The Inside Press

Magazines serving the communities of Northern Westchester

The Inside Press

Women and Finances

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Scott Kahan
Scott Kahan

By Scott Kahan

You get in your car knowing you left plenty of time to arrive at the restaurant for your eight o’clock dinner reservations. Somehow, on the way you manage to make a wrong turn and get lost. Assuming you don’t have a GPS, what do you do? The stereotypical answer, which is probably true more often than not, is that men will keep driving around hoping to find their way. Women, on the other hand, will stop and ask for directions. So when it comes to finances and financial planning, is it any different?

Financial planning is about identifying your goals and objectives. Once this is done, the next step is to come up with the “road map” of how you reach your destination. Studies have shown that women deal very differently with their financial planning than men do.

Women often face more financial challenges than men as a result of lower salaries, prolonged career breaks, and relative longevity. Women tend to have smaller pensions or 401(k) balances, on average earn less than men while working, and are more likely to have part-time jobs with limited retirement benefits. Women also leave the workforce more than men to become family caregivers, further reducing their ability to save.

Whereas men are often more confident that they will have enough retirement income to live comfortably, women tend to be less confident in their knowledge about financial products and services and that they are on the right path financially. So logically this leads women to ask additional questions with the goal to become more knowledgeable about finances.

This way, when making financial decisions, having the information allows you to be more confident in that decision. When it comes to financial planning, being more confident with your decision making process allows you to stay the course and not panic with every headline or market drop.

So the next time you are lost and need help, stop and ask questions. Of course make sure the person you are asking is knowledgeable. By doing this, you have a much better chance of reaching that goal, whatever it may be.

Scott M. Kahan, is a Certified Financial Planner® professional and President of Financial Asset Management Corporation, a fee-only wealth management firm located at 26 South Greeley Avenue in Chappaqua. Call Scott Kahan at 914-238-8900 or write to skahan@famcorporation.com.

What Makes a Dining Experience Memorable? What Doesn’t?

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Members of a gourmet dining group–which includes our author–share their thoughts. (L-R): Karen Talbot, Art Nagle, Paige Nagle, David Talbot and Wright Elliott
Members of a gourmet dining group–which includes our
author–share their thoughts. (L-R): Karen Talbot, Art Nagle,
Paige Nagle, David Talbot and Wright Elliott

“An ardent or refined interest in the dining experience,” defines a foodie and surely applies to the membership of our gourmet group, who I recently surveyed to get their opinions. Wright Elliott has brought a sophisticated palate and passion for food from his native New Orleans. Wright’s many talents include a recipe for jumbo lump crab cakes honed to perfection over many years from when he owned a house on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Art Nagle brings expertise in finding the freshest and highest quality ingredients, and on the visual aspects of food presentation, he is most certainly a perfectionist.

Eating out is indeed a special occasion for these men, because they have high standards when cooking at home. Both believe that restaurant food should be original and memorable, prepared by a chef who takes a personal interest in customer satisfaction. Farm-to-table ingredients and quality (or the seafood equivalent) are high on their list, and they tend to seek out restaurants that are building this concept into their menu options.

Service is very important too. Beautiful food, beautifully served is 90% of a “memorable dining experience” in Wright’s opinion, and Art adds that he also wants the host or hostess to be friendly, along with the wait staff. As wine connoisseurs with large personal wine cellars, both Art and Wright look for moderate to expensive offerings, as well as esoteric wines from different areas like Sicily or Greece, if these selections seem more appropriate. They like to be able to consult a sommelier or resident wine expert, as restaurant wine lists rarely provide sufficient detail about their choices.

To sum up a positive dining experience, both men like to go first class, and don’t mind paying a premium for good food and service. The two ladies from our group, Judy Foley and Paige Nagle, are excellent cooks in their own right, and have high interest in seasonal menus with a good balance of flavors. They too look for creativity and, even if premium priced, the menu has to have a Wow factor to it.

