ChildWild » money

Buying Bras Without Breaking The Bank

Sierra — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:27:10 +0000

Yesterday, over 80,000 of us were flaunting our cleavage for Boobquake.

I’m guessing that more than a few of us wish our cleavage was a little easier to flaunt. Having and nursing babies doesn’t do much for the shape or firmness of our breasts.

A great bra can totally pick up the, um, slack. Maybe you’re one of those lucky women whose chest is a 34C, and you can find fabulous bras that fit you perfectly in the bargain bin at Target. If so, you can stop reading now.

The rest of you should run, not walk, to a Fancy Bra Store. The Fancy Bra Store here in the Boston area is called Intimacy, and it’s in the Copley shopping plaza.

I’ve also heard good things from Bitch PhD about Nordstrom‘s. Intimacy is the kind of place I expect to be escorted out of by security, not pampered in. You have to make an appointment to shop there, and the two bras I’ve bought there in the past year represent 90% of the money I’ve spend on clothes in that whole time.

They were totally worth it. For the first time in my life, I own a bra that fits me. Two, actually.

That’s changed my posture, and my profile, and my wardrobe. All of a sudden I can wear all these foxy little tops from my pre-baby days that I had about given up on.

I have always had a weird bra size. Since high school, I’ve had to buy my bras at Lady Grace or the back of the department store. They all look like military issue body armor. If we have ever gotten drunk together, you have probably heard me rant about the fact that everyone talks about how big boobs are sexy but no one actually makes pretty bras for them.

Well, it turns out they do. In Europe. And you can buy them here for a LOT of money.

What’s a frugal girl with a 30G bust to do?

Here’s my approach, shamelessly yanked from the friend who initiated me into the mysteries of Intimacy:

Go to the fancy bra store. Let them fit you, and try on everything in your size. Take not of all the brands you like, and what styles work well on you.
If your budget allows it, buy one. Just one. Because they are really hard to resist, and the nice ladies at the shop do work hard.
Then go home, and track your preferred brands/sizes/styles on Ebay. Occasionally something will pop up, and you can grab it for a lot less than you’d spend at the retail shop.
Also keep tabs on discount websites that sell bras. Now that you know your correct size, you don’t need to pay the premium to be fitted perfectly into every bra you own. You can watch for online sales and save your pennies.

Your Money Book Giveaway and Top Money Hacks

Sierra — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:20:56 +0000

Congrats to Soundhunter, the winning commenter in my Your Money: The Missing Manual book giveaway. Send me an e-mail at sierra@childwild.com with your snail mail address and I’ll send you a book.

Here are some of the great money hacks readers shared:

Automate your savings (one reader suggests using Smartypig.com for this; they do offer a great interest rate)
Pay yourself first by having your direct deposit split between checking and savings.
When the going gets better, you better keep going. Have a plan for when you finally pay off debt to avoid back sliding. (I like this hack so much I’m doing a whole post about it, stay tuned)
Know your priorities; don’t try to keep up with the Joneses (there’s apparently a new movie about this, starring a still-hot David Duchovny)
Use the flexible spending accounts your employer offers for childcare and medical expenses.
Use multiple bank accounts to separate your spending money from your fixed expenses.
Sell your excess Stuff

These are great tips. I’ll add one more here: there’s no need to invent the wheel. If you have a money problem, chances are good someone has solved it before. Check out the personal finance section at your local library, read great blogs like Get Rich Slowly, and talk to people who’s approach to finances you trust. A little guidance can save you a lot of frustration.

Book Giveaway/Review: Your Money, The Missing Manual

Sierra — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:54:46 +0000

Welcome to my long-awaited (at least by me) review of Your Money: The Missing Manual
. It’s taken me weeks to review this book because it is so damn good. Obviously, I’m a fan of J.D. Roth’s approach to managing money. I was a loyal reader of his blog, Get Rich Slowly, for years before I became a staff writer there.

I thought I knew what to expect from his book, and would dash off a quick happy review of it. What slowed me down? The book is even better than I expected. It’s so good I couldn’t put it down or skim it quickly. If you’re going to read one personal finance book, it had better be this one. (Dear husband, that means you. Read this book!)

Your Money: The Missing Manual
is so great because it’s so simple. J.D. gives you straight, easy-to-understand talk about money. I knew he would, he’s been doing it for years on Get Rich Slowly.

The book goes beyond the blog though in it’s simple focus. This isn’t a collection of essays plucked from his years of writing on personal finance. It’s a roadmap to managing your money.

