Teen Money Guide - Issue 1

This will be a recurring series of posts regarding everything I was told or wish someone had told me when I was a teen about money. Of course, teens don't read unless it's about vampires, werewolves, alien love affairs or some other fantasy nowadays so eventually these will have to morph into videos.

But anyways...

Save more than 10%

When I was young I heard the whole save ten percent thing. Something about being in the Bible belt; give 10% to God put 10% in your savings account. But as a teen who actually has a job in this still slow economy (ignore the hype about being in a recovery), I advise if you don't have to take of yourself with that money because of parents that can't cover all of your ESSENTIALS due to the current job market, put more than 10% in your savings account. That way by the time you're legal you'll already have that rainy day account a lot of Gen Y and some of you Millenials won't have but will desperately need.

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Make My Mani Last!

How many times has it happened? You just paint your nails or worse, pay for a manicure, and a day later your color is already chipped. I feel your pain.

 

 

 

Although ECV took a summer hiatus from posting it doesn't mean we weren't working hard to solve the beauty problems that bug us and you to no end. We did the following nail polish experiment after researching a lot of different base and top coats to try to find the best.

 

And now for the how-to...

 

1. Before we even get to the polish we soaked our nails for a few minutes. How often does this happen at your average strip mall nail shop nowadays? Please let us know in the comments if your manicurist does this. But here's the reason: soaking your nails gets them soft enough to cut evenly and the nails swell slightly.  Having them swollen when painting is important if you wash your hands as much (or as long) as I do.
2. Next we applied a thin base coat of Seche Clear^TM crystal clear base coat. It had the best reviews from the various national beauty editors and mags we researched.
3. Two thin coats of color were applied to the nail and the edges of nails. If you don't have nail tips that extend past your finger, don't try to get the polish on that extremely thin edge or you'll just end up with a lot of color on your fingers. We used Avon Nailwear Pro+ nail enamel in Tangtastic mainly because it's a color we retail so we wanted to see how long we could get our product to last. Unfortunately, as you'll see in the photos below, it didn't live up to the "12 days of lasting color" as advertised.
4. Finally we finished up with Avon's Speed Dry top coat. We applied a thin top coat to the top and edges of the nail and under the nail edge.

 

Photos are not retouched in any way (only cropped so you won't see so much sheet or desk) and no additional top coats were added. Sorry for the brightness variations! Please send comments of what you think.
 

Day 1



Day 2

Day 3

Oops, looks like someone forgot to snap a pic.



Day 4

 

Day 5A

Day 5B



Day 6







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Artwork by ASP - Sonic the Hedgehog

For our first post to the design section we're posting artwork by a young aspiring artist called ASP. She is a huge fan of the trademarked Sega character from the 1990s Sonic the Hedgehog.

All of the drawings that we'll post in the future are her original renderings of various characters from the Sonic universe.  The first is a picture of the hedgehog that started the franchise...

Sonic!

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