"Dear Santa", Not "Dear Lonely White Lady"

If you'd like a slightly more amusing take on the "deserving poor" and their angel tree benefactors, watch this.

How Do You Set Goals When Everything Is Up In The Air?

It's that magical time of the year when snow is falling, wind is gusting, lights are twinkling, when all I want to do is curl up with a mug of cocoa and rum in front of a toasty fire... and work on my 2009 financial goals. I'm working on a post looking back on my 2008 financial and non-financial goals, but I won't have the final bean count until the end of the month when bonuses are paid (or, let's be honest, are not paid). However, bonus or no bonus, the prognosis is good, and since I'm projecting that I'll meet or surpass the goals I set for 2008, I'm juiced to look ahead to 2009. I've done this every year since graduating from law school and it is a really valuable exercise, probably the single most useful habit I've created for myself in terms of keeping my financial life from skipping the rails.

Here's the thing, I don't really know how to do that this year because so much is up in the air right now.

There are a lot of changes afoot for us in 2009.

(1) Shiner and I are getting married, which will change our household accouting in ways that we have fleshed out only conceptually. We do know we're moving farther into the Yours-Mine-Our scheme we've been flirting with since we began living together, but exactly what expenses and savings will be individual versus joint has yet to be determined.

(2) We'll probably get presents. I don't count my chickens before they're hatched, but experience tells me to expect some cash windfall in the form of wedding presents. Without having any idea how much that amount will be we can't really take it into account in setting our goals, but it may very well be a gamechanging amount--we may go through the whole goal setting process in December just to have to do it again in February when the thank you notes go out and the checks are deposited. This is by no means a problem, but it does make me feel like setting specific goals right now may be pretty futile.

(3) I am changing jobs in the second half of 2009 to a lower-paying job with a different benefits structure that I don't know much about.

(4) I am not 401(k) eligible in that new job because it is a temporary position. Do I crowd my contributions into the first half of 2009 and trytrytry to max out the account? Or do I continue on at the same pace I'm at now so I can keep more cash on hand?

(5) The economy sucks. This has two effects: first, it will probably influece the goals we set (for example, paying down revolving debt is still huge, but paying down fixed debt maybe not so much--it's probably better to keep those funds liquid for now in case we need to fall back on them). And second, job instability and crappy markets may present a bigger obstacle to acheiving the goals you settle on than they ordinarily would. So do you keep your goals low? High, with the understanding that you could fall short? This goal stuff is all about psychology, after all. As well-heeled has noted, setting realistic but challenging goals in this economy is a real tightrope walk.

How do you account for big changes and uncertainty in your life when setting your goals, financial or otherwise?

How To Care For Your Clothes, Part 3: Wear The Right Underwear

Hear me out! No, this is not a post about how you have to wear thongs and padded bras to look like a better, sexier version of you. If you wanted that, you'd be lurking around the grocery checkout, letting Cosmo badger you into a fog of self-doubt. But since future posts will cover how to separate the keepers in your closet from the tossers and how to work with a good tailor to frugally turn tossers into keepers, it's important your base layer is working as it should. If it is not, you're going to look like you're wearing someone else's poorly fitting clothes, and no amount of tailoring will fix it. It may cost a little as an initial outlay, but you will be more comfortable, will be able to wear more of your clothes, and you won't have to cry bitter tears over a tailoring bill.

3(a) The Girls, a/k/a Bras
I will break the ice by telling you a somewhat embarrassing story about myself. Hi, my name is feminist finance, and I wore the wrong size bra for about 15 years. I bought bras based on the size I thought I probably ought to be. My breasts weren't small, but I didn't think they were especially big, either. I am not quite sure who or what I was comparing myself to, but I have a sneaking suspicion it was, oh, boob-fetishizing culture at large. So, not so big and not so small: a B-cup sounded about right based on that description. So that's what I wore from the start of high school until the very recent past.

Ding, ding, ding, guesswork and habit is the wrong way to buy a bra. My idea of what I looked like, and consequently what size bra I should be wearing, didn't match reality. I knew what body dysmorphia was, mostly I'd heard it in the context of women with eating disorders, who can be painfully, even fatally thin yet still worry that those around them will see them as obese. But dysmorphic thinking can take a lot of different, less extreme forms, and the form it took for me was thinking that because I didn't look like a Hooter's poster girl that I could not possibly be larger than a B-cup. That is also the form it apparently takes for a lot of the women who appear on Tim Gunn's Guide to Style (I'm such a sucker for Tim Gunn ), who says that in all the episodes of filming that show, he has never worked with a woman who was wearing a correctly sized bra. It's not necessarily about body hate or even mild body dislike, but it is always about unreality.

