😫📈 Make it make cents!

It’s Monday, Boston.

🌒 Happy eclipse day! From weddings in the path of totality, to eclipse-viewing playlists, to eclipse-tracking apps, New England is having its not-so-sunny moment in the sun today. If you’re watching from Boston, remember, the eclipse will peak at 3:29 p.m. And don’t forget your eclipse glasses! 

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Mother nature: 1. Willow tree: 0.

• Heaven for bargain hunters

• A Dunkings dilemma 

Up first…

MONEY MOVES

Investing for newbies

If the words “brokerage account” are enough to send you spiraling … never fear. We’re back with another installment of Money Moves, our now five-part series where local money experts answer your money questions. Last month, we tackled student loans.

Next up: Investing.

🙋‍♀️ First things first: Let’s debunk some myths. For the average person, investing shouldn’t be a huge gamble, isn’t that difficult, and requires neither a degree in finance nor a ton of money, said Tori Dunlap, CEO of Her First 100K. “My not-so-conspiracy conspiracy theory is that this multibillion-dollar industry has been built off making women feel like they're too stupid to understand it,” she said, so many "hand their money over to a financial advisor or a trader who is stereotypically and statistically a man." 

⏰ But before you start your investing journey, take care of two things: Establish an emergency fund (see: our savings story) and prioritize any debt you have, including student loans, with over 7-8(ish)% interest rates (investing should take priority over debts with a lower interest rate, Dunlap says, because you can get a higher rate of return investing). But due to compound interest, the most important factor in long-term investing is time (which you can see using this 401k retirement calculator), so once that’s squared away, start as soon as you can.

💸 Your first investment shouldn’t be a risky one. Yes, there are folks who day trade and mess around with meme stocks. But regularly contributing to a tax-advantaged retirement account like a 401k and/or Roth IRA is just about all the average investor needs to be doing, said Danielle Piskadlo, executive director of Women’s Money Matters (read up on which account is the best fit for you here). In many cases, your employer will offer one or both of these accounts for you to contribute a percentage of your salary to (and some will even match a percentage of your contributions!), but you can also open them on your own. 

🚨 But remember! A 401k or Roth is just a basket to hold your investments. Once the money’s in your accounts, you still need to manually invest that money. For that, Dunlap recommends an index fund, which will safely distribute your money across many different stocks and bonds. For more detailed info on the whole process, see here.

😬 Our No. 1 piece of advice? Just do it. For Grace Lemire, a 25-year-old finance TikToker who started contributing to an index fund monthly at 22, the key to beginning her investing journey was squashing her fears. "You're never going to have 100% of the information,” she said. “But at some point, you just have to move forward with the 70% of information that you do know, and start small.”

📝 If you’re looking for additional resources to learn: Tori recommends her stock market school, and Lemire recommends Jeremy Schneider’s personal finance club. 

B-SIDE MADNESS

Boston’s best nightlife

🪩 It’s the Nightlife Madness final four! We crowdsourced some of Boston’s best nightlife venues to create our own March Madness bracket, where B-Siders can vote which spot is the city’s best. We’re down to the wire, make sure to keep voting!

TOGETHER WITH CELEBRITY SERIES OF BOSTON

Experiences > things 

🎁 Looking for a meaningful Mother’s Day or graduation gift? Skip the cliché bouquet of flowers (which, let's face it, is forgettable) and treat your loved ones to an experience they’ll remember forever: tickets to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Featuring timeless classics like “Revelations” and cutting-edge contemporary pieces that showcase the resilience, empowerment, and rich cultural heritage of Black American life, this annual tradition by the Celebrity Series of Boston is the perfect way to celebrate any special occasion. Don’t miss out —  secure your tickets now for shows at the Boch Center Wang Theatre from May 2 to 5.

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🫨 Mother Nature went on a bender last week. Of course, her main outlet was Friday’s now-infamous rare east coast earthquake, which, ICYMI, hit New Jersey with a 4.8 magnitude that was felt all the way up here in Boston (although zero out of our two B-Side writers felt the impact). But whether you felt the quake or not, Mother Nature’s wrath hit closer to home in the form of our losing one of the beautiful weeping willow trees in Boston Public Garden to the wind in last week’s nor’easter. R.I.P. 

