I'd have to start tracking what I spend a lot more carefully before I'd have any idea. But there's definitely a whole lot of room in the food budget.
Half the household budget? With nothing else changing (e.g. someone no longer employed)? Spending on groceries would get much more constrained, and I would seriously consider moving to somewhere with cheaper rent. Rent & childcare are our two biggest (and quasi-equivalent, gulp) expenses. As long as we're both working, childcare is non-negotiable, and we're currently using the cheapest of available options...
Half the household budget? With nothing else changing (e.g. someone no longer employed)? Spending on groceries would get much more constrained, and I would seriously consider moving to somewhere with cheaper rent. Rent & childcare are our two biggest (and quasi-equivalent, gulp) expenses. As long as we're both working, childcare is non-negotiable, and we're currently using the cheapest of available options...
What is a household budget? Like everything you spend in a month, including things deduced from payroll (health insurance, retirement)?
As long as we're both working, childcare is non-negotiable, and we're currently using the cheapest of available options.
Putting the babies in bags filled with sand?
I guess the reason is why do you need to- one parent lost a job? In which case the obvious answer is cut child care. SPouse has moved up the government-mandated pay ladder in the last few years so that having her work brings in more after-tax than the cost of daycare, but the years where she made less and we had two in full-time care it was a wash to slight loss.
Er, that should say "the question is why"- I've been writing grant reviews all day and my brain doesn't work with words any more.
Hypothetically, four kids is like two kids except doubled.
What would you cut? There's not much left to cut. It would have to be the food & drink budget, which wouldn't remotely amount to 1/2 to 1/3 of the budget, though. First world problem.
Rent, food eaten at home, transportation, and student loan payments already average about 3/4 of my spending (health insurance employer-paid so not included in numerator or denominator). So not a lot of non-painful options.
My rent is high in dollar terms but low by local standards; due to rent control / vacancy decontrol, anywhere new would probably be higher unless I got like 4 roommates.
I do have the ability to move down from 10-year to minimum repayment level on my student loans, which I think would represent another 10% of my spending.
I guess I'm not including pre- or post-paycheck savings contributions in the above either. That would be an option for me in a pinch; I've been managing my overall spending enough to be a saver. But the question was how to trim the household budget.
One half is a lot. We could go back to minimal payments on mortgage and car loans as a first step. If the reduction were long term, we would need to cut the food & drink budget. I'm pretty sure Cheerios and Mill High Life provide all the nutrition needed for life.
I eat out a lot, although not so much that stopping would cut my budget in half. This month I'm noticing that not having to make mortgage payments on a property in another state nicely cuts down on one's monthly spending.
I guess in a real pinch one could get food spending down to $65/person/month on the potato-only diet.
You need some dairy to do that long term.
You need some dairy to do that long term.
Mostly asking out of idle curiosity. I don't think we could do half without major life disruption, ie moving into a two bedroom apartment and cancelling all kid activities.
Look, if I can't trust the executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission on the nutritive value of potatoes, I'm just packing it in altogether.
Someone get him op-ed space to write about potatoes.
21: It'd be rough; we went through that in the recession when we were both out of jobs and only I was collecting unemployment. We stopped going out and ate simply at home, made minimum payments on the mortgage, had no car payments (whew), and drew down savings as slowly as we could.
Today I'd reduce or cancel my 401k withholding, travel much less--more day trip hikes and local exploration instead of bed & breakfasts on the coast, cook more at home, delay the new car purchase, and draw down savings. Fortunately, half of my current salary is much better than 35% of my old...
Videogames (and related hardware), mobile phone and internet (downgraded rather than cut entirely) would save me a few hundred a month. I'd probably switch supermarkets too for maybe another hundred. Less booze. As a single professional who's no longer renting, there's a lot of slack in my personal budget.
When I got laid off from my job years ago, I basically cut my monthly budget by 1/3 while I was unemployed, but a lot of what I cut was stuff that was just not needed while I wasn't working.
- I stopped taking taxis altogether (I learned what the subway was like at 2am - that was interesting! - and I still take the subway late at night now, even though I've been employed for years since then)
- I didn't wear anything that was dry-cleanable unless I had a job interview
- I stopped traveling - I generally like taking nice vacations, but the only 'trips' that I took during my unemployment were to my parents weekend house (which I got to by riding in their car) and one trip to a friend's wedding which I used miles to fly to, and I shared a hotel room.
