did not consider braces (I had them in 8-11th grades, decades ago). I have found them to be a bigger PITA than I had anticipated because of the constant in-out-brush at every meal. And I’m here to testify that I have not lost a single pound from the resulting lack of snacking; apparently it is easy to become super efficient at getting all your calories into 2 hours/day. Also to consider, sometimes they have to put “buttons” (little squares of the same tooth-colored compound they use to fill cavities) on some of your teeth so that the trays have something to pull on, so even when your trays are out, you can still see these white bumps on your teeth. I would ask whether you will need buttons and, if so, where.

    8. I had braces in my 40s and not gonna lie — my quality of life took a significant hit while I had them on. They were painful and I had rubber bands for a while, which was embarassing and annoying. Also they fly out of your mouth and I was finding little rubber bands in corners for YEARS! (This was close to 20 years ago so maybe the technology has improved and they don’t do that any more.) That said, the results were more than worth it and I’d do it again to get the results.

      1. Invisalign sometimes requires rubber bands, too. I swear, I was finding those rubber bands around the bathroom for years, too. LOL.

    9. I had braces at 15 but they shifted as I got older. Went to court with my second set in my 40s and was very happy with them.

    10. Hated Invisalign. They are a huge hassle and time suck. Yes, you can take them out, and that is the one tiny advantage. You still have buttons installed on your teeth that are visible, so it’s not like you are going completely invisible. I was constantly having people ask “what are those things on your teeth”. From a looks perspective, it would be less of a distraction to have braces.
      I would take them out if I was going to be doing a lot of talking in a meeting or something because they do make you talk with a lisp. But then, the buttons rub on your cheeks and cause major irritation.
      You have to clean the trays every time you take them out to eat or drink – including coffee! So it was constant cleaning. The trays were never cut right so each time I got a new set, I had to use a nail file to make them not stab me in the gums. They are not comfortable.
      I had to have a brace stint before they could do the trays (my issue was the result of an accident so it had to heal before I could do corrections). There was initial embarrassment over the braces but I got used to it really quickly and it was a non-issue within a week. With none of the hassle of the trays. Had I known everything the trays entail, I would have preferred to do braces.

    11. I will be 48 in a few months and am getting my braces off at the end of January. The reason I got them meant that traditional braces were my only option. I wore them for 3 years and they look like you would expect braces to look and they were quite literally a pain. But you know what? It’s the end result that matters, not what they look like, and adults don’t react the same way to them as kids do. I got so many positive comments about the fact that I was wearing them.

    12. Despite the brand name, I find invisalign totally visible and obvious when I talk to folks in person. It may not look like braces, but my gaze definitely snags on them regularly.

    13. I had Invisalign in my 50s (!) and not gonna lie, it was hard but I am happy with the results. The attachments on the teeth were something I was not warned about- they have to be drilled off which I found pretty painful even though I was told it would not hurt a bit. (My two sons also had the same experience). The ability to take the aligners out and really clean your teeth is a huge benefit- I had no issues with gums , etc afterwards as some people do with traditional braces due to not being able to clean as well. Lisp went away after about a week.I removed the aligners when speaking in a group at work and that was a big plus for me. Consistency is really key- leave those aligners in except to eat and you should be fine.

  6. I’m turning 40 in a couple of months and I have no idea what I want to do to celebrate when my husband asks. Ideally it would be a nice long vacation but I have a toddler and travel is not fun with a toddler. I also don’t have anyone I would feel comfortable leaving her with. I’m also not really into big parties. So push a big celebration back a few years when we can travel again? Or any other suggestions?

    1. don’t know where you are geographically or what you like to do but I got two tickets for Billy Joel at MSG for my 40th. tickets for something?

    2. I’m the same- not into big parties, also don’t want to “vacation” with my kids. So I’m hoping to take a fun trip with one of my best friends from college, we used to travel a lot together.

    3. Do you definitely want to do something together, or would you enjoy a long weekend solo trip?

    4. Covid foiled my ‘big’ 40th plans so we’re planning for a milestone famly vacation at 50. What I did instead was book 2 nights at a fancy hotel. I checked in early (alone), had a nice lunch, went to the spa for a massage/facial, and then got room service and watched trashy TV in a robe. The next day I slept in, had breakfast at a pretty local cafe (Tarte!), did some shopping at the ‘fancy’ stores I never visit in person in the city and then my husband and son joined me for dinner/stayed over in the suite I’d booked. We all got a big breakfast and hit up the aquarium and walked around the Greenway/seaport before heading home. If you’re close to Boston I can suggest some hotels!

    5. So as someone who turned 40 during the height of Covid (and thus all celebrations and travel were completely off the table), I’ll just say that if you don’t know what you want to do, just have a quiet dinner and a cake and move on. Don’t spend the money. You get to turn 40 whether you have a blowout in Cabo with 10 girlfriends, or if you have a steak, a good bottle of wine, and sit on your patio. Save the money.

    6. You could do an all-inclusive resort with a kids club if you’d be comfortable leaving her there. It’s not the same as an adults only vacation, but you would have time for stuff like massages and fancy dinners without the toddler.

    7. My gf and I turn 40 next year and are planning a trip to celebrate. It’s not a huge trip in terms of duration or expense – it will be a 4-day weekend in Montreal. But we are really excited about it. And our SOs are capable of solo parenting for four days. Would a short trip with a friend or a solo trip be doable?

      1. I would LOVE a solo trip but can’t get over the guilt that on a milestone birthday I want to be alone and not with people I love. I also have a velcro toddler :/

        1. Let this internet stranger tell you that if there is ever a time to be selfish, a milestone birthday is it! Doing things on your own schedule/according to your own preferences is so rare as a parent – this is the perfect time to do so!

        2. Could you reframe it as a chance for the toddler to get some quality other-parent time (and vice versa)?

        3. Don’t feel guilty. Assuming your child is 3 or under, they won’t even remember this. My parents went away without me when I was 5 or 6 and I have only the faintest memories of it. Plan a separate family celebration and take the solo or girlfriend trip!

        4. I wouldn’t feel guilty. My mom went on trips by her herself when I was a child. Mostly to places or for hobbies that did not interest my dad. It was fine. Sometimes we also tagged along and went to amusement parks or kid-oriented things without her. But often I was just at home with him. What it modeled for me was the importance of having adult relationships/interests. Go spend time with friends or take a solo trip or see a show only the girls will enjoy if that’s what you want.

    8. What about a small dinner with close friends somewhere fancy to celebrate? Surely you have a babysitter who could cover an evening out and that’s different from a big party.

    9. I turned 40 last year and had similar priorities / little kid situation. We ended up getting a private room at a nice restaurant for about 20 guests with me and my husband, and we paid for the dinner instead of a vacation or big party. It was really, really wonderful. The restaurant let us bring wine and champagne, my husband worked with them to develop a birthday drink that I love, and it is just a really great memory of mine. I’m not a big spotlight person but it was so amazing to have close friends and their spouses with me to celebrate a milestone day.

      1. That sounds so nice! I would find being a guest at something like that also very special.

    10. I did a staycation for one night in my city but on the beach for my 40th. Son stayed with family.

  7. So…Claudine Gay is out at Harvard. She doesn’t seem to be taking responsibility for the plagiarism charges and is instead blaming her opponents. I don’t think that’s a good look – it seems more mad about getting caught than having messed up.

    My view is admittedly colored by a colleague who also had an elite education (like Gay), plagiarized like crazy on a massive report, and never apologized or took responsibility. She only escaped firing because she was already quitting. I just can’t understand adults who behave like this.

    1. Well I think most academics, which clearly you are not, disagree. She did not commit academic misconduct, at most a failure to
      Sufficiently cite that happens not infrequently, and very few academics are up in arms about this.

        1. Consider the source – a white male conservative who was a Harvard adjunct professor, legislative aide to Republicans at the state and federal levels, and contributor to The Federalist.

          1. So are others not commenting because they are circling the wagons? There is such a publishing culture in academia, and if it is questionable, then it makes schools look bad that they obsess over this and it all might be garbage or cribbed from someone else. It’s hard to believe it’s not a big deal b/c publishing original scholarship is what professors are supposed to be doing (or reserach if a hard science; it’s definitely not teaching undergrads).

          2. Just because he’s a white male conservative etc. doesn’t mean he’s wrong, though. I’m firmly liberal but that doesn’t mean that I believe that everything every conservative ever said is wrong.

          3. Nichols has an agenda. Not saying he is wrong, but he isn’t an unbiased party here. Most profossors don’t also work as legislative aides to Republican lawmakers.

            Calling him a Harvard Professor is a stretch. He wasn’t a faculty member. He was an adjunct teaching courses at the Harvard Extension School (primarily personal enrichment courses open to all who can pay) and the Harvard Summer School (primarily attended by high school students).

          4. Folks, the is-he-HAHVAHD-enough-for-us debate is ridiculous. Nichols is an extremely well-respected academic. PhD Georgetown, longtime career as a tenured professor at the Naval War College, published really well regarded books with top-notch university presses (Oxford, Cornell). He absolutely has the academic chops to make a straightforward assessment of the plagiarism charges.

