Best and Worst Buys of 2015

Now that I'm looking back at all of my purchases for the year, I'm actually quite pleased. Although there are a decent number of items that I've yet to fully utilize, mostly because of season-specific needs that did not arise, I'm reasonably confident that I will eventually get good use out of the vast majority of what I bought. I don't have any data on my shopping from previous years, though with the many rounds of closet clean-outs that I undertook before reading Marie Kondo's book and my several additional rounds of closet decluttering after, my general satisfaction with what I bought this year likely means that I've seen some real improvement in terms of learning to buy less, buying things I'll use, and having a better handle on my personal style. 

I don't have one real methodology for picking out my "Best Buys" of 2015. There are other items I bought this year that I wear more often or that filled a more important niche. I suppose my main criteria here was that the purchase in question brought me an unexpected amount of joy, such that I find myself reaching for the item significantly more than I would have expected. So these best buys are more my "sleeper hits" of 2015 rather than my most used items.

Best Purchases of 2015:

• Lou and Grey Ombre Waterfall Cardigan - When I bought this, I actually wanted a different color of the same sweater (a non-ombre grey and white), but it sold out. Even with that sticking point, I've gotten plenty of use out of this, in both my casual and business casual outfits. Although I've become a bit of a snob about avoiding synthetic fibers in my sweaters, which might make me reluctant to buy another mostly-acrylic sweater in the future, I have to admit that I don't actually notice many real downsides with many of my mostly-synthetic sweaters like this. 
• Uniqlo Cotton Cashmere Sweater Tunic (similar in other colors) - Both tops I bought at Uniqlo in February ended up being great buys for me, and with the unseasonably warm winter, they continue to be featured in many of my weekend outfits. I didn't previously own anything in light gray, but I've now added a few other light gray sweaters to my closet. 
• Skagen Freja Watch - I wear this almost everyday, in both my casual and business casual outfits. I like most of Skagen's women's watch designs and the quality has been great.
• Loft Floral Peasant Blouse (similar in different print and solid colors) - It's strange, but I almost never wore long-sleeved blouses to work before I owned this top. I had a few long-sleeved silk blouses, but tended to wear them exclusively with my casual outfits, which is probably idiosyncratic. One of my main influences in starting to wear long-sleeved blouses to work was seeing some of Adina's long-sleeve blouse-and-skirt work outfits. 
• Ann Taylor Lace Dress - This dress could potentially work for a wide range of occasions any time of year. I can even see myself wearing it in my casual outfits in the summer. For now, I mostly wear it to work with thick tights.
• Madewell Northstar Pullover (similar in other colors, similar from Loft) - I'm still not sure about the quality of this piece: all my merino wool sweaters from everywhere-but-Uniqlo shrank the first time they encountered a machine-washing, even when I made sure to use cold water and a mesh bag to protect the items. This makes me too scared to ever machine-wash this sweater. It's still holding up okay though, and I just love the color and the casual, slouchy feel of the design. With this purchase, I'm realizing that some of my favorite colors are dark jewel tones like this forest green. 

It was much easier to pick out my "Worst Buys" of 2015. These were all items that I wasn't able to use as expected at all, or that I wore once or twice before realizing that the item just didn't suit me. See the list behind the cut:

December Shopping Reflections

Happy holidays! I hope that everyone has had a lovely holiday season. Work got a little crazy the weekend before Christmas, and then my mom and my sister came into town to spend the holidays with me.

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Most of my shopping this month actually came from online Black Friday sales. With this month's clothing expenditures, I've spent $2729 for the year, which at least puts me slightly under the $3000 absolute upper limit I set for myself. In the next few weeks, I plan to write up some reflections on my shopping habits this year: best and worst purchases, plans for next year, and a few other thoughts.