- I cooked a lot more (and, quite frankly, had a lot more time to cook since I wasn't working law firm hours!). More importantly, even for breakfasts/lunches, I was just eating sandwiches or other stuff out of my fridge rather than going to the office cafeteria.
- I basically stopped buying anything new - no new clothes (except, MAYBE if I needed something for an interview), no new electronics, nothing. I did some work for my dad and his startup company, and he did things like buy me the new iphone when it came out during that time.
- I rarely did things like go to movies (and when I did, I would go to the half-price morning shows). seeing friends involved hanging out at apartments for home-cooked meals rather than going to restaurants most of the time (Once in a blue moon I'd make an exception, so that I wasn't a complete stick in the mud).
- I'd also "help out" friends in non-monetary ways so that we could hang out - for instance a friend was moving, and since I wasn't working anyway, I spend the day helping her pack - at the end of the day she took me out for a lovely meal.
My brother, who is much more frugal than me, had some other suggestions which I did not take - things like getting ride of cable TV, which seemed like a good way to go completely stir crazy at the exact moment that I would be home significantly more.
I also used Mint to track my finances obsessively. There are other similar programs out there - I had started using it well before I got laid off, but I really became obsessed with it during the layoff - setting up budgets, figuring out what I was spending, etc.
When I got laid off, I sat down and figured out that with what I had in savings and what I was spending per month, I could live for about two years. I was unemployed for two years, and at the end of that time, I still had about half my savings in the bank.
I didn't do anything too drastic like change my housing situation, because I was already in a pretty sweet housing setup - I had bought my apartment at below-market value, so I wasn't really going to get a better situation unless I sold and ended up somewhere geographically remote, which seemed like a bad choice in the long run if I was ever planning on working in manhattan again. Plus, I knew I was sitting on a pile of equity that, worst-case scenario, I could potentially tap into if I got really desperate (thankfully it didn't come to that).
Also though - I don't have kids and I didn't have pets at the time. I think it's a lot easier to be a cheapskate when it comes to yourself than when it comes to denying stuff to your kids.
All of this is to say, BTW - it's a lot easier to cut your budget down if a lot of your spending currently is on discretionary/frivolous items. If you're currently living at subsistence level, I don't know how you would do it.
I didn't wear anything that was dry-cleanable unless I had a job interview
That's just common sense, unemployed or not. Maybe also weddings, funerals, and the odd cotillion.
Cutting the budget, or cutting the income? When shiv went back to school, which cut our income in half at time, we made do with one car and accepted that we wouldn't be putting much into savings. But what allowed us to get by with that is that when we bought the house, we bought a house that we could afford on my salary alone, so all we had to do was not really buy anything fun or go out to eat for three years. Fortunately, we're happy being homebodies and old and tired.
If it were temporary, I would probably cut savings/debt payments. Buy a bike again and start riding that around. We probably don't need two cars.
Eat out less. Drink cheaper wine. I am fairly frugal other than that.
If I drank wine that was any cheaper it would just increase my expenses since I'd probably go blind.
We have a box of wine. It says "Bota Box."
I'd need to uproot the family and move somewhere where the rent is less than half what we pay now (so quite a long way away). If we had to stay in Cambridge: sell the car and go everywhere by bike, turn off the heating unless the temperature went close to freezing, put both boys in one bedroom and sublet the other (putting a space heater in the lodger's room if they complain about the cold, and charging them extra for it), send the boys out to work part-time after school, buy big bags of cheap rice instead of expensive short-grain Japanese, scour supermarkets for approaching-sell-by-date bargains, switch the cat to a cheap catfood instead of the expensive anti-hairball brand and just put up with more regular vomiting, and dig up the lawn and plant potatoes.
Since we have money saved up, if it really was a long-term loss of income I'd consider moving to a country with a much lower (50% or less) cost of living, paying up front to save long term. People retire abroad to take advantage of lower CoL.
I've been looking at moving to cut our rent now that our kid is off at college, but anywhere I look, we're only going to save (at most) a hundred-fifty* a month. Given that it will cost at least a thousand bucks to move, probably, I'm not sure it's worth it.
*Rent is cheap here in NW Arkansas, and we're already living in a fairly cheap house. I was hoping by moving closer to the university, which is in a crap area, we could save more, but nah.
I'm a frugal grad student, so already living bare to the premium mediocre, SWPL bone. I've almost completely cut any eating out that's not explicitly social, but I could cut down/be sneakier than that (i.e. show up late and not order anything). My closest friends are poorer than me, so we already drink $4 wine at home for entertainment.
