Money News Lately: Grab Bag

Coach Foldover Card Case Wallet (affiliate link)

In a little less than a week, I'll be off on my travels! K and I will make a quick stop in Taiwan to see my family, and then we'll be off to Tokyo and Kyoto. Things will probably be quiet around here until I get back. I might be able to get another post or two written and scheduled to go live during my trip, but that will depend on how some things go at the office in the next few days. I'll be fully back to writing here and reading and commenting elsewhere in a few weeks, once I get back from my trip and have gotten over the jetlag! 

For today, here are a few quick thoughts about some money-related news items (and well, yet another unpopular Refinery29 Money Diary) that I've found interesting lately: 

On Fleeting and Ill-Gotten Gains

Congressman Duncan Hunter from San Diego is a personal finance cautionary tale for us all (as well as a "don't commit federal crimes" cautionary tale, but that's a given). The indictment is a doozy, let's just say. I personally think its worth skimming through just for all the very many alleged instances of money mismanagement and misuse it contains, detailed down to specific transactions. Among other details, the Hunters allegedly incurred approximately $37,700 in overdraft and insufficient funds fees on their personal bank accounts over seven years. All this despite his annual congressional salary of approximately $174,000, and allegedly siphoning off $250,000 in campaign funds over the years on top of that! 

In other news that's, at least in part, also about, er, how quickly even a large quantity of ill-gotten gains can potentially be spent, there's also that saga of the $400,000 GoFundMe. The story, and the related civil litigation (and possible criminal investigation), are all still developing, but there's an allegation that the couple that raised the money depleted it all without actually giving it to the person they raised it for. It sounds like GoFundMe has committed to giving the intended recipient the money that was raised for him, but there could be potential criminal proceedings against the couple regardless. 

The Case of Another Unpopular Money Diary

I know it's terribly silly of me to regularly think too hard about comments and reactions to Refinery29 Money Diaries, but sometimes, I just can't help myself! With this particular diarist, or rather, the reader reactions, I may yet spin off my thoughts into another post at a later date, but I thought the story was also worth sharing now.

The initial Money Diary, by a purported 24 year-old NYC-dwelling software engineer with $118,000 base salary, and additional bonus and stock worth approximately $168,000, was... unpopular. I did find a few details odd (including that a Duane Reade purchase of batteries, decongestant, and a box of tissues would cost significantly more than $5.50). Except that I feel like most Money Diaries probably fudge some numbers, both intentionally to protect anonymity and accidentally because of mistakes with record-keeping or math. I don't think that kind of slight adjustment or error prevents a Money Diary from being substantially true and interesting. Furthermore, I generally find a lot of the reflexive skepticism and criticism about high-earner Money Diaries to ultimately be ill-founded, so I'm generally not inclined to nitpicking individual details as if that might call the whole thing into question. People hated that Brooklyn-dwelling biglaw attorney's Money Diary, for instance, and some even declared she must be defrauding her firm with some of the reimbursed expenses. Trust me, because of the generous reimbursements associated with summer associate programs and business development (charged to the firm, not the client), those charge were likely all proper.

I thought the software engineer diarist's follow-up with Refinery29 about her approach to investing should have calmed some of the criticisms. I thought she came across as being practical and hard-working. Alas, if you go through the comments there, not everyone agreed. I know it's particularly foolish of me to think too much about the especially mean comments, particularly ones I can identify as baseless or incorrect, but I really am interested in the psychology and mindset behind them, as well as in whether those comments suggest that there's a need for better personal finance education for everyone. 

There are some real awful things in the comments, some of them buried deep in the discussion threads and responses to other reader comments: 

• One reader accuses her of having an "I'm only here for the cash y'all" attitude towards her career, and maybe her life in general. (There's some terrible and horrifyingly sexist aspersions about the diarist's personal life in that particular gem of a comment, if you find it.) Um, isn't compensation, and seeking fair market compensation for our work, something we should all value? 
• Various readers turned up their noses at the idea that someone who was average in school could get themselves to that compensation level by their mid-20s, which just seems really wrong-headed to me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like anyone who's been in the working world for a while, whether they were excellent students or not, quickly realizes that grades have almost nothing to do with career success and compensation after one has gotten their foot in the door? 
• The diarist noted that, given her many successes in the years since school and a challenging search for a first job, "[n]ow it's easy to think I was always a superstar". Many readers gnashed their teeth about this. Some readers were skeptical that any real person would say that about themselves. I found that entire set of reactions particularly bizarre. (I tend to be a bit self-deprecating, but I'm also not afraid to own up to my successes when it's warranted...) 

I totally shouldn't get so absorbed into Money Diaries comments sections, but I really do have a strange and intense fascination with it. How do people get so opinionated, sometimes based on incorrect assumptions? (There are many other times when commenters on other Refinery29 money-related discussions are actually extremely sensible, it is mostly just the Money Diaries where the comments sections get really wild.)

Have you been following the Duncan Hunter or the depleted $400,000 GoFundMe stories? What did you think? Particularly if you're familiar with the STEM industry in the US, do the numbers in that Money Diary seem plausible to you? 

On Anthony Bourdain

via

I was devastated to hear about Anthony Bourdain. From all his work, his writing and his shows, he seemed like the most wonderful and fun person, with such spirit, such empathy and compassion, an always open mind, a complete lack of pretension, and a willingness to speak up sharply for what is right. I devoured his work eagerly, was always delighted by every piece of it I encountered. And because he always seemed so genuine, so vibrant, and so unabashedly true to himself, I feel almost as if I knew him. I still can't fully process what has happened. I feel such great sadness for his family and for his daughter. 

He had so much to teach us, in particular about the importance of doing our sincere best to understand other people, to meet them on their own terms. I couldn't possibly do justice to him in my own words, so I thought I'd share a few things that best captured what I knew of him. 

