Today’s post is just the tiniest hack, but one that’s made a big difference over the years in making the most of my clothing budget. Here it is: at several points in the year, I’ll review my purchases and consider whether they were money well spent — or not.
To back up a bit: like everyone, I don’t want to waste money on clothing. I want to feel great about what I buy, whether it’s a steal-of-a-deal thrift find or a highly-anticipated splurge. I don’t want new purchases to sit in the closet, gathering dust, either because of the material, the style, how they fit, or how they sit on my body. I want to love what’s in my closet and feel good about any money I’ve spent!
But, also like everyone else, I don’t always get it right. Sometimes I think I’ll wear something, but it never ends up being what I reach for — maybe the style feels impractical, the material isn’t comfortable, or I just don’t have the right place to wear it. Occasionally, I’ll get suckered in by a sale price. Occasionally, I’ll make a bet on a final sale piece that doesn’t pay off.
For me, pausing every so often to review my purchases helps me make better decisions in the future. My process is simple: around the turn of fall (late enough in the year that earlier purchases have had a chance to settle!), I’ll open up our budget doc and click to the clothing budget tab. There, I can see every purchase I’ve made this year, laid out plainly in front of me.
(If you don’t keep as detailed a budget as ours, this might be a little trickier — but you could still do a similar audit in your closet! Physically pull out the pieces you purchased in the last few months for consideration.)
Then, I’ll go line by line and highlight the items in green that have felt like great buys: I wear them, I’ve washed them, I love them. I’m so happy I spent money on them.
This, of course, lays bare the items that don’t get highlighted. Though it can be a little painful, I take a look at each line: what about it is holding it back from getting highlighted? Is it the price I paid? Is it the item itself? What insight can I tuck away that might keep me from making the same mistake in the future?
And… that’s it! I’ll do the same thing at the end of the year before I switch to the next year’s budget doc, marking up any purchases made in the last quarter. It’s quick, I try not to beat myself up about misses, but it’s really helpful for me to stop and look for what’s working and what’s not so that I’m not just spending, spending, spending, adding, adding, adding.
To close, here are just a few examples in each category from this year so far:
In the green category:
— These raffia ballet flats. I spent about $150 on them but they’re comfortable, they filled a need in my closet, and I’ve worn them all spring and summer. (And hey, if you like them, you can get them for wayyyyyy less than I paid – ouch, ha!)
— This striped pullover. (They don’t have my exact colorway, but this is the style!) I bought this in person on a whim this spring, and I hesitated over the price (a little under $100) – I hadn’t walked into the shop expecting to buy something like this! But, in looking over the list, this has been my absolute favorite thing I’ve bought this year and I wear it as often as possible. Absolutely worth it.
— A white v-neck tee and a white gauze shirt from Quince. Total workhorses in my wardrobe. I wear both of them most weeks and will year round. And at just $60 for both, a great deal.
— A magenta rain jacket. The rain jacket I’d had for years went missing last year, so I’d been casually on the hunt for a new one. I spotted this one in-store when I was looking for something else and took a gamble on such a bold color. It’s been the nicest splash of color on dreary days and I’m happy I bought it every time I put it on, even though that’s not that often.
And now for a few misses:
— A floral cap-sleeve top I bought from Tuckernuck on final sale. I have worn it once or twice, but probably wouldn’t have bought it if I could have tried it on in person – it’s just a little too fussy for me. And at $75, this one hurts.
— A teal and white striped long-sleeve tee from Alice Walk, also on final sale. While it’s so soft and I like the colors, the round neck is a tad high in a way I don’t love, so I don’t reach for it as often as I thought I would.
— An olive green dress from J.Crew. I did try this one on in-person, and I do like wearing it. But again, it’s a little fussy in the way it lays, so it’s not particularly easy to throw on, so I haven’t worn it much. If I had paid less for it I probably wouldn’t mind so much, but the $100 price tag makes it feel like more of a regret.
There are a few more in each category, but that gives you a taste! And hopefully, you can see how it’s easier to spot patterns that I can use in the future once I sort things into categories.