        2. This is a good piece.

          “But these new revelations about Gay’s work seem to show a pattern that is too damning to ignore and transcends excuses about sloppiness or accidents. Any scholar—to say nothing of any student—with this many problems in their work would be in a world of professional trouble. And in the end, Gay’s name is on her dissertation and her published papers. She, like every author, is ultimately responsible for the integrity of her work. (Gay has defended her scholarship, but her letter announcing her resignation makes no mention of any of the various academic accusations regarding her work.)”

    2. This is honestly such an ill informed take on this situation. I encourage you to either a) speak less about this because you’re pretty ignorant or b) read and learn more.

    3. I haven’t been following closely, but the last I read was that it was “just a few, minor incorrect citations” on a paper from 20+ years ago – is that not correct?

        1. No, you’re the one who is incorrect. Check the New York Times if you want to inform yourself – or do you think that’s some right-wing conspiracy blog?

      3. It’s 40+ instances in 5 papers across a decade (half her publications), including the acknowledgements of her dissertation, which is completely ridiculous. How can you respect someone who plagiarizes their acknowledgments section?

        1. The Boston Globe interviewed a number of the academics she “plagarized”, and none of them actually considered it plagarism.

          2. But if a student did it, how would it also be an honor code violation but OK for a full professor or university president? It shouldn’t be both.

          3. Carol Swain has been very noisy early on about how Gay took her work and gave her no credit. What about her?

      4. No, it’s not correct. As often happens in plagiarism cases, more continues to be uncovered. It’s all obviously a tangled mess. But the news is changing on it pretty often.

    4. If she plagiarized, I agree it should be taken very seriously and not written off as misattribution of source. Have you seen a detailed analysis of the accusations? Everything I’ve seen is annoyingly high level and non-substantive

      1. Yes, the writers who broke the story have all the details. Gay basically did plagiarism 101: copied word-for-word (or close to it) instead of rephrasing in her own words. She usually added a citation at the end of the sentence, but it’s still plagiarism when you borrow the author’s exact words without quotes. Plagiarism was found in her doctoral dissertation and about 6 of her 11 published articles.

        1. Harvard doesn’t run a thesis through AI to check for this like every middle and high school teacher I know, I guess.

          1. …I’m guessing, without looking up, that her dissertation was a while ago? I don’t remember AI checks (or digital plagiarism checks) being a thing when I was in law school, and in middle and high school I handed in my papers handwritten because I didn’t own a computer (in college I typed them up in the library).

          2. Gay was hired very recently though. No one thought to scan it in? I did my thesis in Word, so even if it had been typed in paper, it exists somewhere as an electronic document.

            I’m really surprised. This is routine for undrrresourced public schools in my city to do as a first pass for quality control and to check for obvious full-blown copying.

          3. She’s a bit older than I am, and there were no AI / turn it in type programs when I was in college in the 1990s. It was also not that easy to get a copy of a dissertation or even an article someone had written to check for plagiarism. I suspect no one really looked until she became a frontrunner for the president position.

          4. Her dissertation is not hard to find if you know where to look (and I only have a master’s and never worked in academia). No one cared to look until conservatives needed any tool at their disposal to take her down.

            All Harvard theses and dissertations are available in the library. My undergrad thesis is there (of which I was very proud…my mom printed the citation and framed it).. I did a quick search and found her dissertation there.

            2 other major respositories are EBSCO and ProQuest. My master’s thesis is there. I easily found Dr. Gay’s on ProQuest.

          5. I’m sure it’s easy now, but it wasn’t that easy 15-20 years ago, when she got tenure. Rising through university administration is about relationships, fundraising, and internal politics, so I suspect vetting for deanships isn’t that thorough, at least until someone ticks off the big donors.

          6. I’m the commentor about the archives. I got my degrees a few years after her. So I know those databases definitely existed.

            I agree that an administrator has a different role than a research professor with different vetting.

    5. It makes me mad too. I’m an academic and it’s driving me nuts that people are saying what she did isn’t plagiarism. It’s not necessarily a major offense, in the sense that it doesn’t seem to affect any of her research conclusions, but it’s still a pretty significant pattern of clearly copying other people’s words without attribution that’s way outside of academic norms and suggests both general sloppiness and someone who doesn’t really understand her field well enough to summarize the literature in her own words. She should take responsibility for it and it’s probably appropriate for her to have resigned as president, as the major function of a university president is to raise money and make the university look good, and she’s clearly failing at that. It’s a shame that she was targeted by people I despise, but continuing to defend her mistakes has made me convinced that she would only make a mockery of any kind of academic standards if she stayed.

      2. 1000% your last sentence. Do schools not vet their presidents? And since this is after the allegations surfaced previously and an internal panel re-vetted this and cleared her, was that just window dressing?

        I have Questions, especially I imagine that Harvard can actually spend $ to vet people property, can run a serious panel to investigate what they missed, and actually has internal and likely external crisis communications people and advisors, so how did they mess this up this bad? Academic cheating would seem to be a major area of concern, but not.

        1. This is my question, too. She’s not the first university president to have academic integrity issues (wasn’t Stanford’s president forced to resign for similar reasons?). Shouldn’t reviewing a candidate’s scholarly publications for academic integrity issues be a standard part of assessing that candidate?

          1. Stanford’s president published falsified data, which in my mind is a much bigger issue than copying some words without adequate citation. Yet I did not see cries from the same quarters arguing that we must vet white men more seriously for these high-power positions.

          2. @PolyD: I agree that falsified data is worse than what Gay is alleged to have done, but they’re both things that should have been uncovered during due diligence when they were candidates. I don’t remember much public discussion about academic integrity after the Stanford’s president’s dismissal (aka, vetting white men more seriously, as you put it), but I certainly had the same reaction then as I do now: how did his academic publishing record not get examined more thoroughly before he was hired? Same question about George Santos: why wasn’t his background investigated more thoroughly before the election? This kind of stuff should be standard operating procedure for any kind of big-time public job: CEO, university president, state/federal elected official, etc. Universities and companies should be doing their own vetting, and state parties should be doing it for candidates (their own candidates as well as opposition candidates).

          3. Standford’s president published falsified data, which is much worse than plagiarism, but there was no indication that he was personally responsible. It’s fair to say that the pattern of fraud in his lab was sufficiently troubling that he should be held responsible and resign because he’s the president and presidents should be held to a high standard, so in that sense I actually feel like it’s somewhat comparable to Claudine Gay’s case. I don’t think she’d need to resign if she was just a regular faculty member and he probably wouldn’t have either (though he may have faced additional sanctions from NIH or other funding agencies if the papers involved government funding). I’m a STEM prof.

      3. Not in academia now but ran a university writing center for several years and agree with all of this. Students at my university were disciplined for exactly this type of thing. Regularly.

        1. Yes. I know there is too much plagiarism in higher ed administration in general, and I know a lot of it is unintentional though it reflects a poor understanding of research conventions and the reasons for them, but I do not like a double standard when it comes to things students would be disciplined for.

        2. This is what irks me about the situation. I’m a law student and thought about this immediately when I saw the text-to-text comparison of the alleged plagiarism. A student would almost certainly see an Honor Code violation for something like this. Her plagiarism doesn’t seem nefarious and I’m guessing it was simply the result of sloppiness so I have a huge amount of sympathy for her, but it only seems fair to hold those leading institutions to the same standards as are expected from students.

      4. Throwing this out there: Larry Summers was essentially forced to resign after his absolutely misogynistic remarks about women in the sciences. Gay ought to know that being the President of Harvard University is a position that comes with a lot of scrutiny.

        1. It’s not lost on me that mere weeks passed between her admittedly poorly worded remarks, for which she took immediate repsnsibility and apologized.

          Pres. Summers’ resignation came years, not weeks, after comments he made about women in STEM. I was on campus at that time. His argument was defended as academic freedom and free speech while women like myself were scared.

          During that time, tenured prof Samuel Huntington also argued that Spanish speaking immigrants were destroying an Anglo Protestant America using language that Trump would deploy today. His argument was defended as academic freedom and free speech while immigrants and Latino students were scared.

          It’s also not lost on me that Dr. Gay was held accountable for remarks made while speaking under fire in an adversarial Congressional hearing.

          Why have her off the cuff remarks, which she apologized for, been judged far more harshly compared to s3xist arguments (Summers) and x3nophobic arguments (Huntington) made in academic papers and speeches carefully created after weeks and months of research and reflection (and likely edited and read by multiple sets of eyes)?

          1. “Pres. Summers’ resignation came years, not weeks, after comments he made about women in STEM. I was on campus at that time. His argument was defended as academic freedom and free speech while women like myself were scared.”

            Liar.

            His remarks were made on 14 January 2005.

            The Faculty of Arts andSciences passed a “no confidence” vote on 15 March 2005. While some people (Pinker) agreed with him or said that it was academic freedom, the backlash was intense.

            In July of 2005, a board member resigned over Summers’ continued presence.

            He resigned 13 months later, on 21 February 2006. That isn’t “years” by any reasonable definition of the word.

            Nice try. Want to keep playing, Ms. Extension School?

