New Year, New Goals and a Splurge

I’ve been enjoying two weeks of vacation and haven’t been very productive during the holidays. However, now that my vacation time is coming to a close (I still have one more week, though), I’m ready to get back to work. So, to start things out for the New Year, of course I’ll set new goals. My goals won’t be too different from last years, but the one huge focus for this year is to BUY A HOUSE! In order to do that, it means saving a huge amount of money over the next 9-10 months. The quarter goal system worked really well for me, therefore I’ll continue with the same method for this year.

First Quarter Goals:

1. Save $655 each month towards a down payment (this is distributed into two different accounts; one which is more aggressive and one which is more stable) = $1,965
2. Side income gets deposited towards this goal. I’m averaging $300 a month on this, so that additional $300 will be applied towards the goals. = $900
3. Squeeze out another $200 a month to put towards savings. This one will be more difficult, but I should be able to manage it with budgeting our money closely. = $600
4. Total income saved first quarter = $3,465

Now for my splurge, which is completely off topic of New Year’s Goals, but finance related. Mr. LH and I don’t really buy each other Christmas gifts. Instead, we usually buy a gift that benefits both of us. This year, I got a hair up by bum to do something about my hair, literally. That sounds weird, but my hair has always been the one feature I just have never been happy with compared to the rest. It’s fine, thin, and takes forever to grow. So, I splurged on, here it comes…., hair extensions!

Okay, so this isn’t a beauty blog, but I am extremely happy with my splurge. I purchased a set of clip in Remy hair extensions from LuxyHair.com for $129 after a $5 off coupon and shipping. I lucked out and they matched my hair color perfectly (dirty blonde) which meant I didn’t need to get them colored or color my own hair. However, they were really long, like Rupunzel long and I felt silly wearing them that length. So, for an additional $55 I got them trimmed (cut about 4-5 inches off) to blend better with my own hair. But that’s not all in terms of money spent on these things. Because I see these as an investment  (extensions often last 4-6 months, but can last up to a year if cared for), I needed to purchase a few items to take better care of them including a tangle free brush, hair protectant heat spray (though I haven’t used heat styling on them yet) and a texturizer spray to give my hair some grip to hold the clips. All in all, I’ve spent about $200 on my splurge.

Now that I’ve been wearing these things for over a week, I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to make them last for more than a year, especially since I don’t wear all of the pieces at once. Literally, my head just isn’t big enough to wear all 9 pieces! If I factored in a monthly cost, the extensions only come out to $17 a month, which really isn’t bad at all. Or maybe I’m just rationalizing my splurge. 😉

Have you rationalized a splurge recently?