Your turn! I’d love to hear what your favorite clothing purchase of 2024 has been so far. And, if you’re feeling brave, maybe a miss, too :)
You know those podcast episodes that you hit play on as soon as you see them in your feed? Today’s post was inspired by one of them – a recent Lazy Genius episode. In it, Kendra shares 20 helpful decisions she keeps repeating across four areas of life: personal, kids, food, and money.
“Decide once” is probably my favorite Lazy Genius principle – it speaks to my heart which loves both efficiency AND intentionality – and though I’ve written about some of my “decide once” decisions before, we’ve never discussed money-related decisions specifically. Since I loved hearing Kendra’s, I thought it might be helpful to share some of John’s and mine, especially since we love chatting personal finance around here :) Let’s do it!
P.S. This is probably obvious, but “deciding once” means making one decision about one thing and continuing to make that decision over and over until it doesn’t work for you anymore. Boundaries AND freedom!
A mostly unrelated photo, but you know these Articles Club gals are a great source of riches in my life!
1. I sign up for every Meal Train that crosses my path, and I bring a prepared meal from a local shop. In this season of young kids, trying to prepare and deliver two meals in one day (for my family and the other family) was causing enough stress that it had begun to dissuade me from signing up in the first place. While it’s more expensive than cooking from scratch, I love that I can choose a meal that matches the family’s needs with ease (gluten- or dairy-free, vegetarian, etc.) and support a local small business, too.
2. When a school or teacher asks for money, we give it. Our oldest attends a public elementary school, and our middle will soon join her. We believe strongly in the importance of a vibrant and healthy public school system, and because I’ve done the mind-numbing math of what we’d pay if we sent our kids to a private school, it feels comparatively easy to drop by the store or send money on Venmo whenever a request circulates.
3. When we can help a foster family or a family in need, we do. Similarly, our church helps support foster families and at-risk families in a few different ways (buying diapers or baby gear for vulnerable pregnant moms, buying backpacks and school supplies for foster kids), and we always say yes when asked. Caring for the orphan, the widow, and the generally vulnerable was near to Jesus’ heart, and because we will likely not be a foster or adoptive family ourselves, it feels like a duty and joy to tangibly help those who are.
4. We will keep John’s car as long as we can. John’s Ford Focus is currently 12 years old, with less than 100k miles on it. He drives it to and from work twice a week… and that’s about it. While it does have power windows and AC (ha!), it’s a basic trim level and nothing fancy.
But that’s kind of why we love it :) It’s been paid off for almost a decade, and it works just fine. We have money sitting in an account for his next car, and it will be wonderful when he gets it, but that day won’t be until this one needs repairs that no longer make sense. Until that day comes, we just don’t think about replacing it.
5. We have a date night every month. And we almost always go out to eat, because the Triangle has incredible restaurants and all we really want to do is talk to each other :) Both the restaurant bill and the babysitter are expenses, but it is a non-negotiable for us and has been since June was small (back when it was a lot harder to fit it into the budget!).
6. We give 10% of our income each year to our church. While not a command to Christians, we believe this guidance is to our benefit, and a way God graciously cares for us as He partners with us to care for others. It took us several years of slowly increasing our percentage until we hit the 10% mark; we hope to increase it over time from here.
7. We give annually to our college. This feels like a direct inheritance from my maternal grandmother, who was a devoted alumna of her school (and heavily involved with my grandfather’s college even after his death). There was never a question of whether I’d give after graduation, and I’ve done so every year since. (I think I gave $50 the first year!) While it’s debatable how much of an impact my four years of undergrad had on my professional trajectory, I nevertheless feel incredibly grateful for my career path – and this is one way to pass on that gratitude.
8. We max out our HSA. While a bit more arcane, we prioritize this over maxing out our 401ks in this season, and have for many years. (I wrote a post about it in 2018!) It’s simply a part of building our budget each year: we look up the maximum contribution limit, then plug that into our budget.