          2. LOL I’m a College grad but way to be classist and insult the Extension School.

            I have a photo with Summers during the procession at Commencement in June 2006. He stepped down at the end of the academic year, so he continued to collect a paycheck and serve as Harvard President from Jan. 2005-July 2006.

          4. Calling someone a “liar” is wildly aggressive…especially when the receipts back up the “liar”.

          6. Anon at 12:30 – whoever you’re really mad at in your life? It’s not the person you were responding to. Your toxicity is terrible and likely the cause of most of your life problems. Reconsider your choices about – well, just about everything. I’m sorry you’re so miserable.

          7. It isn’t a lie to characterize January 2005-July 2006 as “years”. 1.5 years = years, spanning 2 of my 4 academic undergrad years. A simple fact.

            Funny how this poster was so quick to call me a liar while quibbling over dates, yet completely silent about the easily verifiable fact of student consternation when Huntington faced no consequences for openly anti Catholic, anti Muslim, and anti immigrant arguments. He happily continued his career at Harvard.

            https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/3/16/critics-claim-huntington-is-xenophobic-over/

      5. I don’t know anything about Claudine Gay’s research (I was distracted by the Stanford resignation I guess!). But I do wish direct quotation were more normalized in academic fields. I’ve followed some citation trails in STEM papers where the phone game actually resulted in a misrepresentation of an original source, and I’m confident people were rephrasing just for the sake of rephrasing. (Meanwhile there are already Reddit threads on how to use ChatGPT to do literature reviews, of all things…)

        I’ve worked with nursing students before who really struggle because they’ve been correctly trained not to just rephrase things when working at the hospital. I do know the value to teachers of seeing a student use their own words (and for many reasons it may be time to bring back oral exams). But in academic writing, if your source said it best, why not just quote the source? Rephrasing just to avoid plagiarism is just a game students play to make it easier to over rely on sources when writing term papers. If a professional doesn’t have enough original things to say, that’s a problem with their research or their understanding of the field that I feel goes beyond their citation practices, or they just feel pressured not to quote because of an unhelpful convention of not quoting.

        1. I’m a lawyer, not an academic. But I completely agree. The number of times that people cite a case for the exact opposite of its holding is shocking. When a judge said it best (which is often), I quote. I don’t understand why others feel the need to rephrase everything.

    6. I’m more upset about her congressional testimony and the moral failure it represented. Like, you can’t -ism at anyone for any reason, period. To do so is against the student code of conduct and is also just a huge moral failing. Now, I do believe the actions taken to handle each of those incidents are context dependent, but they are an issue and you must handle them. Which of course did not happen.

      I know Gay personally and did my PhD in her department, so I feel especially disappointed for that reason.

    7. The right wing targeted Gay in the hearings. When that didn’t work, they targeted the missed attributions. They admit as much (see the WSJ commentary today). This isn’t about plagiarism. As you point out, her conclusions and academics were her own. This was about pushing a black woman out of a leadership position at a major institution. She did not resign because she plagiarized. She was forced to resign because she couldn’t lead Harvard while also fending off a constant barrage of right wing attacks.

      1. She should have taken a page from DJT’s playbook of ignore and attack (or just ignore), but she lead so poorly. So poorly. This seems to have been the note she started on (and the woman from Penn), but you just can’t do this poorly and expect to stay.

      3. They’re trying to push out all three university presidents who testified that day, two of whom are white. It’s not credible to make it about Gay’s race.

    8. Her takedown isn’t about plagarism. As an alumna of the College, I’m very sad to see her and the other women presidents thrown under the bus in a PR nightmare. Seems like Gay and the others were set up to fail.

      1. Were they? Surely they did a mock-up of how this would work and prepped them? Like we do attempts to mimic an oral argument environment and grill people as practice. Does Harvard think they are too smart to practice like the result of us would? I’ve been grilled by a regulator and had to focus and not run my mouth but thoughtfully say something on the fly that I knew if itI did it wrong would come back to bite me.

        1. All 3 used the same law firm for prep, and all 3 gave poor responses that the presidents then walked back. Hmmm.

          1. Which firm? This is really incredible. And yet, I think some people in BigLaw really get high on their own supply, like they are so brilliant that nothing bad could ever happen to them vs assuming a legitimate worst case scenario and actually attempt to prepare for it.

      2. Of the college presidents that testified, all women, two of the three have now been forced out. I’m wondering when it happens to the one at MIT. And I’ll bet my bottom dollar that all are replaced by white guys.

        Related: I would *love* to know how they were prepped for these hearings and whether some of their advisors were basically setting them up to fail.

        1. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/dealbook/wilmerhale-penn-harvard-mit-antisemitism-hearing.html

          “Lawyers for WilmerHale sat in the front row at the hearing on Tuesday. They included Alyssa DaCunha, who leads the firm’s congressional investigations and crisis management practices, and Felicia Ellsworth, the vice chair of the firm’s litigation and controversy department.”

          Both DaCunha and Ellsworth are still listed on the WilmerHale website. I wonder if they’ve faced any accountability for their poor preparation?

          1. Are university presidents commonly called to testify before Congress? HRC was amazing, which is not surprising given she’s had a lot more preparation and exposure to that type of setting. Really feels like the presidents prepared for a light rain and were greeted with a torrential downpour.

          2. Their testimony was just so…dull, stilted, overly cautious, as if one of Mr. Burns’ lawyers in The Simpsons was brought to life (or the consultants in Office Space were real people). College presidents are basically professional fundraisers, the idea that they couldn’t be personable and thoughtful in their responses is just wild to me.

          1. Did they let the 1Ls do this? I feel like the proof is absolutely in the pudding here. Have they sent out their November / December bills yet? If not, maybe they should consider whether any of that time should be written off.

          2. I wonder what the ratio of $$$-but-not-great-advice was to “I’m doing this *my* way, thankyouverymuch.” Either way, very disappointing.

            HRC was SO good when she was questioned before Congress, it’s a shame these hearings were such a disaster.

          3. I think you mean $$$$ advice.
            And the fact the three all got prepped the same and all got tripped up the same way suggests they were following that expensive advice.

    9. Somewhat off topic but did you all know she’s a first cousin of the writer Roxane Gay?

    10. Well, done OP, you placed the bait right there any everyone bit on it. Top notch tr011ing.

    11. I’d love some insight from anyone in higher ed as to how professors (and what professors) move into administration and up the ladder. Are university presidents selected for their academic achievements? Seems like they come out of an administrative background versus pure research or teaching.

      I’m reading criticisms that Dr. Gay hasn’t published much. Do any of them? She was Dean before this role. I can’t imagine a Dean having the time to be a Dean + be a teaching professor + be a research professor and publishing.

      1. Expectations for publishing after moving into administration are low at most institutions, but many people do manage to be quite prolific, so it certainly varies. In her case, the more legitimate criticism is that she published remarkably little before becoming a full professor and moving into administration. I’ll withhold judgement, as I’m not an expert in her field, and impact doesn’t depend solely on the number of papers, but it does seem low on the face of it. I’d published more papers as a new assistant professor and that wouldn’t even be remotely enough to get me considered for a job at Harvard, much less get me tenure, but I’m in STEM.

        1. I took a look at Harvard’s government department faculty list. Many of the professors list their publications and 12 does strike me as low. BUT, as Anon 151 says it depends also on the impact of those publications. (I’m also in STEM and if I had, for example, published one paper announcing I had developed a material exhibiting room temp superconductivity, I would be writing this from Cambridge MA.)

  8. Talk to me about travel insurance, please. My husband and I travel frequently (domestically and internationally) and have never purchased travel insurance before. But we are travelling to Cabo in September (hurricane season) and it seems like it would make sense for this trip. Is it? Any recommended vendors?

    1. It’s worth it for any costs you could not get back in the event of a major disruption, or if you needed to cut your trip short for weather. I always just go to InsureMyTrip and shop from there. It’s pretty easy. You do have to have already purchased everything for your trip (hotel reservations, airfare, any tickets or extra excursions) so that they are insuring the total cost, and the further out you buy the insurance, the less expensive it is.

    2. I would look at under what conditions the insurance will pay out and how hard it will be to collect. What if it’s ill-advised to travel or too stormy to have fun, but insurance co says it’s fine and won’t pay? If it’s bad enough that travel is prohibited, would the vendors refund anyway?

      I never buy travel insurance and figure all the money I save on premiums more than covers the occasional cancelled non-refundable trip. No insurance haggling either. I’d consider insurance for k&r, evac, etc if it was relevant to my trip, though since the costs could go well beyond losing what I’ve paid.

    3. I don’t do this, I pay a little more for refundable airline tickets and book directly with hotels at the rate that lets me cancel within 24 hours of arrival. Rental cars are usually refundable too. My work can stymie a vacation and I’ve had to cancel more than one and it’s a much easier approach than insurance, which only works for narrow circumstances, and usually not work, getting a cold, having something else come up, etc.

      2. All airline tickets (except basic economy) are refundable for airline credit now. No need to buy a “refundable” ticket unless you think you can’t use airline credit within a year or so.

        1. I am not loyal to airlines and book based on convenience so I do think it’s worth it to just get a refund. I’ve lost more credits than I’ve used.