1. I could cut down on travel, which is by far my biggest expense, but not easily. I spent >$1k on tickets to and around Europe to see my husband and his family (husband was living in one country, his family was in another). I could have saved a bit on tickets in Europe (one trip we bought a bit last minute at a high travel time and got dinged), but nothing was totally unreasonable. I could have simply not seen my husband, but that would have had repercussions for my relationship. I probably could have gotten my in-laws to pay for some portion of the tickets, up to all of them (MIL wants to see us as often as possible, and she would want us to spend time together), but since I can afford it I would be a bit ashamed to make my in-laws pay for it. I could also cut down on visits home (maybe 1x per year), or any travel for weddings, but that would also damage relationships, and I really don't get invited to many weddings.
2. Food--at home I keep eating out to a minimum, (i.e. no takeout), but I don't completely scrimp on home cooked food. I could cut down my food budget, but I doubt it would cut out 1/3 of my budget. I already don't really buy much meat or pre-packaged foods, mainly because of price. I could do better about not wasting food. I already try to minimize it, but I often have veggies going bad, mainly through poor planning or unexpected free meals (as a grad student spontaneous free meals are not uncommon).
3. In 2016 I bought no clothes but 2 pairs of shorts (buy 1 get 1 50% off) for a total of about $40. In 2017 I've spent more, including replacing clothes that wore out, but I'm trying to keep clothes spending at a minimum, and I'm trying to implement strict replacement only policy. (I've already failed by shopping in Paris and Italy, but I don't feel all that bad about that).
4. Rent/utilities/internet are fixed and non-negotiable. I pay undermarket for rent to live in a studio in my neighborhood. I could move to a much shittier neighborhood or have 8 roommates and save some money, but not enough to be remotely worth it. If I moved too far away, I'd have to get a monthly transit pass, which would probably offset my rent savings. I could get rid of internet, but I need it for my work and I work from home a lot. I bought a refurbished fitbit last year and really liked it. It's falling apart now, and I'm a bit upset but not sure if tracking my steps is worth replacing it (I'm leaning towards yes, because I feel it did get me more active). My ipod is from 2009 and the earphone jack is getting wonky but it still works for exercising, my phone is 2016 and my laptop from 2014 and both are still fine. I mooch netflix from my former roommate and rarely go out for paid entertainment. I'm sure I could spend less on random miscellany, but I don't spend that much as is.
My income is going up this year by a third, but I'm hoping to keep living at my previous income level and saving the remainder. My income will actually be double what it was two years ago, and I feel like if I could survive on that, I should try to keep living at that level for as long as possible (rent has almost doubled since then, but my rent was obscenely cheap back then thanks to a generous discount from wealthy former roommate). (I should probably write an offensively tone-deaf book on how you too can survive poverty as long as you find a good-natured wealthy person to subsidize your life.)
Humans are also edible and there's a lot more meat on them.
5/8
One of my grandmother's aunts had 13 children and then her husband died. She had a farm, so to keep her kids from wandering off and dying she tied them to the bedpost while she plowed the fields. She managed to keep them all alive to adulthood, which counted as wildly successful parenting back then.
I am in the process of decreasing my monthly budget pretty substantially, if not by 1/3: moving from a new-ish 24th floor condo with an amazing view to an older (by narnian standards) 3rd/4th floor walk up masionette with no pool next to a noisy, big road--that's one half. not having a maid anymore is the other half. normal people with one working spouse and one non-working one and two teenagers manage to get by somehow in this fashion all the time but i'll confess to embarrassing nervousness after 16 years, much of that spent seriously ill and in dire need of help. I guess I'm also used to an unreasonable standard of cleanliness and want to maintain it at the cost of my sanity.
girl x eats the low-FODMAP diet now as part of her amazing return to heath (as do I, but I'm more tolerant of other things) and that requires a lot of careful meal preparation and means there's pretty much no packaged shortcuts to fall back on if I'm exhausted. obvious solution: husband x and girl x need to learn to cook. other things: no or very few taxis (this means a 10 minute walk on both ends at mid-day to the MRT for my AA meeting which sounds like nothing but you try it sometime in narnia), shopping at the wet market more and building up dem arm muscles. we've already cut back to beef once every two weeks. sadly the low-FODMAP thing means we can't eat beans really which is the obvious go-to for frugal eaters. well, I can used canned lentils and I can make split-lentil daal. if I had to really cut back I would be moving to an HDB rental flat on a non elevator floor (they skip floors in the oldest ones) and having the girls share a room and husband x have no office and just work at school...um...no cheese or yogurt or other western foods, that'd be tough. we don't have a car obviously. no psychiatrist? probably not a money-saver in the long run, though damn he expensive. I'm about to facetime with him now; we'll see what he has to say about the current problems.