• I only got to know his work a decade after Kitchen Confidential was published. I know that people sometimes find his depiction of super-macho restaurant culture and his past participation in it off-putting. Regardless, I truly believe that his body of work since then has shown his growth as a person, how his perspective has changed, and that he is absolutely one of the good people. Because I only read his book so long after it was published, I didn't necessarily see or understand that he had anything to apologize for from his Kitchen Confidential days, but what matters is that he did. 
• The original New Yorker essay that predated Kitchen Confidential and gives a good sense of what's in the book is a must-read, of course. 
• Last year, the New Yorker published a take on Bourdain and how he'd changed as a public figure over time. Parts Unknown, his current show, is still on Netflix, and I highly recommend it.
• He did two Reddit "Ask me Anything" sessions, or AMAs, one around 2013 and one last year. They're both good, but I thought the one from last year was particularly great. You can practically hear his voice reading out his responses. 
• I really appreciated how Bourdain was decidedly not a snob, was totally against anything pretentious. Beyond that, he was capable of great kindness and empathy. This is seen in so many of his shows, the foods and restaurants he featured, and the way he interacted with the people he met on those shows, and it was also seen here in his reaction to the hullabaloo when a small town newspaper's review of a local Olive Garden went viral quite a few years back. 

Sunday Reading: The Messy Intersection of Money and Family Law

Given the stage of life I'm in, it's downright silly for me to expound at length about my views of family law and marriage. As someone yet unmarried and childless, if I said anything particularly opinionated, I'd essentially just be asking - nay, demanding - that real life intervene to make an absolute fool of me. That sure doesn't stop me, though. As usual, nothing in this post constitutes legal advice. 

When I read Jamie Seaton's essay on Buzzfeed about the dramatic transformation in her apparent financial status that resulted from her divorce, and how that paralleled her experiences as a child of divorced parents with their own dramatic financial disparity, I was, for no discernible reason, entirely transfixed. Although the topic is quite serious, and the bare facts inherently do not paint her ex-husband in a positive light, I personally thought she was evenhanded and honest, matter-of-fact rather than self-pitying, and far more generous to her ex-husband than he likely deserved. Overall, I liked the piece, and sympathized, though reasonable minds differ greatly on this, and it turns out to have been extremely polarizing. 

P.S. before formulating an opinion, it's best to read Seaton's other published essays about the end of her marriage, one tabloid-y piece about her immediate post-divorce finances and a more gentle essay about co-parenting with her ex. My opinion changed after reading both pieces. My initial feeling, that he'd nickel and dimed her to an unsavory degree in the settlement, to the detriment of his children, turned out to be wrong. There appears to be a provision that penalizes her on spousal support if her monthly earnings dropped below a certain amount, which seems to me unnecessarily draconian to an ex-spouse that worked throughout the marriage. Even if spousal support serves a different purpose than child support, I don't think it uncontroversial to assume that most economically less powerful ex-spouses with primary custody spend most of their income on things directly affecting their children's quality of life, especially at the cutoff they set.

As it turns out, her ex-husband likely didn't nickel and dime her much at all. Instead, it appears that he controlled their finances, and he was really very bad at it, insisting on a house they could not afford and keeping her in the dark about their credit card debt. He most likely didn't have much money after all, and unless he's dramatically changed the way he handles it, he likely still doesn't. (Her ex's money management reminds me of this dude.) Among other things, she came out of the divorce with $16,000 in marital credit card debt that should, I think, ultimately be considered "his fault" because he controlled the purse strings.

And yes, some might say not to believe everything someone writes, though I feel like Seaton admits to enough that isn't flattering about herself - her extreme youthful fixation on designer clothes to buy the appearance of status - that I'm not skeptical. I certainly trust her perception, writing, and understanding of money far more than that of the writer behind that uncomfortable New York Times "Modern Love" piece on prenuptial agreements, for instance. (That person sounded really bad at money, her then-fiancee was reasonable in his demand for a prenuptial agreement, but callous in his handling of it and may, to my non-expert eyes, have created unnecessary risks to the contract's enforceability.) 

When it comes to stories like this, whether just about money or about the messy intersection of family matters and money, I often find people's varying reactions more interesting than the pieces themselves. Because most of my friends are not into talking about these things every time I have a link to share, I end up relying on internet comments sections to get my discussion fix. I know, I know, internet comments sections are often pointless and toxic, but still! There was a lot to unpack here, plenty more fuel for strong, visceral reactions than in most money-related personal essays, and that's really saying something. (Among other things, from my experiences living in Hong Kong, I'm always ready to raise my eyebrows about expat lifestyles in Asia.) I was actually pleasantly surprised by the relatively evenhanded and calm comments on Buzzfeed, given that the money subreddits I follow, though well-moderated and generally reasonable, have left me with a sense that everyone's ready to accuse a woman, particularly one who generally earned less than her husband, of being a freeloading, gold-digging mooch, even when it's absolutely not true. 

That's not to say all the reactions were reasonable. One top-appearing comment excoriated her for failing to open her own secret savings account "just in case", which seems iffy. While I would never personally agree to a marital money arrangement that left me without a checking and savings accounts solely in my name, even if the amounts retained in it are relatively nominal, plenty of people out there maintain fully joint accounts and shared finances. Another follow-up comment to that "secret savings account" comment, rather a non-sequitur, was eager to declare how their own single mother did it so much better than Seaton by "working full time and sacrificing to provide for her family", which it's clear that Seaton actually is doing, so that was super weird. One other top comment was about how all of Seaton's wealthy friends (I suppose from earlier days in that wealthy Connecticut suburb or the high-flying expat community) should have given her financial help, which seemed to me an extremely strange thing to take away from the article. Normal people generally don't ask non-family members for money, right? 

Anyway, I'm a total weirdo with my strangely intense interest in these topics. I suppose I just really enjoy financial voyeurism. Seaton's essay was part of a Buzzfeed collaboration with the Death, Sex, and Money podcast, and they came up with some really interesting essays that are worth a read. 

Sunday Reading: On Shopping Bans, Fasts, and Freezes

via Racked

By now, almost everyone has likely read Ann Patchett's New York Times piece on her "Year of No Shopping". My reaction to the piece was initially more skeptical than I expected, given that it aligns perfectly with my interest in "minimalism-ish", as well as my fondness for lighter, more accessible (and not necessarily comprehensive) introductions to bigger, difficult topics. For instance, I love Marie Kondo's first book, even if, by most standards, it's a "baby steps only" introduction to only a portion of the ideas that fall under the minimalism umbrella. In the personal finance area, I'm fine with beginners' books, and I'm not sure most people, myself included, need much more than that. 