      3. +1

        This is what I generally do now.

        I also use a credit card that gives me a bit of additional travel coverage.

    4. Make absolutely sure you understand the exclusions. I have worked on this in a professional capacity and can’t discuss, but read every single line of the contract / policy while you can still get a refund of premium.

    6. I purchased insurance through Allianz for international travel in fall ’21 and Jan. ’22 due to concerns about “what if I catch covid and can’t travel”. Both coverages cost about $60 per trip and included full refunds for flight + hotel. It was well worth it to have peace of mind.

    7. I get it for any all inclusive vacation because the cost of the trip is paid up front. These trips are also the only travel for which I use a travel agent and I just get what she suggests. There are different coverages. I like the refund in full less the cost of the insurance kind. I’ve used it three times – twice for when an elderly parent had a health crisis and once for a bad diagnosis for myself that required immediate surgery and a long recovery.

    8. I would understand what you’re paying for in advance first. I have not purchased for most trips because I also choose rooms that I can cancel 24 hours in advance. The times I have purchased it were when it would be incredibly expensive to fly home should I need medical attention.

    9. I have a good cover travel insurance. It’s mostly relevant when I travel outside of Europe, especially to North America, because of the need to have a travel insurance that covers health insurance.

      I don’t think the kind of travel insurance that’s normal here (health outside Europe, delayed flights, lost luggage…) is even relevant in a situation where there’s a normally occuring weather situation. Sudden volcano trapping you on Iceland – sure, acts of God or well-known weather in normal weather season, no.

  9. ISO recommendations for family vacation trip in April. I would prefer city in Europe. Catch is that DH is having issues with his hip (arthritis) and I don’t know how much he will be able to walk. We don’t like beach vacations or cruises. Kids are teen/tween. Any ideas? TIA!

    1. Lisbon. It’s a decent amount of walking, but there are trams/buses, and taxis are affordable if you need them.

      1. It’s a city built on several steep hills paved in tiles that are slippery when wet and April is a rainy month

    2. Why do you want a city in Europe? What kinds of things do you want to do? What is your vision?

    4. What do you like to do? When I think of going to a city in Europe, most of the things I would want to do involve a lot of walking (museums, sight seeing, etc.) even if there is very, very good public transport.

      1. Yes, these are the things I like! So I’m wondering if there are bus tours/segway tours/scooters/other stuff that we could do all together. He can do museums (more SLOW walking rather than walking to get somewhere).

        1. Any big European city will involve some walking. Most will have public transit and hop on/hop off buses that will take you to the main attractions. If you can do museums slowly, I would pick a museum rich city. You can also book a driving tour or boat tour (in Paris, the boat tours on the Seine are a good way to see some sights while sitting down, and you can get a private tour in a cute vintage car that can be a good option.) I personally don’t recommend Lisbon – lovely city, but very hilly. I was there while seven months pregnant and found it hard to get around, more so than other European cities we did on that trip.

        2. I think you’re going to find this frustrating. There will be plenty of time for fun walking European city vacations in the future, after your DH addresses his hip issues. For now, pick something more sedentary, or skip this year’s vacation.

          1. +1. Every trip I have taken to a European city has involved a lot of walking, as compared to daily life in the US, even when I have been in cities with good public transport, and I like to do the same things when I go (museums, food and wine tours, sight seeing, visiting parks, etc). The year that my partner was having knee problems that prevented much walking we vacationed domestically instead.

        3. My suggestion would be to spend the money for private tours with a van/car. You can find them on Tours By Locals dot com or Viator. Also I don’t know if you’ve done a Segway tour but it involves standing for several hours and your feet, if not your hip, gets really tired.

          All that said, we LOVED Copenhagen last year. It’s super expensive but I think the teens would love Tivoli Gardens (the prototype for Disneyland) and there are segway tours and boat tours as well as good subway service. Also highly recommend a day trip to Malmo, Sweden (although the one I did was a lot of walking).

          1. +1 to this suggestion (as well as group tours). I’ve traveled with elderly people in both Europe and South America and what helped was having an organized tour to take you as close as possible and pick you up. That cuts down on walking.

            You also have to prioritize. If you want to go see the Mona Lisa for instance, walk in, see it and leave. Or see a handful of things. You just can’t see everything. And that’s ok. It’s just a different experience. I’ve been everywhere from Budapest to Havana with people 80+ and have yet to find one that had no accommodations for mobility. Rural areas, yes. But very few cities.

    5. The hip problem is just going to be an issue with any city vacation, IMO. If you’re really tied to it, then talk to DH about whether he’ll feel okay sitting in a cafe while you explore during the day, maybe getting a wheelchair at museums, etc. You certainly can cut down on walking by taking public transportation and taxis, but there’s no magic city in Europe where this will be easy. When I was just pre-hip replacement a couple of years ago, we did a family vacation in an up-north cabin type place. We were able to spend some time boating, kayaking, light sightseeing, a little sitting on beaches on a lake. That worked out really well.

      1. Counterpoint: anywhere but venice. It is probably my favorite city in Europe, but unfortunately not for the mobility-challenged. There’s no way to get anywhere without crossing multiple bridges of stairs up / stairs down. Water taxis are good but only get you to points around the edge of Venice. Gondolas are really more for scenic tours than getting around and a single ride is $90+ for 30 min.

    7. Agree any city will be challenging. I would suggest the Tuscan countryside or Mallorca to scratch the Europe itch without needing to walk everywhere.

    8. My recommendation for people with walking difficulty on European trips is to try out the buses/trams – it’s a great way to cut down on walking since you avoid stairs and walking long distances to platforms. Google maps directions work great for them, too (in most cities – Berlin was a little off).

    9. Second (third?) the recommendation for Paris if he can manage the stairs for the Metro. I went with my mother who was recovering from ankle surgery last year. She did have some issues with stairs but public transportation in Paris is so good, the central part of the city is flat, and most of the major tourist sites are accessible. You can even rent a wheelchair or push chair at a lot of the museums.

    10. I would do London. I had a family member visit there on crutches and while it wasnt that fun, they got to get out of the house and do different things with minimal walking. Not many hills. Many of the popular tube spots have step-free access (there is a specific map that indicates these). The bus system is great and can be used to get around quite easily. I also did a hop-on-hop-off tour during one trip there and it’s an easy way to get around sites of interest. Ubers and other car share services are readily available if you dont want to do public transport, and are generally less expensive than many European cities I’ve visited. Some musuems and cultural sites have wheelchairs available if you request, and all of them should have a specific page on their website explaining their accessibility accomodations.

  10. Anyone have experience with pilates or a pilates-style workout class like Solidcore? I’ve done some regular pilates classes in the past and I’m interested in going more regularly–my primary goals are some vanity weight loss and improved muscle tone and flexibility. Regular pilates seems great for improving mobility but the classes I’ve done don’t seem like they burn a ton of calories. Solidcore/Lagree on the other hand are more intense but I’ve heard you’re more prone to getting hurt because the instructors don’t focus on form. I have bad knees so most traditional HIIT classes are unpleasant for me, and anything with a reformer seems like it would be a helpful variation.

    1. Try barre classes – it’s a more intense workout than just Pilates but it has many of the same elements.

    2. I think it’s worth a try. Solidcore is really slow, so lots of time to self-correct your form. Whether or not the instructors give good advice on form might depend on their background.

      1. +1. I started doing solidcore almost a year ago and I’m obsessed with it. I’ve cycled through almost all the trendy workout options–various flavors of HIIT, pure pilates, barre, etc.–and it is, bar none, the most effective workout class I’ve ever done.

        As with any instructor-led class, the quality varies and you’ll figure out who you like and who you don’t.

    3. I’ve done both barre and solidcore. I prefer barre, but I think they are effectively mostly the same workout. you will definitely improve your muscle tone and flexibility. I’m not sure either classic barre nor solidcore would be hugely effective for weight loss…but most barre studios offer cardio versions which might be more helpful.

    4. I have done Lagree regularly for about 4 years. I love it, no matter how long you have done it there are still ways to make it challenging. Form is really important to not get hurt (and to benefit). Teaching correct form is very studio/instructor dependent. I was lucky to have some good ones in the beginning. I would look into some private sessions to really learn proper form (probably not at the very beginning but after a few weeks when you have a basic understanding of the moves and are ready to tweak your form). It has really increased my strength and flexibility. Weight loss I don’t think it does much. The goal is to do the movements as slow as possible. For me this this does not elevate my HR and up the calorie burn. For the typical 50 minute class I burn about 70 calories (Apple Watch), others usually get more, but it is more strength training than intense cardio.

    5. I would just do a real Pilates class and something else for cardio. Seems like trying to combine them gives you the worst of both.

    6. Just remember that you don’t lose weight in the gym, you lose it in the kitchen. It’s way “easier” to just not eat those 200 calories of ice cream than it is to burn 200 calories in the gym. (yes, I have a sweet tooth too and I know it’s not “easy” to forego the sweets) If you’re looking for weight loss, yes go exercise and build some muscle and get all of the other health benefits of exercise, but also take a look at what you’re eating. Focusing on whole, unprocessed foods vs. ultra processed foods and added sugar (it’s in many ultra processed foods, so they go hand in hand) will lead to scale changes faster than from burning a few hundred extra in the gym a couple times a week. Another bonus is that you’ll probably be eating more nutritious food, which will make you feel better and have more energy for your workouts.

