July 2019 Shopping Reflections

This last part of the month has been, to say the least, an adventure. In multiple matters I'm working on, we've recently won some favorable rulings. Except that, with all the trouble caused by other implications of the court's other rulings this week, including on some smaller issues we lost on, it really doesn't feel like we're winning. This was not a phenomenon I would have understood at earlier stages of my career, but now I know. Let's just say that litigation is a field with lots of surprises, which generally come around with little warning. I work with great people, and we, as a team, manage the surprises fairly well, with as little fuss as possible, but it's still challenging. We certainly can't control the actions of the court or opposing counsel! 

All the work-related stress has the side effect of amplifying those desires to shop I mentioned last month. As you'll see, this hasn't resulted in many actual purchases in July. But I think August and/or September will end up being far more eventful on the shopping front. Fair warning, I've been feeling a particularly strong impulse to treat myself to something nice after the time I've been having with work recently, enough that I think it's safe to assume I'll be indulging that impulse sometime soon. 

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As for what I expect to indulge in, that's still a bit of an open question. I have a fondness for the idea of printed silk scarves, as seen in a few images on my personal style inspiration Pinterest boards, so I've been thinking about getting a secondhand Hermes silk scarf, probably from TheRealReal. They generally have a fairly wide selection of the 90 cm x 90 cm silk scarves. I also keep looking at more Alighieri necklaces, although it takes me a long time to decide on which designs I think are prettiest or will suit me best. I keep changing my mind! At the moment, it's either something with a longer chain length, like the Initial Spark or the Odyssey (some retailers may have a version of it with a shorter chain), or maybe the Fractured Cloud because I find the shape of the pendant particularly intriguing. 

Fashion - (TOTAL: $16.00)

• Falke Invisible Liner Socks, black - $16.00 - I still don't have a go-to brand or design for liner socks designed to be worn with shoes like ballet flats. Previously, I've mostly been buying ones from Hue with silicone grips at the ankle, but they're only so-so at best. They slip off my ankle semi-frequently with many shoes, aren't "no-show" enough for some shoes, and also aren't very durable. I've been wanting to try different kinds to see if I can find something better, so I got a pair of these more expensive Falke ones to try, because I know from experience that Falke tights are pretty good. Sadly, these liner socks aren't great for me either. They're not no-show enough for the only pair of ballet flats I currently own, the Cole Haan Tali flats. The elasticized cuff with no silicone grip also did not stay on my ankle well at all when I tried them on for a day with my Sam Edelman loafers. Thus, they're less functional than the Hue ones for me. Alas, it's back to the drawing board for me when it comes to my search for a good pair of no-show liner socks. 

Does anyone have recommendations for a particularly good brand of no-show liner socks? Then again, maybe it's a category of item I don't actually need. With how my feet are now, I'm not likely to wear that many more ballet flats in the future, given that they all tend to be too uncomfortable for all-day wear for me these days. The shoes I am more likely to wear in the future, such as loafers or slip-on sneakers, are all much higher-coverage than ballet flats, so I could just stick to wearing more high-coverage socks. 

The Equifax Class Action Settlement

via Unsplash

Nearly two years ago, news broke about a massive data breach at Equifax, one of the major credit reporting bureaus here in the US. The scale of the breach was massive, affecting more than 140 million people. Given the number of people affected (I've occasionally seen reports that the figure represents 44% of the US population), the odds aren't great that one's information wasn't included in the breach. Equifax later reported to the SEC with firmer details about the total numbers of individuals that had certain categories of information stolen. Let's just say that one might not be left in good cheer after seeing the Social Security Number category!

Fast forward to a few days ago, and a settlement has now been preliminarily approved by the court in the class action arising from the Equifax data breach.

Before we go any further, an important disclaimer: Please note that nothing in this post constitutes legal advice and this post does not create an attorney-client relationship. While I am an attorney, I am not your attorney. This post is intended for general informational purposes and entertainment only. All opinions are my own and not those of my employer. 

Back then, I hemmed and hawed for quite some time about whether to freeze my credit or take any steps beyond the CreditKarma membership I already had (which, in my experience, gave me reliable notifications any time a new account popped up on my credit report). I ultimately decided against taking additional action. To be frank, I thought that freezing my credit sounded like too much of a hassle, given that I had some interest in future credit card signup bonus accumulating activities. I never even used that website Equifax made available for checking if one was affected by the data breach! (Back then, I remember some journalists were reporting that said website sometimes gave conflicting answers when they tested the same person's information multiple times.) Gradually, I forgot about the news story. 

