I’m not a cheap skate, I am frugal. Many people have money saving tips, I’m one of those people. My approach is not “how do I save money” but “what can I do myself.” It has given me a large skill set to work with over the years. If you read my blog about weird hobbies, you will know I am a soap maker (nothing like washing with a $10+ bar of soap for less the $1.) The biggest money saver I have in my arsenal is something that cost me $20 and I have saved over $15 thousand dollars in the past 20 years doing it. Before I started going bald I had crazy thick and awesome hair. So what did I do with it? Burned the hell out of it with bleach and dyed it crazy colors (very punk rock, I know.) I would bleach it, color it, then cut it all off after a few weeks. At some point I hit up the store and got my own clippers so I did not need to pay someone to cut off all of my hair. After a few years of doing the grow/color/cut cycle I noticed I liked having very short hair. NO shampoo, NO conditioner, NO combing my hair and NO paying someone $28 + tip to cut my hair every two weeks. One of the best parts is it only takes me about 15 minutes to do it. Let’s do a quick story problem below (because I am just writing this as I go I’m not sure how much I have ever saved doing this.)
I have been doing this let’s say 20 years. We all know we have 52 weeks in a year. That is 1,040 weeks, but I only cut my hair every two weeks. So I have cut my hair 520 times this way.
According to the Professional Beauty Association a man’s haircut averages $28. But I don’t want to be cheap so let’s toss in a $5 tip every time I go. We are looking at $33 every time.
520 times I have cut my hair X $33 for the hair cut = $17,160
Now lets do the same story problem with the way I do it.
We know now I have cut my hair 520 times and I got a set of clippers for $20. That works out to .038461538……. So lets just call it $0.04 per haircut.
I am not going to say this is for everyone because it’s not. What I am saying is this helps out a lot when I spend $0.04 per haircut and my wife pays $200.00 for a color and cut.
-The “G-Man” Gunther
