The Savvy Life

When it comes to men’s fashion, men really get the short end of the stick. There are very few options for accessories for men and when everyone is wearing suits, how can a man stand out. Sure, there is the hair, but not every man is blessed with a wonderful head of hair. There is one accessory men can wear that allows them to stand out: the tie.Somewhere along the line ties picked up the reputation as being an ‘office noose’ instead of a bit of flair. I do think this image came from a combination of strict dress codes and poor fitting shirts. A comfortable tie is more about a comfortable shirt. Before delving into the world of neckties, I am first going to point out how to buy a proper shirt.

Dress Shirts

Most people I know don’t have a tailor, don’t know how to find a tailor, and if they did, wouldn’t be able to afford a tailor. I know at some point in my life I shall have custom made dress shirts, but until then, I only have department stores and catalogs.

The most important aspect of buying a shirt, the whole reason I am even devoting time writing about shirts, is to know your shirt size. Small, medium, large, and extra-large are inexact measurements and will lead to ill-fitting uncomfortable shirts. If a man is wearing uncomfortable clothes, he will project that discomfort to everyone around him. He will fidget and look nervous.

How do you measure up?

These are the things a man needs to know when buying a dress shirt. How long are his arms? What is the girth of his neck? If he doesn’t know what these numbers are, he will need a friend or pay a stranger to take his measurements. To get his sleeve length, he needs to measure from center back at neck base along shoulder and down the arm to the wrist while his elbow is slightly bent. This type of sleeve measurement is referred to as a retail measurement and is not the same as a tailor’s sleeve measurement which only measures the arm. When ordering online, it is important to know which kind of measurement is needed.

The neck is the measurement I really care about for tie buying purposes. To measure the neck, a man only needs to wrap the tape around the base and make sure it is comfortable. It shouldn’t be a skin tight measurement. There should be some slack, some say two finger widths of slack, some say one. I’m in the two finger category, but I happen to like breathing.

The final test of a proper fit is trying the shirt on. No one can know how he will look in a shirt unless he actually wears it. Since these directions are for off the rack retail dress shirts, trying them on is even more important.
With a proper fitting shirt, a necktie can’t strangle.

School of Hard Knots

Tying a tie seems to give many men fits of frustration. I’ve heard stories of men getting their ties tied and then never untying them, just loosening them up enough to slide over their heads. This method is slightly better than buying a clip on tie. Both of those options are uncalled for since tying a tie is a simple procedure. On this very particular issue, I’m not going to reinvent the wheel and instead will offer several links to websites where a man can learn how to tie his tie.

Tie Knot
Tie-a-tie
How To Tie a Tie | Classic Knots
To Tie A Tie

The man who wants to wear a tie only needs to find one or two knots he is comfortable with and practice them a few times. When I first started wearing ties I stood in front of the mirror and practiced over and over. Each tie I owned was slightly different and required different finesse to make the knot look right. The time was well spent because when I got my first job where I had to wear a tie daily, I could knot it quickly without much effort and sometimes without the help of a mirror.

A caveat, one that I failed to adhere to for a very long time, is do not tuck the thin part of tie into the lable of the tie. If the tie needs to be restrained the man should use a tie clip, tie tack, tie bar, or one of the many other accessories that will keep the tie from flopping into the soup bowl.

How’s it hanging?

One of my problems when I started wearing ties was trying to figure out how long it was supposed to be. I always knew that it shouldn’t be a short tie or else I’d look like Oliver Hardy. I also knew that if I sat down and the tie draped between my legs like some fancy fig leaf, that it must be too long. Finding the happy medium was the key. The rule of thumb I’ve gone by that has served me well was the tie had to touch my belt. That’s it. If it was above my belt, the tie was too short. If it was below my belt, the tie was too long.

Tie Selection

There are so many types of ties available that all that is truly important is to make sure the tie goes with the other clothes being worn and to make sure the tie expresses the man’s personality. I went through an ugly tie phase and I went through a knitted tie phase. Really wide to ultra-thin, yes, I even wore a bolo-tie a few times. I’ve never worn a bow tie but I’m not opposed to them. Whatever the case, a man can express himself through his tie.

So while dressed in the bland corporate uniform, a man can still demonstrate his creatvie passionate soul through his well chosen tie.

In a simple article entitled Branch Out to Find Work You
Love, Penelope Trunk writes out a few bits of advice for those individuals seeking to find some happiness and satisfaction in his or her job.

I chaff at some of the advice she offeres, like “Don’t go to grad school for humanities.” Yet, I forgive it because she is playing a statistics game. As with most advice, the reader needs to keep in mind that personal desire trumps a stranger’s advice each and every time.

My favorite bit of advice from this article is the following.

Don’t work with jerks.