The court has now given preliminary approval to a class action settlement arising from the Equifax data breach. A copy of the court's order can be reviewed here, along with certain other key documents from throughout the history of this case.

I imagine that people are leery about going to and trusting what could appear to be a random website when it comes to something like this, so I first looked to the Federal Trade Commission's ("FTC") announcement of the settlement to point me to the settlement administrator's website. On that website, there's a place to check whether one's personal information was affected by the breach, i.e. as the website calls it, to "check your eligibility" and whether "you are a settlement member". Using that feature requires typing in one's surname and the last six digits of one's Social Security Number (which might reasonably have caused me some suspicion if I had not first been directed there by the FTC's website). 

A Shopping Survey

via - The Lo & Sons Pearl in Pacific Blue is one of my favorite and most functional  purchases from the past 12 months.

I've had a bit of writer's block lately, and I thought that this survey Elaine shared from the Good Trade (which covered groups of people who had spent under $500, $500 to $1,000, and over $1,000 on fashion last year) was a nice and slightly new spin on a way to discuss my shopping. Because I focus primarily on how I'm feeling month-to-month with my shopping check-ins, it's easy to lose track of longer-term trends and changes to my approach. My answers to these questions cover the past twelve months, from July 2018 to June 2019. 

In addition to my actual total spend for that period, I also threw in the number for how much I spent minus jewelry. In recent months, I'm starting to think of jewelry as a somewhat separate category from everything else in my closet, something which I enjoy collecting for its own sake rather than for practical reasons (almost like collecting wearable art, I suppose). With almost everything else, I'm far more inclined to think about utility and whether the item would be redundant of things I already own. But with jewelry, my desire for a new item is pretty much always a "want," there's never really a case to be made for it being a "need." 

Also, what I'm willing to spend on jewelry has been inching up towards being disproportionately large relative to what I'm currently willing to spend on most other categories for my wardrobe. There could come a time (it might already be the case now) when the jewelry portion of the total cost of my shopping each year distorts the analysis of how much I'm spending spend on clothes, shoes, and other accessories that I see as more utilitarian. 

Age: 30
How Much You Spent: $3,452.58
How Much You Spent (Minus Jewelry): $2,305.48

A Purchase You Planned: This is a surprisingly difficult question for me, given that I pride myself on "planning" every purchase! Most of my purchases in this one-year period - especially after I became more regimented about using Pinterest to track all my potential shopping - were planned out ahead of time by at least a few weeks. When everything is planned in a similar way, not much stands out as being a particularly good answer to this question.

I would say that the purchase I planned out the most in the past year was the Elizabeth Suzann Georgia dress and Asawa belt I received last month. I'd spent a lot of time thinking about all the ES dresses before I first saw a photo of this particular dress and belt combination and could finally make a decision. Because of the four week production time and ES's store credit-only return policy (though the secondary market for ES seems robust enough that one should have little trouble recouping close to the full cost of the store credit), I had to feel extremely certain about this purchase before I put in the order. And it turned out well, the dress and belt together really work for me, and it's a combination that I like wearing for both work and weekend. 

An Impulse Buy: This may sound contradictory to what I just said about how much planning I do with my shopping, but I also find this question difficult to answer because, in actuality, one of the main reasons why I spend all that time planning out purchases is that I'm otherwise very prone to sudden impulses and compulsions as a shopper. I know this about myself, and so I need to take those "extra" steps to rein those tendencies in. Enough of my purchases in the past year were originally inspired by fairly sudden impulses (even if I ended up sitting on the idea for at least a few days - usually at least a week or two - before letting myself go ahead and put in those orders), that it's hard to pick just one item as an answer to this question. 

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If I had to pick just one thing, I'd say the Sam Edelman Lior Loafers in gold glitter (similar) from November 2018 were my most impulsive purchase. I definitely wouldn't have gotten them if I hadn't seen them for a particularly good price during the Black Friday sales. I had an easier time putting these into my semi-regular rotation than I imagined, and I wore them almost once a week since I got them, mostly on casual Fridays. At the same time, maybe because these shoes are made of fabric backing under the glitter and not leather, they're not as durable as my other Sam Edelman loafers. There's a rip developing near a seam on one shoe. So this was initially a more successful purchase than anticipated, but also ultimately a little disappointing. 