  11. NYC people — help please! I’m trying to plan a family visit over the teen kids’ spring break. Are there days where museums aren’t open? Also, does anything major close the week after Easter (Easter is 3/31 this year)? IDK that it will be everyone’s break, but hopefully not like DC when it’s all tour buses and crazy. Anything else to be aware of?

    Need to tie in a visit to my in-laws out by the Delaware Water Gap at some point and rent a car, but would like to stay somewhere where my kids could finally get a central park view (a splurge, but this is after years of spring break wrecked by COVID lockdowns or someone actually getting it). Also: anything to not miss in 2024? Kids are more history and museum kids; spouse will just want a steak dinner at some point. May check out Stevens for a college for 1 kid. No broadway shows, but would see something quirky and off-broadway (our city gets the major tours and they have seen big shows like Les Mis and Hamilton). Have been to Fraunces Tavern before and the WTC area and have taken the ferry from Weehawken but not a Circle Line.

    Will probably fly into Newark (not JFK) or maybe Allentown (see DWG stop).

    2. The museum websites should have the days that they are closed. If they’re into museums, clearly the Met, the Intrepid and the Nat Hist museum are musts.

    3. That is not spring break for NYC kids, and most things are open on easter and nothing closes during the week. Many museums now have a day of the week they close, but you’ll have to check them all individually, they are not all the same (I think it’s Wednesday for the Met). I live here so can’t advise on tourist stuff, but the Museum of Math is fun and relatively new.

    4. If you mean a view of Central park from the hotel room, that’s going to be absurdly expensive. If you mean visiting Central Park from a hotel close by, I’d recommend the Fitzpatrick on 57th and Third. If you want a cool view of the park and the city, I’d suggest getting tickets to the top of One World Trade.

      1. Agree with this. You can see Central Park from many places, but your hotel–you’re going to be out and about, so just pick a good hotel in a good ‘hood (e.g., NOT Times Square). Have fun!

    5. Many museums are closed every Monday, but I think the big ones vary their closed days a bit so they are not all closed on the same day – check their websites. I would not expect any of the big ones to be closed due to Easter since NYC has so many faiths. A lot of theatres are dark on Mondays year-round. NYC schools’ spring break is aligned with Passover, so many local kids will be off on Easter Monday but then in school the rest of the week, which might make things slightly less crowded.
      How old are the kids?
      If you are going to be in NJ anyway, you might like the Liberty Science Center. It’s better than the Queens Hall of Science. The Tenement Museum might be cool if your kids are old enough. Going up in the crown of the Statue of Liberty is one of my favorite thing I’ve ever done in NYC.
      For theater/shows, see what is playing at the New Victory Theater. It is technically Broadway due to theater size but they don’t host touring shows or anything you would likely have seen at home, and they focus just on kids/family shows. Most Off-Broadway shows that will be running in April haven’t opened yet, and some aren’t even selling tickets yet, so I’m having trouble thinking of recs. There will be a lot of new Broadway shows opening up this spring for Tony consideration, including many plays that will never tour, so don’t rule that out.

    6. Even if your kids have seen the big touring shows, there’s nothing like seeing a Broadway show on Broadway. The theatres are generally smaller and quirkier than most touring houses and it’s just a whole different experience.

      Highly recommend the Lower East Side Tenement Museum for history lovers — you should get tickets in advance and you can chose the tour that interests you the most among the various immigrant experiences. It’s close to Katz’s Deli for a fun lunch stop.

      1. Realizing the privilege screaming from my comment… OP, it’s fine for your kids to have seen the touring productions, but someday you ought to treat yourself to the real Broadway productions. The difference is really striking. A particularly disappointing production of Hamilton at the Kennedy Center made us swear off tours – the tickets are nearly the same price, but actors, acoustics, and even sets can fall far short of the experience you’d find on Broadway.

        1. Broadway is just so d*mn expensive. I went to Les Mis once on a trip and was in the humming section. I get that we all know the words. Save it for the car or the shower.

  12. Where do I find wide-legged denim in interesting colors? I have bright purple jeans from Madewell (Emmett 2.0 garment dyed) that are acceptable in my business casual office, but they lose their shape very quickly and end up hanging weirdly. Just looking for some other brands to try! Thanks!

    1. Coloured denim is very 2010 to me so maybe that’s why you’re having trouble finding it.

    2. I highly recommend the Billabong Free Fall Wide-Leg pants – comes in a variety of colors and fabrics. I have the black and white pairs and love them very much; will definitely purchase other colors.

    3. Dickies Women’s Regular Fit Wide Leg Work Pants came up when I was searching the Billabong pants. Google always shows me tons of shopping results similar to what I’ve searched, which might help you.

  13. My bf and I are both 40s in a VHCOL city. A few dates in, we had our first chat about money. He said that he “lived on his base salary and saves his bonuses.” I shared that I did the exact same and was excited to find a match that was financially responsible. I had boyfriends in the past ask me for money or loans.

    A few nights ago, he told me about needing to borrow money from his brother because of his credit card company essentially debiting his account twice and needing a week to fix it. I expressed surprise that he didn’t have savings to cover it, as we are both high earners. He got a little defensive, asked me what my intention was in that statement. I explained that I didn’t understand how we both live on our base salary and save our bonuses…that means there are 10 years of bonuses somewhere and surely a one month credit card bill shouldn’t mean borrowing from family, right? He clarified that “live on base, save bonuses” means he saves the bonuses but then actually uses that money to pay expenses as they come up…so “things get tight in the months before a new bonus.” Huh? He also pointed to his child support payments as a reason he can’t save. As a percentage of his income, this is a small amount.

    So basically this man has almost no savings. I feel a bit lied to. I make about a third of his income, but have saved my whole life and could probably retire tomorrow if I wanted. We are both divorced, he has 2 young kids. He has floated the idea of me selling my home and buying a larger home with him. Now I don’t think I can ever share a bank account or asset like a property with him. Is this a reason to break up?

    1. YES! Break up. 1) finances are reason enough to break up. this would be a deal breaker for me. 2) he pretty much lied.

      1. This. Break up. He’s dishonest and you aren’t on the same page financially. This will be a lifetime of misery and maybe bankruptcy.

    2. I think it’s a reason to keep your finances separate from his, not necessarily to break up.

      1. Agreed. Life is expensive. Child support is expensive. Not being able to retire at 40 is not a red flag.

        1. And I never said it was. I said not being able to bridge an extra credit card payment without a loan from family is a red flag.

          1. It’s a red flag that he lied. Even if it was unintentional/clueless, that’s a red flag for him being clueless.

        2. Not having even a month of expenses saved at 40 is a red flag for higher earner. I would understand if he made little and therefore needed it all for basic expenses, but he is being financially irresponsible.

          I would break up with him for the lie.

      2. Can you both share more of your financial positions before thinking about breaking up? I know some people do save but keep very little in liquid accounts. It’s not impossible that he’s putting too much into stocks and not keeping a rainy day fund in cash or something like that. Or he really doesn’t save. It doesn’t sound like he’s shared enough for you to know. If you’re thinking about houses at all, it’s fair to get into details about your full financial pictures. Buying a house is equally serious to marriage in terms of financial sharing.

    3. If you think it’s a reason to break up, then it’s a reason to break up. And I kinda feel like you do.

      1. Agreed. It sure sounds like he has been deceptive and like he is teetering on the very edge of living beyond his means. If true, these are huge issues and not ones I’d be optimistic about him correcting. Not to mention that any “help” with correcting these issues runs the risk of putting you in Mommy territory not partner territory. And for goodness sake don’t loan him money.

    5. I met my husband when we were in our early 40s. VHCOL. Both professionals. He had two teens at the time.

      One of the (many – yay!) reasons our relationship works so well is that we have the same approach to finances. FWIW, our approach is the same as yours, but I think what matters is that we have the same approach. We keep our finances totally separate, but we are completely transparent about them: I know all his investments/income/expenses, he knows mine and we invest to complement the other’s investments (ie, he owns rental properties, so I don’t invest in real estate, so we are diversified). We are now doing the we-plan-to-retire-in-18-24-months-analysis with our financial advisor, and we are in good shape after having used this approach almost 20 years (plus both saving and investing before we met).

      Please don’t ignore this red flag.

    6. I think it’s a red flag worth paying attention to. His first statement was misleading, but in the first few dates, everyone is trying to make themselves look better than they are. You now know what he meant, which is he lives off everything he makes and has no savings. Do what you will with that information. If it was me, I would not buy a house with someone who could not handle major repair expenses when they come up. It means you will be paying 100% of those expenses. It’s up to you to decide if you want to date a grown man with no financial sense. At least you know what you are getting into, and sometimes the relationship is worth dealing with a persons downsides.

      1. +1

        This is where I fall.

        I mean…. if he has ?no savings (?), how would he contribute to a downpayment?

