$16,000 sounds to cheap to be of decent quality. Is he giving you mini grafts? The absolute cheapest micro grafts I heard of are $3 per graft, and that is without the best magnification or donor hair preservation techniques. $3.40 for that many is more like it.
I can't say for sure that a wig will be noticed, since maybe only the worst are noticed and we don't know about the good ones. But that wig will wear out eventually no matter how good it is, and you need to spend $5000 for one that won't be noticed immediately, and that is a lot of money for something non-permenant, and I think you will regret spening the money.
Depending on how thin your hair is, grow it out to 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch so when you wear a hat, all people see is the sides. If you are diffuse on top, grow that to 1/2 inch if it is very thin, or do 1 inch if it is think enough it can hide itself. Wear the hat, use a swimmers cap for swimming, and save your money for HM, or spend some on regrowth treatments.
Since you have $16k, you can afford to spend up to $70 per month to regrow a lot of hair in a year. Regrow enough and you can save money on grafts later. Even if you do get grafts, you need to take this stuff to keep your hair. 20 year olds with male pattern baldness have much more agressive male pattern baldness than 30 year olds. You can still loose more.
No matter what you do, you should be taking finasteride (active ingredient of propecia (1mg) and proscar (5mg)). Get a prescription from your Doctor or a qualified nurse and ask them for proscar instead of propecia, telling them you will cut it in forths. Buy a pill cutter, and ask your pharmacy can special order generic proscar. If not, get the proscar and shop around. If it you can't see the Doctor soon, go to one of these online sites and get it without a prescription to last you until you get one.
Finasteride stops about 70% of DHT formation, and DHT is the initial cause of hair loss. Finasteride also greatly reduces your risk of prostate cancer, the leading cancer in men. Since effects are rare and transient and generally mild.
Eucapil (sold at Eucapil.com for about $50 per month, but you can reduce that to $25 if you make one dose last two days and have a small area to cover). Or get RU58841, another supper anti-androgen, which is $50-100 per month depending on use. Or there is spironolactone 2% liquid or 5% cream, but the cream will be problematic in your frat house. All of these compete with DHT for androgen receptors so DHT can't latch on to them as much, amplifying the effects of propecia. Even better, they only work locally, so that your entire body is not deprived of androgens. Pick the one you can afford. You can get the spironolactone fast at
http://www.minoxidil.com, for $23 after shipping. The other two will take a month or more to get.
It is not possible yet to stop all DHT in your scalp. Also, once DHT starts the process, many other problems occur and each must be treated with other treatments for maximum results. The following do this:
You need to get folligen (for copper peptides) and dilute it in a bottle to 1/2 or 1/3 concentration, and throw away the original or its lable so no one finds it. Put it on your whole top and front scalp every other day, 1-3mL. The liquid spray is $25 and diluted should last you 3 months.
http://www.follica.com, I think.
You need minoxidil 5% (generic rogaine, same thing). You can get it for $18 for three bottles at walmart, or $26 for 4 at minoxidildirect.com. Again, remove the lable if you want, and joke that it is your length and girth inhibitor meds if anyone asks.
Get prox-N at drproctor.com, $59 for two months in one bottle. It has many good things for fighting male pattern baldness. 10 drops a day don't have to cover every area, just put them far apart. This will actually last 6 months if you just do 10 drops per day. Cheap, huh?
Nizoral 1% shampoo smells and feels great, stops irritation some people get from Rogaine, stops dandriff, and has a weak anti-androgen effect that grows as much hair as minoxidil 2%. It is $15, no prescription needed. Use it 2-3 times a week. Also look online for cheaper generics if you can find them.
Supplement your diet with arginine. Some of the chemicals in the hair loss process after the DHT initiation can't form in the presance of higer arginine concentrations, and the chemicals that fight these do need arginine. At least this in the case in lab test trials. Who knows what happens in the body. Arginine is cheap and it is an amino acid, so think of it as more protein. Take 1-2 grams per day. I think vitacost has some that is bonded to glutamine. This is aborbed better than L-arginine.
Long list but you can do it for $70 per month. It is worth it. It is what I'm doing.