Conversations that are insulting have five times the impact on your day than positive conversations. Unfortunately, we have a great memory for the unpleasant. Daniel Gilbert’s research supports this, but Bob Sutton, a professor at Stanford University, specializes in the jerk at work.

Sutton warns that if you work with jerks, you become one. His book gives advice on how to make sure you don’t end up working with these toxic people, and his web site gives you a way to test yourself to see if you’re a jerk yourself. After all, if you’re the jerk, you’re going to have a pretty hard time finding an office without one.

With spring on its way, it is a good time to consider renewing yourself, whether it is in your current job or in a new job.

In honor of my birthday, I give you my favorite birthday drink.

Red Headed Slut

1 part Jägermeister
1 part Dekuyper Peach Tree Schnapps
2 parts Cranberry juice

Best served as a shot. Pour the liquor over ice and add the juice. Shake it and strain into a glass. Drink.

I’m all for saving money.  I’m all for saving lots of money.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as easy as it should.  I understand the concept.  You take all that you earn, subtract what you owe, subtract what you need to live, and save the rest.  It is such a simple formula.  Yet it seems that category of ‘what I need to live’ is like a huge black hole.

Jonathon Clements wrote in an article entitled, Tricks to Soften the Pain of Saving,  different tricks to help you save.  Some are obvious, like putting tax returns and bonuses into savings.  Some are more ‘tricky’ like zeroing out your checking account so it appears you have less money than you actually do.  This type of trick will not work for me, because I am keenly aware of how much money I have.  Writing a different amount in my check register won’t fool me.  It is like setting a clock ahead fifteen minutes to make you think you are running late.  I lack the ability to lie to myself.  Maybe I’m just not a convincing liar.

If you have any tips and tricks to increase your savings, I’d love to hear about them.

A recent report at MSN Dating and Relating indicates that a greater number of people are opting for non-marriage than marriage. There are many different reasons why couples may choose not to get married. Sometimes there isn’t a need, sometimes careers are fluxuating, and sometimes it is because of previously failed relationships and a desire not to go through the pain and complication of being married yet again. Whatever the reason, there is less stigma about being unmarried now than there ever was.

“Unmarried long-term relationships are absolutely more accepted than they were a generation ago,” says Elana Katz, MSW, a psychotherapist specializing in family therapy and divorce mediation in New York City, and a senior faculty member at the Ackerman Institute for the Family. “These relationships are also popular with different age groups for different reasons. They’re an alternative for people who were divorced and don’t want to be married again. They also allow 20-somethings to dress-rehearse for either civil or religious commitments.”

I believe in marriage as a solid and necessary institution for a well ordered society. Since it is meant to be a foundation for the well ordered society, it shouldn’t be entered into lightly. No one should feel pressure to get married. Marriage should stem from a natural organic desire to comingle finances and lives. What we are witnessing in this modern concept of coupledom is a personal concept of what it means to be a couple, not a community concept. Two people have little need to stand up before God and community to announce their love for each other in order for them to feel committed to each other. Such announcements are now just part of the bureaucratic necessity of certain aspects of life. The article touches upon this in discussing people getting married just to get health insurance.

Personal Finance Advice is calling it the Ultimate Credit Card and I would be hard pressed to disagree. I don’t have one and no one I know has one which means I am travelling in the non-elite circle. That’s okay, because I don’t think I could even afford the entrance fee to this exclusive club of American Express Black card holders.

Information about how one qualifies for the Black Card today is somewhat of a mystery since, although there are references on the American Express website about the card, there is no formal page where you can see the requirements to get an invitation to carry one (there is a user ID and password protected page for those that do have the Black Card). When the invitations first arrived in 1999, the Black Card came with a $1000 a year fee. People that now have the card say that the yearly cost has risen to $2500 a year and a minimum of $250,000 a year needs to be charged to qualify.

I don’t think many people who read The Savvy Life will have an American Express Black in their wallets, so this is a chance to at least see how the elite are living so we can see what we are striving to achieve.

The smell of taxes has filled the air along with the faint hints of desperation from some of us who don’t have children or own children. For nine months it is all about the bucks and for three months it is about the deducts…. I swear I won’t attempt wittiness in a financial entry again, I promise.

There is hope out there. Start your own business. Jennifer Openshaw is CEO of winnindadvice.com and suggests that to really reap tax benefits, individuals should really consider opening a small business.

Here’s how it works. With a “Schedule C” business, named for the tax form used to account for it, all legitimate costs of doing business are fair game to be written off. Now, especially if your business is home-based, the natural commingling of personal and business expenses opens new possibilities.

She cites all sorts of benefits for starting a home business in the article Want to reap more tax benefits? Start your own business, like writing off everything from your car to your subscription to the Wall Street Journal. There are caveats though. It has to be a real business, not a hobby, which means it must be profit motivated. Plan to make a profit, even a small one, and you will be good.