Judy and Paige both stress service, cleanliness and ambience to make for a “memorable dining experience.” They like it when the chef comes out at the end of a meal to inquire how your dining experience was, and a warm and inviting atmosphere with pretty flowers and tablecloths on the tables is a plus.

Here are ways a dining experience can fail to impress:

  • Poor acoustics and noise top the list, as all of them want to be comfortable and able to carry on a conversation with their fellow diners.
  • Hovering service or, on the other hand, slow service, are frowned upon. No one enjoys that moment when the second you put your fork and knife down, the plate is whisked away; you feel like you are being deliberately rushed.
  • Overly large portions is a no-no, especially with the ladies.
  • Overly small servings of wine are not a very hospitable gesture and can be especially annoying.
  • Another pet peeve is a “No Reservation” policy -– no one wants to run the risk of a lengthy wait the next table. Restaurants should take reservations no matter how many people arrive with the party of diners.

To create a positive dining experience for his customers and to attract new customers, a local restaurateur hired a new chef and added high quality seafood at affordable prices with great success. He believes that cleanliness and ambience are the ultimate expression of hospitality.

Karen Talbot is a Westchester-based personal shopper and restaurant reviewer. The love of cooking runs in her family! Karen’s son Alex and his wife Aki Kamozawa have just opened “Curiosity Donuts” in the Stockton Market in Stockton, New Jersey.

Dr. Maria Briones: Transforming Lives One Pound at a Time

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By Miriam Longobardi

Anyone who has ever struggled to lose weight knows how difficult and frustrating it can be, both losing the weight and keeping it off. Those who have significant weight to lose –beyond a few extra pounds after a vacation–face a greater challenge. Enter Dr. Maria Briones, owner of Dr. Briones Medical Weight Loss Center located in Mt. Kisco.

Photo by Carolyn Simpson/Doublevision Photographers
Photo by Carolyn Simpson/Doublevision Photographers

Dr. Briones began her career as an internist in New York City in 1994 and in addition to her weight loss clinic works at Burke Rehabilitation Center in White Plains. During her career she has always been concerned about obesity and its related diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and stroke as well as some cancers. At Burke she also noted that some of her patients who had undergone hip and knee replacements needed the surgery as a result of obesity. “I want to help people before obesity takes a toll on their health and body and possibly avoid surgery and some of the diseases connected to obesity.”

At her weight loss center, Dr. Briones assists patients far beyond helping them develop healthier eating habits to lose weight. Her approach is very personal and addresses the many psychological effects of obesity. “In addition to the effects on the body, being obese changes how people feel about themselves. The most common are loss of self-esteem and depression. As I help them lose weight I didn’t have to use any medication.”

All patients must undergo a health evaluation and obtain medical clearance to participate in the diet plan. After that, patients come for weekly visits to be weighed and spend time being counseled by Dr. Briones. “They need to change the relationship they have with food.” She helps them develop a plan which they must be disciplined enough to follow. Part of her plan involves using Optifast, a meal replacement program that must be medically supervised. “With Optifast patients can see results similar to surgery sometimes in as little as six months,” Briones reports. Depending on the amount of weight to be lost, patients begin with the Optifast meal replacements very strictly for approximately four to six months. “It’s like people that want to quit smoking –they have to really be ready for it and commit to following the program.”

Elysa Belessakos, a patient and one of Dr. Briones’s many success stories, says that working with Dr. Briones changed her life. “The woman is brilliant,” said Belessakos. “She completely devotes herself to her patients and gives us one-on-one personal attention.” While some people relate to group support such as Weight Watchers, Belessakos feels the emotional support she receives from Dr. Briones helped her sort through emotional eating issues that in the past always caused her to gain back weight she had lost. “A lot of people dealing with obesity don’t want to sit in front of a group and talk about their weight loss struggles,” says Belessakos. Through a combination of the Optifast meal replacements, Lipo-Light, which is a machine that burns fat cells in targeted areas of the body, and Dr. Briones teaching her about nutrition and talking her through strategies to avoid emotional eating, Belessakos is down 40 pounds. “I get so many compliments!” she enthusiastically reports.

