ByElizabeth Hours Updated
Comments 256 Comments

Thursday’s Workwear Report: Wildflower Carlota Blouse

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

I was browsing through Tuckernuck for some weekend outfits (how pretty is this flutter sleeve dress?) and stumbled upon this gorgeous blouse from Pomander Place. I don’t usually go for a bold print, but there’s something about this combination of colors and the slightly whimsical wildflower print that’s really speaking to me.

I would wear this with dark jeans on a casual Friday, or with some navy pants for a monochromatic look.

The top is $98 at Tuckernuck and comes in sizes XS–XXL.

A plus-size alternative is this top from Vince Camuto; it's $84 at Nordstrom.

This post contains affiliate links and Corporette® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more details see here. Thank you so much for your support!

Sales of note for 12.5

Sales of note for 12.5

And some of our latest threadjacks here at Corporette (reader questions and commentary) — see more here!

Some of our latest threadjacks include:

256 Comments

  1. My husband and I are finally near purchasing an apartment (after so many months in a crazy market). My credit is a little lower than his so our mortgage broker told us if my husband can afford it alone we will get a lower rate. I have a chronic illness so am not working or contributing income. I will be on the house title. I know a downside to myself not being on the mortgage is that I would not get the benefit on my credit over the years of paying, but I’m wondering if there are any other downsides? I got an issue on my credit fixed recently so it may be that the rate is the same but I’m not sure if it’s worth having the mortgage firm pull my credit again and whatever additional paperwork will be necessary to add me at this point. Thank you in advance for any info or thoughts!

    2. I’d call your mortgage broker, tell them you had an issue fixed with your credit report and tell them what your new score is and ask if they will hold the lower rate with you both on the mortgage.

      Pulling the credit would happen again anyway closer to the close date – in my experience our credit has been pulled at the start of the mortgage process and then right before closing. I wouldn’t let additional paperwork stop me from getting added.

      I would strongly lean towards being on the mortgage so that I could talk to the bank about it just as easily as my husband. Even if he signs off on you having access to the account, in my experience over years this somehow gets lost. My husband has a boat loan that I didn’t end up on because he handled the whole purchase/loan paperwork (obv I knew about it) and the bank refuses to talk to me about it even though we’ve went through the whole process of getting me permission several times. I’m the one who actually pays the bill, so it’s frustrating.

    3. Can’t you also use him solely for the mortgage and then use a lawyer to retitle the house? We did this when we wanted our new house to be part of our living trust. We are just middle-class with a will, so I don’t see why this couldn’t be an option.

      1. Generally not. The mortgage company won’t allow this, because if you’re on the title but not the mortgage and he dies, you’d have sole ownership of the house but the debt would be extinguished.

        1. What? No, that’s not how it works at all. OP, I don’t know that this scenario is necessarily a good solution, but I was still in law school when we bought our house (so, no income + debt), so husband was on the mortgage and title and I was just on the title.

        3. This is not necessarily incorrect like a couple of other posters seem to think. It varies widely by state and by loan type, and there are typically certain forms the non-purchasing spouse is still required to sign at closing. Simply transferring 1/2 interest post-closing without your lender’s consent can be a breach of your loan agreement in many circumstances. This is a question for your loan officer or a real estate attorney in your state.

          1. I mean listen, sure laws can vary from state to state. But literally the point of a mortgage is that the property secures the loan. And it passes with the property. If you sell a property, it is sold subject to the mortgage. If you donate a property, same. If the husband dies, the debt isn’t just “extinguished” and then she would get the house free and clear. The estate would have to pay the mortgage off or the house gets repossessed.

          2. Not only is your tone unnecessary, but you are still incorrect at least in your response to me. It can absolutely breach the loan agreement. The Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Uniform Instrument Deed of Trust says: “If all or any part of the property or any interest in the property is sold or transferred (or if borrower is not a natural person and a beneficial interest in borrower is sold or transferred) without lender’s prior written consent, lender may require immediate payment in full of all sums secured by this security instrument.” So depending on where you live and what closing forms your lender uses, by all means, go ahead and do this if you want to risk having to pay your mortgage balance immediately in full.

          3. If they own it as joint tenants, it doesn’t go through probate. She automatically owns it upon his death.

    4. Is there maybe a difference between qualifying for the mortgage and the mortgage itself. I had the same issue in reverse, and we qualified for the mortgage on my credit and income alone, but the bank wanted both me and my then husband both on the mortgage. I’d clarify that with the lender.

    5. My DH is on the mortgage alone for our refinance because there was a deal with the company we used that if someone made less than $x, they waived the closing costs. I say go for it!

  2. Best fashion sneakers for triangular feet (B+ width but with high arches and very narrow heels)? And best no-show socks that won’t slip down?

    I am nostalgic for the old Pom-Pom socks and old Tretorns but the new Tretorns don’t seem to work for my feet (sniff!) and Pom socks don’t seem to be a thing either.

    Thanks!

    1. I have your feet shape, but don’t really wear sneakers. A friend gave me a pair, when they didn’t fit her daughter…. Adidas superstar gold. Just huge clunky leather grandpa shoes. They are very comfortable, and per my friend, trendy …. but I would prefer something light and sleek.

      So I am not much help, but I had to post just to say your mention of Tretorns and Pom-Pom socks instantly brought be back to my childhood!

    2. look at world’s softest socks on Amazon. They are my fave for staying in place.

    3. Muji right angle socks. The heels of these socks are much more pronounced than regular socks, and the extra room and angle makes them more grippy than regular sneaker ankle socks.

  3. Can you please share your wise (and kind!) perspective on an issue I’m facing as I navigate managing my team during this pandemic?

    Background: I’ve worked in pandemic preparedness and response for more than a decade and now lead a small team charged with leadership and project coordination, among other more detailed work. As we are considered “essential workers”, the company empowered supervisors to manage WFH policies on a department-by-department basis, allowing us to weigh the specific roles and external factors affecting our small departments. I believe this has worked well to ensure a representative of each critical function is always available in person for crises, but overall reducing risk (zero in-office COVID transmission to date due to ongoing mitigation efforts). My team has been in the office almost 100% of the time due to our roles. Things have slowed in the past few months due to major work finally being on autopilot and due to funding concerns (the government still can’t decide whether it actually meaningfully wants to support pandemic preparedness and response). As a result of funding concerns, several people from other departments have found jobs elsewhere. All of this combines to create a pretty empty office, a letdown from being frenzied to dealing in less urgent work, and not insignificant uncertainty due to funding.

    My current issue: Members of my team have been increasingly asking to spend more time working from home. On the one hand, I can see this as a “benefit” they were denied last year due to their roles (one employee told me he liked to work from home because “it is easier to manage my laundry”). On the other hand, I am witnessing how morale decreases as fewer people are in the office. Given our function in the company, we are supposed to be “torchbearers”, if you will, providing leadership through informal communication of next steps and priorities on the horizon, which is very difficult to do remotely. Of course, if most people are remote, then we have to do things other than show up to the office to fulfill our responsibilities (this is in progress). I prefer to have my people in office, but have yet to deny a request or express my preference. Is it even appropriate to explain that WFH is fine as long as you can figure out how to fulfill the softer part of the responsibilities? Do I just let them do what they want as long as performance in other areas isn’t an issue, knowing that the pandemic won’t last forever? I’m not getting any guidance from higher ups on the issue. I, personally, prefer to be in the office and believe in-person influence is important, but I don’t want to project my own biases/preferences on my employees. Thank you for your thoughts!

    1. Question: when you say you are witnessing a morale decrease, what does that mean? Are you possibly projecting your own disappointment/dislike of remote work onto other employees?

      I can’t imagine how challenging the last eighteen months have been for you and your team. I would imagine that all of you are feeling pretty burnt out. Could the informal communication these staff provide be somehow formalized, say, into daily/weekly briefings for the rest of the org?

      1. +1. In my office, our boss insisted that everyone’s morale was low and that everyone is depressed working from home. It was the other way around. Working from home has been the only thing for some of us to keep our sanity and feel safe during this time. OP, it sounds like you need to listen to your employees.

        1. Thank you for sharing your experience! I am happy to listen to them and have yet to deny or even question a request to work from home. I just want to make sure that I am doing the right thing in the right way. Honestly, I’m just as tired of all this as anyone else and I appreciate this forum to give me a gentle reality check!

      2. Burnout is certainly part of the issue – at the end of May we all started to come up for air and looked around at each other like what in the world just happened?! We have all been good about taking real vacation time this summer, but I think continued uncertainty combined with the lack of urgent purpose-filled work (“we are saving the world!” not really, but that sense of purpose is so important) are the main contributors to current less-than-positive attitudes. I guess my main concern is that they have lost that purpose and vision, that they are doing important work to make tomorrow better than today, and subconsciously I fear that WFH will exacerbate the issue since they won’t physically be around other people who are finding it easier to carry the torch. Thanks for the question – this train of thought was illuminating for me! Do you think my fears are rational or unfounded? In your experience/opinion, would flexibility improve morale in this situation?

        1. You need to listen to your employees. When they say they want to WFH, believe them. You don’t actually need to ask us.

          1. To WFH for laundry . . . I wish people made better cases for it. It trivializes the flexibility that is needed by many (and needed for things other than laundry, like managing a complex medical condition or other critical life things).

          2. Honestly, I would encourage OP to look at the “work from home for laundry” comment as a more general statement that employees are at a level of burnout that they’re struggling to manage basic life tasks.

          3. For me, it makes laundry easier, but it also makes it 1000x easier to make private medical calls to manage my conditions. They take just a few minutes, but at the office in a cube farm with nowhere private to go, it doesn’t work and is really disruptive.

          4. As a fellow essential employee – anon at 10:52 is spot on. I’ve been so burnt out over the past 1.5 years that basic tasks like laundry, going food shopping, etc. were totally beyond what I could manage.

            I was regularly working 15 hour days, for 15ish days straight with one day off and then would repeat the cycle. I distinctly remember needing to do laundry during those 15 days and coming home, throwing in a load of laundry, setting an alarm and napping, waking up to change over my laundry, and then going to bed for real.

            Now that I”m back to pretty normal hours, I relish the opportunity to do laundry like a normal person!

          5. I hate it when “doing personal tasks on work time” is why people argue for WFH. I know people who work remotely and largely also on flex time to work in: chemo, a spouse with ALS, a child with complex medical and developmental needs, on a different time zone due to spouse’s military posting, managing kids zoom schooling at home, managing a parent with diminishing capacity, etc. They do personal tasks during the day (that is when a lot of doctors are open), but move heaven and earth to make sure work is done on time (so they are largely also working outside of work hours and on weekends; their lives are brutal but they need/want to continue working and move heaven and earth to meet all of their responsibilities). I feel like this crowd has made it work for a long time and gives the value that the workplace expects.

