Springtime Shopping Spree

Ah, spring. The air gets warmer, the sun shines, the birds chirp... and the cash rolls in.

March is always a big month for me, as it's when my company pays out bonuses, and I usually do my taxes earlier enough to be getting my refunds.

• Bonus: after taxes and 401k contribution were taken out, my net was about $7,168.


• Tax refunds: I got $1,266 from New York State, and $2,307 Federal

So that was over $10,000 that went straight into my savings account. My savings account balance has been rather high lately anyway-- I've been transferring $4,000 a month to my checking account to cover all the bills I'm auto-paying, but my after-tax income is a little over $5,000 a month, so my savings keep building up. I do like to keep a good cushion of cash on hand as an emergency fund, but I also want to make sure I'm investing as much as possible rather than letting too much money sit there earning an infinitesimal amount of interest. So I transferred $25,000 from my savings account to E*Trade and went shopping for mutual funds!

Here's what I bought:

• 444 of SFSNX @ $11.25 $5,000.00


• 495 of SFLNX @ $10.10 $5,000.00


• 993 of BRLIX @ $7.55 $7,500.00

These 3 were new funds that I hadn't invested in before. I don't have a particularly sophisticated method for picking funds: I just use the screening tools they provide on E*Trade to narrow down a list of funds with high Morningstar ratings and low expense ratios.

I also added to my holdings of these two funds that have done pretty well for me over the years:

• 224 of ICENX @ $22.35 $5,000.00


• 163 of BRSIX @ $15.38 $2,500.00

We'll see if this ends up being a good choice-- ICENX was way up several years ago and then lost some ground. I'm not sure it now is the best time to be putting more money into an energy fund, but I decided to take a chance on it. And BRSIX did extremely well for me several years ago, and I sold some shares near its peak when I bought my apartment. It took a big hit in the recession, but has rebounded in the last year or so. Hopefully it will continue to do so!

I've always tried to vary my picks among large-cap, small-cap, bond funds, international funds, etc. so I wouldn't have all my eggs in one basket, and though I haven't been very scientific about it, I've ended up coming pretty close to the recommended asset allocation for someone my age, maybe a little more conservative than they suggest. And my performance over the last few years hasn't been too bad, sometimes a little ahead of the overall S&P 500 and never lagging too far behind, as you'd expect given I have a lot of index funds.

After all this, I now have an E*Trade portfolio with a market value of over $78,000 -- this is what I consider my "personal" investing portfolio, not including a separate Roth IRA portfolio or my 401k. When I first started using E*Trade over 10 years ago, I put a couple thousand dollars in and almost thought of it as "play money"-- it was real savings, but I felt like I was experimenting with investing in the stock market. I've tried various things over the years, like buying a few individual stocks and an ETF or two, but I've learned that I don't want to manage my account too actively or take any weird risks-- I just want to keep putting money in, reinvest the dividends and periodically check to make sure none of my funds are total dogs. There's no exciting get-rich-quick story here, but hopefully, the slow and steady approach will get me to my goals.

Bra-llelujah!

Ok, male readers-- just stop right here. This one's not for you. Ladies, read on.

How much would you spend for a bra? And what would make it worthwhile for you to spend a lot?

I personally have not spent a ton of money on bras in my lifetime, compared to the average woman, I suppose. I have always found wearing one extremely torturous-- and I mean EXTREMELY. I have some back pain issues that make it really uncomfortable to have anything digging in back there. I also hate the feeling of something tight around my chest. I also don't like anything itchy and scratchy, or with little sharp spots. And I have the kind of shoulders that straps always slip off of. In short, I'm just very sensitive to all the things about bras that a lot of other people seem to take for granted as something you just have to deal with.
Fortunately, I've often been able to avoid wearing a bra altogether. I've always been on the small side, so a camisole was a fairly viable substitute. But there are times when a camisole just doesn't cut it. And for those times, I have searched high and low for bras that would work.
Here was my list of necessary features:

• Straps that wouldn't slip down, so preferably a racerback style
• Straps that wouldn't dig in
• No lace or anything remotely itchy
• Lightly lined/padded cups for "modesty"
• Preferably a front closure
• No sportsbra mono-boob
• No underwire jabbing into me
  

I found some bras at the Gap that were close-- a racerback style, front closure, light padding. The had underwires but I was able to cut them out with a pair of sharp scissors. They were almost bearable to wear but the straps had a little metal loop and stitching where they joined the cup-- totally unnecessary and totally itchy. I bought two anyway, but then over the years I had them mostly sitting in my drawer, I seemed to gain some weight and was suddenly a B cup rather than an A.
I bought another style at the Gap that was pretty good for comfort, but the straps were always falling off my shoulders. It was actually meant to be a convertible bra that you could wear with the straps crossed over, but since the closure was in the back, it was almost impossible to get into without either all sorts of contortions or a friend to help you out.
I bought many other bras along the way and had bra-fitting ladies make sure I was buying the right size. I did research online. I tried sportsbras, despite the dreaded mushing effect. Nothing worked.
And then... Bra-llelujah!
That's what it's called-- the SPANX Bra-llelujah! Full Coverage Front-Close Underwire Bra. Oh my god, it was different! The straps are wide and soft and stretchy. The chest strap is wide and soft and stretchy. The cups are padded and comfy and even though it has underwires, they don't dig in. There's one little place on the chest strap where there's a bit of decorative stitching that I wish they'd left out, but it's not too itchy. It closes in the front. It's my dream bra! I went shopping with a friend who wears bras that would drive me up the wall and claims she can forget they're on, and even she went bug-eyed when she tried on the Spanx bra, saying how comfortable it was. But here's the only thing that bummed us both out a bit-- it costs $62.
Most of the bras I've bought were probably in the $20-30 range. I think once I may have spent closer to $50. I'm don't think I've ever spent $62. But I did not hesitate for even a second before I bought it.

I can't help thinking that the woman who founded Spanx is brilliant. The bras aren't their main claim to fame-- it's the "shapewear"-- but she's obviously realized that comfortable undergarments are something that is very valuable to a lot of women. This isn't to say that price isn't an issue at all-- but she also started an lower-priced offshoot line called "Assets" that is sold at places like Target and Loft. Those bras didn't look quite as comfortable to me, but if I have a chance to check them out in a store, I will.

There's one other thing you may be thinking: "that Spanx bra may be comfortable, but it isn't the sexiest-looking thing..." All I can say to that is... no, it isn't. I guess if your intention is to have someone want to rip your bra off, it doesn't matter how comfortable it is while it's on. But on the flip side, I'll probably look sexier while wearing the Spanx bra because I won't constantly be squirming and breaking out in hives and grimacing in pain.

I only just recently bought the Spanx bra, so I'm still waiting to see how it will hold up under repeated washings-- if it doesn't, I may start to regret the $62 more. And it does have some competition from another bra I bought the same day, which is now my #2 runner-up comfy bra: Warner's Womens Invisible Bliss Front Close Bra. It's only $32 and a little cuter, though still not quite Agent Provocateur material. And with bras costing around $200, that's where you should go if you want Spanx to seem cheap.