Friday Link List: Mostly Money Talk

K and I recently had dosas at Pongal, which we enjoyed! Eva Chen recently went to the same restaurant in one of her Instagram stories, which made me feel cool. 

I'm a bit taken aback by how quickly this month is rushing by, as January felt so slow! It's been a productive month. I got that last root canal done, filed my taxes, and have kept up my workout routine. I also shopped a lot this month, ack, most of it in the form of a new bag. I'm not too worried yet because my budget is ultimately rather flexible at this stage of my life (fear not, all my financial goals are well taken care of), though I may start feeling like I'm overdoing it soon if I keep it up.

One thing I've been having fun with recently is watching K play Persona 5. We're homebodies on weekday evenings, and usually for part of each weekend. All those long hours at work really catch up with us! Although he's a bit more extroverted than I am, we enjoy hanging out quietly together at home, often with him on the PS4 and me on my laptop, browsing blogs or writing. It's quite different in style from the "open world" games he typically plays, and it's a little easier to follow the plot while half paying attention. It's a quirky, stylish game. 

1. // I was happy that my post about the first designer handbag I ever fell in love with, the Miu Miu Coffer (not one of the enduring classics), generated a lot of interesting discussion. On a related note, I also wanted to link to some of the online discussions regarding that recent Harper's Bazaar piece about how women generally get shamed far more than men for anything they spend money on, whether big or small. 

It's a topic that's long been near and dear to my heart, though it's complicated. On the one hand, I'm always upset by sexist double standards. On the other hand, I feel like many types of marketing, particularly social media "influencer" marketing, is geared towards encouraging women in particular towards excessive consumption and materialism (points made by others here and here). Then I think about the latter issue some more, and get depressed about all the expectations placed on women in terms of maintaining physical appearance, and how it's essentially "necessary" to spend a lot on those things every year... Ugh. 

2. // Racked does some really interesting articles. I really related to this article that was essentially about guilt and a touch of "imposter syndrome" regarding expensive designer purchases, though as I mentioned over at Michelle's blog, I come at the topic from a slightly different place. There was also this interesting historical article about one of the women from "murderesses row" in 1920s Chicago.

Speaking of financial anxiety and guilt over expensive purchases, whether large or small, Bitches get Riches has done several great entries about how to deal with those feelings, including here and here.  

3. // Legal industry gossip time! In recent weeks, there was a set of extremely high-profile partner departures from a prominent biglaw firm (one that solely practices litigation, which is unusual). This by itself isn't too surprising, as individual partners, and sometimes entire practice groups, move between firms often. It's maybe a bit more atypical for a whole slate of high-profile partners to leave together to start their own small firm. At any rate, this caused some serious "reply all" email drama.

4. // Almost everything I'm talking about this week is to do with money. Luxe did a great post about how to pick funds to invest in through a workplace retirement plan. She does a good job covering all the things I keep an eye out for. Alas, I don't get to do this with my current 401(k) plan. 

In terms of other, not as directly money-related, recent blog entries that I enjoyed recently: Style Dtour did a good roundup of some recent internet discussions about skincare, which was ignited by a rather clickbait-y piece claiming that all skincare is a con. Jess at A Thinking Animal did a fun analysis about the economics of knitting.