            And then there is the 2020-2021 WFH people who are just not seeming to GAF or put forth at least the fair amount of work but are just barely dialing it in. I cannot express how the remote workers on my staff have been very serious workers throughout their careers and situations and have never let me down. And then there are the new hires who think they just get to announce that they are going to the beach and are unavailable on Fridays. HR is too overwhelmed and I feel like this is the third rail, but if you are putting up a fuss to keep doing personal tasks during the day and how this helps you, consider if that is really a good look long term. When people don’t see you, but remember your words, maybe choose them a bit more wisely.

          6. A direct report complained that she’d have to do her hair and that would take her more time if she had had to return to the office. I now have Opinions.

          7. anon@11:18, you sure sound angry, but it’s not clear at who? You hate it when people ask for flexibility to balance work and personal responsibilities. But then you cite people with significant caregiving with huge challenges balancing work and personal responsibilities, who were at high risk for burnout and underemployment even before the pandemic. You seem to be saying that these people deserve flex time but others don’t? What does it harm my colleague with a high-needs kid, when I have a little bit of extra time from skipping the commute? Giving them flex time while insisting on butt-in-seat for me is surely a recipe for resentment. This can’t be decided on some weird moral ranking of whose life has a sufficient level of hardships. Business needs or bust.

            You second paragraph also makes no sense. You have WFH staff who are doing great. You have WFH staff who are not. Clearly it is not the WFH that is the problem here. If it’s all new staff that’s problematic, maybe look into how they are hired, onboarded and managed.

          8. Here’s the thing, it shouldn’t matter why people want to WFH. If they are getting their work done, why do you care? I like WFH for a variety of reasons including things like being able to throw in a load of laundry, which makes 80 hour work weeks a lot more managable. So does not having to commute. So does not having to have office appearance readiness (hair done, clothes dry cleaned), etc. People decry the doing chores during working hours as a reason to not allow WFH as if when we were all in the office no one wasted any time doing non-work things…how much time is spent at the water cooler talking about sportsball or gossip about what happened at the work happy hour or 30 minute coffee breaks or whatever. I make a lot of personal calls during the work day when I have down time. I do that whether I’m WFH or in my office.

          9. Agree with others. If your employee is talking about laundry to you, I think that’s a sign they’re having a hard time meeting their basic needs. If they can do the job from home, they should be allowed to do so, at least part-time.

            “Employee morale” is the biggest BS excuse of our time. It’s for managers who can’t or don’t want to pivot their management styles to dealing with remote employees, and it’s for senior executives who need to justify their real estate spend.

          10. 1) if you can’t trust your employees to work from home, you have the wrong employees

            2) if your employees are getting everything done when they work from home but you still don’t trust them, then you’re the wrong manager

          11. Good grief. The prep time of doing laundry literally takes three minutes, tops. The issue is that the machines (washer and then dryer) run for hours. This is not the same thing as scrubbing the floors during work hours.

        2. Agree. WFH is what is likely to keep some of them. And putting people in an office during this pandemic simply because you personally think it is more motivating isn’t the answer. Focus instead on the problem at hand. Find ways to remind them of mission—share goals met and stories of people impacted. Acknowledge how the work is changing things for the greater good in ways big and small. Formalize recognitions for shared successes. That’s going to do far more for connecting them to a cause.

          1. Thank you for the specific ways to remind them of the mission. You are right, there are certainly better ways to achieve engagement than proximity.

        3. My org has been completely remote since March 2020 and it’s been a bit of a bumpy ride, but I would probably quit if I were forced back into the office just because someone at the very top likes to see people in the halls. If you need to work on information flow and being a leader, then you have to figure out ways to do that remotely. On my team, I have weekly 1:1s with my manager, we have a small group meeting weekly and a larger group meeting weekly. There’s also an open Teams meeting on Friday morning with no agenda, and it’s supposed to be more of a virtual watercooler for people to talk about personal lives, minor issues they’ve encountered, etc. For our more junior staff members, they are paired with someone more senior as a mentor with weekly short check-ins. Our leadership is making an effort to reach out to people outside their direct reporting line for virtual coffees to foster relationships and promote an interest in long-term career development.

          All of this is to say — virtual leadership is a lot more work for managers but it can be done. And kudos to your team for working for over the last 18 months and for you advocating for them. Looking ahead to the fall, they are probably just trying to preserve any benefit to their sanity that they can. WFH for me is about more than just laundry (though that’s nice) — it’s about streamlining the mental load. I don’t have to deal with a commute that added 90 minutes to my day. I don’t have to worry about packing a lunch or putting on office clothes. Above all, I don’t have to worry about unnecessary exposure to Delta or any other variant.

    2. i do not necessarily have a suggestion, but i want to say that you are being a good manager by not projecting your own biases/preferences on your employees. i encourage you to find a way for people to fulfill these softer parts of the role while WFH, since it sounds like many others are too. Or, have a partial WFH schedule. There is a lot of space between full WFH and full in the office.

      1. All of this. How would you feel about a hybrid setup, with one day set aside when everyone is required to be in person? This is how I’m addressing it with my team. They still get the perks of WFH, but after 18+ months of remote work, I can tell that things are off in terms of collaboration, camaraderie, etc. I do think some in-office presence is important.

      2. Thank you for the encouragement. I feel like I have failed in so many areas over the last 18 months and I really do care about my employees and being fair with them. Formalizing the WFH schedule sounds like a good idea. Structure is certainly missing here and providing some may solve a lot of problems!

    3. Your employees and their families had to get through the pandemic without the support of both parents being at home. Learn the tools of remote work management and deploy them to give your team a break.

      1. Thank your for your input. I am certainly 18-ish months behind the curve in learning to manage remote work since that hasn’t been an option for us until now! Are there any best practices you would recommend for fostering the kind of collaboration where you just run over to someone’s desk for a quick brainstorming or priority-setting session or to get a quick proofread/opinion on communications? We use Teams for quick chats or phone calls, so maybe it is just as simple as communicating that continued collaboration needs to be a priority no matter where we are.

    4. I’ve never felt so qualified to answer a question here :) I also work in public health preparedness/emergency response. Spent a good deal of the last 18 months working 70-95 hour weeks, with lulls of 40-60 hour weeks. I work in local government (so at least we get OT/comp time, but also we’re paid peanuts). Many of my colleagues in other government departments have not set foot in an office once since March 2020, but many in my department either never got to wfh or did so on a limited basis and it does suck knowing Bob from Procurement works 35 hour weeks from home while I’m working 90 hour weeks running a vaccine clinic. Much like your team, now that things are slowing down there’s an exodus from our department due to burnout, better offers elsewhere, etc.

      My office has implemented a 3/2 hybrid schedule, with the 2 days in office being the same for everyone (Tues and Thurs); most people tend to work in office Tues, Weds, Thurs and WFH Monday and Friday. I like this better than a “choose your days” hybrid model because we’re guaranteed to see everyone face to face on Tues and Thurs. If we want we can come to the office 5 days a week, but only a few people do that. I do agree that both wfh helps morale (no commute, comfy clothes, ability to do laundry) but I think facetime with colleagues builds stronger teams and overall morale (especially in our field where we work crazy hours, we really have to depend on each other, etc.)

      As for his laundry comment – as someone who literally was not home enough hours in a week to do basic laundry/chores/errands for much of the last year I don’t begrudge anyone for wanting easy access to laundry.

      Your team was asked to go beyond above and beyond last year, so I understand wanting to give them a “benefit” others had that they didn’t, but also wanting to preserve morale. I think a hybrid schedule is perfect.

      1. Cheers to you, my friend! I wouldn’t wish this last 18+ months on anyone, but it is comforting to know we are not alone in the crazy experience. Has your leadership communicated about the duration of the hybrid schedule (i.e., is this a permanent change or will everyone come back to the office at some point)? My company was very clear about the expectation of working in the office prior to the pandemic and I imagine we will return to that some day, but it feels like all norms have just been turned on their head. I think a formalized hybrid structure is probably ideal, but if I proposed such a solution with the caveat that we would plan to do this for four months and re-evaluate, would that come off as rational or judgmental? Also, if I came in to the office every day (I can’t work from home – small kids with a nanny at home during the day make it very difficult) do you think that would put subconscious pressure on my people? Clearly I am very in my head about this.

        1. It’s my understanding that this will be a permanent change. I think that since we’re paid so poorly, these non-financial benefits will be crucial for staff retention/recruitment (especially since most industries will be offering increased WFH permanently). Prior to the pandemic we had 20 wfh days a year to use at our discretion.

          My supervisor never works from home (he manages two teams – one of which requires in person coverage 24/7, whereas my team is a traditional 9-5). He never works from home in solidarity with the team that cant. I’ve never felt pressure to wfh less simply because my boss is in person.

      2. Seconding the laundry. It sounds trivial, but makes life so much easier when you can throw a load in before breakfast, put it into the dryer after a 9 am meeting, and fold it during lunch. Of course, it is not just laundry – running the dishwasher, going to the post office during lunch, better coffee, not having to rush out the door every morning.

        1. Yes, and everyone’s situation is different. If you get home at 8-9pm due to long hours plus a commute and live in a detached house you can throw a load of laundry in your machine then. If you live in an apartment building and regularly do laundry late at night your neighbours will hate you.

          1. I remember working 5:30am-9:30pm and having a 20ish min commute each way (so was essentially gone from 5am-10pm) and was working 2 weeks on, 1 day off. There was literally not time to do laundry! Thankfully my apartment has in unit laundry, because if I had to use a common laundry room I literally couldn’t have done it!

          2. Likewise, if you have enough water pressure to run the washing machine and the shower/bath, it is easier than coordinating the laundry around bath time for the kids and showers for adults.

            When I worked from home, I often started dinner (chop veggies, etc.) during lunch. Slow cooker meals got started around 4 pm.

      3. I’m in municipal government and have also been working on pandemic response for the last 18 months. Definitely my teammates and I all have needed (and still need!) time to recover from burnout, catch up on our lives and selves outside of work, etc., and I think finally leaning into work from home is slowly helping.

        That said, the other thing my coworkers and I have noticed is that our skill sets have expanded greatly during this time, and the idea of returning to our original pre-pandemic roles is not that exciting. We’ve all grown a lot professionally, and after we take some time to rest, we want new challenges, or at least new roles that acknowledge our new abilities. If you sense that morale is lacking, it might be worth thinking about how your employees can be recognized and given new challenges and responsibilities (but not another pandemic, please….).

        1. That’s SUCH a good point! I went from being a specialist in a different sub-field to doing a lot of response, running a vaccine clinic, etc. I don’t want to go back to my desk job! I loved response work and my day job feels so boring in comparison. I also was a pretty junior employee who was entrusted with some major projects. I know I still have to get more experience before I’m promotable, but once again – going from running entire projects, having my own team, etc. back to reporting to my micromanager boss is killing me. I loved being challenged by my job for the first time in a few years, and want to continue that too!