I have been thinking about this fascinating question today anyway... Would want to see how taxes shift, perhaps making a 50% reduction in gross income possible without moving. Otherwise housing is half the budget, so it would be rough.
hmm I should have said 1/2 of my reductions each; it doesn't amount to 1/3 but maybe it does? the landlord wants all his old lights back but some are broken/lost and now I have to pay to remove them. shittiest of all he's making me remove the air-con in the maid's room because the new renters won't be willing to pay to make their maid comfortable. fuck everything.
all these reno costs for rentals are destroying the savings I get from moving to where maybe I won't save for the first 8 months, especially if I don't get my deposit back; I am sick at heart.
my psychiatrist takes the blame for my current state and has changed up all my meds; hopefully this will improve things. he actually is ok with increasing the benzos temporarily while I get through mania and akisthisia, if not quite employing the chiclets strategy.
43: strategic anyway. husband x has to work on both moving and packing days all day at school but I think "gets to work" would be more accurate.
I guess the biggest thing that might have to go is that we are currently paying two undergraduate rents. We already don't give them any other money. After that, stop overpaying the mortgage, stop saving money, start cutting down all the bills (tv package, switch energy providers, cancel charity donations, etc), pay attention again to how much we spend on food and stop eating out or having takeaways. Could do 1/3 easily, not sure that quite gets us to 50%.
Took the dog to the vets today as he has a weird black blob on his leg and it's getting red around it - she reckons it's a melanoma and he's going in on Friday morning to have it excised. I cancelled his insurance when he hit 8 as it was ridiculously expensive, and put the money aside each month instead, so I've got enough sitting there waiting to cover it atm. In your scenario though, I guess the dog might not come out so well.
|| This is going to be my default news source from now on.https://www.bbc.com/pidgin
|>
48: Not quite up to 13-babies-then-slacking standards.
It's different if it's a 50% cut in income or in budget.
46 is insane. They can't keep it around for heat emergencies in the 21stcentury? Switched off? Hang in there. Your landlord probably is n't even enjoying his tenant move-out pity party. He may even woefully be taking antacids.
I think I'd cut a lot from a budget before monthly liquid saving,s -- that is the other thing. It has taken me 20 minutes to type this much, I give up
Yes to 52, too odious to detail distinction on this interface though, I tried
46 is nuts. Couldn't he just sell the air conditioner if he wanted to go full asshole?
normal people with one working spouse and one non-working one
Three person marriages are the Narnian norm now? I had no idea.
I hate that I missed making that joke and hate that I hate that.
I could definitely drop some expensive hobbies, and bring my lunch to work. That's probably less than $5 or 6,000 per year, though, so not the kind of thing y'all are talking about. I could close my office, lay off the secretary, and work from the spare room in my house: that's maybe $2,000 per month all in. I can imagine losing some work by becoming a lawyer who works from home in the burbs rather than a lawyer who works from a downtown office, but truth be told it's probably a net gain.
I'm not sure what downsizing to a 2 bedroom apartment would look like -- my current house payment isn't that much compared to rents -- maybe there's $500 per month to be had there.
I could probably cut a lot of my budget if I already owned my home, had no debt, and had years of savings built up.
I live a pretty frugal lifestyle, so I don't know how easily I could really get that much savings. Eating out would be the biggest discretionary item that could make a big difference; maybe travel too, but I don't do much personal travel and it's mostly for family stuff, and I could easily use miles. I also just paid off my grad school loans, so there's a big budget item gone. I save a lot of the money I take in, so realistically reducing that would be the way to cut my budget. If it's income that's being cut, well, that's another story, but I could maintain my current lifestyle on a much smaller income.
Easy, get divorced.
sigh.
If I had to do another 50% budget reduction, I would have to move into shared accommodation. And cut out restaurants and decent (any?) wine. That might do it, just about.
As I've previously mentioned, I've been overpaying my loans, which has taken a pretty substantial part of my monthly budget. If I measured systematically instead of eyeballing accounts week to week and paying attention to credit card billing dates and the pay day schedule, I'd know how much it takes as a percentage. In net terms, it's meant I've essentially broken even every month for a couple of years, with "discretionary" spending varying according to whatever the current and previous months looked like.
