how to be a trendy wendy when you're a broke joke

This is something I have struggled with FOREVER. I love all of the cute clothes and dressing up, but I really truly am broke. Most of us without full-time careers (and some with) struggle with wanting things, but not having a boatload of money to buy them. I have a bunch of ways to cope with this horrid hardship.

I splurge on some things, but most of the time I'm cheap af. My philosophy is, why buy something more expensive when you can get the same look cheaper? That being said, at this point in life I don't care too too much about quality. If I'm buying something that I will probably hate in the future anyways, why would I pay over $50 for it? If you're a quality snob stop reading here because you'll probably cringe at the thought of what I'm saying hahaha.

WHAT TO SPLURGE ON

Before I go on I think I should list the things I feel the need to splurge on. I think these items NEED to be higher quality because they are staples & won't go out of style in the blink of an eye:

- Basic, plain jeans (actually anything jean, cheap jean fabric kills me)

- Shoes (in some cases)

- Eyeshadow

- Bras

- Button-ups

- Blazers

- White clothes

- Very unique clothes

Everything else is open for budget shopping. I especially look for cheapness when it comes to shirts. I get tired of shirts so easily that it would be ridiculous for me to buy super expensive ones. I would literally have no money.

WHERE TO SHOP

Now that we've covered the fact that I rarely care about quality, I'm going to talk about my go-to cheap stores where I look for dupes and cute clothes. If I'm not looking at sales, the stores I usually shop for cheap clothes are Amazon, Shein, Nordstrom Rack, Forever 21, H&M, Old Navy, Nasty Gal, and Boohoo. These places generally have cheap clothes that are still cute.

HOW TO SHOP THE STORES

I will often go look at more expensive boutique stores or name brands and find things I like, then I'll go on some of these cheaper sites and type in keywords to try to find similar items. For example, if I found a super cute pink strapless dress with ruffles on Hello Molly that's $70, I'll go to amazon and type in "pink strapless dress with ruffles" and a lot of the time very similar items pop up. Sometimes I get lucky and an exact replica of an item of clothing or accessory will pop up when I search.

When I want to shop for quality but not overpay, I'll wait for a sale. At LOFT I've noticed that they put items on sale super quickly. I know if I like anything in LOFT, it will be on sale within the next month, so I'll go in and find things I like and then buy them after they go on sale. Other brands like J. Crew and Free People are awesome places to shop sales because they use the same looking clothing year after year. I'll get a winter shirt on sale during the summer and then these brands will put out exact replicas of the sale clothing for the next winter. I love when I paid $10 for a piece of clothing that is being re-sold for $40 during it's in-season; this is what brings me joy in life hahahahah.

VERSATILITY

Another tip I have is to buy clothes that are versatile. I love plain white tops because you can accessorize and add other pieces of clothing and create so many different outfits. In the photos below I have this cheap af OTS top on, but it can also be worn as a one shoulder top. Since I can wear it two different ways, I can get a lot more use out of it while not looking the same each time I wear it.

Thats pretty much it! The hardest part for me is not getting stuck in the “you need to have this” trap. I always see things other people have or wear and then think HAVE to have it. This is usually how I end up spending the most money on things I don’t actually need. Analyzing your closet and accessories and being creative with your outfits can help prevent this. If you learn to work with what you’ve got, you won’t need all kinds of new stuff. I still need to work on this, and once I put it into practice I might have more than $5 in my bank account hahaha.

Thanks for reading!

-CDH