After sticking closely to the Optifast plan, which also offers nutrition bars and soups in addition to the meal replacement shakes, transitioning back to mainstream food can be challenging. Dr. Briones is considering adding a nutritionist to her staff but Briones helps her patients with meal planning, food shopping and menus to help them keep the weight off and follow up with her for maintenance.

Belessakos says that it is the level of devotion she and the other patients receive from Dr. Briones that gives them the support and encouragement they need to maintain their weight loss. “It’s her personality that sets her apart from other doctors. So much of weight loss is psychological and you get one-hundred percent of her attention. She listens, gives you feedback and is so warm and encouraging that nobody wants to stop seeing her.”

A wife and mother of three children, Dr. Briones continues to learn and explore new medical breakthroughs through professional associations and by attending conferences regularly. She recently added anti-aging and skin care products at her center. Belessakos adds, “She absolutely loves what she does and genuinely cares about each of her patients with compassion.”

Dr. Briones feels that in addition to being healthier physically, one of the greatest accomplishments she sees in her patients is their attitude toward life. “Not only are they active and have more energy but their social and intimate lives improve. It’s amazing the effect weight loss can have on a person’s life.”

For more information, visit http://www.brionesweightloss.com/.

Miriam Longobardi is a freelance writer, fourth grade teacher and single mother of two daughters living in Westchester. A breast cancer survivor, she volunteers for the American Cancer Society, has completed four marathons and travels the world. Follow her on Twitter @writerMimiLong.

Sharing Dance: A Tribute to Kathleen Fitzgerald’s Extraordinary Career

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Kathleen Fitzgerald
Kathleen Fitzgerald

By Matt Smith

“Since my first class, I have loved dance, and I want to share that with everyone.”

While she presumably meant those words to be a wish for the future, by the looks of it, Kathleen Fitzgerald, speaker of the above, seems to already have the “sharing” covered. So much so that the Mount Kisco resident was named Gala Honoree during the Steffi Nossen School of Dance’s 79th Annual Benefit Week, held earlier this year, from March 31-April 2.

As is tradition, the yearly Gala serves to benefit the Steffi Nossen Dance Foundation, a not-for-profit dance advocacy and community outreach organization within the school, while at the same time honoring one of their own for his or her Outstanding Contributions to SNDF. As a special treat unique to Fitzgerald, this year’s event included a performance of a new work, danced by nine graduating seniors of SNDC and choreographed by Steffi Nossen Dance Foundation Artistic Director–and Annual Benefit producer–Jessica DiMauro, which served as a tribute to Fitzgerald’s life and career. “I’m flabbergasted,” she says of receiving the honor. “I’ve worked behind-the-scenes for so long now that I was just not expecting it. I’m uncharacteristically speechless.”

While she may not have been expecting it, the honor is certainly deserved–dancing’s clearly in her blood.

Fitzgerald began dance training at age eight, as a way to augment the “complete lack of coordination” that resulted from poor vision. Nonetheless, regardless of the reason, it was clear she was hooked from that very first day. “I got in the car after [the class] and said, ‘Mommy, I’m gonna be a dancer,’” she recalls. “That was really all I ever wanted to be.”

Her first foray into the professional dance world came at age fifteen, when she auditioned for “new state-supported performing arts school” North Carolina School of the Arts… as #13, no less, which Nossen herself always considered a–a telling sign of what was soon to come.

Kathleen Fitzgerald in Jiří Kylián’s “Ariadne”
Kathleen Fitzgerald in Jiří Kylián’s “Ariadne”

Subsequent to graduation, and prior to joining the Steffi Nossen family, Fitzgerald was a principal dancer and Company Ballet Mistress with Ballet Frankfurt, where she worked under choreographer William Forsythe. Preceding that, she was a soloist with Netherlands Dance Theater I, before Jiří Kylián took her on as Assistant Director of Netherlands Dance Theater II. “I can’t say enough about how great it was,” she says of those experiences. “We toured all over the world. We toured with live orchestra, with live singers and choirs and incredible lighting designers and costume makers…It was everything you could possibly want to experience.”