This month, I also tried on a few other things that didn't work. This Uniqlo x Lemaire wool and cashmere sweater with a knit-in square pattern was lovely and soft, but ran strangely large for a Uniqlo sweater which, when combined with the dolman-ish sleeve, just wasn't flattering. I also bought these Frye Erin lace-up boots from Hautelook on a whim, in hopes of replacing a well-loved pair of boots that I wore out early this year. While the leather was nice and soft, and I thought the boots were great quality, they were a little too narrow. My usual size was right on the edge of being too small and the next size up was definitely too big. 

Fashion - (TOTAL: $194.53)

• White + Warren Cashmere Open Knit Cardigan - $53.40* - I bought this on Gilt during a fairly substantial additional percent off Black Friday promotion. I didn't realize that White + Warren sweaters run large, so the size M I bought has an oversized, boyfriend sweater look on me. I don't mind that too much, and the oatmeal color works well to add a tiny bit of variety to my mostly black and navy work wardrobe. 
• Uniqlo Cashmere Crew Neck Cardigan - $49.90 - I also purchased this during a Black Friday sale. Uniqlo's cashmere sweaters are a good value when they're on sale, though I have sometimes balked at paying full price for them. This sweater also runs a bit larger/more true to size for a mall brand than I expected based on the size chart and some of the Uniqlo merino wool cardigans I've tried, so the M I got is also a little big. This is also primarily for my work wardrobe. 
• Sam Edelman Sara Leopard Flat - $55.24 - This was my last Black Friday sale purchase from 6PM. It ends up filling one of my "Five-Piece French Wardrobe" slots as an alternative to the leopard print slip-on sneakers I initially wanted, but are less suitable for my new lifestyle as an office-dweller. 
• Madewell Silk Retrospect Top, Brushstroke Plaid - $35.99 - This was one of my only in-person purchases in the latter half of the year. It was an impulse purchase, though I find casual-leaning silk tees like this (I also have one from Uniqlo from several years back) to be versatile because they work in both my work and casual outfits. 

Beauty - (TOTAL: $4.19)

• Real Techniques Silicone Liner Brush - $4.19 - Pret a Porter P recommended Real Techniques brushes in a comment, and I decided to add this to a recent drugstore.com order when I was stocking up on household items. I previously used this Sephora eyeliner brush, but wasn't satisfied because it was difficult to clean and the bristles sometimes felt stiff and uncomfortable to use. The Real Techniques silicone brush is great, though it took two to three uses before I really started getting the hang of it. I get a significantly finer line than with the Sephora brush, and it is also easier to clean due to the lack of bristles. I think it also wastes less product because less excess product gets caught on it. 

*Indicates that listed price includes shipping fees, sales tax, or both. 

Linking up with Franish and the Budgeting Bloggers again this month! Be sure to check out what everyone else bought. 

Financial Picture, Part II: Lifestyle Choices

personal photo of Santorini, Greece

The idea for this post has been floating around in the back of my mind ever since Franish's monthly budget post in May, when she received a reader question about whether it'd be more accurate to factor interest into her shopping budgets because of her student loans. Her answer touched on the difficult balancing act between  living one's adult life and being in a profession that goes hand in hand with massive student debt. Now that I've been more explicit about my circumstances, I finally feel like I can write about this topic without sounding vague and maybe a little foolish.

Repayment of six-figure student loans is a marathon, one that will hopefully only take me seven years. Combine the time spent on repayment, the time spent in school, and the time spent planning for and applying for school, and the total number of years is likely to be more than a decade. For doctors or dentists, the timeline is, inevitably, even longer due to longer training periods. One would likely go insane if they spent the entire time weighing every single spending decision against how much extra time it would add to the repayment period and how much interest would ultimately accrue as a result. If one wishes to start a family, particularly as a woman, there are biological and other reasons not to put off that financially weighty decision for that long.

Harsh calculations about how much interest will accrue are useful, by the way, and I think everyone should try them, ideally before matriculating. The schools and lenders (even the US government) are, perhaps unsurprisingly, in no hurry to give applicants the nitty-gritty details. Sure, they provide all the information necessary to calculate everything, but I don't think these institutions are ever as upfront and blunt as they should be about the cold hard numbers, given how young and relatively inexperienced much of their customer base often is.

