urban reds

bagatelle jacket ($17!), charlotte russe skirt, thrifted blouse, rebecca minkoff bag, dolce vita shoes

I'm in love with this paper-thin red leather jacket; it's really the perfect layering piece for transitional weather. The bare legs in these pictures (taken this weekend during the 70-80 degrees warm spell) seems so far away as Austin is currently below 30 degrees right now. I'm not going to venture outside in any kind of attire other than my heaviest coats so you'll probably be seeing random outfits from this weekend rather than from this week! Haha.
I will post my outfit for this week's theme, styling the boyfriend blazer in an outfit, on either Thursday or Friday which means the contest deadline for you guys to submit links is pushed back to Saturday! 
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Yasmeen asked me in the previous post how often do I buy clothes/shoes and how other bloggers afford to constantly purchase things in general. I can't speak for anyone else although I've read on a post from IFB a while back that some have managed to pay for their purchases on credit cards. While I'm not the best at balancing a checkbook, I do not like to be in the red so whatever I buy, I make sure I have enough in the bank to cover it. Although I'm kind of reluctant to share my personal finances on the internet (like most other bloggers), I've decided to be more transparent about my budgeting. I'll just say that after rent, textbooks and basic groceries (ie. unprocessed food. Not candy, cokes, packaged meals, etc.) are paid, I have on average $100-200 (depending on how much I'm working outside of school) per week to spend on whatever I want...this includes any sort of luxury goods (yes, that includes any sort of shampoo/ hair styling products over $3!):

1. I don't drink, don't smoke, or anything of the sort. I make my own coffee/tea. No $30 bar tabs or $5 lattes.
2. I cook my own meals instead of eating out/purchasing pre-cooked/packaged meals, saving a lot.
3. I buy drugstore (instead of brand name) beauty products with the exception of the primer potion by Urban Decay (I'm too lazy to reapply my eye makeup 10x a day). I stock up during CVS's clearance sales on the $2/bottle shampoos and makeup. (makeup junkies might be shaking their head in total disapproval right now, haha) 
4. I rarely get pedicures/manicures...I do them myself most of the time unless it's Fashion Week. I cut my own hair so no salon fees (which since even Tim's haircut costs around $100 every two weeks, I'm going to assume I'm saving probably even more than that).
5. Some weeks I buy nothing while other weeks I buy a lot (ex. during the clearance sales weeks on sample sale sites). I never buy in season items unless they are vintage/thrift.
6. If you notice, most of my items are f21/vintage/thrift/asos clearance so they range from $0.99 to $50.
7. My nicer (ie. designer) items were always purchased on at least 60% clearance...usually more like 75-90% clearance. For example, the Dolce Vita shoes retailed $155 but I got for $35, the new leather jacket I got retailed over $450 but I got for ~$100, the Leonello Borghi bag I cherish retails at around $1250 but I splurged one Christmas and got it for ~$200, the Diane von Furstenburg boots that retailed ~$550 I got for $98. 

As you can see, a few different lifestyle choices makes affording nice things with a crappy student budget feasible. I work more than 30 hours a week outside of my normal engineering courseload during the semester and even more during the summer, just so I can have spending money: tutoring (either hired by UT or one-on-one private tutoring), grading papers, research, etc. I constantly get to my apartment past midnight because I just spent the entire day in classes/research/work. Once I even asked Tim to drive me back to campus at 2AM at night to finish a crucial step in a experiment. As my blog is getting slightly more noticed I'm getting a few bucks a month from advertising but that's way less than minimum wage if you consider how many hours I pour into this blog.
Since I never had an allowance as a child and my best friend's parent had to pay for a prom dress on clearance for $40 because my parents found it silly to pay any amount of money on clothes over $10 that wasn't to be worn again (even though we are far from poor), I find some sort of psychological satisfaction in having clothes rather than having a nice dinner out? Weird but true story.
PS. now that was probably way T.M.I...but I've been asked this question in different variations and I decided to finally blog about it. Hope at least a few people read it because I spent an hour thinking and typing this out!

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