First things first, there's nothing wrong with the piece itself. It's well-written, not at all annoying or preachy, and by introducing a broad audience to the idea that less is more, and that we likely all need  far less than we currently consume, it's doing positive work. At the same time, I was taken aback by just how... easy she made it seem. It wasn't even just a fashion shopping ban! By late January, she had made it broader. As she says, "while I couldn’t buy clothing or speakers, I could buy anything in the grocery store, including flowers. I could buy shampoo and printer cartridges and batteries but only after I’d run out of what I had. I could buy plane tickets and eat out in restaurants. I could buy books." Sensible enough, not the most restrictive, but far more than just a fashion shopping ban. 

I suppose my main reason for skepticism is that I'm not sure a shopping ban or shopping fast, any set of what's likely to be somewhat arbitrary rules for an arbitrary period of time, is going to be the best way to get the benefits that she describes.

First, there were some lessons on "wants" versus "needs", how "If you want something, wait awhile. Chances are the feeling will pass" and "Once I got the hang of giving shopping up, it wasn’t much of a trick. The trickier part was living with the startling abundance that had become glaringly obvious when I stopped trying to get more. Once I could see what I already had, and what actually mattered, I was left with a feeling that was somewhere between sickened and humbled. When did I amass so many things, and did someone else need them?" This is where the enthusiastic KonMari fan in me comes in, I suppose, because by early 2015, having gone through a round of KonMari decluttering (which worked for everything but my closet, which I had decluttered many times before, and from which I still haven't let go of everything I don't actually wear, much of which I haven't in fact worn since 2015), I felt like I'd already learned that lesson, as to everything but the things in my closet.

Post-KonMari, I gave away the majority of my furniture and various other non-closet things when moving out after graduating law school. Since then, I've been careful and deliberate about new acquisitions of furniture, kitchen tools, all those sorts of things. Heck, I sometimes go too far. After our wooden cutting boards got permanently warped due to improper maintenance, I agonized over whether to buy replacements, and which replacements to buy, for more than a year and a half before I felt like I knew what the right choice was, and how I'd care for the next set.

Second, she derived a related personal finance lesson from the experience, how, "[t]he things we buy and buy and buy are like a thick coat of Vaseline smeared on glass: We can see some shapes out there, light and dark, but in our constant craving for what we may still want, we miss life’s details. . . . I came to a better understanding of money as something we earn and spend and save for the things we want and need." That sounds like what I experienced when I started budgeting, and tracking every single transaction, around the time I started blogging, using You Need a Budget (software that is now subscription-only, but the approach is simple and could be replicated in Excel). I wasn't always using YNAB properly, but that "better understanding" of money was there.

By tracking every transaction I quickly learned that some of my money was disappearing into a void, being spent on things I didn't want or need, a combination of (a) Sephora purchases as stress relief, often rounded out with an extra add-on item to get to the free shipping threshold, (b) Amazon purchases every time I thought of a new vague thing to try, and (c) Amazon and/or Drugstore.com (they had reliably great prices compared to brick and mortar drugstores in NYC) purchases to stock up unnecessary and excessive quantities of cleaning products and other household items, some of which I gave away when I moved out and some of which, in the case of more compact items like dish soap, I only finished using nearly two years later. So I stopped those things almost immediately, and it was easy because the purchases weren't adding real value to my life.

I suppose the other main reason for my skepticism was, in the end, that it sounded too easy. Given how long I've been reading minimalism blogs, it's probably not surprising that I've read tons of posts about shopping bans, fasts, and freezes over the years. Many of them were "no shopping" for months at a time long before KonMari was cool. And actually, over time, it often proves extremely difficult to simply stop shopping for any extended period of time. I've tried no less than twice, just as to my closet, with no success, though I have an occasional month of no shopping, once in a long while, usually because I was busy with something else (at that time, final exams). The most common "success" scenario I've seen is when someone looks back and realizes, several months on, that without even trying, they hadn't shopped for a certain length of time because they hadn't seen anything they liked, or because they were otherwise occupied.

Maybe there are lessons there, though, in how "easy" Patchett's essay made it seem. The way she writes it, she was much more gentle on herself than many of us tend to be, when there are slip-ups or exceptions made, which she describes as happening a few times. She didn't dwell on it, just moved on and continued working on the larger goal for the rest of the year. That's a useful mindset. Also, for the USA-dwellers among us, American society may be more consumerist, at least when compared to the other societies I'm familiar with. We have more in the way of "big box stores" or places like Costco, where we buy in bulk to save and, in the suburbs at least, more in the way of space to store the excess. If one's starting point is an average American consumption habit, then of course it'll be easier to scale down the shopping, and work on the backlog of soap, paper towels, and dental floss that's already in one's pantry or bathroom cabinet.

What did you think about Patchett's piece? When I started this entry quite a few weeks ago, I thought I'd have more to say, but as I kept reworking this draft, I realized I wasn't able to add much that was new to the discussion. Oh well! 

Sunday Reading: Sponsorships and Swag

Racked recently did a feature about how much swag they, a smaller online publication, received in the last six months. This isn't particularly surprising, especially if you watched The Devil Wears Prada (though the movie painted an exaggerated picture of what it's like to work at Vogue, employees don't actually take home clothing and handbag samples for keeps). What was more surprising is that Racked doesn't ever feature the vast majority of what they receive. Either way, it doesn't particularly bother me that big publications get lots of freebies - I always assumed that. Regardless, I generally don't get product recommendations that way. The feature didn't generate too much discussion on r/femalefashionadvice, but there was still some good food for thought, most of which went in the direction of gifts and sponsorships sent to social media "influencers."

Last year, Adina posted her thoughts about the extent to which bloggers may contribute to excessive consumption, or unrealistic ideas about how much one should buy. I left a rambly comment there and always wanted to spin it off into my own post, but alas, it takes me forever to write anything serious. Back then, I thought it wouldn't be fair to attribute my previous more excessive, and sometimes careless, consumption habits to fashion bloggers, as I had those tendencies long before blogs were a thing. Plus most of my favorite blogs were by extremely creative, dedicated thrifters (Fops and Dandies, I miss you still!), so if anything, they encouraged "good", or at least, relatively eco-friendly and wallet-friendly, shopping.