        You could use the discussion about buying a house to open up a discussion about what are our goals… as a couple? And financial goals are a big part of this, and our plans on how to share (or not…) finances and ongoing expenses.

        It’s time to put everything on the table, financially, if you are talking about buying a house. If he is evasive, or gets defensive, or you don’t like what you see when he reveals all… those would all be concerning to me.

    7. To me, sharing a life also inherently means sharing finances. You’re never going to be comfortable sharing finances, so you shouldn’t continue down a path of sharing a life.

      A lot of people manage finances like your bf, but what matters is that you don’t want to and don’t really respect his having done so.

      FWIW, your bf’s approach would make me incredibly uncomfortable, especially in VHCOL area and with having children and with earning plenty. Like, what happens to his kids and him if he can’t earn so much one year because of illness, layoff, etc? It’s one thing if someone has no savings because they have to pay for necessities and there’s nothing left over, but his spending suggests values that are very out of line with yours.

      1. I think not respecting the way he’s done it is really key here. OP probably isn’t going to get over that, so for that reason probably best for both of them to part ways.

    8. If you feel lied to – and I think that is valid – THAT is what needs to be worked through. And he should want to work through that with you.

      But the finances themselves would not be a dealbreaker for me or a reason to breakup. I would never combine finances anyway (in my 40s, never married and never want to and happily childfree) – especially not with a man with small kids. So that part feels like it’s not a dealbreaker. Focus on the dishonesty/lack of transparency.

    9. In what state is child support for two kids a “small percentage of income”? It’s something like 20% to 25% of gross (before all deductions).

      1. Not in his case. He pays about 3% of his gross income, and has 50% custody.

        1. It seems like a red flag that he budgets to only spend 3% of their gross income on multiple children. That seems like the very base floor…and also not sustainable. Sounds like the kids are young. What happens when they get older and want to play soccer and do art and play the trombone, go to summer camp, get SAT prep etc?

          2. I don’t think he’s spending 3% of income on the kids – he has 50% custody, so he’s presumably spending money on the kids outside of child support too

      2. It’s really disappointing to see a comment like this on a board of high achieving women. Child support is a function of custody time and the parents’ respective incomes. If the parents have 50/50 physical and legal custody and mom makes more, mom is paying child support. Let’s not normalize the trope of the higher earning man spending more money and less time with kids than his lower earning ex wife.

    11. Second question. You say that you are “both high earners” and then say that you make “about a third of his income.” Can you provide approximate numbers? Does he also pay alimony?

      1. Given all the assumptions OP has made about her bf’s finances, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s also assumed, possibly incorrectly, how much money he makes.

      2. I make low six figures and he makes high six figures or even 7 figures.

        1. What on earth is he doing with all that money that he has to borrow from family to pay off a credit card?

          2. I honestly do not know. I had no idea how high-earning he was until recently. I have been funding most of our dating expenses, including an international vacation, because I thought we earned similarly but he had the childcare expenses and I wanted to be considerate of that.

          4. So, with this additional information – yes, break up with him. Because someone earning that much who has no savings is financially irresponsible, and he is not likely to change at this point in his life. He’s used to living a very high-flying lifestyle if he’s spending that much per year, and it is really, really hard to change that in order to develop financial discipline at this late stage. You will be fighting about money from Day 1 of your marriage. Thank u, next

          5. I think this is where I would land on deciding to break up and it would be because our values aren’t in alignment. I’m all for maintaining separate finances but he is doing something wildly different to be losing that much money and it not be obvious. You would clearly have noticed a fancy car or a Picasso by now. Any habit like that would clearly explain where the money is going.

            I also wouldn’t be paying for your dates or trips or whatever because of “childcare expenses” with his income. Where do these children go to school? And he isn’t even paying for all of it. I agree that there are many red flags here that just aren’t about his representation of his savings habits.

        2. His situation is bonkers under that salary – something is off with what he’s telling you or he’s just really bad with money, which seems like a deal breaker for you (which is fine)

          1. Yes, either he’s not telling you the truth about his salary, or there’s a big gambling/other girlfriend/drug/something else issue. And the fact that he’s let you carry dating expenses reflects pretty poorly on him.

          2. My guess is gambling problem. Sports gambling specifically. I have met so many men who think sports betting is different and there’s no way they can lose long term. Spoiler alert: none of them have won long term.

        3. High 6 figures/low 7s, and he can’t afford a month’s credit card bill?

          I’m not trying to be glib. But the math isn’t mathing.

          Does he secrecy pay alimony? Gambling debts? Drugs?

          I’m concerned because you mentioned past partners have asked for money or loans, as well as funding vacations with your current partner.

          I’ve been there, making low 6s and once found myself paying for a Valentine’s Trip that was supposedly for me. I even onve paid a friend’s mom’s overdue utility bill. I justified it as “so many people are struggling” but then I realized “I’m not struggling. I budget and make good choices, and it’s not my responsibility to fix others’ problems”. That was something I worked through in therapy as I learned about my very well intentioned caregivers response due to being a parentified child.

      3. He pays zero alimony. His ex received a large settlement 10 years ago, and that was it.

    12. Yes obviously. But he didn’t lie to you. You made a bunch of assumptions without any basis.

        1. I’m trying to understand where you are coming from. Like, how you read differently the phrase that he was ‘saving his bonuses’. Do you mean because he didn’t immediately blow the money on a big trip or purchase? Because it sounds like he was spending it in the months after receiving, and by the time the next (annual?) bonus came around, the previous one was long gone. You can’t call that saving…can you?

          2. I would call it saving. I save at least part of bonuses. In my HYSA. Then I use that money for things I need to. To me, saving doesn’t mean saving for all eternity. I save so I have the money to spend when I need it, whether that’s on a vacation or an emergency or a car, whatever.

            Now, I can afford everything I need to when I need to without loans but that doesn’t change that to me, “I save X” doesn’t automatically mean I save X for all eternity.

          3. huh, thanks for sharing – I guess the bottom line is good open communication is key here.

          4. Yeah, to me it’s fair to call it savings if the money is being put into an account that’s earmarked for later expenses. I say we “save” our tax refund, but what I mean is we put that money in a HYSA and use it to cover some expenses throughout the year (some anticipated like property taxes, some not).

    13. The communication pattern is the red flag here and not the fact that you have different interpretations of what “saving bonuses” looks like. Without clear communication, I don’t think you know whether or not he has no savings; he could have a well funded 401(k) that he doesn’t raid for credit card payments, which is reasonable. He could also be spending more on his kids than just the court ordered amount or even have 529 accounts for them, which would be another reasonable thing to do.

      I think you need to actually sit down with him and discuss what your situations look like. With printed statements, I mean. And then you can decide whether you are comfortable with his situation.

      I think you also need to sit and think about whether you only want to date men who are financially set for retirement. That’s a small pool and you may find you have to compromise in other ways that matter to you.

      1. I agree that OP totally could do this, but it would be so off putting if a partner essentially audited me to decide if they wanted to stay together or not. Her BF might decide that’s a deal breaker for him. I probably would in his shoes.

        1. Setting aside printed statements (ew, paper), is this uncommon, though, especially at this age? Before we got married, DH and I broke out our phones and opened our banking and investment apps and showed each other where everything is held and how it’s held. Each partner should know the other’s financial picture. And in the case of a spouse, you should know where the accounts are held in the event of your spouse’s death or incapacitation. One of my friends lost her husband unexpectedly at 30 and she didn’t even know which bank he used for his pre-marriage savings accounts. I guess I can understand that when you get married at 25 but not at 40.

          1. Not sure I’ve read the entire thread, but do we know how long OP’s been dating this guy? If it’s early, then something like this would be overkill. But if they’ve talked about the future, and are seeing one together, then a clear conversation about money should be expected at their age.

          2. Yes? I didn’t do this with my husband or in the long term relationship I had before meeting him.

    14. People mean different things when they say “savings,” so it’s possible that this is a difference of perspective and not necessarily a dishonesty issue. I once had a blow up with an ex about something similar, and I definitely could’ve handled it better, though I think it did show that we had major differences of opinion about finances.

      When I talk about savings, I usually mean the liquid amount that’s in my savings account at this moment. I don’t mean my 401k or investments, those are set it and forget it so they’re sort of out of sight out of mind. If your guy is treating the term “savings” this way then he probably has other savings like his 401k, and it’s not accurate to say he’s 40 and has no savings.

      When my ex and I discussed his savings, we were also talking about him fixing up his house (which needed big ticket items like a new roof, new HVAC, updating the 1960s kitchen with faulty wiring) to get it rented so we could find a place together. When he told me he had, say, $100k in “savings” I thought that meant he had $100k liquid or easily liquidable, which to me sounds like it would hopefully if barely cover the work that was needed. I felt pretty hurt and betrayed later when I realized that $100k was mostly in his 401k, and in fact he only had something like $20k in a savings account, which for reasons that are beyond me he somehow deluded himself into thinking was totally enough. In fairness to him, I didn’t ask many questions because I didn’t want to pry too much and I made assumptions I shouldn’t have. If you’re getting serious with this guy then you should start talking about actual numbers so you understand the full financial picture.

