But don't go jumping on the fashion bandwagon without a good idea of what you're jumping for. To buy a new outfit just to buy something new because it is new is a poor way to budget. The sooner you learn how to buy what you want when you need it, the faster you'll find that you have fewer difficulties in your wardrobe.
I don't think there's a person alive who hasn't made a mistake at one time or another, who was carried away by something that was just too beautiful to resist, and who subsequently discovered that the dress (or coat or suit) did absolutely nothing for her. Such calamities lie fallow in every closet. But there are ways you can keep your mistakes to a minimum.
Don't buy anything unless it fits your figure, your personality, and your present wardrobe. Consider what you have before you get something new. Try to have the new purchase dovetail into your scheme. Don't switch colors all of a sudden. Switch slowly via accessories and blouses and sweaters so that you can evolve a new color scheme over a period of time without wrecking the one you've already got.
There are times when a bargain turns out to be more than you bargained for, and there are times when it turns out to be a good deal less. A bargain is of no use to you unless it serves a purpose. If you never wear purple, buying a purple dress just because it is cheap is a total waste of money. If you look ghastly in peplums, don't buy a peplum suit just because it's marked down.
Do look before you leap. It is wiser in the long run to buy clothes that make sense than it is to save cents. Good basic costumes in neutral colors should be the backbone of every wardrobe—a wardrobe such as I outlined before. Allow yourself, at holiday time, at birthday time, when you have a chance to spend your checks or to hint at things you'd like to get, a bit of splurging. But confine your splurging to small items: scarves, blouses, sweaters, jewelry.
These small items put flesh on the basic skeleton of your wardrobe. They add color, they add dash, and they give you a chance to express yourself. Because they are inexpensive, they can be discarded when you are tired of them. Because they are adaptable, they can be changed to suit your fancy. A collection of colorful scarves can pep up a whole closet.
More substantial than accessories, but every bit as switch-able, are clothes that mix and match. Sweaters that team up with skirts, jackets that make suits with matching skirts, that look very unsuitlike with contrasting skirts. Blouses that look tailored with school skirts, devastatingly datelike with taffeta skirts. There can be no end to the possibilities of a small collection of separates, provided you have chosen each and every piece with the idea of wearing it with more than one thing you already possess.
The plain fact of the matter is that you are the common denominator of your wardrobe. If you are not divisible into eveiything you own, then you had better subtract the misfits. A wise girl has few clothes, but clothes that she knows are right and becoming. A foolish girl has lots of clothes, none of which is quite right, and she is always moaning, "But I haven't a thing to wear."
Youll always have something to wear if you plan ahead, if you buy with an eye to the future, a glance at the past, and a firm foothold in the present. It takes practice to straddle three tenses, but it can be done, and the girl who can do it knows that every bit of planning pays off—not only in dollars saved, but in compliments earned.
"// only I had the money ..."
The plaintive lament about money or rather the lack of it cannot fairly be said to apply strictly to teen-agers. Many adults and lots of children are afflicted by the same desire. However, teen-agers are in rather a special position in regard to money—they need more of it than children do and yet they are not free to earn it as an adult would.
Some teens, of course, have their own allowances, but sometimes these do not suffice for all the things that need be bought. Mothers and fathers do the best they can to provide for their offspring's needs, but when it comes to an extra formal or money for a frou-frou blouse, things that aren't desperately needed but desperately desired, then the best answer is to try and earn your own.
Earn your, own, you say. All very well, but how? How? In many ways, so many in fact that you can almost take your choice. First you must decide if you want to make money consistently or just in periodic spurts for special expenditures. If you decide that you want a constant supply trickling in every week, then you must find a way that will guarantee a steady income. That is the program I will discuss first.
Jobs that bring in money steadily are jobs at which you must work steadily. Naturally, with school and dates in the picture, these jobs will have to be part-time ones, which can be done of an afternoon or a Saturday. These jobs are not always easy to find, but they do exist. Check into selling jobs in the department store, the drugstore, the stationery shop. Look into waitress jobs, again at the drugstore, the hotel restaurant, and such.
Aside from such steady jobs as these, there are jobs like taking on the sales of magazine subscriptions or greeting cards, which can be steady provided you are willing to devote the time to them.
Baby-sitting can be a steady job or a hit-or-miss affair, depending on the way you want to go about it. If you want to work at it regularly there is nothing to prevent you from making up a list of clients and keeping in constant touch with them. Often young married couples would like to know that they can depend on you to be free to come to their house one definite night a week. You could schedule yourself in such a way, that you could count your chickens in advance.
Such a schedule might look something like this:
Monday night—The Browns Tuesday night—The Smiths Wednesday night—The Joneses
Thursday night—(no regular job) Friday night—(no regular job) Saturday night—(free for dates)
Don't forget on your schedule to leave room for free time—to do homework, to wash your hair, and for all the million and one things that have to be accomplished. Also, those free nights from time to time can be used to take on emergency jobs when you would like a little extra cash.
Suppose, however, that you don't want to baby-sit on a steady schedule. You only want to do it when you are in a dire financial slump. Then get in touch with a friend of yours who does baby-sit regularly and ask her if she would like to suggest you to her clients as a filler-in. Also, you could babysit for friends of your family, on the understanding that you are only free to do it from time to time. However, once you have taken on a job, do not cancel it. Even if you only expect to work spasmodically, you will get yourself a bad name if you back down from an engagement.
In summer baby-sitting can truly evolve into a profitable occupation if during the school months you have established a reputation of being safe and sound. One idea is for two girls to band together to form a sort of unofficial kindergarten. The system would work like this: contact the mothers of five children or so and tell them that you and your friend would agree to take the child in every morning (or every afternoon) five days a week. Think of the boon to busy mothers who would know in advance that all through the summer they could count on three hours or so that would be uncluttered with small children.
In order to amuse the children during the time that you were responsible for them, you could take them to the park, to the playground, or to the beach (if one is nearby). On rainy days you could use your own home (here you would have to talk over the plan with your mother) and read them books and supply them with crayons and paints. With a little organization, you could get the thing going in no time, and incidentally gain some valuable knowledge on the care and feeding of children.