Yet the top comment on r/femalefashionadvice makes a good point about how, because social media types present themselves as, and certainly started out as "real, normal people," it can create some sense that because "normal people" consume this much, maybe I should too. Looking back, this happened for me, particularly as to beauty products. I've never been a big makeup wearer, but I've purchased much more than I needed, or even particularly wanted. (I've since gotten rid of all the eyeshadow and most of the nail polish.) Because I had no other way to learn about makeup, I relied on Youtube, though this was a lot time ago, before sponsorships, back when Michelle Phan just made her first video, and I viewed it on her Xanga. One indirect lesson I got was that, of course someone must get each of their looks from multiple palettes, so maybe that contributed to my previous VIB every year Sephora habit, which I've since put aside.

Sunday Reading: Asian Americans in the Legal Profession

via NPR

This story is a few months old now, another one of those serious topics that linger in my queue of drafts for weeks and weeks while I gather my thoughts. Things aren't excellent for Asian Americans in the legal profession (first link), which I always knew, but hadn't previously seen much comprehensive documentation for. We're extremely well-represented in law schools and the junior echelons of the field, but quite underrepresented at the higher levels. California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu and a few students at Yale recently published a very comprehensive report explaining that. None of the statistics are at all surprising, even for someone barely two years in to their legal career, but it's good to see it all gathered in one place.

Of particular relevance to me, and this also goes to diversity problems affecting all other minority groups, not just Asian Americans, was the discussion of clerkships starting page 12. White students are 58.2% of the graduates from top 30 law schools, but obtain a whopping 82.4% of federal clerkships, an almost necessary prerequisite to many important and highly influential legal jobs (think academia, the judiciary, and federal prosecution, among others).

A federal clerkship is, from firsthand experience, also a job that comes with massive financial opportunity costs, at least for those who would otherwise be going into biglaw. Just by choosing to do one, I was basically guaranteed to lose two year-end bonuses entirely, passed up a year of biglaw salary to take a large paycut, and needed to postpone refinancing my massive (despite a half tuition scholarship) student loans for at least an extra year, which probably cost me nearly $10,000 on its own, just in that one year. All that is somewhat offset by the prospect of a clerkship bonus upon returning to biglaw, but that covers maybe half at most. Nonetheless, I'd happily do it all over again, though probably would still grouse about the financial implications. I absolutely wouldn't have my current, wonderful job if I hadn't clerked. I expect that my clerkship will also be an integral component to getting future "dream jobs." Yet there's no getting around how one can only make that choice from a place of financial privilege. It is a staggeringly expensive choice.

Then there was Justice Liu's recent follow-up (click first link), which also discussed another, more recent, relevant study. Of particular relevance was an anecdote that I (and too many of my friends) could relate to:

There is a little bit [of a] paternalistic attitude towards women,” reported one Asian-American woman litigator in the AJD study. “You can either be relegated to the role of being sort of a submissive little worker bee or, if you’re more assertive, and I'm definitely more on the assertive side, I feel that sometimes I scare the guys a bit.”

I may discuss this with more specificity someday in the future, but well, I know that feeling all too well. This isn't something that has yet, to my knowledge, obviously affected my career advancement , but I've often found that colleagues and law school classmates get confused on the rare occasions when I speak up in a noteworthy way (when doing a mock trial exercise during my firm's summer program, a male colleague was horrified and scandalized by my very standard performance, "you turned mean" he'd hissed at me under his breath, shaking his head - excuse me?), or when I disclose something that's against stereotype, including that I had bad grades for much of high school and undergrad (people have straight up told me "no, you didn't" - you have no way of knowing that, jerkface).

Even in as cosmopolitan and diverse a city as NYC, among a set of professionals quite well-versed in anti-discrimination law, discrimination, and implicit bias, is often apparent. Interviewers compliment natively born Asian-American job candidates on their English. Colleagues mix up different Asian-American attorneys who don't look at all alike, are of different seniorities, and work on entirely different projects. During a recruiting lunch, where everyone should be on their best behavior, a white partner awkwardly and repeatedly, out of nowhere, directs and redirects the conversation to topics such as their impressions of how annoying it is to go to Beijing and how "ABCs" (American-born Chinese) differ from those born elsewhere, at a table with several Asian-American juniors and summers. Two of those three things have happened to me personally in biglaw, and I wasn't there long. Oh, and much like when I was a summer, minorities and women always got noticeably less substantive work and fewer opportunities than certain other demographics.

Anyway, I recommend the report, it's very interesting, and there are a few odd new trends brewing. Among other things, Asian American enrollment in law school has dropped precipitously since the 2008 recession, more than for any other group. Diversity issues, for all minority groups, in law generally, and clerkships in particular, are near and dear to my heart, so I probably can't help returning to these topics again at some future date. 

Sunday Reading: Grab Bag

Casper's ads are really cute. As it turns out, their business and litigation strategy may be less cute. Funnily enough, when I searched for this image using a search term starting with"Casper" the first Google sponsored link was to a competitor with a caption about not overpaying, which probably says something about how fierce the competition is in the mattress space.

Today's Sunday reading centers on two completely unrelated articles. I wanted to be able to gather my thoughts more about both things, and share them in their own posts later, but as I started my draft entries, I realized that I may not be able to get my thoughts ready for sharing, even after several weeks, and I thought these articles were too interesting not to share sooner. (This happens with so many things that I want to bring into these Sunday reading posts, the half-written drafts languish for months and never make it to being published because I find the topics too serious, and I never quite refine my thoughts enough.) Maybe I'll revisit some of these ideas later, maybe not. 

Prenuptial Agreements

The first article is this New York Times "Modern Love" piece on the author's experience with a prenuptial agreement. Spoiler alert, I found this article perplexing, and sad, and just plain bizarre all around. First of all, how can two adults with a small child be so laissez-faire about an important economic arrangement affecting both their lives? As the "Modern Love" series usually involves thoughtful, often rather sweet and unusual takes on various topics, I found this piece rather... retrograde. It very much sounds like that stereotype of prenups, that they're used by the higher-earning, more financially sophisticated (usually male, in a heterosexual marriage) spouse to browbeat the other into an unfavorable deal, while the less financially powerful spouse throws up their hands and signs out of frustration, without a full understanding of the terms. Why would the author write this about themselves, and about the person they love? Neither comes off well here.