      1. Thanks, I agree with this and told him so. I have raided savings to help family, fund a home purchase, etc. But “saving my bonuses” as a general approach should mean there is something left for emergencies. In our 20s, no. But by our 40s, borrowing from family for a credit card payment just seems problematic.

        1. Absolutely to your last sentence, but I don’t agree that you can broad brush what “saving my bonuses” means for all people. I think this isn’t the guy for you, but I also think making assumptions of any kind is going to be problematic in any relationship

        2. Or does this mean he has tons of $$ in a brokerage account invested in the market/kid’s college funds etc… and just doesn’t keep a lot of liquid cash? I know people like this. They are very rich, but don’t want to sell some Apple stock which would produce a high capital gain/tax for that year, so they borrow from a family member that month and repay with the next paycheck if a random expense comes up. Sloppy, yes, but it saves them a few bucks by keeping everything in the market instead of keeping $100k emergency fund in a money market fund/savings account. Rich people do this kind of thing.

          I wonder because if he makes as much $$ as you suggest (maybe 7 figures….), I mean…. is he renting a Donald Trump type condo in Manhattan for his kids at 25k per month or have the biggest drug habit of anyone I’ve ever heard of because how in the world is he blowing all that money without you noticing?

          1. He expressly stated in the last conversation that most of his net worth is from home equity and his 401k. And that he “doesn’t have a ton of stock that is appreciating like [I] do.” This is the partial driver of his desire to sell his home – to “tap the equity” and invest a smaller portion of it with me into a new home. Then he would have some savings left.

            His home is average in our area. No fancy cars or clothes or anything I can see. No remodeling or big vacations. Maybe some fancy electronics. Most of his furniture is inexpensive (like my own furniture). After almost 2 years of dating, I can’t tell you what this almost 7-figure income earner spends it on. We do not go out much, and I often pay when we do go out since I have no childcare expenses. I thought his salary was closer to mine until he disclosed otherwise recently.

          3. Ok, well….

            Do you love him?
            Are you ready to move in with him, emotionally, and think this is someone for the long haul?

            Well it is time to sit down and have the hard conversations about life goals/finances and be open and honest about all. See each other’s balances and talk about how all expenses for a shared home will be addressed – from downpayment to all monthly bills to all ongoing maintenance (and an emergency fund MUST be started for the house/house maintenance for his “half”). Talk about who is funding the kids college funds and how that will be paid. And what your goals are for retirement.

          4. Based on your comments, it seems like there is a pattern of him being vague or misleading about his financial picture. I cannot imagine dating someone for two years and then finding out they make triple or more what I thought they did.

            He also seems to have a, your money is my money and my money is my money, approach. He’s let you pay more for dates and trips even though he makes much more, and he let you think that was fair because you assumed you had more disposable income. He sees your house as a potential source of money for him: he can get his equity out of his own house without having to pay an entire dp on a new house, because the proceeds from your house will cover half or more of the dp on the new house. Note that he doesn’t seem to think his own equity would go toward the dp, he plans to keep that as savings. I would feel very taken advantage of.

          5. Does he have multiple kids in $60K tuition schools or does he give money to parents? I could see that eating up his salary fast. In any case, this is a good time to consider the status of your relationship. If it’s going to be more serious/living together, then you both disclose your current finances/spending and long term plans. If it’s not serious, then you don’t move in together. Also, he can pay for more dates.

    15. My big question in all this would be what he plans to do in retirement? Does he plan to retire? I want to spend retirement traveling and so on – it’s just not feasible on social security and I would resent funding my partner’s retirement 100%, especially if I knew he had chosen not to save. I don’t know if you want to ask him these questions and see if his responses allay your concern or just break up with him.

    16. I would break up not because of finances per se but because he lied. Spending bonuses as needed is not saving them.

      There’s a few issues here: lying, lack of savings and what that means for your future, and financial commitments to his kids.

      I’m divorced and now remarried, no kids. I intentionally didn’t date men with kids, even though that limited the dating pool, because I know kids always come first. I didn’t want to navigate finances with someone who has other kids to (rightly) prioritize. I got to choose my deal-breaker, and that was a big one. I did find my amazing DH and we want to create a family together.

    17. YES DTMFA I’m you 6 years down the road divorcing a financial idiot and paying dearly for it Believe me, there’s nothing you can do to educate or help him see what he doesn’t want to see

      As our beloved Senior Attorney has taught us, when someone shows you who they are believe them the first time

    18. Just because I love a good mystery, here are some random guesses on where his money might be going:

      – payroll taxes if he is self employed
      – equity payments if he is a partial owner in the business
      – med malpractice/professional practice insurance if he is a doctor or similar
      – could he have flood or fire insurance on his house that is five figures a year or higher? i.e., are you in California?
      – are the kids in private school? do they go to occupational/speech/physical therapy that is $$$? or are they on travel sports teams? I knew a law firm partner whose special needs kid’s high school was $81k a year in tuition, but you wouldn’t know the kid had special needs offhand.
      – is he helping out parents or siblings financially? I can’t tell you the number of high paid men I know who stealthily bought a house for their parents once they “made it.” There could very well be a second mortgage (PMI) in the picture
      – he could tithe or be a Scientologist
      – gambling or drug use

      He may also have unvested company stock that he’s including in his income but isn’t able to cash out. There’s so many possibilities that people don’t talk about and many of them are pretty innocent. But it doesn’t sound like he’s for you

      1. I am giggling from this list, so thank you and I’ll play:)

        No to all above. Parents are long gone. Siblings are affluent – hence his loan from his brother. Public schools for kids. No big kid expenses, and if anything I feel he should spend more on the kids! Last summer he almost refused to enroll the kids in a day camp because of the $1k cost for the week. Then I offered to pay for it, and he changed his mind.

        1. Why did you offer to pay for it?

          So he isn’t a big spender treating his kids. No parental/sibling care expenses, no pricy nursing home bill. Free public school! Where’s the take home pay going? I’m invested LOL

          I doubt he makes as much as he actually claims. We can debate and you can investigate, but at the end of the day, you shouldn’t have to be the FBI with your partner. You should take him at his word (and the spending comment shows you simply can’t). You seem really kind and deserve an equal partner who can reciprocate what you put out there.

        2. I bet he doesn’t make what he says he makes.

          I once went on a second date with a guy who told me, on the second date, how much he makes ($150k). I guess I didn’t seem sufficiently impressed because he proceeded to tell me that $100k of that income was expense reimbursement. I pointed out that if it’s a reimbursement then that’s not income, he’s just getting paid back. He insisted no it’s income. I asked if the IRS taxed him on that money and he said yes because it’s income. I said so that means your actual salary of $50k is less than your tax liability? You’re paying over $50k/year in taxes? And he said no that’s ridiculous he pays under $20k or whatever in taxes, which is a totally reasonable amount to pay on $150k in income. Some people fundamentally do not understand how money works.

    19. I would also wonder if his credit cards are maxed out. Or if he bought a $30,000, $15,000, whatever thing and didn’t have that in liquid savings?

      1. This story reminds me of a link posted here awhile ago. It was a family who had like $600 or 700K HHI, and yet they were totally broke and up to their eyeballs with credit card debt. They bought their son a tux instead of renting it because they had a credit card for the tux store and no cash or available credit to rent. They thought their lifestyle was typical though. Some people…just don’t get it.

        1. This was my ex-bf’s parents. Very high incomes (7 figures some years) and they just had monstrous and ever-growing amounts of debt. They would open new credit cards and get cash advances on those cards to pay something towards the old cards and it just spiraled. The whole thing was just wild.

  14. I think I messed up and I am not sure the best way to fix it.
    Yesterday was my birthday – a landmark birthday. Given the terrible timing of my birthday, I’ve never really celebrated it. In all my years, it mostly gets overlooked by everyone except my mother, it’was never a good date to have a party, and I am not one to like a spotlight, so I’ve always pretty much ignored it. I’ve never been one to drop the date in conversation to let people know it’s coming up or organized a celebration.
    I have been dating someone for a little over a year. A few months ago, he asked my birthdate and I told him. At the time, I thought he put it in his calendar, but I think I was wrong. He definitely did not know it was yesterday. And I made no mention of it leading up to the day or yesterday, even when he mentioned (on the phone, I did not see him) it was a friend’s birthday. I do not care at all, but he enjoys celebrating his birthday, which is in 6 weeks, I am thinking I’ve set him up to feel bad when he realizes we’ve never celebrated mine and asks again for the date, which I did not intend. How do I fix this? Is it better to mention something soon or let this get washed away in the excitement of his birthday later?

        1. He really can’t afford to (but maybe make dinner?) and we aren’t scheduled to see each other. I’m not looking for a makeup, and don’t want him to think he needs to do that, just to avoid future awkwardness.

          1. Hey it’s going to be awkward no matter what if you want to keep seeing him. Just send a text, pull the bandaid off. “Hey I’m feeling a little awkward but wish you mentioned my birthday. It was on the (). I realized we haven’t discussed how we should celebrate birthdays and holidays in the future (exchange presents or not, see each other that day or not, etc), so I’m bringing it up to discuss later.”