Link List: The Farewell

This past weekend, K and I watched The Farewell, the new film from director Lulu Wang, starring Awkwafina. I hadn't realized that it was only released in four theaters nationwide last weekend, so I guess we were very lucky to be able to see it! The movie is really good, all the actors and actresses are excellent, especially Awkwafina. Although the subject matter is quite sad, with clear parallels to things that have happened in my own family, there are also surprising moments of levity. 

1. // I couldn't imagine creating a piece of art that's so personal, it must be incredibly nerve-wracking to see how audiences will react. This article in The Atlantic about Lulu Wang and the movie is great. One particular quote from the director was especially poignant, I thought, and really captured something I think about whenever I recommend something that speaks to facets of the Asian-American experience I find familiar and that resonate deeply with me: 

“I was just really hoping people didn’t hate it, because it is so personal, and it is my family. If they hated it, then they hate us, in a way, you know?”

That's even a sentiment I've expressed, though it was only buried deep in the footnotes of a post focused on something else. 

Whenever I recommend Kathy's novel Family Trust (affiliate link), I always do so with some trepidation because it's about people so much like me, my parents, and the community I grew up in. It's not exactly the same (there are some substantial differences, including in socioeconomic class), but before I read her novel, I would never have dreamed of seeing something so much like my lived experience depicted in a creative work, one that was receiving a fair amount of positive buzz and attention. To the extent that anyone out there found the characters in the novel absolutely loathsome or completely irredeemable, I would take it a bit personally. Such a strong negative reaction would suggest to me that the reader might not be inclined to show empathy to people a lot like like my parents and I, and that would make me sad. 

2. // Because I so recently wrote about my past notebook-hoarding habits (which did not go hand-in-hand with actually using said notebooks), I was a bit tickled when I saw that Vox's The Goods recently published an article about that exact phenomenon, of how difficult it often is for people to use up their notebooks and journals:

“A new, unused, good-looking notebook represents pure potential. The words we inscribe into this beautiful notebook will be words of pure genius, we tell ourselves,” Korkki says. “A used notebook is sullied — it shows how we attempted to achieve something impressive and fell short. [] I hate to continue writing in a journal I have previously abandoned months or even years before because that journal represents the ‘old’ me. A new journal represents the new me, who will always be disciplined and inspired.” 

But what about actually finishing the notebook once you’ve started? 

Korkki believes that “people lose steam because the idea of perfect writing in their heads never matches what they end up putting on the page, and they become discouraged.” 

I can certainly relate to all that! It's only now that I've accepted that notebooks have the most utility to me when I'm not too "precious" about them, and when I prioritize using them frequently over needing the words I put in them to be particularly high quality (or to be done in especially neat handwriting), that I actually can use them up. With my writing and journaling style, anything I handwrite tends to be in a very stream-of-consciousness style, and I never really go back to read over it. Once I've written out whatever I was thinking, the words are no longer as meaningful to me. 

3. // I was glad to see that one of my favorite bloggers, previously at To Universe, with Love, is back and newly blogging at Of a Certain Vintage. Recently, Luxe did a good entry about the importance of knowing one's values when making money-related decisions. In some ways, at least to me (a major homebody and also a fairly shy introvert), it was also an entry about introversion, about choosing not to do (or spend money on) certain kinds of social outings. 

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4. // There are a few small items from the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale that I have bought in the past, and that I think could be a good deal: I got these Nordstrom-branded cubic zircona stud earrings last year, on Kathy's recommendation. They're a solid choice, and more importantly for their being a good value, Nordstrom does not seem to discount them at any other time of year. 

A lot of the more interesting items in the sale are from the beauty section: I recently bought one of those Slip silk pillowcases to see if it would help reduce the tangles and split ends my hair's been prone to. (It helps noticeably, but it definitely isn't a miracle product either. I'm satisfied with my purchase, but I won't really be able to compare it to any other silk pillowcase because I don't plan to buy any others to try.) Nordstrom is offering sets of two Slip pillowcases at a substantial discount, in white or beige.