So many styles, so many fashion startups that want to help you

Thinking about renewing your wardrobe...But, don't know where to start?

In SF there are quite the slew of different fashion startups aiming to improve and renew your wardrobe while saving you money and time.  I decided it's time to take a close look at some of these offers.

Here's the first four that came to my mind:

• Style Lend - "Borrow and lend designer dresses with local fashionistas" 
• Own the Runway - "Best friend with a much bigger closet"

• Le Tote - "Netflix of fashion"

• Stich Fix - "Online personalized styling service for women" 

Here's the differentiation: 

	Offering	Subscription /Lending Model	Pricing
	Concierge service. Pick dresses, stylist comes to you with your selections and extras, keep for one week, return.	Rent for one week Actually lend from a designer dress owner	About 1/4 of retail price
	Find it. Book it. Wear it. Return it. Sales Stores	Different rental times (4, 8 days), New Beta tests: 1. Netflix DVD style - keep 3 return pieces when you want new ones from your queue 2. Yearly subscription - free insurance & shipping	About 1/4 of the retail price, almost double for longer rent time Subscription: $30/yr
	Unlimited looks	Different pieces every month Option to buy pieces you want to keep	$19.99/month - statement accessories $49.99/month - garments and accessory mix Free shipping
	1. Create your style profile 2. Get 5 handpicked items 3. Keep what you like send the rest back	At the time your stylist selects your items on a date you choose, you will be charged a $20 styling fee. That $20 will be applied as a credit toward anything you keep from your shipment.	$20 per styling

Happy Hour: Saving my social life and my money

To me, the hardest part about saving is the toll it can take on my social life....or maybe it's that my social life always ruins my savings plan! Everyone has different money values, but for me spending money to hang out with my friends is totally worth it, which definitely makes it hard to tighten this particular budget item. 

It's great to save on drinks and spend some time gossiping with friends.  As an added bonus, I try to look for happy hours that have reduced prices on food.  That way you're pretty much having a cheap dinner at the same time.  Depending on how long you're out, you'll get hungry anyways so finding places with food is clutch.  Also watch out for 2 for 1 deals, often times it's per person, meaning each person automatically drinks two.  If that's the case, make sure they serve food as well! 

Depending on the situation, you can use the happy hour idea to avoid an expensive dinner.  Group dinners are pretty typical among friends and co-workers, but if you're feeling your budget tighten, suggest a happy hour with food.  It'll be less filling, there'll be drinks involved, and you'll be going out earlier in the evening than you would for dinner. 

Here our some of my favorite happy hours in SF:

• E and O Trading - happy hour till 6pm =/ but nice
• Waterfront Restaurant - yummy till 7pm
• Palio - $1 pizza when you buy 2 drinks
• Otis SF - happy hour till 8pm
• Cafe Metropol - yummy crustini! 
• Million Thai - happy hour till 8pm

Prices of things

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, it can be really helpful when you know when you're getting ripped of and I want to prevent you from being ripped off.

So I thought I'd start listing off services/items and prices that I've encountered (and I'll put in parentheses the location of those prices, since they can change dramatically from city to city).

Services:
Car

• Smog Check: $40 (including certificate). After searching around for the cheapest possible smog check I found this place in San Rafael in the Canal Area. A lot of places will advertise a price and then say +certificate, which is always about $10 extra. So for Marin I think $40 is the cheapest you'll find. Other counties are probably cheaper.
• Diagnostic (of an old car): $99. I didn't do as much research as I should have for this diagnostic, but $99 seemed to be the going rate.  They would have given me a free diagnostic if I had a new/fancy car that the computer/machine could read easily, but alas the machine could not read my car's check engine light. =(
• Oil Change: $30. Not many places in Marin County will offer an oil change for $30, but I found one. Though I wouldn't recommend it, my car fell apart shortly after, and I'm just not sure about them anymore. Plus they tried to tell me I needed to get all these things fixed and it was going to cost tons of money. I hate when mechanics do that!

Ok that's it for now. Please, please, please let me know if you have found different rates/prices for things or know something I don't about these services!