Can I make a confession? I'm obsessed with weave. I love the versatility of hair options weave provides. I also love the wide array of textures, lengths and styles I can get with weave. I also like the variety of personalities I can have with a weave: I can be a 32-inch wearing Brooklyn Baddie one day or a kinky-curly African empress the next. The world's my oyster with weave.
But here's the thing about weave: it's expensive. And the better the quality of the weave, the more expensive it is. Especially if it's sold in bundles. Bundles are a small lines of hair weighing about 3 ounces sold individually as one packet that can be installed in one section of the hair. You would usually need about 2-3 bundles of weave hair to constitute a full-head style, and since each bundle costs $100 or more, you can face a price tag of $300+ just for the hair you're installing into your head. Ouch. Talk about a true headache.
While I was paying off my debt, one of the major things I had to sacrifice was my love for weave. I had to be honest with myself that I just couldn't afford the cost of the hair or the cost of getting it professionally installed. Taking this into consideration, I shaved my head and wore a Caesar-style cut for about a year while I climbed out of debt. Extreme measures I know, but when you are facing over $100,000 in debt that you have no idea how you'll pay off, you do some drastic things.
Thankfully, I have since paid off my debt and grown my hair back, which has also recaptured my love for weave. But knowing the cost of weave and trying to live within my budget so I never have to go through a debt payoff journey again, I had to seriously sit down and make sure my budget could handle my desired hairstyle.
So I decided I wanted to get my hair done and then made a plan. My plan included bi-weekly budgeting for my bundles. On one week's budget, I factored in the price for the bundles and waited for my favorite hair distributor to have a sale on the hair. On the next week's budget, I factored in the price of the visit to the hair salon to have it installed. I set that money aside and was not allowed to use it for anything else.
When my bundles arrived and I hit the salon chair to get them installed, my hairstyle somehow felt like a hard-won victory knowing I followed the plan I laid out for myself, and I didn't accrue any form of debt to do it. Go me.
So I walked out the salon chair swinging these 18-inches of Peruvian bundles with my own beautiful kinky-curly hair neatly braided and protected under them knowing I made a wise decision and handled my money well. The bundles sway different when you budget for them.
Lourdes Anita