          But yes- still need time to recover from burnout, take time off, catch up on sleep, have time/energy for healthy choices again, and re-develop my life outside of work. I’m having SO MUCH FUN re-exploring hobbies, having a social life again, etc. I didn’t realize how draining it was to work all the time until I went back to having a personal lie.

    5. How sure are you that the morale decline is related to fewer people in the office? If the team has been running at full steam for 18 months and trying to serve as a torchbearers on top of that, I feel like you’re naturally going to get a lull in their morale no matter the work location.

      My team has been fully remote but still running at faster than full speed for the last 18 months, and I’ve got a similar morale decline. I think seeing the Delta variant rise, dealing with the reality of another school year with intense precautions, grief over losing loved ones and not being able to celebrate their lives, etc are all coming to a head for those who didn’t get a chance to process it before.

      Your team is likely looking at the fall and winter and seeing yet another season or two of intense work ahead of them. They are likely looking for ways to help them make it through yet another push, and if I was the leader I’d be looking for ways to make it happen.

      1. This is a good point. One of my direct reports noted in passing that the emptiness of the office is depressing and I have to agree, but it is certainly not the predominant contributor to the morale decline. I will reframe my thinking to focus on how I can support them with practical strategies to get us from now through the next push and beyond.

        1. You mentioned that people are leaving for other jobs – I would consider whether the “emptiness” that is depressing is not bc of WFH, but rather because your team know people are abandoning ship to go elsewhere.

          Also, be willing to take a hard look at how much spur-of-the-moment in-person collaboration really happens, and whether it’s valuable for your team, or for mostly for you. A big challenge for leaders (and I lead a team of about 20, so I get it) is understanding that we may experience benefits from being in-office that our employees do not.

    6. Of course morale is dropping. Being made to come into the office to sit around an empty space while others are allowed to work from home (and yes, it makes managing laundry easier) is demoralizing. Especially when it’s obviously because the boss (you) just prefers to be in the office. (Believe me, your team knows exactly why they “have” to come in). Your department mission of being ““torchbearers”, providing leadership through informal communication of next steps and priorities on the horizon” does not sound like something that can’t be done from home. Was it that your employees spent their time dropping by people’s offices and tables in the breakroom to communicate next steps? Probably not.

      Also, read the wikipedia article on the book “Bullshit Jobs”, and you might begin to get an idea why your people are feeling down.

      1. The tone of your comment made me chuckle – THANK YOU for the reality check! I actually am allowing them to WFH whenever they want right now, so I am not making them come in except when they want to. The torchbearer part of the job is a very small part, but the wikipedia article recommended is an interesting perspective.

        1. Read the whole book! It’s fascinating.

          I agree that the best way to address morale problems is to give employees what they’re asking for whenever possible. Being a “torchbearer” is meaningful, but also brings tremendous pressure. I second the suggestion to identify concrete, specific deficits to your work caused by WFH (not permanent WFH, but WFH for now). Your post did not really do so.

          I’m a patient-facing health care worker. Never worked from home, never can. The office is often empty due to medical leaves and short-staffing. My supervisor has asked what would help, but I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t cost money. So, no help is forthcoming. If you’re in a position to give some relief, give it.

          1. I so feel you on “I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t cost money. So, no help is forthcoming”. Morale is really, really terrible in my office right now (and leadership isn’t great!) but I can’t offer any feasible solutions so I’m just silently cranky and job searching.

            I am DREADING what this next wave might look like! I just want a COVID-free world where I can take a very long vacation to a tropical beach and shut my brain off, talk to nobody, read mind candy books, do some fun beach activities and have umbrella drinks.

        2. I would like to add that I’m very touched by the care & concern that you have regarding your employees. Empathy can be a rare thing in the work force these days.

          1. Thank you for this. I really am trying. I feel like empathy has been really hard to come by everywhere you turn since the beginning of the pandemic. Throughout this whole ordeal I’ve tried to keep in mind a line from one of Brene Brown’s books (Dare to Lead, I think): “If you really believed this person was doing his/her absolute best, how would that change the way you act?” and then to believe the best about my employees. I don’t believe for a second that they are trying to pull one over on me by working from home. I really appreciate every perspective that was shared – they are all helpful. I think formalizing a WFH-heavy hybrid structure would give all of us the framework and support we need.

    7. I would focus less on abstract feelings like morale and more on specific manifestations that you are concerned about – like certain communications are happening slower than ideal or X person hasn’t had the opportunity to shadow Y skill, and then work with your team to figure out how to solve those problems. One solution might be more time in the office together but maybe not.

  4. London ‘rettes, can I ask which areas you’re based in? Looking at moving (back) to the big smoke after half a decade in Scotland and having never lived in the city proper I don’t know where to start. Budget will be £300-£375k, for 1-2 beds. Thanks in advance!
    (Was thinking about going out of town to Sussex and then realised that would probably be admitting defeat on the dating front…)

    1. I just recently moved to Islington and absolutely love it! Bustling but in a neighborhoody way as opposed to a touristy way. I actually live between Angel (loads of local restaurants and independent shops) and Kings Cross (convenient) so I get the best of both worlds!

    2. I’m in London Fields, which has its pros and cons – it’s still very hipster, there has been a lot of gentrification over Ithe past few years (rightly or wrongly), lots of Low Traffic Networks, good restaurants, parks, street markets, etc as well as a good commute into the city. However, property pricing around here is very much in a bubble so not sure whether it would work budget-wise. Otherwise, there is a lot of new build property in other parts of East London – so Stratford, Bow, Mile End, etc. Might feel a bit sketchy in parts though.

      A lot of our friends are finding more bang for their buck in South London – Peckham and Brixton and everything in between. A friend bought an amazing house nearish Brixton that would have been at least twice the price here and still has a good commute into the city.

      I’d probably recommend coming up with a shortlist of neighbourhoods and spending a weekend walking around – the wonderful (and not so wonderful) fact of London is even the nicest neighbourhoods are a stone’s throw from the worst ones!

    3. In Clapham – which currently has a surplus of places for sale because everyone wants to move out of town. Lots of green spaces/bars/restaurants and transport connections. Note though that Clapham Junction (which has lots of train connections) is not in Clapham, it’s in Battersea, and doesn’t have the underground.

      I used to live in Highbury/Canonbury which I LOVED (walking distance to the city) and while my DH likes that area too, he has family down here so makes more sense to stay where we are.

      Tooting is rather ‘up and coming’ now. There are a lot of new apartments around Vauxhall but probably not at that budget (and the area is a bit soulless, it hasn’t really caught up with the development yet in terms of activities/restaurants etc).

      1. I’m an American literally staring at a cornfield rn and I desperately want to live in a place called Tooting.

  5. I can’t imagine this shirt looking good on any body type other than the model, and she barely pulls it off. Why does it cut off into frills seemingly way above her waist line?

    2. Agreed, I thought “oh cute” until I clicked through and saw the peplum/ruffle situation.

    3. on the flip side, I LOVE this shirt. If this was in budget, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

  6. Can anyone point to a short, simple webpage or similar that explains the concept of passive voice and how to avoid it? I’m in-house council, and I do a lot of reviewing reports of situations that create some risk. My role should be to make sure these cover the facts and defenses to keep us largely out of trouble, but the people who write these are just …terrible writers, so I spend a lot of time trying to just make the reports sound OK. Their use of passive voice is particularly grating, and they just don’t seem to get it when I try to explain not to do that.

    2. owl.purdue.net is a good general resource for all things grammatical. And what about Bryan Garner–doesn’t he cover it?

      However, passive voice is not always bad and is sometimes preferred. Sometimes it doesn’t matter WHO did what, but the fact that is was done. Sometimes the act is more important than the actor. I see a lot of knee-jerk corrections and rewrites in the spirit of “no passive voice ever.”

      But for advice on more lively writing when the actor IS known and it’s desirable to state it, try those resources.

      They can look for forms of the “be” verb, e.g., “A survey WAS taken,” and rewrite as “Per Deloitte’s 2016 [citation, whatever] survey . . .blah blah blah”, including a noun, as a start.

      Hope this makes sense!

      1. +1 – I took on that battle when I first went in house, learned a lot of business writing coaches (hired by the company even) trained people to write in passive voice. So I learned to temper that edit impulse for when it was necessary.

      2. Second the Bryan Garner advice, if you can get them to a CLE or bring him in.
        Could you pair them up for some editing exercises for clarity and brevity?

    3. This sounds like the kind of situation where people deliberately use the passive voice to avoid risk (e.g. mistakes were made vs. I made a mistake). I’m a scientist, so I have a hard time with this for the same reason- some people feel like it’s better to deliberately remove the self from any description of their actions, but it can lead to really convoluted writing. I try to teach my students that it’s actually okay to use I/we sometimes, but they don’t always believe me. I think it will help if you put together a reference that’s very specific to the type of writing you’re doing.

    4. I don’t have a website, but also don’t have a lot of hope for you. It sounds like a hopeless cause to get business people who are terrible writers to care enough about becoming a better writer to read and internalize a website about passive v. active voice.

      Do you have authority over them, to require them to change (can you refuse a badly written report or send it back to them to be fixed?). If not, you’re stuck with needing to find some way to inspire them to want to change. (Good luck with that.) Or, can you identify someone at support staff level who has good writing skills and get that person promoted to “associate editor” or something, so they can clean up the wording before it comes to you?

    5. I feel you, I’m a litigator and I have this struggle with lawyers and clients alike. My advice is to focus on getting the information you need rather than correcting their writing style. For example, I can’t help you resolve a discovery dispute when you write things like, “a litigation hold was sent and documents were collected.” WHEN was the lit hold sent? WHO was it sent to? WHERE were docs collected from? Etc. I tell them to act like a reporter and give me the who, what, where, when, why, and how for each thing I ask them for. I don’t care if they word it like “a litigation hold letter was sent by prior counsel on August 1, 2018 to Bob and Carol, and documents were subsequently collected from the server and Bob’s and Carol’s computers by the e-discovery vendor on September 1, 2018.” The wording is sloppy and cumbersome but at least I have the information I need.

    6. Not exactly what you asked for, but the thing that worked great when I was teaching this (to undergrads), was the “…by zombies” trick. Basically, if you can add “by zombies” to the end of the sentence/phrase and (a) it makes sense, and (b) the zombies are clearly the ones doing the actions referenced, then it tells you that the sentence is in passive voice.

      So for example, “Mistakes were made” becomes “Mistakes were made by zombies.” And clearly it’s the zombies who made the mistakes, so the original sentence is in passive voice.

      It’s short and memorable, so it really clicked with a lot of my students. (Also, obviously “zombies” could be any noun but something unusual seems to help it stick.)

