I Wore This Expensive-Looking, Under-$40 Watch on Job Interviews

The one piece of advice every adult in my life gave me as I prepared to graduate from college was, “Wear a watch, especially to job interviews.” That way, my potential employer could see I was a serious person, worthy of a paycheck. The cruel irony is, you need a nice paycheck to afford a fancy watch, and, as I quickly learned at my first postgrad internship with a business-formal dress code, a plastic digital watch is not often considered “nice,” even though it was all I could afford on my then-non-salary. That’s around the time I started looking for an affordable watch that looks expensive, a metal watch that costs negligibly more than a plastic one, but still looks like a thousand bucks (or at least a couple hundred). Eventually, I came across the Timex Easy Reader, which I still consider to be the best watch under $50.

The Timex Easy Reader tricks people into thinking it costs more than it does because it’s simply designed, yet still has all the features of a pricier timepiece. The watch face has minimal branding; large serif numbers that are easy to read, even in the dark, with the help of a pleasant turquoise backlight; and a built-in date dial. I prefer the version of this watch with the expansion band because it fits more like a bracelet, but doesn’t slip down my arm; the oversize fit is reliably stylish with both menswear-inspired looks and more feminine blouses.

These days, I’m gainfully employed with a salary, but I still prefer wearing this inexpensive watch because I don’t have to be precious with it. This watch is blissfully hard to scratch. In fact, back in the 1960s, Timex ran a series of so-called “torture tests” on an early version of the Easy Reader to prove it was able to withstand hard-core situations like cliff-diving in Acapulco, Mexico. (Spoiler: It did.)

Though I haven’t engaged in extreme sports with this watch, I have put it through the ringer. And despite high drops and semi-regular water exposure, the Timex Easy Reader still keeps time as well as when I first got it, without looking like I’ve owned it for years, which seems as solid of an investment to me as any fancy watch could be.

For something with a leather strap, the Daniel Wellington watch is a handsome option, as suggested by Kurt Soller: “The hands and tickers are neat, brass- or silver-colored, and placed against a clean white face that says little more than the company’s name in a small, Swedish-seeming font. That name — generic, vaguely patrician — can’t be identified the way a Michael Kors or Kenneth Cole can, which is, of course, the point. The watches look expensive (i.e. they look like nothing) even though they’re actually not.”