So, I spent some beauty money yesterday. I got a Bare Minerals starter kit at Sephora, and then added a Sephora brand longwear lipstick in a neutral color--I'm trying to convince myself that wearing makeup on a regular basis doesn't have to be an enormous pain in the ass and/or make me look like I'm trying too hard. That cost me my $75 gift certificate, plus about $8. Then I stopped at the drugstore in Grand Central for a box of hair color (a slightly darker, richer brown than my natural kinda-reddish, kinda-brownish color): $9.99 plus tax. The total out-of-pocket cost was just about $20.
Then, though, you consider what happens if I really like Bare Minerals--I use it daily, and I have to replace the products regularly! And they are certainly not cheap. It's like adding another regular bill.
On the other hand, though, I do think some makeup can make a 24-year-old look a lot more like a grownup, and thus add a little credibility in the world. Theoretically, I guess that credibility could boost my earning power. Still, can we really call makeup an "investment"?
Friday, February 29, 2008
Being a Girl is Not Cheap
Friday, October 19, 2007
The Pretty Girl Discount
I bought my lunch today, and somehow, an $8 pack of sushi, a $4 half-sandwich, and a can of Diet Coke added up to less than $10. Huh? I looked at the guy behind the register, who'd greeted me in what suddenly seemed like it might have been a somewhat more than friendly fashion, and tried to figure out if he'd made a mistake. But all three items were sitting out on the counter, in plain view. He carefully put all three items in a bag. He smiled at me. He pointed out that chopsticks were behind me. He wished me a good afternoon. I paid my less-than-$10, thanked him, and left. I probably did give him an extra smile.
So I'm going to guess it was the Pretty Girl Discount. And it may be ethically dubious, but I take that when it's offered. At my neighborhood bodega, one particular guy always rounds down to the dollar--"For you, four dollars!"--and throws in one of the sour apple blow pops I like. I do not object.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
My Mom's Money: Gender, the Generation Gap, and Personal Finance
On Sunday night, after returning from the bar mitzvah, I put in some time helping my mom with her identity theft mess. I was pretty shocked to learn that she hadn't yet pulled her credit reports or placed fraud victim alerts on them. She had canceled the compromised card, signed up with a credit monitoring service, and begun wrangling with the companies that had charged the canceled card, so it wasn't an issue of being unwilling to put in the effort--she just didn't know what to do. I directed her to AnnualCreditReport.com, and in helping her verify herself to receive her reports, discovered that she didn't know what bank held her and my dad's second mortgage, or what the monthly payment was. She guessed the highest range the question offered as an option; when I asked my dad, it was within the lowest.
I also told her that she has to be really vigilant about her bills and statements for the next few months (at least), and my dad started in on how she never checks them over. Now, my dad's not exactly a financial paragon himself in many ways, but I never thought my mother was this clueless about her financial life. She's a gifted thrift-store shopper with a M.A. in arts administration, which means she's done half the coursework for a management degree (she did tell me that she almost failed her accounting class, though). But mostly, I just didn't think she was that kind of woman--the kind who can can just say, "Oh, my husband is taking care of it," and that's the end of that. That's certainly not the kind of woman she raised me to be.
I wonder if this is the way she always lived, or if her money-management muscles began to atrophy after marrying my dad. I know she worked a bunch of crappy jobs and lived very cheap when she was a young college dropout living in New York, and I know that she ran all the finances for her art gallery herself. Then again, I also know that the gallery went under. My mom comes from a family with a lot of money and a lot of (serious) problems, and I don't know if she got parental support or not--I could see it making sense either way. So I can't really say if these are skills she let lapse or skills she never developed to begin with.
But either way, it's weird for me because it's just not the kind of person I thought my mom was. I think of my mother as brave and independent and sort of unusual for her time--I think of her dropping out of her Seven Sisters college and moving to New York to go to Factory parties, or of her work bringing new technology into the curricula of the poorest New York City schools, or the way she talked her way into an MA program at an Ivy League school without a BA (she still doesn't have one, but she has two Masters degrees). And it's strange, because this is such a normal (if kind of unfortunate) thing for married women of my mother's generation, this learned helplessness thing, but it's not something I ever associated with my mom. I guess I always assumed she was an equal partner in my parents' finances. And it's not that she doesn't bring skills and attributes to my parents' financial table--because she certainly does (I can vouch for that myself; I've transfered the communications about my medical billing from my dad to my mom, and it's gone much more smoothly)--it's just that I always assumed she was as familiar with the big picture of their finances as my dad. And she's not. And that's weird to me.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Where Do our Money Personalities Come From?