As background, even as a teen with absolutely no experience with either serious romantic relationships or the relevant law, I had a rather precocious (or maybe just cold) perception of prenuptial agreements as being generally a good idea. My college friends were completely aghast to learn this, even if some of them were also the children of difficult divorces. Since then, I've learned a bit more about the law, and well, most of the landmark prenup cases in, say, a family law textbook, do involve that stereotype of harsh deals in favor of the higher-earning spouse. Yet the general takeaway from that unit in my wonderful, but more philosophical than practical, family law class was that there's something valuable and good about negotiating a (hopefully fair and reasonable) deal between two people, represented by independent counsel, in a time when they love each other, are happy, and are seeing each other in the best light. That's probably the best time to negotiate a fair and reasonable plan for the "what if."

If nothing else, the contested divorce procedures in any state can be a Kafkaesque nightmare, to the point where, I know from personal experience in my pro bono work, it could take a bevy of biglaw attorneys almost a hundred hours each to figure out how to do just the last steps right, so sidestepping that process by relying on a pre-drafted contract certainly has some value of its own, if only in attorneys' fees avoided.

That's actually the conclusion of the "Modern Love" piece, that they were both better off for having gone through this process to settle their longstanding arguments about money, but that comes out only in a rather confused and not clearly written last two paragraphs. And only after the author sneaks in what I see as a pretty nasty potshot about how her now-husband:

“I’m so sorry,” Matt said, eyes down. “This was an awful thing I did to you, to us. And for all the fights we’ve had about money, this was a huge waste of it.”
“But there was no other way,” I said. “If I fought you on it, everything would have imploded.”
“I know,” he said.

So he felt awful about putting her through this experience that she found very painful (though being forced to go through a recounting of one's personal finance situation shouldn't be painful at 42, when one has a child to care for, but that's another story), but pushes for and gets his agreement anyway, and she gets to paint him as this bad guy in the New York Times? I just found this all so confusing and uncomfortable!

Online Mattress Review Wars

Then there was this article about the strange, kind of scary (if you write reviews on a blog) story about just what that trendy startup-y mattress company Casper did to a major mattress review website for more positively reviewing another company's mattresses. Spoiler alert, and this is all paraphrasing from the article, Casper brought out the big guns with a federal lawsuit, something that could cost at least $1 million/year to fully defend (and take at least two years, if not longer, to fully litigate), and eventually the former owners sold the site to an entity... that borrowed money from Casper, and the content about Casper was edited.

One major takeaway, though hardly the point: to the extent that you, like me, have a monetized blog, we all got into the wrong business, as it seems that mattress reviews, even for a smaller, less well-known site, are a million-dollar business. To my knowledge, nobody discloses anywhere near enough information for anyone to actually know what top bloggers in the American fashion and lifestyle space make, outside of College Prepster's disclosure on r/blogsnark  (in a very nice and thoughtful AMA) that she was at over $400,000 but under $1 million a year. I would assume that the more international/jetsetting fashion powerhouse bloggers, think a Gary Pepper Girl, Chiara Ferragni, or Song of Style, make significantly more than that, but who knows, it's all just guesswork. Though that's just me wondering about nosy things.

That's not to say, in the seeming David vs. Goliath, mattress review website versus Casper, battle that the David was entirely in the right. As we all might suspect from the monetized fashion blog context, particularly where sponsorships, or money in exchange for posts, are an issue, the financial conflicts of interest issues might... prevent a review from being entirely honest, or at least entirely what it would look like if money wasn't a concern. And those mattress review websites were making a lot of money, including through affiliate relationships. Casper eventually decided affiliate relationships weren't good enough:

In July 2015–a month after the $55 million investment–Krim revived his email chain with Mattress Nerd’s Mitcham, informing him that while Casper had “decided to sunset” its affiliate relationships, it nevertheless would be interested in exploring “economic relationships beyond the affiliate program structure.”
“Nothing would make us happier than to pay you a ton of money,” Krim elaborated in his next email, “but we need to do it in a context of being accretive to Casper. Currently you actively endorse a competing product on our review page. What can we do not to have you endorse another product as superior to ours? I am certain we can be a better partner to you than Leesa.”

I don't know if fashion marketing is ever as "serious business" as mattress marketing seems to be, but I suppose that's one obvious reason why the FTC may be getting serious about online influencer sponsorship disclosures, that the arrangements may be such that a fair review is impossible, it's actually just advertising, but in the blog review-type space that's not always clear to readers, and it should be clear. 

Sunday Reading: On Data Breaches and Credit Reporting

John Oliver's very educational, pre-Equifax data breach segment about the American credit reporting system.

By now, if you're American, you're probably painfully aware of at least some of the messy facts and many remaining unknowns surrounding the recent data breach at Equifax, one of the three major companies responsible for recording individuals' credit histories in the United States. (The others are Experian and TransUnion.) If you're unfamiliar with the system, John Oliver's 2016 segment above offers an entertaining and accessible explanation. Heck, even if you are already familiar, I'd still recommend the clip, as it certainly taught me a few things I didn't know about the downsides of the system. As the clip progresses it's strongly implied that these companies are really very, shall we say, "amateur hour" in their handling of certain things, including by getting people with similar names mixed up or accidentally declaring someone dead. 

Most recently, and perhaps most catastrophically, Equifax suffered a security breach that compromised the personal information of an estimated 143 million individuals. I've read that this is roughly 44% of the U.S. population, which would pretty much mean that one has a rather close to 50-50 chance of being affected (by 44% do they mean of the adult population? regardless, the odds are really bad). It's unclear how much information was compromised, but the credit reporting agencies definitely have SSNs, address histories, essentially everything that's needed to open accounts in a person's name, which seems worse than just the loss of credit card information (as in the Target breach).  By the way, Equifax discovered the breach in late July, but did not inform the general public until early September. In the meantime, several Equifax executives sold some of their Equifax stock. 

To my knowledge, Equifax has not reliably confirmed who is affected, i.e. is it only people who had "hard" credit inquiries run on them in the last year, or something like that. They had a website for checking if one was specifically affected, but, at least at one point, it gave inconsistent results to people checking the same information multiple times. P.S., Equifax was originally charging fees for customers to use some of the tools (credit monitoring or a credit freeze) that could help protect those affected by the data breach. Oh and also, when that site for checking whether one was affected first opened, using it to sign up for certain protections also meant agreeing to a waiver limiting one's ability to participate in a hypothetical future lawsuit against Equifax. To be fair, Equifax has since publicly stated that the clause at issue will not actually preclude future legal action. But let's be real, has anything about this mess given you reason to trust this company? 