I've been able to take some vacation time, but I generally stay in cheaper places, and the one trip I fully paid for was car camping/hiking/staying in motels. Otherwise I've tacked on days to work trips where work covered the work part plus airfare, as they've been nice about covering airfare if adding days doesn't change the cost of the ticket, which it often doesn't. The biggest unnecessary regular expenses I have right now is buying lunch, coffee, or takeout dinner.
I'm looking forward to seeing what my "real" budget could be when the fucking loans are gone.
I'd need to uproot the family and move somewhere where the rent is less than half what we pay now (so quite a long way away).
That's what we just did. Our new rent is 1/3 of our old rent, and also we get to send the kid to public, rather than private school, which saves a bunch and is my preference anyway. Also, I had been putting a good monthly check into savings, which we are no longer doing in as much as we are currently burning off said savings. And we went with the cheapest insurance on the Obamacare exchange, which is still damned expensive for the shit coverage it provides, but would be a lot more expensive to get anything with a deductible low enough to make it useful.
At some point we are going to need to get jobs, but right now its nice not having them.
The worst part so far is not being able to buy myself toys. I seriously need a new Linux server and maybe a quadcopter and a new SUP paddle and some canoe paddles and probably some type of VR headset also.
Heebs and al, you guys doing ok? Hope so.
I learned yesterday what my mom's other fears were when I was a little kid, she just came down for a visit. Turns out they weren't crazy, even if she's not always playing in the right key. Things worked out though, even if it took a while. Good vibes to you both.
thanks lw; I am still doing horrible but have spoken to my psychiatrist who took responsibility for screwing up my meds and has adjusted them. hopefully we'll see relatively fast improvements. and I'm not underwater!
One way not to trim your budget: spend $250 a year on the Fyre Festival guy's "on-demand experience platform". If anything, this one seems even more pie-in-the-sky than the festival. It doesn't remotely scale and isn't expensive enough to actually pay for things that would make it seem exclusive.
Hope everything gets better soon al.
How many times have you had to move house in Narnia?
As I understand it, every time you go to Narnia from the outside, you arrive at a different point in the time line and in a different place.
this will be my 7th place. I hope it doesn't go en bloc next year or I will be pissed.
on the plus side I think I avoid dying in a train wreck in this one, because I've worn lipstick.
I've never worn it with premeditation.
So, a baby elephant died at the zoo here. But, they're just going to waste it.
Anyway, my sympathies on having to move so much. I've not moved in 14 years. I've had to move other people, which is enough to remind me that I don't want to move even though our house is really too small.
Yeah moving sucks. Especially when it's just to a different place in the same city. I get really used to a neighborhood and an apartment. I had to move out of my apartment in June and ended up just switching to a different one in the same building and I'm still unhappy about it.
Really? I've only ever really moved intra-city so I can't compare, but it was much less stressful when everything didn't fit in one load or I thought we forgot something- no worries, just a 10 minute drive back to the old place, we'll make another trip.
It's certainly easier to move within the same city, but you've expended a bunch of effort to effect a very small change in your life. When you move between cities, it's more work but when you finish you are not in Ohio any more.
It was certainly stressful moving to another country but that went along with a lot of other changes. Having to move house in the same city for reasons beyond your control is just all hassle for little payoff. Unless you're moving up I suppose.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
28:
In this case, "common sense" would dictate that as a junior/mid-level associate at a large NYC law firm with a strict "business" dress code that I wear things like...suits. And I don't know what suits (and suit-like clothing) is like in your neck of the woods, but around here, you can't really toss those in the washing machine.
Downgrading to jeans/t-shirts as my daily wear (again, except for interviews) was massively money-saving.
As a bonus, of course, most people in NYC don't have laundry facilities in their apartments, so they're paying for *something* regardless of the method of cleaning.
I guess I wear jackets that are dry clean only. But that's all theory since I never get them cleaned.
Anyway, as was common before the great recession, there used to be a junior associate in a law firm in the household. Possibly that involved a great deal of dry cleaning, but I never paid attention.
I used to feel I had to wear neckties to work, but that feeling went away when I moved to North Carolina and nobody wore them to the office. In fact, I was the only man under 50 who didn't ever wear short pants to work.
When I started in IT at a university I thought I should wear a tie since I thought that's what grown-ups did. It took a bit of time to realize it was pointless to dress more formally than the faculty and managers.
I thought I should be able to make a Trimalchio joke out of it, but nobody but me ever thought it was funny.
I always go to the $20/haircut guy so I don't look like the IT guy.
