On Glasses, Bathing Suits, & Whether Budgets Make Any Sense

Nicole: Hi! Happy Summer Friday and National Donut Day!

Ester: Indeed! Though I have not availed myself of same. To me, it’s happy Finally Buying That Bathing Suit day. I’m headed down to Iris this afternoon to give her back the blue suit and actually purchase the black one. Have you had a donut yet?

Nicole No, but soon! This afternoon. I’ve already got my donut shop staked out and will be descending. And Happy Finally Buying That Bathing Suit day! I love finally buying something you’ve been wanting to buy for a while. I finally bought glasses from Warby Parker this week, now that my freelance checks have started coming in again.

Ester: Oh, how exciting! Pics or it didn’t happen.

Nicole: They have to make them first, so I don’t expect to be able to share pics until next Friday. And there is no good way to say “pics of the bathing suit or it didn’t happen,” so I won’t.

Ester: Ha! Yes, indeed. Suffice it to say Ben chose “sexy” over “flattering,” and I commend him for it, though he denied that that was the dichotomy. I decline to let the Internet decide, so that’s that. The glasses thing is fun though. How many pairs of glasses have you bought as an adult, would you say?

Nicole: Four. I bought one basic pair in grad school. Then when I got my first permanent office job, I bought this pair of old-fashioned 1950s-esque frames, about the time Mad Men was just getting started and I wanted to pretend I was in the 1960s but really in the last years of the 1950s. Just like the show!

Later I bought my current glasses, and now I’m buying the Warbs. So … four. You?

Ester: Three: one pair that I was excited about it because they were on super sale but in retrospect I don’t think were terribly attractive (lavender); one pair that I enjoyed until Babygirl broke them (black); and the pair that I have now (dark red). I’ve always found glasses hard to buy — they change the tenor of your face so much, and it’s strange to, in the moment, have to decide whether the new tenor is good, bad, or indifferent, because anything different can be hard to adjust to. Mostly I wear contacts instead and it’s not a huge issue. Do you do contacts?

Nicole: I did in high school and college, but I kinda found them a hassle. Then as I got older I started thinking “hmmm, glasses hide the undereye lines and blemishes…” It’s also, like, some people wear a lot of makeup to draw attention to the eye. But a bright pair of glasses does that too! (She thinks, optimistically.)

Ester: Ha. Yeah, I still have my mom’s voice in my head from back in middle/high school, when I had a very unattractive pair of glasses because “cool” glasses hadn’t been invented yet, and my mother despaired of me anytime I left the house in them. Oh, and Dorothy Parker’s voice too: “Men seldom make passes / at girls who wear glasses.” That’s out of date now, I know, and yet I still feel like I *should* wear contacts, to seem like I’m making more of an effort.

Nicole: Something something Marilyn Monroe something something “you look better with them on.” I suspect glasses are not the critical factor in whether people like you, despite what THE MEDIA would like us to believe.

Also, my junior high glasses were horrendous. Bright pink.

Ester: Hee! Yeah. I have a cruel and critical inner voice that echoes the media, like cable TV I can’t shut off. It’s the worst. But, you know, therapy! Therapy helps. Meanwhile, I have found an excellent gif, it really ties the conversation together:

Nicole: If I could find a pair of donut novelty glasses (with prescription lenses) for under $40 I would buy them like hotcakes. Or like donuts.

Ester: Naturally. Which reminds me, let’s talk budgets briefly! Helaine Olen tells us today that she kind of hates them, and she thinks they’re not as useful as they’re purported to be, and as a non-budgeter I cheer for that; but how about you? How did you react to her Slate column? Did you budget for your new glasses and does that make you feel better about having bought them?

Nicole: I didn’t budget for my glasses in the sense that I said “I will only pay this many and no more.” I did budget in the sense that I said “I am not going to pay $400 for glasses even though I really like these frames, and I am also not going to buy my new glasses until I can afford them while still chucking half of my money into those sub-savings accounts so I can pay my taxes and debt and stuff.”

But that’s not what Helaine Olen means by a budget. She means “this month I will spend $100 on eating out, and $200 on clothes,” and I’ve tried doing that and it’s always failed. How about you?

Ester: I have never budgeted; instead, my MO has been to simply spend as little as possible and worry all the time. It’s not a great system, I grant you. It does kind of work, though. I always got my bills paid and I managed to save enough for a down payment while still maintaining friendships and some approximation of a woman’s wardrobe. It causes some friction in my relationship, though: Ben doesn’t budget either, and we don’t really have rules — like, “anything over $500 we have to discuss and ideally agree on” — which means we simply trust each other to be careful and prudent with money. It’s mostly functional and it’s madness and it’s stressful all at once, and it requires lots of communication which can be exhausting. Would a budget be easier? Maybe?

Nicole: I mean, budgets really only exist in a vacuum, as it were. Helaine Olen’s piece starts with how she “blew her budget” because her dog got sick. Once you start introducing other variables into your life like family, friends, pets, you can’t really control how much you spend. People have needs and wants, and you’re going to work to meet them.

Ester: Absolutely. I talked to Mike about this briefly earlier this week — in re: the expensive bathing suit, of course — and his approach was straightforward: once he pays off what he needs to pay off, and puts money towards the priorities he considers crucial, anything left over he is free to spend on whatever makes him happy, and he spends it, the end.

Nicole: That’s an ideal situation, and that’s sort of how I do it too, and then you get to the end of the month and your dog gets sick, or your friend says “hey we should go to this awesome concert,” and then there you are. You’ve already spent your discretionary money on stuff that makes you happy, but there is more month left!

Ester: Right! I have been very, very lucky that I’ve never been in that situation. I’ve never had to borrow against the future, even when I was living in New York on $28K a year. It helps that I didn’t start out with debt, and that was, as I’ve said, a huge gift. I have, on the other hand, said no to things because I felt like I should, to be financially responsible: no to concerts, to trips, even to the occasional wedding. I would rather say “no” to something optional than put it on a credit card; that’s mostly because of my own fear of credit cards. I know many, many people in those situations don’t even have the choice. Credit cards are the only way they can get by.

Nicole: Yeah. That is my big fear this year too. I did the credit card thing, and I’ll be the first to say that it helped me in my career and life — like, I put tickets to things on credit cards, and then I showed up and talked to people, and I got jobs off that. But this year is about getting my financial house in order, as it were, and so I spend every month worrying that I won’t have enough and I’ll have to use a credit card again.

I’ve tried to do the math on it, BTW — like, if I have X discretionary money and Y days until my next paycheck, how much fun can I have every day? And then you’re using the envelope method, which also only sort of works.

Ester: Yeah, seriously. Besides, fun doesn’t parcel itself out neatly like that; as you said, it often pops up like “concert you’ve been dying to attend, must buy tickets now!” and if it does that at the same time as your dog gets sick, you’re screwed.

Nicole: In other words, all financial advice is useless, best of luck!

Ester: Kinda! “Use good judgment and try to save what you can.” That’s all anyone can or should really say with confidence. At least for most people, who aren’t looking to get rich so much as to get by.

Nicole: I am still looking to get rich! And with my new glasses, I’ll be able to look THAT MUCH HARDER.

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