After following Ballet Frankfurt with work for Johann Kresnik’s radical dance theater group, Bremer Tanztheater, Fitzgerald moved to Mt. Kisco–for the sake of her daughter, Jessica Rose, who has special needs and requires intensive therapies. Thanks to some guidance from an local librarian, she found herself an all-too-perfect position at Steffi Nossen School of Dance, and she’s been with them for 16 years. Fitzgerald began first as a core curriculum teacher in 2000, then as School Director, a position which she held from 2004-2015. Today, she continues to lead the Ballet Program at SNSD, and serves as Production Manager for the Copland House concerts at Merestead. She has also been extensively involved with the outreach programs, one being the 13-year-old Wheels and Heels intensive dance program for disabled performers, one of the programs this very benefit helps to fund.

In accepting her honor, she acknowledges the work of the “fantastic” students at SNSD and takes note of “the incredible camaraderie of the Steffi Nossen faculty.” (“You don’t find that everywhere,” she adds, with a smile). “I feel that I’ve found a home at Steffi Nossen, an organization that stresses the importance of family, community, and mentoring. And I feel very lucky to have had this incredible performing career, and to have [done] such meaningful work within the arts.”

Steffi Nossen School of Dance is located at 216 Central Avenue in White Plains. Fitzgerald notes the company has several satellite locations throughout Westchester, including one in Chappaqua at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. For more information, visit steffinossen.org.

Matt Smith is a writer and regular contributor to the Inside Press. For more information, please visit www.mattsmiththeatre.com. 

Spotlight on Skin Health: Up Close and Personal with Dermatologist Dr. Lydia Evans

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Photo by Carolyn Simpson
Photo by Carolyn Simpson

By Stacey Pfeffer

Nestled on a tree-lined section of King Street close to downtown Chappaqua is the office of dermatologist Lydia Evans, M.D.. From the minute you walk into her cozy, yet state-of-the art office, it’s evident that you’ll be given individualized treatment and that she truly takes her time to know her patients’ concerns. Dr. Evans has been practicing both medical and cosmetic dermatology for more than two decades in this location and is passionate about treating families in our area.

Dr. Evans was initially studying both internal medicine and oncology and clearly remembers her rotation through dermatology. Although she fell in love with treating skin conditions, at that point she was already committed to completing her oncology residency. After practicing oncology though for six years, she decided to switch to dermatology.

“Oncology at that point was not what it is today. There are lots of significant strides made forward in the past years but when I was practicing it was not the case. I knew oncology was not the long-term answer for me so that’s why I went back and completed another residency in dermatology and that was clearly the best move I’ve made,” Dr. Evans notes.

Working in the local community for so many years, she’s had the privilege of treating multi-generational families. “I think my longest relationship is with one family, where I see five generations of them, including a very senior grandmother and a relatively new baby. That’s just one of the many things that I love about my job,” remarks Dr. Evans.

As the warmer months approach and sun exposure increases, many patients come in asking about skin cancer prevention. But taking care of your skin “is really a life long proposition,” explains Dr. Evans. “People tend to be very careful with their children about getting their kids to use sunscreen but are not so diligent themselves. A lot of proactive work will save a great deal of aggravation ultimately in terms of skin health such as preventing cancers and the cosmetic aspects.” If patients haven’t been careful about sun protection, visible signs of aging can begin to appear in their early 30s.

Dr. Evans believes that sunscreen should be a daily ritual year-round like flossing your teeth. “Two minutes of prevention equals long-term remarkable benefits,” she notes. She recommends that people look for a sunscreen with both ultraviolet-A (UVA) and ultraviolet-B (UVB) protection. UVA light penetrates glass and UVB light does not but it is the most burning part of light. The intensity of UVA light does not change that much from season to season but driving in your car you are still exposed to it. “Unfortunately exposure to UVA light is associated with cosmetic signs of aging and melanomas,” Dr. Evans said.

