As many of you know I am currently teaching an undergraduate class while I am pursuing my PhD. It is good experience for me because I have not decided whether I want to go into a business and practice in field or if I want to be a college professor. I wanted to use my budgeted savings to update my look a little bit because I have been wearing the same clothes and I am running out of combinations that do not look the same. I realized that I needed to stay under budget but still find things that could work with my existing clothing so that I would not have to spend too much but I could still have a great variety of options.

I normally wear jeans to my graduate classes but I wanted to differentiate myself from my students when I teach. I therefore decided to dress a little bit nicer than just jeans and a t-shirt. I am not wearing full on business attire but I am wearing a few nice blouses and business casual bottoms.

I wanted to get a few blouses that looked nice enough to distinguish me from my students but I did not want to appear too dressed up. I also needed to stay under a budget because I did not want to just go shopping and blow my money on clothes.

I looked at a few sales and clearance racks and decided that I would stick to a budget of $10 or less for any item. I ended up getting a couple of nice looking blouses ranging from $3 to $7 so that was really great for me. All of those items were discovered on the clearance rack and I think I will spend more time there in the future.

It took me a VERY long time to weed through the clearance racks to not only find items that

  • I liked
  • that fit
  • that were in good condition

but in the end it was worth it because I do not wear the trendy items…so it does not matter that those styles had been out for a while before hitting the clearance racks.