9. We save a certain amount in our Home Free account each month. When I think about decisions we don’t think about, this is a big one. In fact, in many ways, it’s best not to think about this too much :) And luckily, we don’t have to! The money is automatically transferred from our checking account to our investment account each month. After almost a decade of doing so, we don’t miss it – which is very much to our benefit, as it quietly adds up in the background.
10. We make a budget every year. I know I’m a particular type of person, but it is truly hard for me to grasp how people maintain their mental health without a budget. Our budget is a plan. It reassures me that we’ve taken care of everything that we need to, and that if we stick to the budget, we are free to spend money without guilt, we’ll be able to pay our bills, and we can rest assured that we’re making progress on all of our savings goals. A budget has worked for us when we’ve had little money and when we’ve had more; it has helped keep our marriage (and minds) happy and peaceful in every season. I am so grateful.
Now I’d love to hear from you, friends! What’s on your financial “decide once” list?
One of the most frequent requests I get, on all platforms, is for a mortgage plan update. This is funny to me (the requests are usually random and out of the blue!), but I welcome it, and I understand it: there are not many people willing to talk about finances in a personal and detailed way. But here I am! Willing to talk! So let’s get into it, because we have made a shift since our last conversation…
A brief overview of where we’ve been:
Spring 2013: We buy our house! We pull together a 13% down payment, because that’s the most we could afford.
Fall 2014: After paying off our car loans, we use about half of what we had been paying to make an extra mortgage payment each month (directly to the bank), and the other half to build up a fund for our next car purchase.
Fall 2015: Car fund complete, we shift that amount we’d been paying toward our mortgage, too. Instead of paying down our mortgage directly, though, we begin transferring the extra monthly amount into a specific home brokerage account and invest it, with the goal of paying off the mortgage balance in one lump sum once we reach the amount we need. I talked about that here.
2018: We shift our strategy. Instead of paying off our mortgage as soon as our home brokerage account reaches the right amount, we plan to keep saving a little longer, until we’ve reached a large-enough amount of money that, if carefully invested, the returns themselves would be large enough to cover our monthly mortgage payment (meaning our mortgage would no longer need to be a part of our household budget). I talked about that here.
2022: With June in (public) kindergarten, we shift most of the money we had been paying for preschool each month towards an increased monthly transfer to our home brokerage account.
2023: Our home brokerage account reached the amount where we could begin taking withdrawals for the monthly mortgage payment… but we didn’t begin taking withdrawals.
Wait, what?!
Yes, indeed. In yet another change to the plan, after much discussion, we agreed that we wanted to keep rolling with our current situation indefinitely: paying the monthly mortgage payment to the bank out of our salaries, and contributing to the home brokerage account each month while letting it grow.
Why?
To put it simply, our standard of living was (and is) perfectly comfortable. We don’t see a compelling need in our budget for our mortgage payment right now. Our current plan is to do this for the foreseeable future, or until our needs change, or until it no longer makes sense. Just as I shared in my last post, the hope is that this account will eventually pay for college tuitions, weddings, a rental property, some really extravagant generosity, or – most likely – all of the above.
Suffice it to say, this gives us an incredible amount of flexibility, and peace of mind. We knew that, I think, but we recently had an experience that drove home just how much we value living below our means. Story time? :)
Recently, a house came on the market that we were very interested in. Though we had a few alerts set up, we didn’t consider ourselves actively looking, and so scrambled to get in touch with a realtor and get prequalified for a loan. We went to see it on a Friday, the day it went on the market, and then debated whether we should put in an offer almost constantly for the next 36-ish hours.
We ultimately decided not to. As we were debriefing on Monday (when, naturally, the house went pending), John asked me how I felt. Relief was my overwhelming feeling. The weekend had been incredibly stressful: not only because we were thrust into making a fast decision (when we are two of the slowest decision makers on the planet!) but, had we gone forward, we would have taken on a much larger mortgage with a much higher interest payment. Our monthly discretionary payment to our home brokerage account would have been essentially redirected towards paying our new mortgage.
Could we have done it without much change to our lifestyle? Yes, because we were already used to forgoing that money.