And so my embarrassing story is that Tim Gunn and his reality TV makeover show has changed my life. It wasn't enough of a prompt that I always had to wear a sweater over my button-down shirts because they would gap and pucker across my chest. I thought that was just an occupational hazard of buying cheaply made stuff. It wasn't enough that I could sometimes see the outline of my bra through my sweaters where my breasts were spilling out over the top of the cup. I thought maybe my sweaters had shrunk. No, it took Tim Gunn and his parade of regular women on TV in their underwear getting fitted in bra shops across Manhattan AND a gently worded suggestion from Shiner that perhaps those particular segments might have something to do with how I was always complaining about said button-down shirts and sweaters before I decided that just for shits and giggles I would swing by my friendly neighborhood department store lingerie department. It was there that I learned that I have probably not been a B-cup since early in puberty. Me and my properly supported 34-D's can now quite happily wear the exact same button-down shirts that used to make me swear and foam at the mouth.

So yeah. I spent $40 on two nude colored bras that have allowed me to wear at least a couple hundred bucks worth of sunk costs in shirts and sweaters. (Er, actually I spent a lot more than that, but the two $20 bras would have served me just fine if they hadn't been having a sale, and I wanted to buy drop dead sexy wedding lingerie, and I had a bit of a spending tantrum, feeling like I was cosmically owed for a decade and a half of ill-fitting underthings... oh, the best laid plans of mice and (wo)men...) And I am so much more comfortable! I didn't realize I was especially uncomfortable before, I just thought that's how bras were supposed to fit, sort of poking and chafing and constricting around the ribs. Au contraire. Usually my first thought when my alarm goes off in the morning is OMFG it's dark and cold, I hate everything. I am not lying when I tell you that when my alarm went off the morning after I went bra shopping, literally my first thought was how freaking excited I was to wear one of my new, life-changingly comfortable bras.

It's worth mentioning that aside from keeping you from inadvertently flashing people through your puckered shirtfront buttons and keeping people from being able to see the outline of your underwear through your clothes, a properly fitted bra can also help alleviate the back and shoulder pain, poor posture, and welting that can come along with wearing the wrong size bra.

My advice is this: if you have even the tiniest doubt in your mind that you might not be wearing the right size bra, or if you've never had a real bra fitting, or if you've recently gained or lost weigh, gotten pregnant, had a baby, started or stopped nursing, or gone on or off or switched hormonal birth control methods, please get fitted by someone who knows what she's doing. All these things can cause your bra size to fluctuate. Go to a lingerie store or department, find a staff person who looks like they're been there longer than six months, and tell them you need a bra fitting. If you're feeling modest, don't worry, even they've already seen London and France, it's perfectly fine to ask them to leave the dressing room while you change, and then have them come back in to evaluate the fit. They'll be looking for whether the band is too loose or too tight (most of the support for the breasts comes from the band that runs around the ribcage), whether the cups are too large (gaping between the breast and the top of the cup) or too small (your cups runneth over, creating double-boob), and will make sure that the straps can be tightened enough. Once you know your proper size and how the right fit feels, you don't need to splash out at a specialty store, Marshalls will do ya just fine.

Just do it. Do it as a favor to me. I have heard the gospel, and verily I say unto you, it lives in the Nordstrom lingerie department.

3(b) Knickers
I don't have so many strong opinions about knickers as I do about bras, except that I pretty much cringe anytime I hear anyone call them panties. Underwear, knickers, undies, whatever, but never panties--what are those? Pants for girls? I have some of those, thanks, and they come to my shoes.

But I will tell you this, if they bunch or squash or dig, they are the wrong size. Read that again, and carefully: you are not the wrong size, they are the wrong size. Or the wrong cut. Don't torment yourself with fabric up your bits just to be happy with the number written on the tag. And if a standard bikini cut digs across your bum or at your hip, may I suggest the strangely named (all things considered) boy short? I used to think the thong was the only path to VPL freedom, but that, as it turns out, is a vicious, ass-flossing lie.

Christmas, Charity, and the Deserving Poor

When I was small, my family would buy Christmas gifts for a child in our town whose family couldn't afford them. We picked a construction paper angel off a big tree at the mall and went shopping with the wish list written on it. I remember that sometimes those wish lists were pretty aspirational: Nintendos, brand name sneakers and sports jackets, gameboys, portable CD players. (Have I dated myself yet?) Anyway, those are all things my parents wouldn't buy me because they were too expensive, and I remember thinking it was pretty cheeky of these kids to ask strangers to buy them such frivolous stuff. After all, they were poor--why did they feel entitled to ask my parents for stuff they wouldn't even buy me, their darling daughter?