    7. It’s helped me to review my work going through this list of passive voice indicators:
      Be
      Being
      Been
      Am
      Is
      Are
      Was
      Were
      Been
      Has
      Have
      Had
      Do
      Did
      Does
      Can
      Could
      Shall
      Should
      Will
      Would
      Might
      Must
      May

      I don’t always change it when I find a sentence including one of those words but reviewing does often make it sound better overall.

      1. I had to memorize this in seventh or eighth grade. I can still say it pretty fast. Mine goes

        Is am are was were be being been
        Have has had
        Do does did
        Can could
        Shall should
        May must might

        Like a really fast poem.

      2. These may indicate a hedged rhetoric, but they aren’t indicators of grammatically passive voice.

          1. Most of them are subjunctive mood, rather than indicative. “If only” vs. “It did”

  7. Might be a long shot, but does any one have recs for a primary care physician in Lincoln, Nebraska? Preferably female and ideally on the northern side of town rather than way down south.

    1. Janet Sellon at Lincoln Family Wellness (approx. 70th and A area, so not super far south)

    2. Nancy Baugous at Family Physician’s Group in the Gateway building at Cotner and Vine.

      (Also, there are three of us on Corporette?? I never knew.)

    3. Thanks ladies- both these recs look great!

      Neat that there are three (at least) of us!

  8. Had anyone gotten laser hair removal, and if so, do you recommend it? I’m considering it for my armpits and (if that works out) my bikini line. Any recs in the DC area also appreciated!

    1. YES! I just finished getting my bikini line done because I get horrific razor burn, and I’m a total evangelist for it now. After the second treatment I stopped really having to shave at all. I had 5 treatments. I’ve heard sometimes you need a touch up every couple of years, but it hasn’t been that long for me yet. I plan to get my lower legs done next.

      I’ve been told you must have high contrast between your hair and your skin, so take that into account. I have very pale skin and very dark hair, so that wasn’t a problem. My esthetician said it would probably not work on my upper lip because most of the hairs are pale brown instead of dark brown, so there wouldn’t be enough contrast. I’m not in DC, but I went to the esthetician at my dermatologist’s office.

    2. I used DC Derm Docs for my armpits and am still, years later, very pleased. I just have a few wispies that I’ll take care of once a week or so. I used a Groupon and still felt like I got very good treatment. I’d go back to them for other areas.

    3. I had laser hair removal when I was 25 (I’m now 40) and I highly recommend it. I love never having to think about shaving and I can wear sleeveless tops/dress whenever I want without thinking about hair.
      I did my armpits and bikini. It took 7 appointments : one every 6 weeks and it costs me about 1800$ back then. It was a good investment. I would say all there is may be 3-5% of the hair left: it looks neat. After 16 years and a twin pregnancy, it still looks good. I have to mention that I am the ideal candidate for laser removal : pale skin with dark hair.
      I would suggest going to a laser hair removal clinic that is well established : professional laser machine are expensive. I would not take one of those Groupon offer from an aesthetician working in her basement.

    4. Love it but mine grew back after a hormone change (new iud) a mere 6 month after I finished my treatments, so I’d hold off if you have anything like that in the works in the near future.

    5. I have done for my armpits and it has been great! I am planning to go back this fall for my legs – waiting until after my beach vacation at the end of the month, since you are supposed to stay out of the sun before and after.

    6. I’m not in DC but I bought a cheap Groupon for a place after a friend went to the location. It’s the best! I’m currently doing my bikini area abs armpits. After one session on my armpits, I hardly shave.

  9. Morning all. I established with a new, thoughtful, and very thorough PCP last week and just got bloodwork results. Everything is normal except low T3 and high T4 total (my quick googling shows me that’s an unusual combo). I am returning to my PCP today to discuss the results and next steps. At my first appt, my dr briefly mentioned HRT – and given my results, I am guessing we will discuss that again. Does anyone have recommended questions for me to discuss with my dr today? I wonder if I should request a consult with an endocrinologist, if that’s not offered? Would appreciate any suggestions from the group – I am guessing lots of folks have done HRT. Thank you.

    1. I should add – I have rapidly gained weight in the last year which would coincide with hypothyroidism, I believe.

      1. My advice is to go straight to the endocrinologist. It’s good that you have a PCP you like and trust but I think a specialist is a no brainer.

    2. What your body is supposed to do: your thyroid produces T4, which your body then converts into T3, which is the active hormone needed for metabolism. Your brain secretes thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) in response to how much T3 is circulating. So if your T3 is low and your T4 is high, it means that you’ve having trouble converting the T4 to T3. Your TSH is also probably high. My coworker had this condition, and she took a supplemental T3 pill. Yes, you should probably see an endocrinologist about this. Thyroid dosing is extremely finicky and an endo will have a better understanding of how to get your levels where they need to be (“dial in the dose” as it’s frequently called).

      I’m assuming by HRT you mean the menopause related HRT, which is totally different from the hormones you would take for your thyroid.

  10. Sigh. I think I am at the point in life where I need to consider fiber supplements. Has anyone had any luck with those? Any recommendations? My doctor recommended more fiber to help with certain issues I am experiencing and I’m just not consistently getting enough in my diet despite trying.

    1. I’ve done psyllium husk capsules for years. I started with the Metamucil brand but now use Walmart/target brand. I prefer capsules to powder. There is literally no downside other than you need to drink plenty of water – which is an upside!

    3. If you’re experiencing constipation, check out the Reddit communities around it (I think, r/constipation, IBS, etc). What you may have is not really fiber related, but low motility (you should also google that). I experienced a slowdown in my motility even though my diet was the same (and even when I increased fiber, that didn’t really help). What did help was increasing exercise. 3X a week of cardio, and my digestion is perfect. Otherwise, look at stool softeners like Miralax which is incredibly safe (even to use daily, even in pregnant women and the elderly).

    4. I take fiber gummies. It was recommended when I was pregnant (to avoid the common complication of constipation) and I never stopped. A fiber gummy and yogurt have done wonders for my digestive well being.

    5. I take Metamucil daily – about a tablespoon in water. I’ve found it to be difficult to get enough fiber with just diet alone.

    6. This might not be what you’re looking for but you may want to check out probiotics too if you haven’t already. My GI system has become way more reliable since I started taking some.

      1. Thanks – I had that thought too, but my GI doctor doesn’t recommend them because they are not tested for safety/FDA-approved. I’m sure they’re fine for most people but I have some additional health concerns that warrant extra caution.

        Thanks everyone for the recs! I think psyllium husk sounds promising.

    7. The recommendations you’ve already gotten are probably what you need but I just wanted to throw in a little plug for flaxseed. You can buy flaxseed meal pretty easily at Whole Foods or wherever and just sprinkle in to things.

    8. My doctor got this wrong, so just as a PSA: constipation benefits from fiber and fluids. Gastroparesis and dysmotility are significantly worsened by fiber. When I actually saw a gastroenterologist, he basically reversed every recommendation my PCP had made.

      I assume constipation is way more common, but increasing fiber doesn’t seem to be helping, it’s possible it wasn’t the right Dx (or at least, that’s what happened to me).

    9. My husband has GI issues and recently added tons more fiber with great success. Easy diet changes that get him 2x the recommended daily fiber include:
      – chai seeds on his morning yogurt
      – switching the granola in the yogurt to a high fiber granola
      – high fiber bread
      – switching his yogurt berries to raspberries

      He also cut caffeine and all coffee (caff and decaff) which has helped tremendously with his GI issues.

      Beyond that, he takes a fiber supplement a few days a week.

  11. How do you fight cynicism at work? It’s possible that I’m just plain burned out, but I’ve noticed my own attitude is not in a great space (in addition to noticing that my colleagues are uncharacteristically snippy these days). We are launching all these new initiatives, which my team is expected to do the heavy lifting on without much real support or guidance. And part of me is like, why the heck are we doing this NOW, when everyone is burned to a crisp, in terms of energy? My boss has been extremely hands-off this summer, and on the rare instance I actually hear from her, she’s taking on this blunt tone to that drives me insane. She can be like this anyway, but it seems more pronounced lately.

    I’m just out of grace/patience/energy for both myself and for others. I took vacation time recently but it wasn’t enough to fully unwind or recharge. Now I’m staring down the barrel of a very busy fall, and I just want to give up. I’m not in a good place to handle the pressure.

    1. I could have written this myself; word for word. Vacation time and self care isn’t helping. Here’s to hoping that the hive has some great ideas!

    3. I had to duck into a bathroom and cry this morning because I was just. so. frustrated. Following in the hopes that y’all have some good advice.

    4. I decided that moving forward, my primary goal is preserve my health and sanity. I am burnt out.

      I just opted out of running a Very Large Thing, and now I am just the source of institutional knowledge about it. If the other folks pull it off, great! If they don’t, whatever. My instinct is to power through everything all the time, so pulling out was very difficult for me. Glad I did it.

      I am exercising every day. I will take leave the second there is a school or daycare closure.If I don’t bill enough hours, too bad. I’m not getting a bonus. I’m not making partner. Okay.

      I will give you permission to find another job. If you don’t want to do a ton of work without sufficient support or guidance, you don’t have to. If you need to stick with this job, set firm boundaries and let people deal with it.

    5. I feel this. After the mass vaccination clinic I ran closed, I took a two week vacation. I thought it would be lovely and fix everything. It did not, I’m still burnt out and the way Delta is trending I fear I’m in for another crazy fall/winter.

      I’m effing exhausted and way b!tchier then normal. 6 weeks ago I thought we’d beat this thing, but now it feels like the light at the end of the tunnel zapped out.

      I don’t have great suggestions, seeing as I’m still burnt out but the little things that have helped me are:
      1) Leaning hard into hobbies. Ideally hobbies that take a lot of time/energy/focus. I started training for triathlons and half marathons again. I like a challenge, setting a goal and working towards it, and the feeling of accomplishment at the end. Of course, it is now looking like the races I signed up for this fall will be canceled so we’ll have to see if I actually get to race for the first time in 2 years. Would also recommend home improvement projects or other hobbies that are somewhat consuming. While fun/easy hobbies are also great, they don’t do enough to re-focus me.
      2) Taking advantage (safely!) of normalcy while we have it- I’m doing lots of outdoor dining with friends, I’m going to outdoor concerts, etc. Restrictions are starting to pop up again in my area, so I recognize that this might change. But, I’m trying to not take anything for granted and do as much as I can while I still can. Note that everyone I socialize with is fully vaxed and that as of this week, we’re back to masking.
      3) Having slow weekends to unwind. I’ve been scheduling much of my fun/social activities during the week and really chilling during the weekend. Long walks around my neighborhood, getting my nails done, getting a fancy coffee and enjoying it in the park, etc.
      4) As much time off as possible!