I have not, to my knowledge, been affected by previous high-profile data breaches (and there are many). With this one, given its size, I think it's safe to assume that I was affected, or have such a high likelihood of being affected, and that I must seriously consider preventative measures. At present, I'm not sure what I plan to do. I already conduct my own credit monitoring by logging in frequently to CreditKarma. While their information on your credit reports is not not quite as comprehensive as you'd get from running your own credit report, which Americans can do for free three times a year (once each from each of the big three), I've still found CreditKarma a reliable way to monitor my credit. Its reports have generally been consistent with the information I received when I formally ran my credit on rare occasions (no exact FICO score, but that might be an unrealistic expectation). As far as I can tell, the only other, stronger step to take is a credit freeze, which costs money, though not in certain states. (Even if public pressure has forced Equifax to waive fees for a time, one likely should initiate a freeze at all three agencies to be safe, so fees could apply elsewhere.) 

At this point, I'm dragging my feet on the credit freeze step because it sounds like a pain and a half. (I open new credit cards somewhat frequently to take advantage of new cash back or bonus travel points offers.) Still, I am somewhat likely to ultimately choose to take the step. One note from my research: Because a freeze requires a PIN number to un-freeze one's credit, one should sign up very carefully and make sure to record the number, which might, in the case of at least one agency, be delivered only over the phone.

Are you taking any steps to respond to the Equifax data breach? Have you previously been affected by one of the other major data breaches? How often do you check your credit reports? I only realized today that I'd never written about CreditKarma here before! It's been a constant, but less-used (compared to YNAB and Personal Capital), tool in my personal finance arsenal for years now, and they're fairly well-established. Totally not sponsored or anything, they don't offer referral or affiliate programs, and it wouldn't really make sense under their likely business model. (They promote credit cards and other financial services to users on their site, but I find that information easy to ignore if its unhelpful to me.)

Please note that, as with everything else I write here on this blog, nothing in this post should be construed as legal advice. I write about these topics purely from my personal perspective as a fellow consumer. If you're interested in any of the steps I've mentioned, I encourage additional research before taking the plunge. 

Sunday Reading: Minimalism as Product

via Pinterest

I feel silly using this months old article decrying minimalism as a product for wealthy people as a vague starting point for today's post. It's deeply flawed. It picks out one narrow type of minimalism - a particularly extreme version of the "minimalism as trendy aesthetic" thing I've sometimes referred to, where the desire for fewer, but much much nicer and perfectly Instagram-able things is the primary goal - and sets it up as straw man representing all minimalism. I've followed so many minimalist blogs in my time, indirectly encountered quite a few more that I don't particularly relate to, and even then, I don't think I've encountered a single self-identified minimalist out there that fully and uncritically espouses the particular snobby and image-centric brand of "minimalism as product" that this article criticizes. 

Nonetheless, I'm always up for another discussion about minimalism and possible criticisms thereof. For instance, I've previously touched on whether all of the general "ground rules" about quality and fast fashion are entirely correct, and whether my own motivations for beginning my minimalism-ish journey were a little too based on a desire to consume nicer things by consuming fewer things. Today's links are a bit broader than that, and ultimately a bit all over the place.

However one practices minimalism, I think it's pretty clear that the varieties that most Americans are familiar with (from Kinfolk, Marie Kondo, etc.) are a concept designed largely to appeal to people with a fair bit of privilege, economic and otherwise. Heck, just living in the USA, or in any wealthy country with democratic freedoms, is an immense privilege. Decluttering wouldn't feel as radical if consumption (and overconsumption) wasn't so easy. It wouldn't appeal if one wasn't initially swamped by an excessive quantity of stuff. It also wouldn't be remotely practical if it wasn't so easy, in practical terms, to replace what was being thrown out at the drop of a hat, if needed. It's also clear that many companies use minimalism, ethical consumption, or other progressive empowerment-type buzzwords in their marketing, without necessarily conforming to those ideals. As usual, r/femalefashionadvice has interesting discussions about these general ideas.

To what extent is my minimalism-ish a product of my privilege? I've mentioned that I'm a devout KonMari fan. K thinks it odd, and I doubt my parents would approve. They'd consider the gleeful wholesale discarding (and donating) spree that the process starts with unspeakably wasteful. I had a privileged middle-class upbringing and I think my parents would say the same about their own childhoods, but they also grew up in somewhat-rural Taiwan, in a time and context where consumer goods were not half as accessible as they were for me in America. Incidentally, my post-KonMari wardrobe was about the same size as K's, even though he only throws out clothes that are entirely worn out by years of use. My oldest items, which are few and far between, are from late college. His were from high school. (That may imply something about the quality of men's clothing versus women's clothing, as he has a very lean wardrobe where most individual items see frequent use.)

I had a distorted relationship with consumption and shopping, not to an extreme extent (no credit card debt, not that crazy an accumulation of items in the end), but plenty of money was wasted, unthinkingly, on things I didn't need and sometimes never wore. I've thought a bit about where that came from (including in my comment to Adina's post a while back, which I hope to spin off into another post someday), and I suppose the long and the short of it is that I kept finding myself in situations, academic and professional, where I felt out of place and rather "less than" despite how hard I worked to get there and how, by most objective measures, I was generally holding my own or outright excelling. Mostly, I was just being neurotic or overthinking things, but part of me always felt like consuming and wearing the right things would help me fit in, make things easier, and quiet those imposter syndrome voices inside. It's complicated. Getting out of NYC for a while during my clerkship has probably a good influence to counterbalance all that, because what's "normal" for my colleagues now is so different from what's "normal" at the firm. The legal community in adjacent areas and states is also... quite different from that in the city.

Alas, I feel like I'm never able to fully get to the bottom of any of these topics, however often I try to write about them or think about them. 

