How I spent my Christmas Money & Bonus

For Christmas the only thing I got was money, but that is a-okay with me because then I can pick out what I want.  I also get a portion of my yearly bonus in December and since I have such a small family and not many Christmas presents to buy, that meant I had a lot of extra cash burning a hole in my pocket.

I know I should save this money. But I had to splurge on a few things for myself.

I had been contemplating getting an e-reader for years!  Like ever since the very first Kindle came out.  But I kept putting it off.  I also had iPad envy ever since they first came out, but resisted because I thought "why do I need an iPad when I have my iPhone and a small, very portable laptop?"

Last summer I bought a Lenovo A1 tablet because I work there and they were having a awesome sale.  So combine that with my employee discount, and I was able to get it for like $100.  But sadly after just a week I decided to return it.  It's an Android operating system and I didn't want to have to re-buy all these apps I had already bought on my phone.  And it was a little bit too heavy to use for long time periods as an e-reader.

For months I was contemplating a Nook.  I almost bought the Nook with Glow Light a couple times.  Then the Kindle Paperwhite came out and I was considering that.  Then I heard they were coming out with an iPad mini, so I decided to just wait to see if I liked that better because it would be the best of both worlds and I wouldn't have to buy an iPad and a separate e-reader.

Well Sunday I had to take my iPhone to the Apple store because it was randomly losing connection to Wifi and/or 4G at least once a day and I had to hard re-set it every time it did it which got super annoying.  (For those of you who think Apple products never have issues like all other electronics, you must have never tried to visit the Genius Bar on a weekend.  That shizz was cray-cray!)  I had made an appointment for 3:30, but between parking hell and then waiting in line to check in, it ended up being 3:43 when I made it to the front of the line.  Well, their system cancels your appointment after 5 minutes so I had to wait for the next available appointment which wasn't until 6:10!!

I went and ran some more errands but there was no way I was going to lose my appointment again so I got there at 5:45 to check in.  This gave me plenty of time to get sucked in to "i want" land.  I of course went to check out the iPad mini.  I spent about 15 minutes playing with it and comparing the specs and finally decided this was the device for me.  So I finally caved in and bought one.

I did not get the AppleCare+ Protection though and now I am second guessing that decision.  After meeting with the guy about my phone (which they ended up just replacing with a new one) I am scared that I may have made the wrong decision.  Those of you with iPads...did you get the AppleCare+ Protection?  Do you think it is worth $99 for an extra year warranty and accidental damage protection?  (You still have to pay $49 to fix accidental damage and are limited to only 2 accidental claims.)

The other thing I splurged on:

Not one but two new Coach purses!  Now before you go judging me I got both of these purses with tax and shipping and handling for just $205!  A few years ago I either stumbled across or was invited to this Coach outlet site.  Every few days they invite you to these secret sales.  They usually have pretty decent deals but this was an amazing deal so I just had to get both.  

Earlier this year I got this awesome messenger bag for my work laptop for just $100.  I love it so much!  It is just big enough to fit the essentials and I love the pop of pink on the inside.

If you want an invite to the Coach Outlet site just send me your email address and I will send you an invite.  It took a few months for my other friends to regularly get invited to sales (apparently not everyone is invited to every sale and you can't access the sale if you are not invited.)  But now they get regular weekly or bi-weekly invites like I do.

Do you guys splurge on non-necessities when you have extra cash or are you more diligent about saving it?