I skip lunch but I do delivery/take out for almost every dinner. I could cook at home to save money. Still that only gets me savings of about 340 USD/month. I go to restaurants maybe once or twice a week too and could give that up but that's not much more savings. I could give up booze. Also no travel but that would suck mightily and I would lose a main motivator for being over here in the first place so no way would I do that but if I had to I could.
I brought my lunch today, sandwiches I made with leftovers. The financial savings of this will be slightly reduced because I ate my lunch at 9:30 and will now need to eat another one later. In conclusion, Special K isn't special enough to keep me full until lunch.
87 And I've actually saved a ton of money in the time I've been over here. Not having to pay taxes certainly helps with that.
That's what Willie Nelson used to say.
We recently started spending more money so switching back would be pretty easy at this point, until we get accustomed to our new lavish lifestyle (just started a weekly housecleaner, doing expensive birthday parties for the kids this year since they weren't home last year, ate out three times this week because the kids are off with their grandfather so just two of us and we decided we liked it and would do it more often since oldest kid can now watch the others, wife bought a moderately expensive bike for her commute and I upgraded her cargo bike with electric assist.)
Three separate colleagues at work told me this year that they bought boats- now that's a frivolous expense.
Buying a boat saves money in the long run.
If you don't live in the Appalachians or the Rockies it's just a matter of time.
It may be a minor achievement, but I feel it's one of Obama's lasting achievements that he persuaded everybody apart from the die hard right that men could look really smartly dressed without a stupid piece of coloured ribbon round their neck.
88: I almost always pack a lunch and almost always finish it by 10:30. My co-worker from Japan said that in high school they called that early lunch (hayaben). So I learned a word.
He has also said that I could just bring two lunches and solve my lunch issue. I know I could do it but it really feels like I'd be destroying a norm and I've had enough of that lately.
I don't really know who still wears ties in all parts of the country, but certainly it is not a very sensitive indicator of being right wing. When I see people dressed in new, very neat casual clothing, I think "Republican."
96.2: You could self-identify as a hobbit, if you aren't too tall.
If the whole family is in neat, causal clothing that matches, I think "Mormon" or "my one cousin before her kids got old enough to run from the family Christmas photo."
I am pretty short. I tried to make "first lunch" a thing to forestall hobbit jokes. It worked about as well as you would guess.
Maybe close your door and hang a sign that says "Conference Call".
It's an open office and the "focus booths" have glass walls, but I'm still not ruling out the idea.
Fortunately, we have office space that hasn't been remodeled since the 80s. Or maybe before. I can open my window even.
100. American Mormon missionaries in Britain still wear a white shirt and tie. And a dark suit except in high summer. I'm in favour of this because it means you can spot them coming a hundred yards away.
Yes. They do that here too. They also jaywalk, because Pittsburgh requires it, but I think they feel bad about it.
I was talking about the ones that weren't on mission.
Mormons in Roc ride bicycles in helmets and fluorescent vests. As they are literally the only people in the country who wear safety gear on bikes, they too are easy to spot.
They probably have insurance requirements to keep.
85:
having most offices go business casual was a big help overall, but offices vary wildly on that point. My office now is technically business casual, but the legal department tends to be on the more formal side. I never wear a suit these days, but I'm still on the "dressy" side of business casual. The guys all tend to just wear suits, particularly if they know the C-suite (CEO, CFO, COO, etc.) are in town - it's both a matter of (1) likelihood of getting called into meetings with those folks and (2) that team has to walk THROUGH the legal department to get to the boardroom. So they see us constantly. Basically, the closer you are to the CEO's office (either geographically or...metaphysically) the more dressed up you're expected to be.
I have an informal meeting with the president of a large (~6000) company, potentially what they call an "informational interview" in that I'm hoping it will end up at him saying "why don't you work here" and I'll respond "got any open jobs?" (I finally got the courage to send him an email asking if he wanted to get together- ever see the Quantum Leap episode where Sam drops an envelope in the mail and it suddenly changes the future and the door pops open? Clicking "send" felt like that.) We're former collaborators/colleagues over several years although not really friends in that we didn't spend too much time together. So what should I wear? Probably just getting together for coffee whenever he can fit it in his schedule.
I should add, I don't know what he wears these days- definitely wasn't a suit guy before becoming president but probably is forced to be one these days. Very few people in our field ever wear suits, just the big bosses.
Sorry. That wasn't helpful. "Juggalo"
On the OP, not much. Mrs M and I went through our bills a while back looking at what we could cut, and there wasn't a huge amount.