The concept of The Savvy Life is to promote a lifestyle of luxury, pleasure, and efficiency. There is a lot of vagueness and leeway in those terms that pretty much allows this blog to explore pretty much every fascinating bauble out there in the wide world. One of the parameters I set for myself is not to go head-to-head with gadget sites because they have much more experience and resources to effectively review cellphones and the like.

A recent rant over at Gizmodo gave me a bit of joy and I want to point everyone to Horseshoes and Hand Grenades: Joel Johnson Returns…to Spank Us All for Supporting Crap. This is one of those rants that I think everyone should be required to read before plopping down hundreds upon hundreds of dollars for consumer electronic gear as it hits the market. Every person who even considered utilizing eBay to buy a device that just hit the market because it sold out at Best Buy should be strapped into a chair like in A Clockwork Orange and have this rant read to them.

Stop buying broken products and then shrugging your shoulders when it doesn’t do what it is supposed to. Stop buying products that serve any other master than you. Use older stuff that works. Make it yourself. Only buy new stuff from companies that have proven themselves good servants of their customers in the past. Complaining online about this stuff helps, but really, just stop buying it.

Brilliant simply brilliant. Of course I say this as a relatively conservative shopper. I am not a luddite by any means but I haven’t purchased a new cellphone in two years. By focusing on luxury, pleasure, efficiency, I tend to not want to struggle with my technology. I’m willing to read a well-written manual for a complex piece of equipment, but little more. If I have to worry about making sure I’ve got the latest firmware on my toaster, I have to question if that toaster is providing the proper luxury, pleasure, and efficiency that it should.

The midwest is in the midst of a winter storm. Things have been so balmy this winter that we’ve forgotten how winter is really supposed to like. We did have a stretch of really cold weather, but that isn’t the same as being cold and wet. When I am cold and wet, there is only one cocktail that makes me feel warm, Hot Whiskey.

Here is how you make Hot Whiskey.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 oz Jameson Irish Whiskey
1 slice fresh lemon
2 cloves
1 tsp sugar
2 oz hot water

Mixing instructions:
Pour the Jameson into a coffee mug (6 oz). Drop in the cloves and the lemon slice. Add the hot water and one tbs sugar.

Enjoy this and all alcoholic beverages responsibly.

I am going to go out on a limb and firmly declare that I like a clean shower. I like my shower to be free of soap scum and free of mildew. I like my shower to be fresh and clean smelling, which makes me confident that when I do use it, I too will become fresh and clean. Unfortunately the act of cleaning the shower is not high on my list of ways I want to spend my time. I won’t call it laziness, but I would be hard pressed to argue with someone who did call it that.

My lack of interest in standing amidst cleaning fluids while scrubbing tiles and the tub led me to explore alternatives. Since I am a gadgetfreak at heart, I picked up Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner. This device promises to clean your shower at the push of a button. At the push of a button! This promises to deliver the future to me, a future in which tedious tasks are done at the push of a button.

I pulled it from the box and admired the sleek casing and the very simple assembly. After hooking the metal rod to the back so it could hang from my shower nozzle, I ran into the first big problem with the Automatic Shower Cleaner. I already use my shower nozzle to hang a wire shelf for my shaving stuff and body soaps.

Since I was attempting to see the value in the Automatic Shower Cleaner, I decided to remove the hanging shelf and utilize my bathroom sink for storage of the soaps and shaving stuff until my experiment with the Automatic Shower Cleaner is finished. I hung the device into the shower and pressed the button. It began beeping, I pulled the shower curtain closed, and soon I heard the cleaning chemical being squirted. I was pleased with the idea of such an easy way to clean my shower. Over several days, after I finished with a shower, I’d press the button and felt smug that some people still had to work to clean their showers.

As I was showering today I had a moment to think about the placement of the device. I was still bothered by losing the valuable real estate to something I didn’t actually get to see do something. Then I realized that the squirting nozzle is only four feet off the ground. This is a quick estimate of distance, it may actually be four feet and six inches off of the ground. My shower curtain rises to maybe seven feet off of the ground. Add in the fact that it is a shower tub, the trajectory of anything squirted from the device would land below the four foot mark on the other side of the tub.

How effectively was this device cleaning all of my shower?

The areas that were being sprayed definitely were cleaner. The areas of mildew disappeared and the soap scum in the basin of the tub dissolved. The areas that were being missed by the sprayer remained uncleaned.

What if they put the cleaner in a spray bottle and let me spray the surface when I am done with the shower? I do believe that would guarantee I could get the areas I need covered cleaned and I wouldn’t lose the valuable real estate of the shower nozzle to this device.

I’m going to attempt to hang the device from the showerrod, which would give it more height, free up my shower nozzle, and allow the sprayer to reach more of the shower area.