In her practice, she recommends that people use an SPF at least in the 30s or 40s. Higher SPFs don’t necessarily protect better, they just protect for a longer period. There is some controversy about the higher SPF numbers because people assume that reapplication isn’t necessary. In reality, sunscreen sometimes gets toweled or perspired off. Dr. Evans suggests that her patients “reapply every 90 minutes, maybe two hours if using a really high SPF.” In addition to sunscreen, Dr. Evans is a proponent of antioxidant serums, which can prevent sun damage in the future. She also recommends that patients have an annual skin check exam to look for moles.

Very often Dr. Evans has patients that come in initially for a skin health exam and then want to find out about other cosmetic procedures to improve their skin’s appearance. Dr. Evans’ practice offers a variety of procedures such as Botox, fillers, Coolsculpting and Ultherapy but her number one rule is patient safety first. “I’m the first guinea pig, so we test everything here personally before it ever is given to a patient. If I’m going to discuss a procedure I want to be able to answer does it work? What’s the recovery like? What’s the downside?” Her office receives many products to sample but Dr. Evans estimates that she only brings in probably one out of eight products that have passed her stringent tests.

Botox and fillers are extremely popular with her patients but are used for different purposes. Botox is used for lines of motion (e.g. crow’s feet, forehead creases) whereas fillers are used to help with lines of rest and help to reshape and recontour the face. “We have a number of different products so treatment can now be very individualized.”

Another procedure that is gaining traction among Dr. Evan’s patients is Coolsculpting for fat reduction. Researchers have now figured out the exact temperature that freezes fat. It can treat a specific site and only takes an hour. About three months post-treatment, patients can expect to lose 25 percent of the fat on a specific area of the body. Besides stubborn belly fat, the company is evolving their technology, so that Coolsculpting can be used under the neck or by the side of the knee where you have smaller pockets of fat that are hard to target with diet and exercise.

Dr. Lydia Evans and her husband Arnold Toback, M.D., who is also a dermatologist along with being an actor.
Dr. Lydia Evans and her husband Arnold Toback, M.D., who is also a dermatologist along with being an actor.

Ultherapy is another technology that improves the skin’s appearance. It is based on deep ultrasound that stimulates collagen production deep under the skin and is used for sagging. It’s offered as a single treatment and results on average can last 2.5-3.5 years. “There’s no question it works and you can tell that because I’ve had my machine for five years and I’ve had many people come back for a second treatment and people don’t do that unless it works. It’s fun to see these much less invasive, much less aggressive non-surgical technologies that offer alternatives. You want a change that takes off five to ten years and makes you look more vibrant, more alive. You don’t want people to say, ‘Oh, you got a facelift,’” said Dr. Evans.

One of the main reasons younger patients come to Dr. Evans office is for acne treatment. “Acne is a genetically driven condition that needs persistence. Some people have a relatively minor problem and some carry it in adulthood, so there is almost a spectrum of conditions within acne,” she explains. Dr. Evans believes that treatment should take into account a patient’s lifestyle, convenience and how much the patient is invested in improving. “I may have ten patients come in for acne treatment and there may be eight different treatment regimens because it’s not all the same. It is not formulaic.”

She also considers how the patient’s skin will look in the future and if scarring is present, she will offer more aggressive treatments than for someone with mild acne. Dr. Evans is committed to learning about the newest products in the dermatological field and attends professional meetings regularly to keep abreast of the latest skincare trends. Recently she saw a sunscreen product that is used as a shower gel and bought some samples home to evaluate it. It is supposed be left on for two minutes in the shower but Evans wonders if people will really leave it on for a full two minutes. “It’s a great idea conceptually but you have to think how will this work in practice?”

“It’s an exciting time to be involved in the field and it really pleases me from both the medical and the cosmetic aspect to see such great strides forward. I feel blessed to practice at this juncture because when I compare now what’s available to 25 years ago it’s exponential and I think that’s only going to continue,” concludes Dr. Evans.

Stacey Pfeffer and her husband and three young kids are New Castle residents. With summer on the horizon, she’s hoping her children will be less difficult this year with sunscreen application.