Leaving it to the Pros

I recent­ly had the plea­sure of attend­ing 3 con­sec­u­tive pro­fes­sion­al base­ball games. My beloved St Louis Car­di­nals were in town play­ing the Nation­als. Con­sid­er­ing I don’t get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see my favorite team often, I splurged. I got good seats close to the vis­i­tor’s dugout, ate what I want­ed and even went all inclu­sive for the last night.

It got me think­ing though, what would hap­pen if one of us aver­age Joe’s went out on the field and played with the professionals?

We’d prob­a­bly look like the ama­teurs we are and get laughed out of the sta­di­um. (Except for this West Ham soc­cer fan).

So then my ques­tion was, why am I try­ing to do the equiv­a­lent of play­ing with pros in oth­er areas of my life? It occurred to me recent­ly that maybe, just maybe, I should let the pros han­dle some things in my life while I stick to the things I’m good at.

Moving Professionals

I have moved myself at least 8 times and let me tell you what. It’s not fun.

I know, total newsflash.

I can move my stuff on my own. I have proved that’s pos­si­ble. But is it the best use of my time and ener­gy? Def­i­nite­ly not.

When I moved to DC, I hired movers to unload the truck on this end. I was faced with a set of steep stairs and dwin­dling ener­gy after dri­ving a box truck 13 hours across the US.

It was clutch. It took my friends and I near­ly 3 hours to load the truck. It took 2 movers 45 min­utes to unload the truck.

In terms of ROI, it’s hard to beat. For about $250, I was able to have enough ener­gy to work on unpack­ing and orga­niz­ing my stuff which would not have hap­pened if I had had to unload my queen-sized mat­tress and wres­tle it up the stairs.

I used to feel guilty spend­ing mon­ey on some­thing I was capa­ble of doing, but I’ve now real­ized I’m pay­ing them to do it more effi­cient­ly and faster than I can do myself. Being able to put my ener­gy into some­thing some­one else can’t do as well as me (the unpack­ing and orga­niz­ing part) made it the opti­mal decision.

The next time I move (which is look­ing to be more and more like some­time in the next few months), I will be hir­ing movers.

Tax Professional 

Tax­es. Ugh.

They were due a month ago and I was hon­est­ly stress­ing over it. I have done my tax­es in the past, but I always wor­ried I was leav­ing mon­ey on the table or going to end up owing a lot of mon­ey if I ever got audited.

This year, my tax­es were pret­ty com­pli­cat­ed. I lived in 4 dif­fer­ent states and earned mon­ey in 2 of them. I had W‑2 income. I had sold stocks. I had (some) mon­ey com­ing in from being self-employed. I had rental income. I sold the rental property.

Things got complicated.

So I hired a tax guy and offloaded all the wor­ry and stress into his capa­ble hands. The moment he agreed to take on my account, I felt a huge bur­den lift off my shoul­ders. It’s always nice to know you have a heavy­weight cham­pi­on on your side fight­ing for you.

To me, the best part was that it was all vir­tu­al. He was phys­i­cal­ly locat­ed here in DC, but he could’ve been in Cos­ta Rica for all I knew. I nev­er met him in per­son. We talked over the phone and via email. I uploaded all of my paper­work through his secure por­tal and was able to sign every­thing dig­i­tal­ly. I love liv­ing in 2019 sometimes.

He was a lit­tle pricey for some­one who does­n’t pay for tax prep, but I hon­est­ly got a pret­ty good deal. I was pet­ri­fied of owing self-employ­ment tax­es and penal­ties, but I actu­al­ly end­ed up with a pret­ty hefty refund! I was thrilled! I don’t think I would’ve even come close if I’d done my taxes.

If any­one would like a rec­om­men­da­tion, I’m hap­py to pass his infor­ma­tion along! He did a great job.

Pro­fes­sion­al Stylist

I’ve always strug­gled with cloth­ing. Grow­ing up, we did­n’t have a ton of mon­ey, so I usu­al­ly wore hand me downs or thrift store clothes. As a kid, I did­n’t real­ly care a whole lot.

But then mid­dle school set in. We were the best school dis­trict in the area, so my class­mates were the chil­dren of exec­u­tives and wealthy busi­ness own­ers and they dressed like it. I was not the daugh­ter of an exec­u­tive with an image to pro­tect, so I caught a lot of flack for not wear­ing name brand cloth­ing. I hat­ed not fit­ting in.

In high school, I got a bit bet­ter with clothes. I was able to buy some clothes from the mall with the mon­ey I earned from babysit­ting and var­i­ous oth­er hus­tles. I still real­ly had no idea what col­ors looked best on me and I was­n’t com­fort­able wear­ing clothes that fit me cor­rect­ly. Because of the bul­ly­ing, I want­ed to hide in plain sight and thus did­n’t want to attract atten­tion with the clothes on my body. Add in a back­ground of Chris­t­ian upbring­ing and the mod­esty move­ment and it’s no won­der I strug­gled with fashion.

