Posts tagged 'Style'
Starlets and their cell phones. Inseparable. Gossip? New movie deal? No, smart money management. Two new cell phone applications help you shop:
Lucky Magazine has created Lucky At Your Service which ties into stores’ inventories. The app featured over 70 shoes in its March shoe guide. Click “find it near you” and either GPS or a zip code can tell you which stores have what you’re looking for. The best part, it’s free. Download it at: http://corp.nearbynow.com/luckyatyourservice
ShopSavvy (www.biggu.com/applications) also acts as a personal shopping assistant. You scan an items barcode with your phone’s camera and the app shows you the lowest prices online and at nearby stores.
Even starlets need to save.
February 2nd, 2009
In his inaugural speech, Obama quoted the Bible: “the time has come to set aside childish things.” The question is does that include an obsession with shoes? He asked the nation to grow up and cited our “badly weakened economy” as a consequence of not just “greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices…”
So yes, sadly, it applies to shoes – or at least our obsession with them. A poll of 1,057 women by the Consumer Reports National Research Center for shopping magazine, ShopSmart, found that U.S. women on average own 19 pairs of shoes, although they only wear four pairs regularly; 15 percent have over 30 pairs.
Carrie: [In shoe store with Miranda]: Where did all my money go?
Miranda: At four hundred dollars a pop, how many of these do you own? Fifty?
Carrie: Come on…
Miranda: One hundred?
Carrie: Would that be so wrong?
Miranda: Four hundred dollars times one hundred, there’s your down payment.
Carrie: That’s only four thousand dollars.
Miranda: No, that’s forty thousand dollars!
Carrie: I spent forty thousand dollars on shoes and I have no place to live? I will literally be the old woman who lived in her shoe.
Carrie, with her disregard for her spending habits – tossing off hundreds of dollars for things she doesn’t need and will, in all likelihood, never wear – might be incredibly chic but is a very bad financial role model.
Managing your money, taking control of your finances and living within your means requires hard choices. However, if you put off or don’t make the hard choices, they become impossible.
January 22nd, 2009
Recent statistics show that the Botox treatment industry has generated over $1 billion per year in revenue. When an industry hits that threshold, it’s a viable, on-going market. Although the recent market downturn may put a slight wrinkle in sales, younger and younger women are now trying the procedure. A growing number are getting Botox the moment they graduate from high school.
This is an example of really bad money management – not to mention a totally unnecessary cosmetic procedure. At upwards of 300 dollars per appointment, you would be much better off paying down your credit card or other debts or saving or investing. Even if you are completely debt free, and can truly afford it, there is plenty of time to freeze your face.
If you put the $300 in your savings account instead and earned 4% interest, in five years you would have roughly $1,460 dollars ($300 x 4 times a year – usually you need three to four injections per year). If you waited five years to start Botox, and saved the money each year, you would have saved approximately $6,700. What could you do with $6,700?
January 16th, 2009
In this time of austerity, black is the new black. It fits the mood, makes you look thinner and taller, and can save you money…I’m going to guess you already own more than a few things in black and won’t have to add very many items to your wardrobe to be in style.
Fashionista Fact:
“____ is the new black” started with the legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland in 1962, when she observed that “shocking pink is the navy blue of India.” Vreeland was commenting on the copious use of pink as the base color for much of the attire in India, much like navy blue at that time the core color of most outfits in New York City. In the late 1970’s the expression changed to “X is the new neutral” which morphed in the 1980’s to “X is the new black.”
December 11th, 2008
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