🎫 Parking tickets could hit your mailbox soon. A bill pending on Beacon Hill would overturn Mass. state law that prohibits parking tickets from being sent in the mail, which would open the door to ticket-giving technology like license plate reading cameras. Those cameras are a key tool in many other cities for catching drivers making quick violations, particularly parking in bus lanes, a huge and largely unticketed habit of Boston drivers, not to mention a nuisance and danger for bus drivers and passengers alike.

🔋 We’ve got good EV news, and bad EV news. We’ll start with the good: 2023 electric vehicle ownership in Boston accounted for about 8% of all new auto registrations, nearly quadrupling since 2019. The bad news: that number is still probably not enough to meaningfully help us reach our climate goals. Despite all of our progress, Boston is lagging behind other metros like San Francisco (at 34%) and Washington D.C. (at 12.2%), due to factors like cost, charging infrastructure, and space to keep a car.

👚 There’s a new heaven on Earth for Boston bargain hunters. Enter: BinStar. The new, New England-based bargain store just opened its first Boston location in Brighton. How it works: the store (essentially, a building full of bins), takes returns and castaways from big-box stores that would usually end up in a landfill and sells them at a major discounted flat rate. Prices start at $19 on Saturday, and drop to just a buck by the following Friday night before resetting. And rumor has it, it’s been a huge hit so far, with customers scoring deals on everything from wedding dresses to PlayStations. 

THINGS TO DO

Weekday plans

🪴 Make your houseplant a home. Crocheting a cozy plant hanger is on the agenda at Trident Booksellers on Tuesday, where you’ll spend the evening learning a new skill that doubles as home decor. 

👯 Network with new lady friends. You can spend your Wednesday night meeting like-minded, business oriented women at the Boston Young Professionals Association’s women’s networking night (snacks, drinks, and a gift bag are included with your ticket!). 

👚 DIY your own graphic tee. Dark Mode is hosting a screen printing night at Bow Market on Wednesday where guests will be able to screen print their own T-shirts or hoodies. 

🏃 Grab all the freebies at the Boston Marathon expo. Even if you’re not one of the 30,000 people running the marathon, the expo is great for freebies, cool merch, demonstrations, and giving you the itch to try running it next year. 

😅 Laugh your trauma away. The Foundry is hosting a “Laughing Through The Pain” comedy show Saturday where their comedians will share hilarious stories and jokes through the lens of this month’s theme: Religious dark comedy/traumedy.

🎉 Want more things to do recommendations? Refer five friends to unlock three bonus items. For those who already have, enjoy below.

ONE LAST THING

A Dunkings dilemma 

Imagine: Spending $120 on a Dunkings tracksuit. Now imagine you did that two months ago, but there’s no tracksuit to be seen. 

Apparently, that’s been the case for many of the customers who managed to snag the iconic outfits in the nineteen minutes it took for them to sell out back in February. Although customers were led to believe that the fits would arrive in eight to 10 business days at the time of purchasing, many have since received an updated time frame of at least five weeks. It’s now been closer to eight. 

But on the bright side, there’s been evidence that at least some people have happily received their tracksuits, including: Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Governor Kim Driscoll with their iconic DunQueens bit last month, and “Real Housewives” star Bethenny Frankel.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🍩 Thanks for reading! Okay, no judgment here, but to any of our readers that actually bought the DunKings merch, I have to know: Why?

💜 Special shoutout to today's sponsor, Celebrity Series of Boston, for supporting local journalism and empowering social change through the arts.

🌤️ The results are in: Most B-Siders (37%) are planning to watch the eclipse from their sidewalk or driveway, although a fair amount (22%) are heading to the path of totality. One reader, who we’d guess is staying home, said: “Most excited about the Sunchips Eclipse flavor tbh.”

💃 Keep up with us @BostonBSide on IG, TikTok, and Twitter. Send comments and suggestions to [email protected] or [email protected].