J.D. starts and ends with the simple premise that what really matters isn’t money at all, it’s happiness. Then he gently guides you to an understanding of how what you do with your money affects the joy you get from life.

From an elegant argument against consumerism through some great guidelines to setting financial goals, you gain an understanding of why money management is an essential part of a balanced happy life. Hopefully you also come away with a clearer image of how you want to manage your own money. From there, the book gets down to business. You get detailed, clear advice on managing everything from debt to grocery shopping to investment accounts.

There are more in-depth books on every topic this one covers. J.D. unhesitatingly recommends them. He’s read dozens of personal finance books over the past four years. His own book distills the best from the best of what he’s read. You’ll come away with a decent handle on every major financial issue most adults face, and a reading list to help you dive deeper into the areas you need more help with.

I reiterate: if you’re going to read only one book on personal finance, make it this one. In case I haven’t done enough to persuade you to go out and buy your own copy, here are two more reasons:

I’m in it! I have a short but sweet sidebar on page 203 about my family’s decision to move into a cheaper home closer to my husband’s job. AKA: THE BEST THING WE EVER DID.
The more copies of Your Money: The Missing Manual
sell, and sell quickly, the more support J.D. will have from the publishing gods in writing and promoting his next book. Which I for one can’t wait to read.

I went out and bought a copy as soon as Your Money: The Missing Manual
came out, and then J.D. sent me a copy as a thank-you gift for my contribution. So now I have one to give away.

I’ll give it away a week from today, via a random draw. To enter, leave a comment with your favorite money hack. Tweet this post for an extra entry.

Heading South For the Winter

Sierra — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:36:02 +0000

The Southern winter, that is. Martin just bought the plane tickets for our family to spend the entire month of July in Argentina with his family.

He grew up there, and was the only one to leave. His parents and three siblings all live within a few miles of each other in Buenos Aires, with their partners and children and aunts and uncles and cousins. Last time I went, when Rio was a baby, we were greeted by the largest family gathering I’ve ever been at, complete with talent show and endless homemade food.

Visiting them is wonderful. It’s like floating on this sea of bubbly love. Our days were mostly comprised of long walks down to the riverfront and big family dinners at which I understood maybe half the conversation, and so didn’t have to worry about impressing anyone with my sparkling wit. Then we’d either sit around drinking and talking with his folks, or go up to the roof and play live music all night with his siblings. I am not even joking. That is how his amazing family rolls.

I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity my kids will have to not only know their family, but experience the culture and community their dad grew up in. I’m so excited about it I’m willing to give up a precious month of summer here for a month of winter there.

I’m also biting the bullet on what is unquestionably a bad financial decision. The money we spent on these plane tickets could have gone to finally pay off the last of our credit card debt, and a chunk of our car loan. Clearly, from a financial health perspective, I should put this trip off another year or two.

But. We’re going to celebrate Martin’s parents 50th wedding anniversary and his dad’s 80th birthday. The grandparents aren’t going to get younger and healthier while I pay off my debt. Argentina will always be there, but the opportunity to visit them won’t. I’d rather drop many thousands of dollars on a celebration and a summer’s worth of good memories now than wish I had later.

I paused to consider Baker’s rule of thumb for making purchasing decisions while in debt. He points out that anything you buy, whether you put it on a credit card or not, costs the interest rate on the debt you could have paid off with that money. It’s a good point, and happily one I’m not concerned about since I’m not paying interest on that debt at the moment. Even with this big expense, I should have the credit card paid off before the 0% grace period expires.

But my real decision-making question goes like this:

Will I regret not having done this more than I’ll regret doing it?

Often I literally flip a coin over big choices like this. Not because I want to let Fate choose for me, but because while the coin is in the air I’ll have this crystal clear moment of knowing which way I want it to land. And that’s the right choice.

I would regret not doing this. So, to Argentina we go.

The $1 Family Meal

Sierra — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:03:04 +0000

My husband is a great cook, and prepares most of our family meals.

He’s not one of these food show followers who makes a different gourmet recipe every night of the week with the rare vegetables he picked up at the farmer’s market on his way home.

He’s more of an intuitive cook. A guy who can make a delicious family meal appear in our kitchen when it looks to me like the only thing in the fridge is some old condiments, a couple of naked Barbie dolls and a take-out menu (how did that get in there? yours truly asks innocently. See also, illustration. How does any of this stuff get in there?).

