Kathryn Finney, the thirty-one year old fashion blogger and founder of thebudgetfashionista.com has made a career––and an astonishing salary ($150,000 a year!)––out of giving her fashion advice and budget shopping tips to stylish ladies through her website. While advertisers now scramble to work with her, Finney wasn’t always part of the fashion world. In fact, she started as an epidemiologist (a.k.a. a scientist who studies epidemics). Finney began her site because she wanted to curtail her spending and communicate with friends about her great shopping finds. When she began, blogging was a relatively new phenomenon. Today, the Web is overloaded with solo bloggers imitating her concept.

Many would agree that Finney has a dream workday. She gets up and checks her e-mails, goes to lunch meetings where people pitch her products, and then comes home and watches “Oprah.” But it’s not all rest time, the site is updated three to four times a day, with help from her assistant and her husband, and there are thirty to forty emails a week to respond to, many from people asking for fashion advice.

Finney’s best fashion advice is to “focus on value.” She believes in purchasing items based on “cost per wear” value, the item cost divided by usability. She believes it is more practical to buy a pair of $100 pants that you’ll wear one hundred times than a $5 shirt you’ll never wear. The Budget Fashionista’s top shopping deals include a Gap high-collar coat , $128, and a Twelve by Twelve retro colorblock dress, $39.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and Finney is donating a dollar to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation for every posted comment on the site. While Finney is afraid this kindness is going to make her go broke by month’s end, she’s still got great prospects in her future. Finney is working on turning The Budget Fashionista into a television program, as well as continuing her philanthropic work.

[Daily News]

[Image: Nydailymail.com]