Sunday Reading: Rising Above

Given the recent social and political climate, here's a quick disclaimer. Today's post absolutely does not deny the importance of standing up and speaking out bluntly regarding truths that those in disagreement may find harsh or alienating. The role models I am describing do not, by any stretch of the imagination, shy away from arguing things that make others uncomfortable. See, e.g., Justice Ginsburg's Shelby County v. Holder dissent (starting page 32), Justice Sotomayor's Schuette dissent (starting page 51), and Justice Sotomayor's Trinity Lutheran dissent (starting page 27). Also, as she notes in her memoir, Justice Sotomayor once reported a law firm when an attorney, during a recruiting dinner, said that she could only have gotten into Yale because of affirmative action. Assuming law school then was anything like law school now, that's a highly scary thing to do. My role models "rock the boat" when needed. My point here is solely about conduct within the narrow confines of the workplace, in contexts where it is necessary to get things done.*

I've noticed that one thing unites those I admire most in the legal profession. It isn't something all of them would voice in these exact words, but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg puts it best in her "Advice on Living":

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade. . . . Collegiality is crucial to the success of [the Supreme Court's] mission

The same, in my experience, goes for legal work, particularly in litigation, and interactions with colleagues and opposing counsel. Justice Sonia Sotomayor's excellent memoir (one of the books that has made the strongest impact on me) doesn't say this as such. but it's strongly implied. In particular, she casts no stones about not getting a full-time offer from her summer firm, blaming only herself. Given how long it took the industry's doors to open to women (see, e.g., the section on the 1970s in this academic article and this piece on more recent trends), it's not a huge stretch to speculate that prejudices about race, gender, and the combination thereof may have played a role. 

These role models are people who treat every person, even those voicing views sharply in contrast with their own, with the utmost respect and civility. The most vivid and well-know example is probably the famously close friendship between Justice Ginsburg and the late Justice Antonin Scalia (his Romer v. Evans dissent may be instructive as to why this may be a shock, i.e. in paragraph two). They are people who rise above the slings and arrows directed their way in order to be the best attorney they can be. 

In Justice Ginsburg's case, she encountered particularly overt sexism, given the timeline of when she attended law school and began her career. You'll rarely hear her speak of it in so many words. I had to search hard for a readily accessible online citation for how things were: "Upon graduation from Columbia Law School with top honors in 1959, she received no job offer from any law firm in New York City, presumably because white shoe law firms were aghast that a woman, a mother and a Jew would dare think she was qualified for the job." She has also written that, back then, law firms simply "would engage no women" as a matter of absolute policy.

There is a difficult balance to be struck between exhibiting the collegiality, civility, and grace that the best attorneys embody while still taking a stand for what is right. It has sometimes been so, so hard to rise above. It's entirely likely that, in the next few months or years, I'll sometimes write about some of the challenges in this profession that make it difficult to face down everything with the ideal amount of collegiality. But that's a story for another day.

P.S. This piece from a former Justice Ginsburg clerk regarding his decision to stay home with his daughter for a time is entirely unrelated, but also a good read.

Civil and Appellate Procedure Imbroglio

The United States Supreme Court, via.

I wrote my last entry a few days before I posted it, as is my general habit. Thus, the post was written a few days before legal chaos was about to break loose. We live in strange times, lawyers especially. In my current role, there are restrictions on political activity, political speech, and practicing law, restrictions that I never thought would chafe as much as they do. I was having trouble sleeping, had fitful dreams about court orders not being enforced. Inspiration, blogging-wise, faded, and has been extremely slow in returning.

Without expressing an opinion regarding either electoral politics or the legal merits of issues in active litigation, my thoughts in November about the importance and the near-sacred duty of our judicial institutions now appear... perhaps remarkably prescient. In that general vein, below are several links that I find particularly educational in laying out some of the current issues. Certain links are, it cannot be denied, partisan in their implications, but are offered here only for educational and informational purposes: 

• "The Quiet Grandeur of the Courts," a New York Times Editorial Board piece, is an elegant explanation of one of the underlying issues in the background of it all. This other opinion piece, by New York Times columnist Charles Blow, is a bit more fiery, but in the same vein. 
• The Ninth Circuit has posted filed documents and other information regarding the appeal on an official public information page. The news media and twitter have generally been about 15 minutes ahead of this page when it comes to breaking news. Given the status of the case, however, I don't expect breaking news to appear in the next few days.
• The Western District of Washington case and ensuing Ninth Circuit Appeal is actually in an exceedingly strange and confusing procedural posture, hence the title of this post. It's technical, but in a way that any law student with 1L Civil Procedure under their belt could at least begin to expound on and attempt to unpack. This informative and very accessible piece was written by Sarah Jeong, who graduated law school not long before I did, and I think it does a good job of explaining why it's odd. 
• P.S. there's one extra step that Jeong's diagram omits. Ninth Circuit rules also allow for one additional stage after en banc review, should it occur,  a "super en banc" if you will. This has never actually occurred in the decades since the rule allowing for it was promulgated. 
• What happens next? Due to the current procedural imbroglio, it's somewhat unclear. Prior to a Ninth Circuit's judge call to have the case heard en banc, Professor Josh Blackman wrote a post providing a very complete explanation of some of the options. Ensuing events have closed some of the doors he described. (Professor Blackman's more technical post, part 1, regarding the current procedural status of the case is here, but with more editorializing and commentary on what may or may not be procedurally proper or improper.) 
• Judges rarely, almost never, make public comments that can be construed as directly political. Chief Justice Roberts may, however, occupy an unique position as the head of the Judicial Conference of the United States, as CNN reports. (The generally recognized norm that judges should refrain from political comment may or may not be as sacrosanct as many assume, at least as to the Supreme Court. All that is probably for historians and academics to comment on.) 

Sunday Reading: Grab Bag

via Sarah C. Andersen

Today's post is a bit of a grab-bag, mostly money-related, of things that I was reading this week. Some of the links were either a bit clickbait-y or not that substantive, but they generate some food for thought and a jumping-off point for deeper discussion nonetheless.

Designer Items on Credit

I'm totally preaching to the choir here, no doubt, but I was shocked by this Refinery 29 article "21 Women On the Biggest Purchase They Made in 2016 - and Whether they Regret It." Out of the 21 women surveyed, five of them bought a designer item on credit without (it's either strongly implied or explicitly stated) having the cash set aside to cover the purchase. That way lies only madness, or at least  some serious ambivalence about where all that money went. 

As a general matter, I quite like Refinery 29's money-related features. They satisfy my ever-insatiable craving for financial voyeurism. More often than not, their money diaries imply a fair amount of financial responsibility across many income levels (though I sometimes find that the numbers don't quite add up or that some parental subsidies are implied). So it was a bit of a surprise to see them publish something that maybe plays into sexist stereotypes of women as spenders.