We could cut down on grocery shopping by putting more effort into using the budget shops, always taking a packed lunch rather than buying lunch at work (which is pretty cheap). Probably get rid of the car. Use the underground less. And I have a few website subscriptions and things (guitar lessons) that would shave off $30-50 a month.
But, it would take a lot of effort to cut down by, say, more than 10-15% a month. Our non-negotiable bills -- childcare, rent, commuting, utilities, etc -- are a massive percentage of our monthly outgoings. I might be kidding myself, and we could really screw back and cut 20%. But it definitely wouldn't be more.
I bought a couple of guitar gadgets this week ($150, combined) and I think that's the single largest personal purchase I've made this year.
I haven't worn a tie regularly since the Clinton Administration. My firm went casual hoping it would get tech bubble people to like us. Plenty of curmudgeons complained then, and in the decade following as office fashions went up and down, but they never got me back into a tie.
I wear jeans on Fridays, but it's khakis the rest of the week.
Obviously, I get all dressed up for court. And, more often than not, the deposition of the opposing party.
I wore a string tie to a deposition in Amsterdam once. Much fun was had about that.
I have a case in the USVI, and wore a suit to meet with the client, a committee. It was nearly 90 with no A/C.
My dad's courtroom rules (which I know because he made me type them for him) specifically forbid string ties. And cowboy hats.
I haven't worn a suit for work since 1997. I don't wear khakis either, as I hate them.* I don't know what people expect from people in my kind of job, but most of the time when I meet with people, it's khakis or jeans. I go with jeans.**
* not on other people. They just aren't for me.
** although I'm usually wearing good shoes and a decent jacket.
What precisely is the region of the United States where string ties are at least potentially appropriate? Texas, obviously, and most of the inland West?
118: The Southwest, definitely. Not sure about further north.
SP @ 110 - I don't know your gender, so...if you're a guy - I would go with dressy business casual - slacks, button down, blazer, good shoes, no tie.
if you're a lady - maybe a dress with a cardigan, or a skirt/nice pants with a sweater-set.
If it was an actual interview in the office, a suit would be appropriate regardless of what the office dress code is, but for coffee? whether or not you actually *are*, you want to basically look like you're coming *from* a relatively professional environment, while not looking like you're expecting this to be a JOB INTERVIEW.
115: my uncle's firm cadwalader, wickersham, and taft did that in the 90s for the same tech-bro hopeful reasons but after the crash sobered back up--much to my uncle's relief, since he has an entire closet full of bespoke suits. he was livid about the khakis.
which reminds me of how I had to take oregon boy husnad x shopping before taking him east to meet my family for the first time. I was breezy. "you don't have to dress formally. you could just wear khakis and a dress shirt and a blue blazer." he did not have any of these things. I was genuinely dumbfounded that he would not have a blue blazer. thus I had to take him on what was essentially a preppy handbook shopping trip in which I bought him penny loafers.
I have nearly achieved my long-held ambition of never wearing anything that can't go in the washing machine. I still own a few things, but wear them infrequently enough that it took me three or four months to realize that the dry cleaner had moved. Now I'm working jeans into the regular work rotation. Shorts still seem like a bridge too far, despite the many people wearing them to work here every day.
120- Thanks, I was thinking that but without the blazer because a jacket would say JOB JOB GIVE ME A JOB. I have worn the blazerless combo you suggest to work when I have meetings with higher level people or interactions with outside sponsors so it wouldn't be too out of the ordinary. Or maybe I'll just go with the ladies outfit you suggest instead.
I think dark jeans and a nice blouse and heels are a totally appropriate work outfit but I have only ever been a teacher/TA and run my own business so what do I know.
I have a case in the USVI, and wore a suit to meet with the client, a committee. It was nearly 90 with no A/C.
Businesspeople in the Caribbean are WAY too fond of the suit and tie, in a climate for which it is entirely inappropriate. I felt like I was abusing my white privilege to go suit and no-tie, which made me feel bad, but usually not bad enough to be worth wearing a tie.
125 - if you do the latter, I want pictures :)
I'm telecommuting and doing month-turnover accounting. I have to ask, and you can post presidentially and stuff: is everyone here a stolidly responsible steward of their personal finances? No one splurges? No one is in unnecessary debt? No one is obviously living beyond their means? I'm all right with money these days, but I have to work at it. I think the extremely tight budgeting I've done this year has improved my life immensely, even if the financial gains are modest (so far -- looking forward to paying off the splurgey eco-car loan, which will free up a huge amount of monthly cash; car was 100% worth it though).