Fast for­ward 10 years to now and things aren’t much bet­ter. I had a bit of an idea of what col­ors I could wear (bright yel­low? out. maroon? in!) but just when I thought I was get­ting a grasp on things, my body changed. I grew an inch last year and have filled out in oth­er areas. I have no idea what makes my butt look best or what clothes make my waist look good.

I was tired of not look­ing my best.

Enter the per­son­al styl­ist! We had an in-per­son ses­sion for a few hours and she walked me through every­thing I ever need­ed to know about dress­ing myself.

What my body type is.
What kind of fab­rics look best.
What my ‘sea­son’ is.
What my style is called.
Where hem­lines should fall on me.
What jew­el­ry I should be wearing.

It turns out my body type is actu­al­ly ‘hour­glass’ instead of ‘rec­tan­gle’ like I thought. My hair is sleek and shiny, so I should look for smooth sleek fab­rics like silk and satin for an ide­al look. No more chunky wool sweaters. I am a fall/winter sea­son per­son so I look best with dark­er, heav­ier fab­rics on the bot­tom. My style is most­ly Clas­sic, with the rest being Nat­ur­al. I am not a funky boho per­son, nor am I inter­est­ed in keep­ing up with the lat­est fash­ions. I learned all about where clothes should fall on my body and why I felt frumpy even in things that fit me well. Turns out know­ing where your waist falls makes a dif­fer­ence in how you wear clothes! I thought I could only wear sil­ver jew­el­ry but it turns out that I am one of the few that can wear gold and sil­ver. I think I still pre­fer sil­ver but it’s nice to know I can wear both depend­ing on how cool or warm my cloth­ing is that day.

The point of this was to fig­ure out how to dress like an adult and feel like a pro­fes­sion­al. I have a very young look­ing face and am con­stant­ly get­ting mis­tak­en for a col­lege stu­dent. I want peo­ple to look at me and think “ah she must be in her mid-to-late 20’s going to work”. I don’t want to be ‘cute’ any more. One way I can do that is by wear­ing jew­el­ry like a small pen­dant neck­lace and a small watch. I own nei­ther of those, so they’re some­thing I’m keep­ing an eye out for. I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like jew­el­ry, but I can see her point so I will incor­po­rate her advice into my wardrobe. I’m still prob­a­bly not going to wear much make­up though. I can also change my hair­style from pony­tail to a bun or a tuck and roll to help make me look a bit more professional.

The oth­er major thing she did for me was help­ing me fig­ure out what col­ors I can wear. Turns out, navy, gray and bright white are all out for me. I also need to wear dark­er col­ors on the bot­tom and lighter col­ors on top. She put me up against the wall and held all sorts of col­or sam­ples up to me. At the end, I had a palette of col­ors that will help me look my best. Think col­ors like a dusky rose, deep turquoise, olive green, and burnt orange. I have a handy dandy flip­book to take with me when I go shop­ping so I can hold it up to the clothes in the store and eval­u­ate the col­ors based on my ide­al palette.

I nev­er in a mil­lion years would have been able to come up with this all on my own. I cut through end­less lay­ers of frus­tra­tion by pay­ing some­one to tell me every­thing I need­ed to know. Her con­sul­ta­tion was a bit pricey at $450 but so so so worth it. I could also pay her to go through my clos­et to get rid of things that don’t work, come up with out­fits from the clothes that remain, and iden­ti­fy what’s miss­ing. She also offers per­son­al shop­ping so I could meet her at the mall and have her help me buy the things I need. Those would cost about $1,000.

I would love help with that, but I think that’s a bit more than I want to spend right now. As with many things in life, there are more than two options at the end of the spectrum.

Enter the sec­ond styl­ist. I reached out to some of the most fash­ion­able ladies I know and asked two things.

1. Am I crazy for spend­ing mon­ey on hav­ing some­one tell me how to dress?
2. Do you know some­one that offers styling sessions?

I was assured that I was­n’t crazy for want­i­ng to spend mon­ey on enhanc­ing how I look. They actu­al­ly thought it was admirable to admit I did­n’t know what I was doing and had sev­er­al sug­ges­tions as to who I could reach out to. Turns out, one of them is in the Fin­Con com­mu­ni­ty and I’m already friends with her on Face­book and fol­low her on Insta­gram. I had no idea she offered these services!

So far, we’ve had two meet­ings. The first was the ini­tial con­sult and the sec­ond was her going over some out­fits (in a spread­sheet!!) she had picked out for me. As she is locat­ed halfway across the coun­try, she could­n’t just see my clos­et so she had me take pic­tures of all my clothes and upload them to Google Dri­ve so she can see what I have and iden­ti­fy gaps. I am super hap­py with the expe­ri­ence so far and think I made the right choice in not going with the first styl­ist for the addi­tion­al sessions.

In the future, if you see me look­ing good in my new clothes, feel free to let me know what you think! I’ll be step­ping out­side my com­fort zone a lit­tle but it will be a worth­while expansion.

Thanks for read­ing! Have you ever hired pro­fes­sion­als to do work for you? Would you hire a stylist?