    6. Glad to know there’s company (unfortunately) in the sinking boat club. I am right there with you and the TINIEST thing at work sets me off, now. I am job hunting, somewhat, but I suspect that this would follow me so I need to fix it.
      Agree with previous anon re leaning into hobbies. I am training for my first-ever marathon, and I’m at the point where it’s taking up a lot of time and energy, and I’ve just accepted that FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE work will need to be just in the “acceptable performance” category. This is very weird and uncomfortable but I think I will benefit in the long run
      Although, a very very few coworkers seem to be much nicer than previous. Either their reaction to the worldwide $hitshow is very different from mine, or they discovered cbd gummies while wfh.

    7. I was in a training (that had to be in person; we’re hybrid normally) last week and I realized that half of the people in the room were unvaccinated. I was livid. I’m now irrationally angry about anyone who is able to be vaccinated but is not (recognizing not everyone is able to be). I’m watching restrictions resume, hospitals fill up, canceling of plans I had for the fall, etc. and I’m just so angry. I realize that my anger is more burn out than anger, but I just dont want to keep doing this BS!

      Once I realized there were so many unvaccinated folks, I wore a mask for the rest of the time, but the unvaccinated group was a mix of masked and not. I work in government, and the day after the training they announced the new rules for unvaccinated employees (regular testing, mandatory double masking, etc). I’m pretty mad at leadership for not enforcing this sooner and for not enforcing single mask wearing during the training (as was the previous policy).

  12. I have looked this up online, but I feel like the answers aren’t making a lot of sense to me, so looking for a “real person experience answer”. Question – does one need to re-enter security to go to a different terminal in JFK?
    Tomorrow I’m flying to JFK and the plan is to meet a friend who is also flying into JFK, lands about 2 hours after me, and then we’ll travel to our destination together. My initial plan was to go to the Centurion lounge (I have access through Amex) and wait for her there. In looking at the maps of JFK and our respective flight information, it seems like we’ll be landing in different terminals, and the terminal I’m landing in doesn’t have the Centurion lounge in it, so I am going to not be able to get into the Lounge.
    TIA!

    1. The short answer is yes, JFK has no intra-terminal transit options that are after security. You won’t be able to clear security for a terminal that you’re not flying out of though, so I don’t think your plan would work unless you have a flight out of the terminal you plan to go to. I’m confused as to what your plans with your friend are post-initial flight into JFK are, though. Are you both flying out of JFK together on a second flight? Or flying into JFK at different times and then getting a car or going into the city as your destination? If it’s the former, you should just plan on meeting in the terminal where your next joint flight departs from. If it’s the latter, I would recommend going to the TWA Hotel attached to Terminal 5 and grabbing a drink and meeting there before leaving the airport together.

      1. I agree that the TWA hotel seems like the best solution here. (Assuming you and your friend are taking a car/train to your final destination.)

      2. Thanks!! We’re both flying into JFK, just on different airlines and landing about two hours apart. The plan was just to meet up before going to grab our rental car. My thought on the lounge was that it would be a more comfortable and quieter place to hang out for two hours on a Friday morning than in the general terminal or where ground transportation is. I am so used to my home airport (Charlotte) where you can get to any gate after you pass through security that I forgot to check before agreeing to this plan.

    2. You would need to pass through security to get into the other terminal, and you won’t be allowed since you won’t have an outgoing boarding pass.

  13. Car recommendations? My car is approaching the 10 year mark and becoming expensive to maintain. I’d like to get a luxury car, maybe in the $75k range? Must be small-ish (I have an Acura TSX and would like to stay around the same size), decent gas mileage, and last for the next 10 years. A lot of my friends have Audis, but they’re all the type who either lease cars or trade them in every couple of years. I’ve heard Audis don’t hold up that well. My FIL is a mechanic and recommended a Mercedes, but the one he recommended (I forget which) was like $90k base model and that’s a little much for me. He refused to recommend any other car (lol). Wondering if anyone here has looked recently? I’ve heard the market isn’t great but I do have a trade in so maybe it’ll even out.

    1. Per last week’s posts, Kia Telluride. I know. I KNOW. Not an Audi. But it looks like a great car / SUV that will set you back maybe 55K if you get the fanciest one.

        1. Not sure which day, but I’m another poster who chimed in that day that I’ve stopped driving my (old) Audi in favor of the Kia Sorento we bought. So I’m another vote.

    2. See the fact that cars get expensive to main around the 10 year mark and liking a luxury car is exactly why I lease. You don’t have to get over your skis and go out of your price range, though. For nicer, still smaller cars, I’m a fan of BMWs – I drive a Mini Countryman (BMW in a a smaller hat) and also like the smaller BMWs.

      1. Also, fwiw, my lease is $425/mo, and has been around there for a decade. So for 10 years of a car, that’s about 50k v 75 or 90. And zero maintenance or repair costs. While there’s no trade in value, the last time I owned (a 5 series BMW) and traded it in around the 10 year mark, I got about 12k for it, and I’d sunk about 5k into fixing things around the end of its life. I know the conventional wisdom somehow comes out in favor of owning cars, but as a depreciating asset, I just don’t get that. I also really value reliability, which you always have with a leased car.

        1. And PS – I do get that a stable marble car like a Honda Civic or something would come out better math wise, I also like a luxury car, can afford it, so that’s not part of my personal buy/lease calculus.

        2. I’d never thought about leases that way, thanks. I’ve really liked not having a car payment for the last… 7?… years but I’ll run the numbers. Do you get dinged for dents and scratches? I park in a tight garage and people love to open their car doors right into your car. I don’t bother getting that stuff fixed, it’s just going to get dented and scratched again anyway. I’m worried that with a lease I would have to pay for it to be in 100% perfect condition.

          1. You don’t get dinged if you lease another one when you turn it in. I also buy ding/scratch protection that covers a bit more damage than that just in case and it adds like $5/month to the lease. The only catch is mileage – I drive very little miles in a year (all city so lots of driving but not putting big numbers on) so I can lease at the cheapest rate (under 24k miles a year). If you drive a ton the math may change.

          2. Adding on, because the dealer becomes your “friend” when you lease, be picky about the dealership (check reviews, go somewhere with a good reputation) and the brand. If you love a Mercedes but get a BMW to save a few dollars and later decide you’d really prefer a Mercedes, that’s when you’re more subject to ding fees and mileage charges (although again you can buy lease end protection to mitigate most of that) and potentially having to make a down payment again when you lease a different brand. When you get into a car line you like, the dealers treat you well.

          3. Oh the hybrid/electric car issue mentioned below is another reason I lease. Current car is a hybrid, the technology is getting better all the time and I want to be able to get a newer battery/switch to all electric without having range anxiety (still a thing).

          4. This number changes really significantly if you buy used in excellent condition with low miles. I have a 2013 audi that I paid off in two years (years ago) that has 55K miles on it and is going to last me for years to come.

          5. EB – original lease poster here, can you elaborate? The last time I looked at it, certified pre-owned (ie used in great condition) cars were only slightly less than a new car (like 5-7k less) so by my math it came out closer to a wash. Curious if you’ve found something different?

    5. I’d only consider a hybrid or electric car assuming money isn’t an issue. The planet’s on fire and time to say goodbye to gas.

      2. +1 if money isn’t an issue and I’m going to drive, I think it’s important to buy an electric car. I’m partial to Teslas, but there are so many excellent electric cars on the market.

      3. Any recommendations? I’m open to something Tesla-like but I kind of hate Elon Musk (petty reason to pick a car, I know, but most of the people I know who have Tesla’s are bro-y types who think Musk is God’s gift to the world).

        1. A hybrid Lexus sedan? Luxurious and reliable. Toyota/Lexus have been making hybrids for a long time.

        2. Volvo electrics are amazing! I have the XC40 and genuinely love everything about it. It’s an SUV, but small.

          1. Thanks for that recommendation! I don’t pay much attention to cars, and I think driving my 40 mpg stick shift Honda in to the ground probably makes the most sense for now, but it’s nice to plan ahead.

        3. I have heard good things about the Chevy Bolt, also the Nissan leaf. So many options.

        4. There are lots of us “overachieving chicks” with Teslas and you won’t regret it for a second.

    6. I would get a fancy electric car at $75K. Electric cars last a long time and have low maintenance. Porsche is going to come out with its first electric car (a Taycan) for ~$83K if you can go up a bit. You can get an electric I-Pace Jaguar starting at ~$70K.

    7. Check out a Mazda model. They’re really fun to drive and hold up very well over time. It’s one of the few companies still doing R&D on internal combustion engines.

      1. I just bought a new Mazda CX-5 and I LOVE it. It’s not in the luxury category but to me it feels luxurious. (I upgraded from an older Subaru that was very basic.) I went for the higher end package and the turbo engine and I love driving it.

        1. We have an 8 year old CX-5 that still looks/drives like new and has required nothing but very basic maintenance. We don’t drive a ton and the last year and a half in particular has been very low mileage, but it’s been a very easy car to own. Our next car will probably be electric, but we drive so little that we’ll probably be holding on to this one for quite a while longer before it makes sense to buy a new one.

    9. I’d get a Tesla model 3 if I were you. I used to work at a dealership and BMWs were terrible vehicles and I would not recommend one.

  14. Help me hive! What app can I use with my husband, nanny, and back up sitter to keep track of my kids’ schedules? Hoping for something that we can all access / edit / add to and something that is color coordinated for each child.

    Silver lining of the pandemic is that I’m still working with a 1 hour commute each way and husband is now permanently working from home and is stepping up on child related duties significantly. Things that used to just live in my mental to do list now need to be shared!

    I have an iPhone, husband has an android, and my nanny doesn’t use gmail

    1. Google calendar is what we’ve been using but I don’t think we’ve gotten great at it, and my au pair doesn’t check it… sigh. I’ve heard some people like Cosi, but I never managed to get anyone in my family (aka my husband) to buy in.

      I’m also trying to figure out how to share to-do tasks with my husband that syncs up to the calendar and can’t seem to figure out how to do this in a way we can both share the list.

    2. Cozi? If I weren’t already in the Google Calendar universe, I’d probably use that.

    3. We use google calendar. I had already created gmail addresses for the kids and our nanny also had gmail – you could just create new gmails for everyone and use them in the calendar? FWIW I never use gmail except for real estate hunting and to sign into other g00gle branded things.

    4. We use a separate gmail account for the calendar that isn’t used for any other purposes. LastNamefamilycalendar at gmail and it’s synced on all our devices. We all have our personal calendars but add stuff here using Initials to differentiate which family member it relates to.