    2. I think it’s weird you’ve been dating someone for more than a year and he did not actively seek out your birthday nor plan for it. You did not mess up.

    3. definitely tell him now and tell him all this.
      But also? He should feel sh*tty about it so your end goal should not be to save his feelings entirely. You’ve dated for over a year, surely he realizes he has never celebrated your birthday – does he think you don’t have one??
      I am not a big birthday person but this is a bridge too far and I am mad at him on your behalf.

      1. Yeah if it feels bad about it …. good? He’ll remember next year? Or he can plan you a half-birthday celebration to make up for it.

      2. Agree, this is especially egregious since he enjoys celebrating his birthday. If he didn’t care about his own, I could understand him not making a big deal over OP’s. But that’s not the case.

    4. It sounds like you didn’t want to celebrate your birthday and you just want to make sure he doesn’t feel guilty about forgetting yours, thereby putting a cloud over his own celebration? In that case you can say it casually next time his birthday comes up in conversation: Whoops that reminds me my birthday was the other day, oh well!

    5. First of all happy birthday! Second, I’m so sorry you feel that way about yiur birthday! My heart hurt reading that you feel your birthday is terrible timing!! That’s simply not true, and I am angry at the people who put that idea into your head!!
      As to this boyfriend, you’ve been dating for a little over a year, which means you’ve had two birthdays since you’ve been together. This is not you messing up, this is him messing up.

      1. Happy Belated Birthday! Your birthday is as worthy of celebration as anyone else’s is. If you genuinely prefer a low key celebration then let him know that, but please don’t downplay your birthday just because of its proximity to the holidays. He ought to feel a little bit bad, he ought to make it up to you, and please don’t think it’s up to you to manage his feelings.

      2. This is weird. Not everybody has to be a birthday person. I don’t really like mine, either. I don’t want to be the center of attention and also my birthday usually makes me feel pretty down and melancholy. And it’s at a perfectly convenient time.

  15. How am I drowning and it’s only Jan 4th? Really could have used that holiday break, but covering for other people’s practices = just a couple days off (which were spend traveling to see family. Fun, but not the most relaxing). Some how, some way, I will find a few days to take to myself this month (hopefully, maybe, probably…)

  16. Law student (1L) here and have quite a few receptions and networking events in January at Big Law firms. Unless otherwise specified, do I assume a suit? I have a pretty nice professional wardrobe from 10 years in consulting and always felt like I understood the nuances/unspoken rules of how to dress in that industry, but not sure what’s expected in the legal industry though I have a feeling lawyers like suits more than consultants do! Most of my suits are dress suits and I always make sure my dresses have sleeves, so I could always go in with the full suit and take off the jacket or switch to a structured cardigan/jardigan if I’m overdressed (that has to be female equivalent of removing the tie). If it matters, I’m in Denver.

    Thanks!

    2. Big law recruiter here: Denver would be slightly less casual so you can do a structured cardigan or jardigan with a suiting dress. But a suit is never the wrong answer for an event like this. Some of your peers will be more casual, and it won’t be a mark against anyone unless they are full-on inappropriately dressed, but wearing a suit indicates you’re taking it seriously and understand professional norms.

      1. Did you mean Denver is slightly MORE casual than other markets? You said less casual, but then the implication being that here a jardigan would be ok.

        In any event, I’ll stick with the suit for networking events. Can’t go wrong with that. Appreciate your help!

    3. Assume a suit unless otherwise stated. I personally don’t think a suit dress under a jacket needs to have sleeves. If you’re wearing a sheath/suiting dress in place of a suit, I would make sure that has sleeves though.

      1. I like sleeved dresses actually just because then I can wear a Numi undershirt. Numi = much less dry cleaning!

  17. Probably a little late for this, but looking for recommendations for a SF Bay Area car service to take me and a few friends (4 total) up to Napa/Sonoma for a day later this month. We don’t need someone with a huge amount of wine expertise and can probably generally plan and ask for our own itinerary (though if you know of someone with expertise, I’m interested!) since we’re all locals, just looking to spend a day together away from family and kid responsibilities.

    1. I’d do a Platypus Tours. I am not sure they pick up in the City, but if you rent a car, you can meet them in wine country. They have great guides.

      If you are more into self-service, pick a specific part of Napa (or Healdburg for Sonoma) and just Uber. There’s plenty of Ubers in the main parts of either Valley.

      LMK if you need any recs! I love following Raquel (@watchmesip) on Insta. She will not steer you wrong.

  18. I love today’s pick so much. I know someone is going to bitch about it being polyester but … I am not sure about fit. I am a solid XL in measurements at this point, but my b00bs usually have other plans when I wear button front blouses.

    1. I love it too. I also struggle with the dreaded boobal gappage and I have gotten pretty good at safety pinning between buttons in a way that isn’t obvious but keeps things decent.

      1. Have a tailor add a small snap in between the buttons that gap. It’s a game changer!

  19. For anyone like me who is constantly on the hunt for cotton sweaters, J Crew Factory has several newly stocked styles in 100% cotton including the Teddie sweater! I just bought a bunch of colours. Cotton sweaters are my white whale.

    2. Yes! I noticed this yesterday and have been waiting for the cotton sweaters to be restocked.

  20. My spouse: I wish we did more fun, date-like things!

    Also my spouse: but not that fun, date-like thing! It costs money!

    And, dear listeners, the amount of money is small and well within our budget for date-like things. He does not know this because he will not engage with any talk about finances at all whatsoever and believes bananas only cost ten dollars.

    1. It sounds like he is extremely out of touch because you two are very rich. Like a President who is amazed at/confused by how store checkout works ala GWHB and DJT. Perhaps your next date night should be a grocery and hardware store run. Mingle a bit with the people. He can shower afterwards.

      2. It is the opposite, rather! He is of the mindset that we are still poor, broke kids and cannot seem to grasp that we are firmly middle class adults who can afford to do things that are not free.

        1. But how is he so off base about what things cost and what you have? He clearly is not participating in basic financial transactions of daily life. Are you doing all of the errands? Paying all the bills? Doing all the banking? Your story is cute but then I think about living with someone who thinks bananas cost $10 and what that means and I get uncomfortable. Frugality is great but this seems more like cluelessness that could have real repercussions for your finances, your ability to rely on him as a partner, and how he views the world/makes decisions/votes, etc. Truly not saying your relationship is bad. It seems good. But I do think he needs to go to the store after reviewing your bank statement.

        2. Yeah I think people are reacting to the $10 banana comment. I don’t see how you could be that out of touch unless you never go grocery shopping, and never shopping for yourself is a rich person thing. That’s where people are getting confused.

          3. I get that it is a joke but unless it is a joke that springs from a kernel of truth it isn’t a good joke. It only works if it comes from the truth.

          4. It’s from Arrested Development, which to be fair is one of the best comedies of the past 20 years. It’s from Lucille Bluth. “It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10.”

            It sounds like he never reset from being just out of college/grad school. If he refuses to budget, it’s not ideal, but what can you do. I’d explain to him that you’ve budgeted X amount per month for dates, which is very small in your budget. He doesn’t need to worry about it further unless he wants to review your budgeting.

          5. I got the Arrested Developmrnt reference and I didn’t take it literally, but I didn’t get why she’d say it unless there’s some truth to him being out of touch with what things cost, and that’s generally not a poor person thing.

    3. Sounds like you’re getting a bunch of fun activities “for free” from work / friends who didn’t need the tickets! If my partner was not engaged in our finances and it was in the budget I wouldn’t mention cost… or perhaps go without him? (not being facetious).

      Also, I have used redd it for my city’s nearly -free resources for date nights. Sculpture gardens in the middle of the city created by a weird Mormon dude in the 1950s? Yup, free entrance to the Gilgal gardens plus a picnic dinner was a date night for us!

    5. Discounted events might be a good middle ground for you two.
      – a membership to something like a garden or museum is a once a year expense, so you’re motivated to use it and also it doesn’t cost anything extra per trip so it feels free in a sense.
      – get on the mailing lists for museums, they usually have free or discount days
      – local theater usually sells (way) advance tickets at a reduced price. My local outdoor summer theater series has tickets going on sale pretty soon
      – a concert venue that has outdoor seating usually has really low cost options, as long as you don’t mind sitting on the lawn
      – if you drink, look into membership/clubs at your local breweries and wineries. Mug club usually gives you a 20 oz pour for the price of a pint and invitations to occasional free or low cost events. Wine clubs often come with free tastings as well as discounts and members only events.
      – many restaurants have great midweek deals, like half off a bottle of wine. If you have any BYO friendly restaurants, that’s another good way to save money.
      – your local nice wine shop might have free tastings. We use it as the start of a low key date night: tasting, pick up a bottle we like, get takeout from the restaurant next door.

      1. I can attest that the membership works out well because then being cheap means going a lot to make the most of the membership! Ours is to the small local zoo/science center so we can get some steps in outdoors, and we’ve never regretted a visit yet.

        Also agreed on discount nights. We have a Monday burger, taco Tuesday, and wings Wednesday promotions to choose from each week and I’m all for it. There is also a music and half bottle wine night around the block.

        We still enjoy coffee dates but they do cost more than a banana.

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