Well, I don't know as I can say, but it seems wise to be able to pay your monthly bar tab with cash on hand.
re: 129
Fair bit of debt. Most of it incurred via buying a car, or via living beyond means for a couple of years.* It's manageable. Debt repayments are maybe 12% of our joint income, which is more than we'd like. I expect we'll be out of that hole and actively saving in about 12-18 months. It has been hard at times, though.
* not mad profligacy, just single salary for a good while in a two-salary economic environment (maternity leave and end of grad school). But, we could probably have made some very hard choices and built up a bit less debt.
129 Well I'm going to Beirut for the better part of a week tomorrow, I suppose that's splurging. But I've got no debt and I'm saving money. OTOH because I lost a lot of time to illness and divorce and not completing my PhD because of same I will never be able to retire. I'll just need to work till I drop dead but now that I found out that my heart is in very good condition that seems unlikely.
Our then-gov at the Dem National Convention.
I have two: one has a silver clasp that's the state seal, the other is a big turquoise, given to me by a NM based client.
Here's some guy from Minnesota.
129: I am in a tough place of needing emotionally and logistically to splurge on improving-daily-life things when by reasonable measures I should probably be saving every spare cent. I'm trying to be okay with being in the former camp despite being a worrier, but it will feel awful either way. On the other hand, I let the girls choose a second new school outfit and Selah in her combat boots and princess dress is living out fashion dreams I could never realize, which is lovely. But at some point will I look back and kick myself? Dunno.
Homeless people in Minnesota have nicer hats than they do here.
137: "No direction home". You're right, Moby!
doing month-turnover accounting
Is this something I need to google to be an informed commenter/participant in Late Capitalism?
A big-shot is visiting our office next week, and we were just informed that for those 2 days we should wear "full business attire." What does that even mean??? Maybe I'd better take those days off.
129: Unnecessary debt is my middle name. God will provide, and I just have to hope he does it before I exceed all my credit limits.
141: HE won't if you don't capitalize! G-d maybe even to be safe.
In other words, yes you should take those days off.
car was 100% worth it though
Buying a Tesla would be great but probably bust our budget for a few years. We don't spend enough on gas (because we never go anywhere) to make it a savings.
139: It's not for the little people, Moby. I have to consult my private collection of medieval almanacs.
141: Toonces Unnecessary-Debt El-Shabazz?!
(I reluctantly include the reference for n00bs)
My new computer purchase turned out to be considerably less painful than I was expecting. It turns out that AmEx has these things called membership reward points of which I was totally unaware. However, the all knowing spy bots at Amazon informed me of exactly how many I had on the card that I use to shop there and asked if I wanted to apply them toward the computer. It turns out I had quite a few!
Score one for our dystopian AI ruled future. At least they'll point us toward ways to save $$ before they enslave or kill us all.
The link in 147 is such a wonderful memory. Princess Fluffykins Hussein Obama made me fall in love all over again.
Inspired by this blog, I'm going to leave work early and walk home through Four Mile Run.
It's a cute little (sub-)neighborhood. Ironically one of the few places in the city my in-laws knew about, due to the restaurant there being featured on the show of He With The Frosted Tips.
Duck Hollow's nice, too, as a rural Westylvanian village somehow transported into the city. Nice place to get onto the river, too.
149: My only regret in that thread is I didn't think of "Tigger Please" until too many days later.
That was 10,000 steps. I didn't go very directly.
That one out in the far east is something else. Started on Wednesday. Is over 80,000 acres now. Our local fire we've been breathing for 6 weeks is just under 40,000 acres still.
There's a fire by my Dad's cabin as of Wednesday. I knew the day would come. I've refused to go there in the summer for the past two years. Driving up 190, it looks like two-thirds of the trees are dead. More on some hillsides.
Most dry-clean only clothes should only early be dry-cleaned. Steamed & hung to air it is just fine.
I can't fit my jackets in the top pot of the double boiler.
Eliminate or at least minimize alcoholic beverages at restaurants.
Eliminate or at least minimize alcoholic beverages at restaurants.
How does this prevent wild fires?
140 A big-shot is visiting our office next week. I always think the best approach is to stage a work area, such as is done in real estate sales, and staff the area with well groomed extras, so that visiting and inspecting minimizes interruption of real work.
My only regret in that thread is I didn't think of "Tigger Please" until too many days later.
This is great, though.