Not only is he a good cook, he’s a cheap cook. The other day in the kitchen, he served me a huge bowl of curried chickpeas with a side of vegetables and a charming lecture about how the entire meal cost just $1 in ingredients.

The recipe, roughly, for those playing along at home:

Soak chickpeas overnight (this gives them a better texture and saves on gas because you only have to cook them for a few minutes the next day).
Do some magic on the stove involving onions, garlic, some spices.
Add carrots.
When its all sizzly and the rest of your family wanders in and starts picking at the extra bits of carrot left on the cutting board and staring hungrily at the stockpot, pour in a can of tomatoes and some water.
Add your pre-soaked chickpeas (Martin says it is important to use organic ones, because he thinks they taste much better).
Cook for about 15 minutes.
Serve garnished with homemade yogurt and some early chives from the garden.
Let your wife make a silly video of you showing off your cheap, tasty curry.

The kids, of course, won’t eat this noise. They don’t know what they’re missing. We save a few not-spicy chickpeas out on the side for them, or give them a bowl of yogurt and some steamed vegetables. I don’t prep special meals for the girls per se; I usually just try to provide enough different foods at a meal that they can find something they like. If they can’t even the little one is capable of heating up a plate of leftover mac-n-cheese for herself.

Ultimately the point of this post isn’t to persuade you all to come over to my house for curry. Though he did make 8 quarts of the stuff the other night. The point is that a certain amount of kitchen savvy is a great path to cheap, delicious meals.

We’d pay $10 for an entree at our local Indian take-out place, and the food wouldn’t be organic or as fresh. Martin can cook that meal for $1 worth of ingredients, and by doing the prep work the night before he does the actual cooking, he can make it pretty fast too.

Martin hasn’t taken a lot of expensive cooking classes, and while we have a bookcase full of cookbooks in the kitchen, its mostly me who uses them. He just likes tinkering in the kitchen, and his hobby pays off big time in lower grocery bills and delicious, nutritious family meals for us.

You might have no interest at all in cooking, but you probably have a skill like this: some hobby or ability that helps you save a lot of money or brings a lot of value into your life. Please tell us about it in the comments!

Here’s Martin’s explanation of the curry magic, in his own words:

“Unautomate Your Finances”

Sierra — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:14:49 +0000

Adam Baker, one of my fellow writers at Get Rich Slowly has a newpersonal finance guide" target="_blank"> personal finance guide out as of today, for sale on his website, Man Vs. Debt.

With a title like “Unautomate Your Finances,” Adam’s approach would seem to be the opposite of my new banking scheme, where I used my automated banking to turn my bank into my personal assistant.

We’re not as far apart as all that though. I’ve just had a quick look at Adam’s juicy work, and he’s using the simplicity and DIY approach that not only got me started on recovering my personal finances, but made it stick. Adam’s theory is all about simplicity as a path to intimacy. Adam writes:

Becoming intimate with our underlying issues begins by peeling off the excess layers of financial clutter in our lives.Becoming intimate with our underlying issues begins by peeling off the excess layers of financial clutter in our lives.

I’m not going to argue with that in any sphere, and it’s refreshing to see it here applied to personal finance.

My own personal finance philosophy is to blend spiritual practice and a commitment to self-discovery with some cold hard numbers. It looks like Adam and I are on several of the same pages about this, and I’m looking forward to more than skimming his book over the next few days.

That said, I’m not expecting it to change my life. This is pretty clearly a book for beginners. If you have a solid handle on your finances already, it may not have a lot to offer you.

It’s also written in a casual dude style. This is personal finance advice from your friend at the bar who happens to be smart about money. In both tone and content, it’s not the advice you’d get from your accountant.

According to the lovely table of contents, Adam’s guide also includes:

A 83-page ebook (25,000-ish words). Theory (core principles), Science (exercise to design ideal life and isolate the “next step”), and Application (deeper topics like tracking, budgeting, paying off debt, credit cards, etc…)
A 27 minute video interview with Leo Babauta (ZenHabits) as a bonus
A 29 minute audio interview with J.D. Roth of Getrichslowly.org as a bonus
2-page printable PDF budgeting template (of the budget described in Section 3)
Minimalist excel template of same budget
Adam will be sending out extended bonuses every months or so. Case studies, more interviews, additional chapters, etc…

Adam has clearly put a ton of work and energy into this project. If you’re the type to buy a personal finance book, or you’re looking for a starting point on your personal finance journey, you may want to invest in this one.