My point is, there are limits to how much one can sacrifice for the sole motivation of cutting down on repayment time (and reducing the resulting interest burden). Those limits are more relevant and concrete, I admit, when it comes to making room for things like weddings, having children, and buying property versus just making room for a shopping budget or for travel. Regardless, I believe that a young working adult who has a plan and is on track for eventual repayment and other financial goals should be able to indulge in fun things that makes them happy once in a while, within reason. As a student, I veered too far in that direction, and even now I question my own judgment on whether I am still too willing to go a little too far in favor of indulging myself, but I don't think my larger stance on this is right.

Been There, Done That: Fancy Body Products

Before I started getting really serious about budgeting and cutting down my beauty and skincare spending, I used to go a little crazy at Sephora, buying things I didn't need to get to the minimum for free shipping. Many of those impulse purchases were fancy body care products. At the time I tried to justify it: I have very dry skin that gets bad in winter, even with a humidifier running all day and night. If I could find a "miracle product," the experimenting would be worth it.

I'm realizing now that, for my skin at least, there is no miracle product: I'll always need to apply body moisturizer daily. Even then, my skin will almost inevitably get dry again well before the next 24 hours are up. I've sworn off the fancy things, none of which were ever that much better than your average drugstore body lotion, though they did smell nicer as a general rule.

These days I'll stick to Lubriderm (I grew up using Costco-sized bottles of it and it is my usual preference, though I find many other brands to be about the same). I've tried out jojoba and coconut oil too (both are cheapest at Trader Joe's). While both have some extra moisturizing "oomph" that drugstore body lotion lacks, I never stuck to either habit because I was worried that some of it could stain my sheets or towels if I didn't give it enough time to absorb.

Coconut oil has a lovely scent, and I might consider going back to it as a supplement to the body lotion, but I'd need to figure out a better way to store it: I briefly kept half a jar of it on my dresser for body and hair usage, and it got moldy and gross within two months. The culprit was my constantly sticking in my damp-from-the-shower hands to apply it. In hindsight, I should have been more careful, and if I went back to it, I'd have to find a smaller container for it, so that I won't lose too much of it in another mishap.

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Without further ado, these are the fancy body care products that were definitely not miracle products for my persistently dry skin: 

• Korres Body Butter in Jasmine: I've tried a few scents of this, and the Jasmine is my favorite. Korres is a drugstore product in Greece (~5€/bottle) , but a very expensive one in the US ($19/bottle). They really do make lovely products, and I also love the shower gels, which I bought in Greece. I just can't get over the American pricing when I know that it's very much a drugstore product in its home country. As for the body butter, it's nice and thick but absorbs easily and it is a bit more moisturizing than the Body Shop or Soap & Glory kind. It's probably most similar to Bliss body butter. 
• Caudalie Divine Oil: I had a phase of thinking that dry oils might do a better job of keeping my skin moisturized than body lotion, which turned out to be an erroneous assumption. I might not have applied these products with a generous enough hand because of concerns about how expensive they were, but either way, they're definitely far less moisturizing than the same quantity of coconut or jojoba oil. The Caudalie is probably my least favorite of the three I tried: the floral scent is a little strange. 
• L'Occitane Almond Smoothing and Beautifying Supple Skin Oil: I do love the way this one smells, but it suffers from the same lack of value for money problem as other dry oils I've tried in that it just doesn't moisturize very well for such a pricey product. This one doesn't absorb quite into the skin quite as quickly ro easily as the other two. 
• Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse: I bought this in Taiwan when there was a nice promotional price. The scent on this one is probably my favorite out of the three dry oils because it is a little lighter and more subtle. 

I wouldn't say that the money I spent over a period of about a year and a half to try these products was a waste: Even if these products didn't work that much better for me than something from the drugstore, there is some value to something that feels fancy and smells nice. Still, when it comes to my personal budget, I'd rather put the funds towards my facial skincare routine. 

Do you have any favorite body products? Any suggestions for particularly awesome moisturizers?