At times, it just seems like some people are savers and some are spenders. If this is true, I fall pretty squarely in the "saver" camp--at this point in my life. I used to be more freewheeling--like when I was in high school, wielding my dad's credit card with aplomb at bookstores and coffee shops from the Upper East Side to TriBeCa.
But as soon as I was really responsible for myself financially, my attitude changed dramatically. My junior and senior years of college, I lived in an off-campus apartment, and while my parents paid my living expenses, they did so by writing me one check at the beginning of the school year based on a reasonable budget that I'd proposed and we'd discussed. I managed that money for the rest of the school year. I guess if it had ever run out, I could have asked them for money, but I made sure it didn't. I had a job on campus, and I saved every penny I made (it wasn't that much).
My money management skillz were honed even sharper when I got my first job, last September, and began making my own way in the world for real. But there are plenty of people who get their first paycheck and go, "Whee!" and blow it at the nearest boutique. What makes the difference between my reaction and that reaction? I wonder if it's not some personality thing, rather than the oft-repeated platitudes about financial education, because I certainly didn't have much of a financial education. All that meant was that I had to go out and get one.
For me, my desire to manage money wisely is intimately connected to a sense of insecurity, a feeling that I'm on a highwire and I need a safety net, a nervousness about my own ability to succeed. It's also connected to a need to achieve: I get a kick out of setting goals and meeting them, and a thrill from being precociously good at things. There's also a certain cautiousness, a hedging-of-bets, that is not unrelated to the other two: it's a fear of failure.
I'm not saying that there are not very good reasons to save money. Obviously, there are. But are those good reasons my real reasons? I'm not sure they are. I'm not sure it's not all a little less rational than that.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Being Your Own Advocate at Work: A Beginner's Guide
Yesterday, I had a conversation with a co-worker about the fact that her boss hadn't come through with a raise at her semiannual review. They'd given her a glowing review, and then...nothing. No mention of money at all. She was pissed, and I thought she deserved to be. She scrunched up her face, and looked at me, and said, "So, does this mean I have to ask?"
I said I thought it did, and looked at her with empathetic dismay. It's hard to advocate for yourself in any context, but especially at work, and especially if your job is (as ours are) to do what other people tell you to do. I'd venture to say that it's especially hard for women, who tend to be taught that aggressiveness, demands, and bragging are cardinal sins of personality. But those are just the things that you need to harness to be an effective advocate for yourself in the workplace, it seems.
Much of my empathy for my coworker was due to the fact that I have to ask, as well.
I've just passed the one-year mark here, and finally, yesterday, had to ask if we were going to do a review. My boss looked at me blankly and said, "Of what?" (To be fair, we do peer reviews of books all the time, so she may have been confused.)
"Of...me?" I ventured.
We met today for a pre-review discussion (the real thing will have to include my other boss, who's head of the department, but he's out of town at the moment), and she told me that she's really pleased with my work. I told her one concern was balancing the new editorial work they're giving me with the running of day-to-day operations. She said something about setting accurate timetables and telling people when I won't be able to take things on. I was being a little disingenuous, though, phrasing this as a time-management issue--what I really want is a promotion. I want my little mini-department to create a more genuinely editorial position for me. And eventually I came around to mentioning that--I mentioned all of the other mini-departments that have promoted former assistants (three, at last count), and said that I didn't know if that sort of arrangement was in the works for our department-ette, but if it was, I'd be very interested in occupying such a position. (A little weak on the persuasion and clarity--my technique needs work.)
She said that it wasn't her call to make, but she'd talk to my other boss (who's her boss, too) about it. She didn't seem opposed to the idea, but she reiterated a couple of times that it's not her call. She also advised me a little on what she thought would make an effective argument for this promotion, which I appreciated.
We had a lot of diversions during this meeting, which I think we were using as absorbers of the awkwardness of the rest of the discussion. And we both sort of soft-pedaled the tough stuff. Nevertheless, I think this was a good introductory effort on my part. The first lesson I've learned about advocating for myself in the workplace is this:
Asking is not optional. If I hadn't asked for my review, it might never have happened. If I hadn't mentioned the promotion, it might never have come up. If I don't ask for what I deserve, no one is going to give it to me--they're going to keep giving me increasingly complex projects without ever translating their obvious faith in my judgment into a new title or a salary bump. (Understandable, from a business perspective.) Therefore, I have to ask. I have to. It's not optional.