Would it have potentially made us feel more stressed? Almost certainly. When we’re paying ourselves each month, we know we can always skip a transfer if something comes up – but you can’t skip a mortgage payment. At work, John doesn’t have to hustle harder than he wants, or feel pressure to take the extra appointment at the expense of our time together as a family. We feel the peace of knowing we can release my salary if something were to change with our circumstances.
There’s a part of me that doesn’t like our current plan. It’s so open-ended! We don’t have a specific goal we’re trying to reach! The larger part of me, though, is extremely grateful. This margin that we’ve fought for — keeping our standard of living stable while our income has risen and costs, like daycare/preschool, have gone away — has given us an incredible peace of mind. It has helped us to be more present, joyful parents. It has helped keep our marriage happy and stress-free. It has allowed us to give generously and freely to the people and causes we love. All of this is of almost incalculable value to me.
As I was writing this post, chapter 10 from Morgan Housel’s exceptional book came to mind. “You don’t need a specific reason to save,” he writes. “You can save just for saving’s sake. And indeed you should. Everyone should.”
Does this mean we will never move to a more expensive home? It does not. Our run-in with the market last month actually gave us a lot of clarity on what we’re looking for in a next home, and what we would and would not be willing to move for. With a narrowed scope, we feel ready to go if the right home comes on the market, but also perfectly content to wait several years should it not. And while we wait, that brokerage account will (hopefully) continue to grow – making action even easier when the time comes.
And now, to one more practical question before we close:
Over the years, readers have asked whether our feelings about this strategy have changed since we shared it, especially given the market volatility during the pandemic. Did the market drop in March 2020 make us wish we’d made payments directly on our mortgage? What has been the emotional impact of this plan, now that we’ve been at it for a bit?
This is an excellent question, and one of the most important ones to get clear on before embarking on a plan like this yourself. In a way, I’m grateful that the pandemic drop proved what we thought all along: that we both have a high tolerance for market volatility and risk. We set out on this plan knowing what we had set aside could decrease in value – and we were okay with that, considering our time horizon and the purpose of these savings. Also, not all of the money is invested in stocks, and most of it is managed in a defensive style which is more protected from volatility. We also have a fully-funded emergency fund, which helped assure us that even if something really unfortunate were to have happened (like, both of us losing our jobs WHILE the market plummeted), we still would have had options.
Key to our plan? We practice dollar cost averaging, or investing on a regular schedule, whether the market is up or down. No trying to time the market over here! Some months it will be up, which is great, and some months it will be down, which is also great – we can get in at a discount :) Over the long-term, though, we believe the market will continue to go up.
I’ll end this post the same way I’ve ended previous ones: if you like the idea of trying something like this, I would highly recommend working with a financial advisor. Of course, it’s possible to make investment decisions on your own, but I don’t want to give you the impression that it’s just me over here knowing all the things and that you should be able to do the same — John IS a financial advisor, and if he weren’t, we would definitely be seeking expertise on decisions of such magnitude.
And finally, I know this is a bit more of a niche Marvelous Money topic than we usually cover, and perhaps it feels wildly out of reach for you right now. I get that. I share this not to brag (!!!) or make you feel defeated (hopefully you know that!), but to perhaps stretch your imagination of what’s possible. At the very least, I hope it encourages you to value the peace of mind that comes from living below your means, whatever that looks like for you.
A final reminder: I am not a financial professional, and nothing I say here should be construed as investment advice! I’m just one gal sharing her story :)
Let’s discuss! What questions does this post bring up for you? Anything we could discuss in a future Marvelous Money post?
Writing about your own generosity is a tricky thing, isn’t it?
On the one hand, there’s the very real fear that you’ll come across as prideful, a show-off. Or that you’ll needlessly make others feel bad about their efforts – which might represent a real sacrifice – or feel shame about the gap between your generosity and theirs.
So why risk it?
Of course, there’s also this, just one chapter later – also from the mouth of Jesus:
Giving in public = bad? Giving in secret = good? If only it were so easy :) The Christian faith is not interested in being simple; it’s interested in being true. In the end, the motivation of the heart is what categorizes the same act as either a treasure or a disgrace in the eyes of God, which can make it confusing to know when to share. However – as long as I can feel reasonably confident that I’m sharing to reflect the light and love of God and not to be praised by men blog readers, I want to do so.
