Makeup
How Much Should You Really Be Spending on Beauty Products?Four women hand over their salon statements and Sephora receipts to our expert analysts to find out whether their beauty spending fits their budgets |
Expert Advice Technically, using the 10 percent rule, Patti has $14,713 a year to use on purchases like makeup. But things get more complicated when you factor in her daughter's college bills and her hope to retire in 10 years. Patti has a retirement fund and her husband has a pension, but Matthews says that not all baby boomers are so lucky.
"An estimated two-thirds of baby boomers haven't saved enough money to maintain their standard of living in retirement," says Matthews. "A 2010 survey showed that 34 percent of Americans actually have zero retirement savings and 22 percent of that number are people older than 65." If a baby boomer has no retirement plan in place, she should immediately cut back on all nonessentials. "A baby boomer doesn't have that much time to save, unless they're OK with working until they're 80 -- assuming there is a job they can do, and they're in good health," says Matthews.
Her best advice? "We need to spend on certain things to make our lives meaningful, and we do have to take care of our present selves as well as our future selves. So the general principle is to find a balance."
SEE NEXT PAGE: Where to Save
"An estimated two-thirds of baby boomers haven't saved enough money to maintain their standard of living in retirement," says Matthews. "A 2010 survey showed that 34 percent of Americans actually have zero retirement savings and 22 percent of that number are people older than 65." If a baby boomer has no retirement plan in place, she should immediately cut back on all nonessentials. "A baby boomer doesn't have that much time to save, unless they're OK with working until they're 80 -- assuming there is a job they can do, and they're in good health," says Matthews.
Her best advice? "We need to spend on certain things to make our lives meaningful, and we do have to take care of our present selves as well as our future selves. So the general principle is to find a balance."
SEE NEXT PAGE: Where to Save