  15. I got engaged a couple months ago and he picked an ethically sourced diamond with great marks for clarity, cut, and color, and it’s just under 1 carat. We both love it, it basically glows in the dark, it’s gorgeous. A few friends have also gotten engaged recently and have gigantic stones that look a bit cloudy and yellow-tinted to my eye. To each their own, I’m happy they’re happy. We’ve (finally!) been seeing friends lately and people want to see all the rings from newly engaged ladies. I’ve noticed that they go on and on gushing about the giant stones and when they see mine they’re like, oh congrats, OMG DID YOU SEE THE SIZE OF JANE’S ROCK HER FIANCÉ REALLY LOVES HER! Idk what to make of this. I’m a bit incredulous that people apparently equate not only the cost of the ring but also the size of the stone with how much he loves her? And I feel a little defensive of my fiancé – he makes less than a lot of people in the group and I feel like people are looking down on him even though he probably spent just as much as anyone else (not that it’s anyone’s business how much he spent but I’m not a fan of the ohhh poor Anonymous with her poor tiny stone attitude). The whole thing made me feel gross. Is this attitude common and I just never noticed it before, or is it a new pandemic related thing?

    1. I think it is just the people you are hanging out with unfortunately. They sound horrible.

      1. +1 Some people are jerks about cultural signifiers (and ignorant too, as you point out – the size alone of a diamond doesn’t determine price, value or beauty!). Congrats to you and your fiancé, enjoy your lovely new jewelry, and do your best to ignore this nonsense.

      2. +2 your friends sound terrible. I think you might also be noticing that it’s rubbing off on you (judging by how many characters you devote to all the qualities of your diamond and how much your fiance spent, even though you then couch it with a justification). Trust your gut and spend more time with other people.

    2. It’s common, it’s gross, just know that’s how those people view things when dealing with them in the future.

    3. I think you’re reading too much into it, it sounds to me like your friends are just trying to compliment your ring.

      1. This, 100%. They’re making engagement ring small talk and you’re taking it way too personally, OP.

    4. For what it’s worth, I got engaged very recently with a gorgeous conflict-free vintage stone of 0.9 carats (and I work in a senior role in NYC biglaw, where 2+ carat solitaires seem to be the norm, and my ring is obviously not in that range). Not a single person has commented on it other than to say it’s gorgeous and reflects us as a couple perfectly. If your friends are drawing comparisons between your ring and others and implying that your fiance is somehow less valuable or loves you less than others, I would say they’re short-sighted and frankly, probably a$$holes. If that’s the case, I would make a point of talking about how much you love your ring and why it’s perfectly suited to you, and pull back from them as friends.
      I don’t think this is a new trend, nor do I think it’s pandemic-related. Some people are just…tacky and say inappropriate and insensitive things.

      2. Yeah I feel like you’re mad that they’re not valuing the same things you value in engagement rings and declaring you the winner instead of your friends with the big yellow cloudy rings.

        1. Wrong read. She does not like that is even a contest but (correctly) points out that if it is, she is not the sad loser of said stupid contest.

          Those are not mutually incompatible. Plenty of people who could go around winning stupid contests have the sense and grace to not initiate comparisons.

          1. Tell me again how OP is not initiating comparisons when she says her friends’ rings look cloudy and yellow to her eye, while hers is ethical and glows in the dark.

          2. Are you really using ethical as if it’s some sort of a derogatory term? Is it not objectively better to buy a product that doesn’t cause human suffering?

    7. Yeah, this is a thing…and I honestly have always thought it was tacky. I got engaged with a family ring so didn’t have to consider any of this for myself personally, but I feel like the large diamonds have become more of a wealth signifier than a choice based on what the wearer likes, which feel gross to me. Also, wearing something that I know costs that much money (and others will know as well if they know anything about diamonds) makes me uncomfortable.
      One thing that seems to reflect this is when celebrities get engaged – it seems expected that they’ll have a massive stone just because they can afford it. And with that, an undercurrent of feeling that if they DON’T get a big rock, like, they’re cheap or something? Oi, it’s a mess.

      1. Slow clap for people with family money who look down on others for being tacky for having to buy what you have been given. Sorry, not all of us have grandma’s ring.

    8. Well, you know what they say… the size of the ring inversely correlates with the length of the marriage.

      So I would try to spend less time with these friends, as their pettiness seems to be rubbing off on you a bit.

    9. I also don’t equate jewelry with love, but recognize that getting expensive gifts may have been important back when women couldn’t have their own bank accounts. Can you reframe from defensiveness to feeling that it’s unfortunate that your friends are stuck with outdated views?

    10. this attitude has been around for YEARS and is commonly referred to as the Diamond Olympics.

      The “how much he loves her” part however is pretty clearly a joke, though, so I wouldn’t get all worked up about that aspect.

      1. This. FWIW, I didn’t want a diamond ring, just have a gold band, and no one ever says anything about it (been married 22 years now). I think people assume that I don’t wear my engagement ring because I’m active/sporty and it would be inconvenient.

    11. Oh boy what a consumerist viewpoint of love. I bet people have probably said not so nice things about my ring because it’s not very large and entirely ethically sourced. Honestly though I really judge people with cheap blood diamonds, so….

    12. Totally get it. The same was true when I got engaged 22 years ago, and looks like not much has changed. I loved my 1/2 carat high-quality diamond ring, but was disappointed that almost everyone I knew seemed to be talking about the size of everyone else’s engagement rings. (I still remember one of my husband’s friends who spent $50,000 on a 5-carat ring from Tiffany’s for his fiancé. He was a lawyer but had just started working and did not have a lot of money at the time. We were shocked and because I was young and insecure, I started questioning my own choices.) I think a lot of this type of thinking is driven by the wedding industry – but it still s*cks.

    13. Agree with the others. Just be secure in what you chose. Even if those other diamonds were conflict free, clear, etc. and bigger, that doesn’t devalue your ring. People have different priorities and that’s okay.

    14. I got engaged about 18 years ago and this was definitely A Thing. FWIW, I’ve noticed that people who got really big diamonds often stop wearing them after a while – they aren’t super practical with kids, cooking, etc. I love my >1 ct. diamond and literally the only person who cares that it isn’t super-big is my MIL, who just loves to criticize her son for everything he does or does not do about everything. At this point, I’m not even sure if I’d want it “upgraded” with baguettes or a larger stone – I’d rather do some home improvement project or go on vacation.

  16. All – yesterday’s personal money snapshot was mine. I’ve responded to the posting answering some of the questions people had. Feel free to ask any more questions you might have.

    1. Considering a move to CLT and am probably similar to you (kid, will need good schools as I’d like my kid to go to school with nearby kids and also like to pay in house price vs private school tuition). I don’t want to out your neighborhood, but are there particular places you’d recommend looking at (or not)?

      Also, in the SEUS, we often read that women don’t work after kids. I don’t envision not working and wonder if I might feel like a unicorn as a working mom in CLT (vs DC). How has it been for you? [DC doesn’t make working moms feel weird for working, but the COL and commute just makes it an awful lifestyle but you at least have peers to complain to.]

      1. Hey! I definitely do not think that you would feel like a unicorn being a working mom. I have one close friend from college who is a SAHM (she kind of always wanted to be one), and through her I’ve met her “mom group” which are her neighborhood moms who have kids around the age of her kids. Those are honestly the only SAHMs I know, but my friend group heavily skews people who are other lawyers. My husband works in a large in house legal department and about 80% of his coworkers are females/working moms (and he’s had multiple roles there so worked with a variety of people). My local moms Facebook group recently had a post where someone said “Am I the only SAHM in this group?” She was not, but it’s certainly not a majority.

        My caveat to the above is that this is my personal experience. If you are really contemplating Charlotte, post a burner email address and I can answer any other questions you have that way! I love living here.

    2. No questions but I’d like to express my jealously over your seemingly super low property taxes. :)

  17. Random unsolicited advice for anyone else who is very prone to blisters caused by shoes. Long story short, my feet always get super beat up from blisters. Over the past decade I’ve slowly upgraded my shoe wardrobe to cheapie flats to Dansko and Birkenstock because of how miserable my feet always were. Anyway, it dawned on me this weekend that this is because I have super sweaty feet, which have an easy fix: Foot deodorant spray. So far a major improvement, and I wish I realized this like 20 years ago.

      1. Also, life hack: carry a small bottle of spray on bandage at all times and apply immediately at the very first sign of irritation. I keep one in my bag, one in my hiking backpack, one in my office.

    2. I use foot powder in the bottom of all my shoes before I put them on. It helps my feet slip around and not get blisters.

  18. Anon for this – what monetary gifts (if any) have you gotten from your parents or grandparents as an adult, other than anything they may have paid for college/grad school or a wedding? Was having this discussion with my husband who is adamant that after college the kids are on their own, we won’t be funding down payments or buying them cars or paying for their daycare/kids private school etc., they have to figure it out. IDK I don’t expect to fund down payments or anything, yet I’ve gotten 20k from my parents and grandparents combined in my later 30s/early 40s and it’s a nice cushion. It was given in the form of stock so it’s something that’ll keep on growing. And 20k isn’t the type of money that’s leading to me quitting my job or buying a house. I suspect by the time my kids are older, 50k will be thought of the same way – nice to have, a small foundation to build more wealth on, but in no way – quit my job and be irresponsible money. Thoughts?

    1. None. I outearn my parents’ combined income 4x and see no reason for them to sponsor my lifestyle. Even if the circumstances would be reverse, I would not expect or accept any financial contributions from them. I have no living grandparents. FWIW, university education in my country is “free” (paid from taxes).

    2. My parents paid for my very modest wedding (<10K) largely b/c they paid for the same previously for a poor sibling marrying a grad student. I would have been fine without it but they wanted to be "fair."

      I recently stayed at a hotel during a family funeral and found upon checkout that the bill had been paid by my parents, which was a nice surprise.

      I find that having a sibling who is not very well off has had some odd spill-over effects to me. OTOH, my parents grew up dirt poor and in their minds are stupidly generous (I agree), so they did not raise kids who expected to be helped out for home purchases, grad school, private college, etc. Others who grew up with more and parents who grew up with more may find out setup stingy, but our family lives long enough where they may legit outlive their $ even though they live quite modestly.

    3. A rich (and very lovely in many other ways) aunt paid for my grad school, but I also out-earn my parents and have for a while, so I’m not asking or relying on them for anything.

    4. I got 20k from my grandfather’s estate after he passed away, but that was it.

      My parents are comfortable but middle class and therefore they’d never be able to give me 20k, nor would I ever expect it. They paid for as much college as they could (I still graduated with 40k in loans), and they might give me some money for a wedding, but they might not. I stayed on their insurance until I was 26, and I’m still on their cell phone plan, but the $25 for my line isn’t breaking the bank.

      Even if they could contribute to a downpayment, car, or schooling beyond that, they wouldn’t. They’re adamant that as an adult you are responsible for yourself, which I agree with. I think being financially independent as an adult is important for personal responsibility reasons, to ensure you’re living within your means (what happens if that financial gift dries up?), and to limit entanglement.