Also, we hear a lot about Christians behaving badly. But there are many, many, many more stories of light that go untold – stories of quiet, unsung acts of selflessness, compassion, and generosity. We need those stories, too, to remind us about the beauty, grace, and truth of a life spent imitating Jesus (imperfectly, always, but earnestly, too).
Finally, on a practical note, I like hearing about the positive things others are doing! It inspires me to be better, to do more, to stretch my conception of what I think I’m capable of and comfortable with – and it gives me ideas for how to do so! It reminds me that people everywhere are doing their best to make people feel loved and the world a better place. It buoys my hope and optimism about my fellow man and the world we inhabit together.
So — with that lengthy introduction, I submit to you three ways we’re trying to live generously this Christmas season – written with humility and love!
We’re giving generously to our kids’ teachers.
Currently, Annie and Shep each have two preschool teachers, while June has her second-grade teacher, her math teacher, and a student teacher. In past years, we have given physical gifts to preschool teachers, like fresh wreaths, snap totes, and Cultivate goodies. I love all of these ideas and may return to them!
This year and last, however, we’ve moved to giving gift cards (accompanied by handwritten notes). Last year we gave each preschool teacher a $15 gift card to a local ice cream shop. This year, we’re giving them $50 gift cards to a local gift shop I love, and the director (who is also a teacher in Shep’s classroom) a $100 gift card to our favorite local restaurant. It’s been a challenging year in their school, and we want her and her husband to enjoy a fun dinner out.
For June’s main teacher, we’ll do a $75* gift card to either a local garden store or the same local restaurant – I haven’t decided yet! (I always try to choose based on their hobbies – last year, we gave her first-grade teacher, an avid runner, a gift card to Fleet Feet.)
*I had planned to do $100, the same as our preschool director, but our district put a $75 cap on gifts this year.
For her math teacher, we chose a 3-month subscription to the Book of the Month Club, and her student teacher will get a Cultivate tumbler stuffed with crinkle paper and a $50 coffee shop gift card.
Again: I include the dollar amounts not to show off (blerg), but to gently encourage. Last year, $15 for five preschool teachers felt like a stretch. My understanding is that even the smallest gift card is appreciated, and if $5 per teacher is what’s possible, it will be gratefully received.
This year, we can do more, so we are. When I think about what it would cost to send our three children to private school (I did the math right here), $100 per teacher feels like a drop in the bucket. Excellent teachers are the lifeblood of our schools and I’ll do almost anything to help them feel appreciated.
We’re giving generously to our pastor.
Moving on to our next category of challenging jobs :) Full-time ministry – whew! It is not for the faint of heart, for the pastor or for his or her family. They (joyfully!) sacrifice so much for the people in their care, and last year, John and I felt compelled to share one of our very favorite traditions with our pastor and his wife.
We wrote them a note explaining our end-of-year celebration dinner – what it is and what it has meant to our relationship over the last many years – and included a $100 gift card to a local restaurant in the envelope. We wanted to make it easy for them to start their own tradition, if they wanted to. We’ll do the same thing this year. Sowing into their marriage feels like sowing directly into God’s Kingdom, and we’re grateful to do it.
We’re giving generously to our garbage and recycling guys.
This is one I come by honestly – it’s straight from the brain of my mom :) Growing up, she’d always leave a Subway gift card and bag of peanut butter balls on top of our trash and recycling cans in December, and honestly, I thought it was weird – ha!
But I also just thought it was normal, and sure enough, when we moved into our own home a decade ago, I taped a colorful (eye-catching!) thank you note, a Jersey Mike’s gift card (we usually do $20 – enough for two guys in each truck), and a bag of peanut butter balls to the top of each can one Wednesday in December. I can only hope my children will think this is weird and then grow up to do the same thing, too.
Of course, I’d love to hear: big or small, how are you being generous this season? This group always has the best ideas.