So that's the first thing I thought of today when I read this post over at Wise Bread about one potential gift giver who was put off by such spendy requests.

My perspective is a little different now.

I remember, with a lot more compassion (thank God), how much I wanted comparable stuff back when I was in elementary school, and how out of place I felt because I seemed to be the only kid in my school who didn't have it. Was I the only kid at my preppy school who shopped for clothes at Target way before Target had anything resembling style? Probably not, but I felt accutely that I was. I surely was not the only one who didn't have a Nintendo, but I felt convinced that it was my lack of practice time that kept me sucking at Super Mario Brothers compared to everyone else at my babysitter's or at the Friday night slumber party, thus relegating me to the Schoolhouse Loser Collective (don't worry, I've worked it out in therapy). And you know, my family wasn't anywhere near hurting. I had music lessons and soccer clubs, for pete's sake. But even so I wanted expensive stuff because the people I spent my days with had expensive stuff, and because their toys looked like fun. What kid doesn't want to have fun and feel included? I knew this stuff was more than I could buy with my allowance; I knew my parents chose not to spend money on it; I didn't know that other people considered it expensive. On the contrary, everyone else seemed to have it, so how expensive could it be?

So that's the first thing, wondering whether these requests that the Wise Bread writer found greedy actually had anything to do with greed at all.

But even if they did, so what? It's called a wish list. It's the stuff you really want. If you are sixteen and you don't already have an ipod, chances are you really want one, no matter you family's income. What are you supposed to do if you're poor? Lie? Say to the nice rich people that what you really want most of all is some warm socks, so you can demonstrate yourself to be one of the deserving poor? Or as one of the commenters but it:

"Just so you know, your family is poor, and so anything you ask for will not actually come from Santa Clause. Because you are poor. So be realistic in your requests. Remember you are poor."

I'm sorry. Just, no.

Look, I'm by no means the world's biggest fan of Christmas consumerism. I am a strong proponent of gift disarmament in my own family and friendships, and I don't do angel tree or Toys for Tots type programs because I find that giving and receiving gifts is just about the least enjoyable and meaningful way to celebrate the holiday--I'd much rather donate to direct service orgs like food banks, legal aid, or shelters, or on the more festive end of things, to theater or arts programs that allow people to sponser tickets so kids and families can attend without having to front the ticket costs. But for people for whom gift exchanges are a beloved part of Christmas, be a little generous about it. I don't mean you are obligated to get a kid whatever he or she asks for, but be a little generous in the sort of emotional existence you want to allow your giftee. Don't expect the kid you're shopping for to be better or more humble or less insecure or more ascetic, or in any way all that different from any other kid, simply by virtue of the fact that their family doesn't have much money. This is not Dickens. You certainly needn't impugn their motives or question their character or values for just straight up being human and honest about it. If what you can afford is a board game, buy a board game. If what you can afford is warm socks, buy warm socks. But don't convince yourself that these things are all a kid born to parents without much money is entitled to want.

And if, say, you are buying a Wii for your family but believe a member of the deserving poor should be happy with a paperback novel, is that really sporting? Really?

Long Time, No Blog

So it's been a while. Excuses abound, but mostly I've simply found thinking or writing about money to be a little depressing these days. I'm fine, we're fine, my job still exists, I'm even on track to meet the financial goals I set at the beginning of 2008. Personally, I have nothing specific to complain about. But when the main topic of conversation at your last haircut involved your wonderful, talented stylist nonchalantly trying to gauge her job security by asking you about your job security, or you spend half your morning bus ride overhearing a conversation about whether your bus driver will postpone his retirement, or you are, hypothetically, in charge of a legal aid fund drive at your big firm place of employment and your highly compensated colleagues put off your solicitations with insincere excuses that times are tight (headdesk)... well, let's just say money is not my favorite thing to think about these days.

Needless to say, I've fallen heavily on habit lately. Thankfully, most of those habits are good. At least, they're not terribly counterproductive. A year and a half ago, Shiner and I decided we would cut back to eating out once a week. Ditto packing lunch. They're both habits now. When I started this job a few years back, I got in the habit of paying all my bills on the last day of the month, when I get paid. Savings and 401(k) remain on autodeposit. Some of these things have piddlier effects on the bottom line than others, but honestly the thing that most highly recommends them is that when the news is all crap and the weather has started to go to crap and thinking about money becomes synonymous with doomy, gloomy general crappiness, these are things you don't have to think about or worry about. Long live habit.