Well, looks like I need to go shopping

Over the summer, one of my projects was to clean out my closet to put together a bunch of stuff for Goodwill.  (Of course, that stuff is all still sitting in bags in the corner of my bedroom).  Also over the summer, I didn’t have to wear dress clothes to work – we were on summer casual attire, which meant jeans and nice tops.  At first, I wasn’t going to bow to the pressures of summer casual.  After all, I’ve always read that you should dress for the job you want.  That said, even in my jeans and nice knit top, I was dressed better than many of my co-workers, who showed up in clothes I would wear to mow the lawn or paint.

After Labor Day, however, we’re back to business attire.  Well, business casual.  But that still means I have to look nice.  And over the weekend, I peered into my closet and realized… wait a minute, I am running out of clothes.  I got rid of things that were really too worn to wear to work and things that didn’t fit well or that I didn’t feel comfortable in.  But that left me with very little.  Oh, I have enough to get me through, and I probably have enough work tops for 7-10 days, which is clearly sufficient.  And that doesn’t count sweaters.  It’s not quite sweater weather yet in D.C.

But well, some of the tops are starting to get a bit worn and are on their last legs.  And I don’t want to be scrounging for work appropriate clothes in a few months.  So it’s time to start shopping.  But that doesn’t mean I have to go buy things.  No, it means I’m going to start browsing, checking out sales at some of the local stores, and watching for some good deals.  That way I can start to restock my wardrobe without spending a fortune.

I have a lot of coworkers who don’t worry about how they dress for work, but I have a number of coworkers who look really classy every day, and I would like to work towards that.  I would like to have a few more items to rotate so that things last a bit longer.  I would like to look good and feel good about what I’m wearing, and unfortunately, that’s going to mean spending a bit of money.

I also should learn to accessorize better, but that’s another post for another day.

Megan Smith

Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:

In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance.  It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information.  It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck.  While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.

While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.

Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.

So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan.  I needed to budget.  I needed to know what I was spending my money on.  I needed to prepare for the future.

I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way.  I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.