The guide costs $17. Since I’m not the type to buy a personal finance book, I don’t know if that’s a fair price. If it’s the key that gets you started on saving your financial situation, it’ll save you more than $17. If it’s just another book, you might be better off going to the library.

Full disclosure: this isn’t exactly an unbiased review – I know Adam, and am inclined to say nice things about his project. Also he gave me a review copy of the book and an affiliate link.

What I’m Doing With My Banking These Days

Sierra — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 04:43:28 +0000

Y’all may recall that a few months ago I fired my local bank after they stole my grocery money.

I took my business down the street to Citizens Bank. A lot of people have pointed out to me that they’re a Big Bad Bank, and I’m sure that is true. They’re doing well enough by me because I am a fairly boring bank customer with good credit. They gave me an overdraft line of credit that they charge interest on but no per-use fee; essentially a credit card linked to my checking account. Fine. I used it once to test the system, and in fact, they did not charge me a fee. The interest on a small overdraft that was repaid 24 hours later was basically not an issue.

That said, I’m not really using them for much except depositing the many small checks and cash payments I receive as a self-employed person. [Speaking of which, dear people who send me checks, I love you. You buy my groceries and pay my phone bill and warm my heart].

I took most of my business to ING Direct. I first opened an account with them about a year ago, after this article at Get Rich Slowly inspired me to get a high interest savings account. The “high interest” part is basically a joke these days, but ING turned out to be a great place for me to save money because I could send dollars there and it was hard to mess with them. They don’t have local branches, and it takes a few days to transfer money from one of their accounts to my local bank. The temptation to raid my savings for “emergencies” like a great band playing downtown vanished.

Using ING, I fell in love with their web interface, and their Incredibly Easy System for managing accounts. It’s almost telepathic. I just gaze at the screen and think about having an account earmarked for our summer travel budget and it appears. OK, it’s not actually that simple. But it feels that simple, which is good enough.

At some point they offered me $50 to open a checking account with them too. Who doesn’t love $50?

So when Wainwright screwed me, what I really did was move most of my banking to my existing but underused ING checking account. I opened the Citizen’s account just so I’d have a local office to walk into and deposit cash, because I’m too old fashioned to mail in my deposits.

This is where that idea gets CRAZY GOOD. When we did this, my husband and I sat down and worked out all of our fixed expenses for the year: our insurance payments, our utilities, our mortgage, our taxes. Everything that comes in regularly and we know in advance how much it will cost.

Then we automated every single one of those payments to withdraw from our ING account, and scheduled a fixed amount of cash to be deposited to the ING account every week to cover those expenses. The rest goes into the Citizens account and we use to buy groceries and birthday gifts and all the little things that are not regular expenses.

My life is so much better since we did this. It’s like I hired ING to be my personal assistant. I give them money, they pay all my bills, and once a week or so we have a little meeting and they tell me how its going. Win!

Keeping a Journal

Sierra — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:05:33 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about several steps to making a life change stick. Then in the shower this morning, I thought, “Oh! I need to write more about journaling vs. simple record-keeping.”

And sure enough, the first comment on yesterday’s post was from the always thoughtful Rebecca Weger, saying, “The most important piece for me is around your bullet for writing things down. For me that translates into journaling about the issues and my feelings about them. Then I dig into noticing. Finding ways to pay attention to what is happening, what choices I’m making, and what is spurring those choices.”

Journaling about an experience you hope to transform is one of the most powerful tools you can use to change your habits, your experience, your life. There’s a substantial body of research, largely done by James Pennebaker at the University of Texas in Austin, that shows writing can have profound impacts on our health and well-being.

The Pennebaker method for journaling includes:

Find a time and place where you won?t be disturbed. Ideally, pick a time at the end of your workday or before you go to bed.

Promise yourself that you will write for a minimum of 15 minutes a day for at least 3 or 4 consecutive days.

Once you begin writing, write continuously. Don?t worry about spelling or grammar. If you run out of things to write about, just repeat what you have already written.

You can write longhand or you can type on a computer. If you are unable to write, you can also talk into a tape recorder.

You can write about the same thing on all 3-4 days of writing or you can write about something different each day. It is entirely up to you.

Pennebaker and his research team have found that writing about trauma can help students heal. Not merely from the traumas they’ve experienced, but from the common colds and flus that affect college kids. Students who write about a traumatic event visit the health center less often and report fewer illnesses.