      I’m very close with my family, so I take their opinions into consideration because they’re usually valid opinions. However, if I disagree with them I have no problem making my own decision, seeing as it’s my life and not theirs. I have a few friends who are financially dependent on their families and their parents have SO MUCH SAY over what their adult children can/can’t do – I’d never want that situation. My grandfather contributed to my aunt’s first house and bought her current house and their lives are way too enmeshed; it ended up really hurting my aunt’s relationship with her husband because he felt their was a third party in most of their decision making (because there was!)

    5. I’m an adult, I don’t see why I should rely on someone else to finance my lifestyle!

    6. About $5-10k as college graduation gift from my grandparents (same amount given to all grandkids), and about $100k in total from my parents, of which about $75k was part of the down payment for my house. It’s a sort of long story, but basically I live in a VHCOL area on a moderate income, and I’m the only one of their kids that is single and therefore handling everything on one income. Most of the non-down-payment money has gone towards making things easier for them when they stay with me for longer stretches, but has benefitted me too (nearly all of it related to housing). They have far more than they will ever need for their retirement and their attitude was “you get it now or you get it later, might as well get the benefit of it now.” I’ve never asked for any of the money; it was all offered. I’m not someone who likes having other people spend money on me, so some of it still feels weird.

      FWIW I don’t anticipate much if any financial support from here on out now that I have purchased a house.

    7. About 10k in my twenties for a Roth IRA – I have a 401k now but in my twenties I was barely making enough to pay rent and eat, never mind save for retirement.

    8. If you can do it that’s nice but I do think kids should have the expectation of paying for things themselves after some point (college seems about right to me). It’s better to be pleasantly surprised as a responsible adult than to be an irresponsible adult because you thought your parents would just keep paying for you.

      My parents were of the “after college you pay for it” messaging school of thought. It was a good message because it made expectations clear for me, and it’s the message we give our kids. I’m not confident we will be able to provide to them any significant chuck of cash beyond paying for college but if we can we will. As it turns out, I’ve received several significant cash gifts and while we just add the money to savings, it sure is nice and we sure are lucky.

      FWIW I disagree that 20K won’t lead to buying a house. There are plenty of folks who make a salary that can support mortgage payments but getting a down payment together can take a long time. 20K is a pretty significant chunk, and a down payment unto itself in some circumstances.

    9. My mom helped me out with my down payment (purchased as a single woman) about 7 years ago (she gave me 50K toward it). Other than that (which is significant to be sure, since the house value has since skyrocketed and I make a small profit every year with the additional rental income), nothing of note. I do plan to have my mom move in with us at some point when she gets older (either in our home or an ADU if we can get one built), but that is fairly common in my Asian immigrant culture.

      As for my own kids, we plan to pay for college in full, help with grad school if we can, and maybe a small sum toward a down payment. Nothing more beyond that.

    10. Well, we know from other threads that many on this board had help from parents with downpayments, cars and more, but not sure why they aren’t posting.

      My parents were of modest means but saved every penny their whole lives and invested it all so by later life they were financially secure. They helped with college, but we still took out loans and I applied for every scholarship available and worked through college. They did not pay for grad school, but I got a full ride scholarship and lived on a shoestring for more than a decade (long dual degree program). They did not buy us cars, or give us $ for downpayments, but if we were ever in a pinch we knew we could go to them for help.

      And they did help down the road. When my income was only $8000 per year in grad school, after 5 years in school they let me drive their older car when they bought a new one. They gave me $2000 as a gift in grad school to open my first ever IRA and taught me the value of saving and investing early. And my Mom quietly gave me $5k to pay off my last student loan. I worked crazy hours for nothing for so many years (grad students are among our most educated most abused cheap labor) and I think they were worried about me surviving!

      And then when they were in their 60’s, they started giving cash gifts to my siblings and I each year, under the amount the IRS limits until you have to report it / file gift taxes. For years we refused to accept them, wanting my parents to save the money for their long term needs. But this upset them, as they wanted us to use the $ to improve our quality of life now, while they could see the results and enjoy it with us, rather than wait until they had passed. Finally, we stopped resisting, but agreed amongst ourselves that we would continue to save/invest the money so that we could help support my parents when they were elderly, if it was needed. Fortunately, my siblings/parents and I have similar values about $ and can trust each other. Not all families are like this.

      As my mother has passed, and my Dad has become more disabled (and emotional), he gives us more money yearly and we save it for him.

    11. My parents helped with college a little (most was covered by financial aid), and did not help with law school at all. But I always considered myself extremely privileged: staying on the family cell phone plan until I graduated, my dad handing me $20 whenever I was traveling so I could buy overpriced airport food, and the knowing that even though they couldn’t bail me out of financial trouble, they would always be able to buy me a ticket home to stay with them in their fully paid off house if some worst case scenario happened.

      After my dad received a large inheritance, they gave me and my sibling $50k each. They initially discussed giving us each $40k, but my sibling needed a little more help to buy a house and they wanted to keep it equal for both of us.

    12. I could definitely see passing on 50-150k in a stock portfolio. That’s how wealth is built. I myself received about 20k that way and it’s grown a lot, and if my immigrant parents could give me that much then certainly I can give the next generation more. I don’t understand the – do it on your own – mentality. Wealth goes generation to generation. I wouldn’t give it for “fun” stuff – not for luxury cars or vacations etc. though I do understand once you gift the stock, it’s theirs they are free to sell and buy whatever; I hope that I teach them enough about net worth and finance that their first impulse wouldn’t be to sell and buy a 100k car – I also wouldn’t make such gifts until their 30s, as I think most people (not all) in their 20s can be a bit more immature with money.

    13. My parents paid for my Big State U education and my wedding. Since I was 23, working in corporate America, they haven’t helped otherwise (I’m 45 now). I have a 13 year old and I plan on paying for his undergrad/postgrad and wedding (if desired). I’d also hope to help him with a down payment on a home someday. I’ve worked very hard and am very fortunate to be in the financial situation I am in. I earn 4x’s what my parents ever did and I want to give my son every advantage in life possible. We do not take our “fortune” for granted and pay it forward whenever possible.

    14. I think the sweet spot is helping kids without them becoming insufferable or greedy. Anyone have advice on how to do this?

      I live in a VHCOL area and would love for my kids to live nearby when they grow up if that’s what they want. Unless my city drastically improves its housing policy (I’m trying!), it’s going to be really hard for them to live nearby unless they do something incredibly lucrative or we help them.

      However, I see adults who expect their parents to fund their lifestyles (luxury goods, gigantic apartments in VHCOL areas, etc) and that’s not at all what I want for my kids. For the people I know, it doesn’t lead to a happy family relationship or satisfaction with life.

      1. My son and I donate a lot of our time to help the less fortunate; food insecurity and homelessness are two things close to our hearts. “Checking our privlege” is a great way to stay grounded. My partner is a social worker and works with the homeless. Just hearing his stories when he comes home from work is humbling.

      2. IDK that once a month volunteering at a food pantry or whatever helps. I think in order for them to not get greedy – set the expectations that they’re on their own after college. That means if they want to stay in VHCOL they better pursue biglaw, specialty medicine, or investment banking. If they want to do other things- shrug then I guess you’ll be leaving VHCOL or renting. Then if along the way you want to surprise them with cash gifts to help with a down payment or whatever, do that; it won’t be an expectation because they’ll have been working towards it themselves and your help will just let them breathe easier/buy a house sooner etc. I also wouldn’t fund a luxury life – I wouldn’t be funding luxury cars, trips, or amazing rental apartments, as that’s what sets up “lifestyle expectations.” I would save my funding for what is wealth building – down payments, stocks, retirement accounts.

        1. I absolutely disagree with this. My daughter is planning to enter a profession that is valuable to society but not at all lucrative. She wants to live close to me and my parents if she can find a job here, but is aware of the cost of living. I (and my parents) want her to live close because we love each other and want the chance to see each other more than once or twice a year. This is years away but when she decides to have children I want them to be close enough that I can see them regularly – just as my daughter saw her grandparents regularly. I am not going to support luxury cars or expensive vacations but will absolutely help her finance housing (nothing ridiculous but the median home price in my city is $750K and the average rent is also sky high. She will absolutely not be able to afford that without help). And I made sure she knows that so that she does not look at housing prices and decides not to bother even trying to stay here. Worse yet, I do not want her to enter the kind of lucrative, high stress job that would make her miserable.

          And to be clear, we are not offering help we cannot afford but the point in my mind of building wealth is to help my child and future grandchildren just as my parents and grandparents helped me. And I know my kid well enough to not be worried she is suddenly going to become some entitled brat.

    15. Nothing in huge chunks, but for me, it’s been small things here and there, that now that I think of it, add up to quite a bit. When my brother bought my mom’s house from her (at market price), she left a lot of stuff there (like a lawnmower, all the furniture, etc.), so to be “fair,” she put about $2k in my bank account. She and my stepdad bought me a very nice standing desk for Christmas this year and paid for half of a really nice desk chair when we all started WFH. They sold me my car at trade in value and then after I had paid 2/3 of it, told me the rest was wiped.

      A lot of this comes from my step-dad doing really well; if she were living on her own, I don’t think she’d have been able to gift what she has.

    16. My parents have given me money to buy a (used) car, and have offered to pay for activities for my kids. They gave us half of our downpayment. They do this because they want our kids to have nice things and opportunities. They also pay for a family vacation for the whole family once a year. This is all something they budget into their expenses. But they don’t just give us money carte blanche- everything they give us is towards something specific. If there isn’t something specific they want to give us money for, they will just save up the money until they see a need. I would never ask them for the money (okay, once, when we were about the buy a house and the wire transfer from our savings wasn’t going to make it in time, they stepped in, but we repaid them as soon as our own funds cleared.)

    17. My parents gave me a zero-interest loan to buy an inexpensive car during my divorce, because my ex-husband took our lone vehicle and I had no access to funds to buy one. Otherwise, no financial gifts of any sort. My parents gave my brother an advance on his inheritance to help with a down payment and would probably have done the same for me, but it has always been important to me to live a life that I could afford on my own, even though that meant not having some things (like my own home) as quickly as I would have wanted them or in the exact way that I wanted them (when I did finally buy, it was a condo instead of the SFH I would have preferred).

      I’ve known a number of people whose parents paid for their kids’ private school, family country-club memberships, house down payments, etc. In a lot of cases I’ve seen that help become a form of control, and it just wasn’t something I wanted.

    18. I have recieved nothing, neither has DH. We outearn our parents (which they didn’t seem to realize until very recently), but when my grandparents pass there will be a substantial inheritance.

