Shopping Spree

Last week I went to the mall with my finance. Since moving back to California, I haven't been doing that much shopping for clothes. One great thing about living in NYC is if you really want something at a regular store such as Ann Taylor (my favorite) or Gap, you can get it on sale if you're willing to wait and travel a bit. So last Saturday was somewhat of an anomaly for me since I went on the largest clothing shopping spree of my life! I got one great suit from Ann Taylor (over 50% off and very classic). My next purchase,a pair of jeans from Lucky, was a major splurge costing about $100 including taxes. I justified this purchase by the fact that I have sort of been looking for a new pair of jeans for over 3 years and I bought my last new pair over 5 years ago. I do still have several perfectly good pairs of jeans, but my 3 favorite pairs all have rips in them. I will still continue to wear those jeans and only wear this new pair for special occasions. This should allow this new pair to last my at least 5 more years.

My last purchase came at Lady Foot Locker. This normally isn't a store I shop at, but when I walked by, it definitely looked like the store was closing. There were no shoes on display and the whole store was a mess. Unfortunately my finance and I had to get back to his house for dinner. On the way to my house, I was still thinking about the sale, so we decided to go back to the mall. We got there 15 minutes before the store closed. Luckily the stuff I had picked out earlier was still there. While we were waiting to check out, I decided to try on a black down jacket. Now being February in California, this isn't something I absolutely needed. I tried it out, and it fit perfectly. However checking the price, it was $119. With the 50% off, that was about $60. I couldn't justify spending $60 for a jacket that I probably wouldn't wear until next season. As I was putting it back on the rack, the saleswoman informed me that the jacket was only $27, including tax. I was shocked! Since this was a Nike jacket, I thought I could probably get more for the jacket on ebay, if sold in the right season. I decided to buy it. It was unusually cold this past weekend. I snuggled in my warm jacket. My mom asked me if I needed the heater (she usually turns it off when she goes to bed) and I was able to say "no" without fear of being chilled since I was wearing my new down jacket.

My Inspiration

I have always been interested in personal finance and financial planning. I've considered switching to that career, but I'm not ready to make that jump yet. I was ready business week when I saw a brief article about 2million. That led me to several other blogs including bostongalsopenwallet and myopenwallet. This is the beginning of my journey. As a female in her mid-twenties, I think I'm going okay, but I could be doing better. Right now I estimate my net worth to be about $35K. I need to do more to analyze this and come up with a concrete number. I have a date with Excel tomorrow.