In separate experiments, Pennebaker found that people who have been laid off will find jobs faster if they journal about their feelings about unemployment than if they simply keep a log of their job searching activities. Both the journalers and the log-keepers found jobs faster than those who kept no records at all.

What makes journaling so powerful is that it engages us on a lot of levels. We bring our hearts and minds to the page. The act of writing helps us define and understand more deeply what we think and feel. And it aids our memory. We’re also committing, if we write about something over a period of time, to a certain energetic engagement with the topic.

I’m an inveterate journaler. I started my first diary in a little white book with a fragile gold lock on it when I was 8 years old. I, um, still have it upstairs on a shelf with the dozens of journals I’ve filled since then. These days I write about my life for a good part of my livelihood. So naturally I journal about just about everything.

I’ve found that to be really effective, I need to keep both a long, rambling, no-holds-barred journal and a clean, simple record. Writing about the unpleasant realities of grappling with debt while in financial free-fall is powerful, motivating stuff. But it’s no substitute for keeping track of every cent I earn or spend. I need to do both.

Because I’m me, and disorganized to the bone, I need to do both *separately*. If there’s not a bright line between my records and my journals, it all turns into a messy mush of long paragraphs interspersed with charts, a monthly budget with poetry in the marginalia. Not a pretty sight.

I use a lot of tiny notebooks: one for my cash tracking, one for my professional story ideas, one to write in when I get a creative flash, one for jotting down dreams. I also use a lot of computer tools, including Remember The Milk, Evernote and Quicken. (Regular readers know I actually have a whole *thing* about personal finance software, and Quicken is a band-aid at best).

For many people, journaling is key to powerful life changes – or simply to living an examined life. For others, like all magic keys, it just doesn’t work. Like most things, the key is to get started, and to play around until you find a system that works well for you.

How to Change Your Life

Sierra — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:58:21 +0000

I have a post up on Get Rich Slowly today about getting the ball rolling with financial management, where I talk about “cross-training” skills from one area of your life to another.

Here, I want to just quickly lay out a recipe I use for making meaningful personal change in any area. You may recall, personal change is kind of a kink of mine.

Here’s how I do it:

Set an intention: it’s vital to be really clear about what you want to do, in as specific and realistic a way as possible. Not simply, “I want to be a writer” but, “I want to be supporting myself making X income doing this type of writing by such-and-such a date.”
Know where you’re starting from. Thorn Coyle talks a lot about ‘knowing yourself in all your parts’. If you want to change something in your life, whether its a small habit or a major life change, you need to know who you are and what that part of your life is like now.
To get that knowledge, keep a record. Just write down what you do. What you spend, what you eat, what you dream, what you write. Whatever area you want to focus on, to transform, put your attention there with a journal or a log.
Energy flows where attention goes. Once you know what you are doing now, take action to change it into what you want to be doing instead. Remember that you can’t simply break a habit; if you cut something out of your life you need to replace it. Choose what to fill those gaps with as you create them, or life will pour in and clutter them up while you’re not looking.
Make that action small, sustainable and as much fun as possible so you can keep doing it over the long haul.
Repeat as necessary.
Enjoy the fruits of your labor!

I’m curious how you all do these things. How do you change your life?

All I Want For Christmas is January

Sierra — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 15:00:06 +0000

I’m feeling pretty bah humbug this year. I’m tired, broke and grouchier about the weather than usual. The holiday season feels less like a joyful opportunity to reconnect and more like a train wreck of social, family and financial obligations.

But tis the season, so I’m bucking up and doing my frugal best to be festive. I’ve written quite a few gift guide articles for other people this year, not to mention letters to Santa.

Here’s my ABC guide to what I would like to get this Christmas:

Art: It’s my poorly advertised ambition to fill my house with beautiful artwork. In the past year, I’ve received gorgeous pieces from Molly Tomlinson, Nica Davidov and Rachel Silber. You who are artists, or inclined to shop for art: keep me in mind. I’m easy to please and a very appreciative audience.

Babysitting: Last year, Martin arranged a year’s worth of monthly dates for us with friends offering babysitting credits. This was THE BEST THING EVER. I would cheerfully take it again. And again. This is a great gift for me, and probably ever other parent.

Charity: I have a guest post up on Get Rich Slowly today about the value and importance of charitable giving. If you’re interested in giving on my behalf, or anyone else’s, check out Rowan’s terrific guide to charitable gift programs.