Financial & Travel Musings

Whilst we’ve all seen the big makeovers of rooms not everyone wants to make such a major change to their surroundings in one go and that’s where the subtle (and inexpensive) changes come in.

The big plus points of these are that they are can be quite cheap but more to the point they can let you try out a new look for your room before you fully commit yourself to it. For example, if you fancied a persian theme to your surroundings you could start quite easily with rugs before you go on to add in matching accessories to complete the look. If the rugs don’t work for you then it’s no big deal whereas it can be something of a problem if you’ve gone to the expensive of a complete makeover and then find that you don’t really like it after all.

Small and subtle changes seem the way to go. Leave the one step makeovers for the TV programmes.

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Jewelry is probably one of the top ranking areas for guys to get it wrong.

The problem is that with jewelry you have every kind of mistake that you can make all wrapped up in one purchase and probably the worst of it is that it doesn’t seem like that so you don’t take quite so much care on the choice as you really should do.

For a start, there’s the fashion aspect of it. That’s a minefield in itself but at least you can rise marginally above it by going a little more upmarket. At the lower end a lot of jewelry is driven by fashion but if you’re looking at, for example, Gucci watches then that’s something that, whilst retaining a fashionable element, is too expensive to have the consumable nature of most fashion ie you’d expect to have it for a number of years.

Then there’s the co-ordination. Does the style complement the rest of the stuff that she normally wears? If you’ve moved upmarket that’s something that you can gloss over to some extent. However, you still can’t ignore it as, for example, it would be difficult if you’ve gone for something silver when she always wears gold or vice versa. Similarly, if she normally wears largely classical styles then something really funky isn’t going to fit in well.

Finally, there’s the size. At least here you don’t have the clothes buying issues where too large is insulting and too small isn’t wearable. Generally speaking you can get away with this aside from rings. However, there remains the issue of whether to go for the chunky or the petite styles. This is largely the co-ordination issue again and can be a difficult call, notably when you’re looking at necklaces. Is that small understated gold one the way to go or would she prefer the flashy chunky one?

One way to help yourself along in this area is to look at jewelry series rather than considering single items each time. This way if you put a little more time into the initial purchase you can get away with almost grab it and go for subsequent purchases. For example, if you were to choose a Gucci watch initially then there’s a lot to be said for working your way through the rest of their range over the years ie get the bracelet next, then the necklace, etc. This way you end up with the co-ordination and size issues nailed down with only the fashion element remaining for you to worry about. You don’t need to go as upmarket as Gucci to do this as many brands further down the price points also come with quite full ranges of jewelry products but try to steer clear of the fashion labels if you’re following this approach as you’d need to be very lucky to get a fully consistent range over a number of years with some of them.

So, as a strategy, spending more time on the initial purchase and going for the series approach is one that will work well.

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With all the pushing of diet pills it’s easy to forget that it may not be that you need to burn fat, or that you eat too much fat and need something to absorb it or even that your metabolism is a little sluggish and you need something to speed it up.

I suspect that by far the greatest problem is that it’s just hard to stick to a diet. That can happen for all kinds of reasons of course. The greatest amongst those is simply that the stuff that makes us fat tastes nicer than the stuff that’s good for us.

That’s not so strange if you think about how that good tasting aspect came about. Back in the days of the cavemen, there wasn’t a whole lot of sugar about so our bodies evolved to gather and retain as much of it as possible. The snag is that nowadays sugar is plentiful but with that impulse to gather more of it, we end up eating more sweet things than we should.

So what can you do about it? Well, to aid your willpower there are appetite suppressants which act to make you feel full after eating less than you normally do and obviously if you eat less you’re going to lose weight over time. I don’t think they’re quite so fast acting as some of the other varieties of diet pill but may prove to be just the ticket for you.

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