I don't want to sound preachy or that I'm putting myself on a moral high horse, by any means. I've done plenty of financially silly things in relatively recent memory and I hate how much contemporary American society like to judge women, in particular, for their consumption. That being said, I don't think anyone would argue that it's distressing to think that it's at all common for people to buy designer items on credit cards and let that balance sit.

Emergency Funds

This piece on "Why Emergency Funds are a Bad Idea" is particularly clickbait-y. It's gotten a little traction in some of the personal finance online communities I follow and generates some helpful discussion, mainly about why having some sort of emergency fund or cash savings buffer is actually really important. The universal response is that the article is silly. Even those who advocate extremely aggressive debt repayment and who might frown upon my six-months' basic living expenses emergency fund, given my student loans at ~7% interest, would agree that having at least $1,000 in an emergency fund is a good idea and should occur before tackling high-interest debt.

Please note that this section of the post contains affiliate links that could result in a commission, typically a few cents, for me if you click. Thank you for your support!

Ken Liu's Dandelion Dynasty

I recently finished Ken Liu's The Wall of Storms, the recently released second volume of his Dandelion Dynasty series.  It was fantastic, a really wild ride in the second half, and I enjoyed it more than the first volume, The Grace of Kings, which was also good. (That pattern of slower set-up in a still good first book and a dramatically faster-paced second that was therefore more enjoyable reminded me of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, incidentally.) Liu's writing style is very different from most of the other fiction authors I read, particularly in the sci-fi/fantasy genres, and it took some getting used to. Among other things, I find his characters a bit flat as a result, though I think it's an intentional stylistic choice.

I would understand entirely if a reader had trouble getting through The Grace of Kings or stalled through The Wall of Storms, but the last half of the second volume really shines and established the series and Liu's writing as something special. One of the top Goodreads reviews of Kings criticized Liu heavily for alleged poor representation of women, which I actually thought was unfair even then. I believe deeply in the importance of diversity in fiction and media, with a particular emphasis on diverse authors and voices and diversity on screen, but I still found the criticism misplaced. Either way, Storms establishes that the criticism contained in that review cannot be applied to the series as a whole: Storms is filled with women taking central stage in both political intrigue and war.

Sunday Reading: The Fashion Law

via The Fashion Law

Adina from Blue Collar Red Lipstick recently recommended the blog, The Fashion Law, which I had heard about, but never read in earnest. A big thank you to Adina for pointing me back to it, as it's fantastic (and educational) reading and I'd never have discovered that without the recommendation. Their coverage is broad, and though most topics relevant to fashion, marketing, and the law are not within my professional wheelhouse (I've done the smallest bit of false advertising work for another industry), it's fascinating to learn about. 

A few The Fashion Law articles I enjoyed from my recent browsing: First, there's this recounting of the Second Circuit oral argument in the case between Louis Vuitton and the parody-bag purveyors My Other Bag over trademark issues. As Judge Lynch apparently stated, "This is a joke. I understand you don’t get the joke. But it’s a joke." Second, this isn't as recent, but some of you may remember when Lord & Taylor arranged for the carpet bombing of social media with undisclosed sponsored posts about their Design Lab collection and that one paisley printed dress. The Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") did not enjoy that, and the whole event resulted in a settlement for an undisclosed amount for the lack of clear disclosure. The Fashion Law does a lot of coverage of the social media influencer scene and the related disclosure rules and practices (i.e. here), which I find particularly interesting. 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I'm home in California for the week and really appreciating having the holiday off to spend with my family. Hopefully, I'll go back to work refreshed and reenergized afterwards. Over the next few weeks, I'll be doing a lot of end-of-year reflection and roundup-type posts as I think about my budget and other plans for the coming new year. 

Sunday Reading: On Desire and Shopping Budgets

via Vogue Japan

Today's post is a fairly light one as far as Sunday reading posts go. Recently, I've come across a few discussions relating to clothing budgets, whether monthly or otherwise, and as it's a topic I'm basically always interested in, I thought I'd share. 

First up are two semi-related discussions on r/femalefashionadvice about setting a budget and sticking to it. The first was about the experience of constantly wanting more than one's budget can accommodate, and how different readers dealt with that feeling. The second was a discussion of different readers' monthly shopping budgets and/or larger shopping habits, often with some context regarding their age and larger financial or life situation. Both discussions were interesting, and I particularly appreciated the second, as it was fascinating to hear about some very different approaches to building and maintaining one's wardrobe. I've personally found through experience that a flexible monthly budget (that sets a hopefully strict limit on the year's fashion expenditures) works best for me, as I can't stick to a more "minimalist" and "needs and careful wants only" shopping fast-type approach. My approach may be in flux, as I think many of my shopping habits and preferences have continued changing this year, but we shall see.

Up next is a series of incredibly thoughtful posts from Twelve: of Our, the blog of Wired's Senior Art Director, Olga Montserrat, reflecting on the marketing of fashion (particularly high-end fashion), the level and type of consumption and spending that can encourage, and various related ideas. This post reflecting on the 1994 Calvin Klein aesthetic that captivated her as a teen, for instance, and how that fed into a desire, a visceral want to buy something that felt like it would, it must "somehow imprint me with a sort of status and cred, making me untouchable in a way-"

It really struck me, because I know that feeling, or something like it, could always relate to that article about the "holy hell, what did I just do" purchase of a Rick Owens leather jacket even when most other people in my life would think it all deeply extravagant and baffling, the epitome of selfish "first world problems." Of course the things that captivated me, that I desired when I first became aware of fashion and style were probably significantly less tasteful and, well, un-classy. No lie, the first item I wanted that way was a $495 circa 2007 or 2008 Coach patchwork tote, and with the benefit of hindsight, it was really darn ugly (exact photo here, and it is a horror).

Her series of posts also includes a few reflecting on regret and big-ticket purchases, as well as on how those big-ticket designer purchases fits in with her larger financial picture, especially after making a subsequent commitment to get rid of consumer debt. Those latter posts are likely a cautionary tale that I should keep in mind when I eventually get in a position to pull the trigger on one or the other  "big distant future splurge," no matter how well-planned and reflected on the possible purchase proves to be.

What was the first designer item or aesthetic that really captured your attention, maybe initiated your awareness of fashion and style as a thing to aspire to? Any thoughts on whether a monthly budget approach or some other approach to allocating funds for fashion shopping works best for your wallet and your closet?