    19. My parents paid for state college, gave me their 7-year-old car when I graduated, and gave around $7k worth of funds they had saved for college but not had to spend because I had gotten that amount of money in scholarships. (They are economists, can you tell?) They also paid for my wedding. Uncompensated, but they have provided a ton of childcare over the years, which is the biggest gift. I am so glad they were able to pay for my college (and them not being willing to pay the difference between [a very good] state college and a fancy Ivy League school taught me important lessons) and that I could graduate debt-free. I’ll also add that I was able to take low- or non-paying internship or research fellowships during my college summers because they were covering my room and board expenses to the extent they weren’t covered by grant money or a salary (although I was always either staying at home or somewhere pretty cheap in a developing country). The other monetary gifts were nice-to-haves that I appreciated immensely. I never would have dreamed to expect them to pay for law school or my down payment, although I like to think they raised me well enough not to get spoiled by it if they had. That said, I now make more money than they ever did and it would be weird for them to give me money. I know they do help out my sibling, who does organizing-type work and makes peanuts, with things like health insurance, and I think they bought her car.

    20. My parents paid about $30k of my $40k college costs plus about $10k of my $15k wedding, about $1k for part of a month-long backpacking trip after school, and about $8k in stock my dad had gotten from his employer when I was very young, which became part of my first house down payment. My sibling received an equivalent amount ($40-50k) toward his first house, I believe. My family was and is comfortably middle/upper middle class but I outearn them and never counted on any of this support except the $8k stock position, which I was aware of as a child and following it over my formative years is how I ended up in finance. :-)

    21. The only money we’ve gotten from parents or grandparents has come via inheritances after people died, and it’s been mostly from my husband’s side – we got a chunk when his dad died in a car accident over 20 years ago, and a smaller chunk when his grandfather died a few years later (my husband in both cases was the only heir). On my side, my mom’s parents barely had two nickels to rub together and they had 5 kids, so I was lucky to get some housewares and a couple of pieces of my grandma’s costume jewelry that had sentimental value. My dad’s parents also had few nickels to rub together and my grandmother was living in subsidized senior housing when she passed, but I was surprised she had left my son $1k for his college fund and left me her only two pieces of jewelry that were worth anything. I posted this the other day when the question was posed, but my parents have given us nothing. They lent us $500 one time many years ago, when my husband got laid off and we needed to pay bills before he got his first unemployment check, but we paid that back almost immediately. Otherwise, bupkis.

      And that’s fine with me. I am an adult and can make my own way, and they need to save money in case they need nursing or dementia care when they get older. They will sometimes talk about how much money they’re leaving my brother and I (in unspecific terms), and I have repeatedly told them, we’ll see. If they live into their 90s, as several of their relatives have, they will need that money to live comfortably and be taken care of. This may sound selfish but if they run through their own money before they die, they’re going to need to go on Medicaid because I can’t be spending my retirement fund, or my kid’s college fund, to pay for their care; we’ll have to figure it out based on whatever assets they have remaining. Which they both have public-service-job pensions and social security, so it won’t be nothing. But I do want them to save their money and be conservative about spending, and definitely don’t give it to us. We don’t need the money, and they very well might.

    22. DH’s parents gave us our down payment and a substantial wedding gift (about $50k total). We did not have a wedding, and my parents gave us a more modest but still generous gift (and paid for some things when we thought we were having a wedding).

      My parents are far less well off but give me random things fairly often, like tools and such for the house.

      Our parents also help occasionally with household projects and sometimes foot the bill (not like a kitchen remodel, but a new door or toilet). Randomly we are both still on our (separate) parents’ phone plans. (My whole family is on my parents’, including my sibling and grandparent).

    23. I have not received any money or support from my parents since I turned 18. I moved out of their house that week. I paid for college and law school. DH and I paid for our own wedding. I am honestly glad they never paid for anything or gave me money because it taught me independence and self sufficiency fast.

    24. They bought me a new compact car at college graduation (I was 22) with funds they had left over from my college savings (I had a substantial scholarship so they didn’t need everything they’d saved for me), but I have not had a dime from them in the last 20 years, including when buying homes or getting married.

      Every friend/acquaintance I know who’s received these 10k/20k/50k types gifts is less responsible with money, I suspect since they know their parents would bail them out if they needed it. The extra 10k leads to a car or house they can’t really afford, and it becomes dominos.

      1. Yes you’re the MOST financially responsible person there ever was because you didn’t have that pesky extra 10k burning a hole in your pocket. Give me a break.

        1. Don’t get so defensive and hostile over a comment that had nothing to do with you personally. If this hit a nerve, examine why that is and why you’re so sensitive about it; don’t lash out at the commenter.

        3. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed. People here used to be thoughtful and considerate, you…clearly aren’t.

        4. Don’t want to pile on, but I do smile because it seems like everybody’s definition of “too much financial help from parents” is “just a little bit more than I got from mine.”

    25. When the last grandparent died and they got a substantial inheritance, they gave me a portion (I want to say it was ~$5K). They’ve also started contributing $1K/year/kid to my kids’ 529 accounts. Birthday/Christmas presents to us are more sentimental or small material gifts, and I don’t expect any monetary contributions.
      My parents were public sector works and firmly middle class, and one was poor growing up, so the idea of funding a downpayment/buying me a car/etc. was not part of my life growing up.

    26. I think if you have the means, then it’s really going to be a case by case basis as to what your adult children need and what you can do to help them. Maybe your kids won’t need financial assistance, but perhaps one will need financial assistance and another may need a place to live or your time caretaking children. There’s no one answer. Functional families help each other, but it’s not always financial.

    27. We borrowed a significant portion of our down payment from family (6 figures). We paid it back over several years, but it was definitely a gift in the truest sense of the word. Definitely not expected, but very much appreciated.

    28. My parents gave us an interest-free loan (less than $10k) to help boost our down payment. They also paid for our wedding venue (county park) in lieu of a gift – I think it was ~$1k. They had about $3k in savings bonds for me and each of my siblings for college; the rest I paid for with scholarships, loans and PT jobs. They’ve helped out my siblings from time to time and also provide childcare for my nephew. I don’t anticipate there being any sort of “estate” when they pass – I hope they enjoy every penny they have, they deserve it.
      My wife got significant scholarships and her parents covered the rest, so she came out of undergrad without debt. She has also received two estate payouts from family members.

    29. Random $20k some years back (sibling had another child, so I got the same amount of tax-free funds as were given to start the new grandkid’s education fund). $15k/year for the last five or so years, expected to continue. That was a *complete* surprise, and I’ve let parent know that their estate is theirs to deal with as they wish, but that as a courtesy I’d appreciate if they tell me if they are going to stop the payment or change the will. They can do that after they change it, of course, but I don’t want any deathbed surprises. I’m already doing well financially, so I initially threw it into investments and then used it to jump start separate funds for a new car and medical expenses, which I also fund on a regular basis as part of my monthly financial accountings.

      I don’t think we should underestimate the importance of people suddenly having an emergency fund. Money provides options in life, so even if $15k doesn’t affect my life much now, it would have a huge impact when I was younger and making far less money.

      Of note, I haven’t told anyone in my life that I have this, because they would view it as a slush fund for vacations and stuff I don’t need. I got rich through being white, having upper-middle class white-collar parents, and a lot of financial discipline since I was in my teens. Having additional fun funds now is nice, but not a key part of my lifestyle or plans for retirement.

    30. My parents give me $20k per year per child for their college education (while they are in college – so $80k each). That’s all they’ve given me. Super appreciated.

    31. My parents helped me escape my abusive marriage. It was no small cost, I needed a car so I could continue to work (no reliable public transit and he refused to let me take one of our cars when I left), the security deposit and a couple months’ rent for a studio apartment, and of course the divorce itself. They also gave me the financial freedom to not quibble over money in the divorce so he couldn’t drag it out like he tried to do. You want both cars? Fine take them, we barely owe less than they’re worth anyway. You won’t agree to let me take even one pan or one dish? Fine, my parents will buy basic household necessities. I’ve always been independent and I didn’t want to have to ask for help, but idk what I would’ve done if my parents hadn’t been in a position to help me.

  19. A partner agency just posted an ideal job for me (not quite dream job, but close). It’s in public health preparedness though, and after the last 18 months (and how things are looking with delta), I just can’t bring myself to apply for it. I’m too tired from working in public health the past year and if I never did a single work thing about COVID for the rest of my life it’d be too soon.

    It’d be a huge step up, a raise, more responsibility, etc. all things that I want, in a field I”m passionate about, but I’m just too damn tired! The burnout is real, y’all.

    2. Not in public health, but I saw a job posting that I would have loved before the pandemic – significant responsibility, high travel, etc. I did not apply.

    3. Do it anyway and take a vacation before you start. You’ll get over burnout and be disappointed you didn’t take the opportunity when it was there. There’s never a perfect time.

      1. thanks! I’ve been going back and forth about this all week. I suppose I should just apply and then go from there.

  20. I was just coming here to say this! It is amazing how one post will get dozens of responses saying that it is totally normal for parents who can afford it to give their children substantial gifts. And a few days later, the vast majority of responses are from people who either did not get those gifts and/or clearly buy into the self-sufficiency model.

    My parents gave me $30K when I lost my job in 2008 and would have given me more if I had not found another one pretty quickly. And they funded 90% of my kid’s college ($150K) – although that was less than a quarter of what my father inherited from his mother the year before (she was comfortably middle class but bought a house in a California city in the 1950s). My daughter is graduating from college next year and if she gets the job she wants (particularly if she gets the job she wants in the VHCOL city my parents and I live in) I absolutely expect that they and I will be helping her for at least a few years until her income rises or she decides to go to grad school, for which they have already put the money aside. And we are very happy to do it – especially if it means she can afford to live close so we can see her.

    My mother was a pregnant high school dropout. She graduated from college and graduate school and it was possible because her parents (both blue collar) helped and supported her, including opening their 3 BR, 1 BA house up to us for literally years. (And I note they had two other children still living at home when we moved in.) I live in a city that I would not otherwise chose so that I can be closer to my parents as they get older and need help – which I do and will continue to provide gladly. In my world, that is what family is and what family does. I realize that not everyone has that relationship with their parents and children.

    But OP – what does it matter? You and your husband have a disconnect in values that you will need to resolve. Your joint money is your joint money and you will need to come up with a way to handle this the same way you would any other disagreement about spending.

    2. “It is amazing how one post will get dozens of responses saying that it is totally normal for parents who can afford it to give their children substantial gifts. And a few days later, the vast majority of responses are from people who either did not get those gifts and/or clearly buy into the self-sufficiency model.”

      Both of those things can be true. People can agree that it’s normal without having experienced it personally. FWIW I’ve received considerable financial help (like 7 figures worth) from my parents but was super busy today and therefore didn’t get a chance to engage in the thread above. *Shrug*

      1. Oh I know that both of those things can be true. There is infinite variety of people and situations. It just feels like sometimes the initial responses to a post will trend one direction and then everyone who feels that way piles on. And then a week later a similar post will get a dozen people piling on the opposite side. It is an oddity that a social psychologist would probably enjoy (if it genuinely a thing and not just my perception).

  21. My former stepmother got $40k a year from her parents, starting around her 30s and continuing until they passed when she was 60.

Comments are closed.