photo credit: Horia Varlan

I’ve been forcing myself to save money for a rainy day, and though it goes against every fiber of my being, I’ve almost squirreled  away a full $1000. That was my ultimate emergency fund goal, and now that I’m getting close to reaching it, I’m beginning to think about what I should save for next. I know that if I don’t set myself goals like that, then it becomes much, much more difficult for me to keep myself from impulse shopping, and if you ask my roommates, I definitely can’t afford to buy more useless crap on a whim.

A while back, I wrote a #Reverb10 post about 11 Things I don’t need, but want. Some of those things, I’ve already gotten my materialistic little hands on (Yay, Christmas Money), some of them weren’t the type of goal that you save money for (I’m still going to be on Conan), and some of them are still floating on the list, but for the most part, the actual things on that list aren’t really big enough for me to worry about saving up for them, too much. Most of those items would fit inside my “shopping” budget for a month, well, if I could excercise a little bit of restraint and keep myself from buying things like pizza rolls and [amazon_link id=”B004478GCE” target=”_blank” ]Lego Ninjas[/amazon_link].

Big Budget Items I need to save up for!

I’ve compiled a list of a few things that I not only want, but want bad enough to make a long term investment out of saving up for them. I’ve put them somewhat in the order I want to buy them in, but that might be subject to change. I tend to be a bit flighty when it comes up to choosing between two things I really want to get first, and sometimes that means continuing to save until I can buy both at the same time.

1) [amazon_link id=”B0039RSYQS” target=”_blank” ]A TV of my Very Own[/amazon_link] with [amazon_link id=”B003BEDQR6″ target=”_blank” ]Surround Sound[/amazon_link] – When my ex wife and I split up a couple of years ago,  I let her take the TV with her, because the roommate that was staying with me had a TV, and it was infinitely more awesome than our crappy TV. Well, there has been a string of roommates allowing me to use their TV since then, but I haven’t actually owned one of my own in a long time, and I have never owned a flat screen. If, for some miracle, I do get a “windfall” like my horoscope predicts this year, I might buy an even bigger TV. You know, the kind of thing that requires rearranging furniture to accommodate it.

2) [amazon_link id=”B003U4S4U6″ target=”_blank” ]Posh Leather Recliner[/amazon_link] – When I had the fire in 2008, I lost a few things that were very dear and precious to me. I did not realize at the time that my recliner was one of those things. I had bought it right after my place was robbed a few years before and had literally no furniture except the mattress I slept on. I got it at K-Mart, for a little under $200, and it served me amazingly well as a worn in and comfortable shell for whenever life was starting to really get me down. It got used as everything from a bed to a computer chair, and never complained, groaned or even showed signs of weakening. It silently bore not only my weight, but all the excess baggage I was carrying with me.

3) [amazon_link id=”B003IQAVIY” target=”_blank” ]A New Gaming Computer [/amazon_link]– I love my computer, and it is custom built. Chances are, if I decide to get a new computer, I will custom build one again, however, I’ve been looking into it, and there are some deals like this one that can be picked up for less than the sum of its parts. Well, that is if you want to run windows on it. I haven’t had a window’s computer for a long time, but I think having a PC with a Windows dual-boot would come in handy for testing things in a different OS for web development reasons. I’m not just talking about a computer, though, I want all the bells and whistles, too. I want a new [amazon_link id=”B002MPPRPO” target=”_blank” ]mouse[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”B000YDIA78″ target=”_blank” ]keyboard[/amazon_link], and [amazon_link id=”B0041G633W” target=”_blank” ]a pair of nice monitors[/amazon_link].

Those are the top 3 things on my list. There are other things, too, but if I let my mind wander past the top three, I’ll probably end up buying something before I’ve saved up for it. What big ticket items are you saving for? Which are the ones you can’t wait for?