FIVE UNDISCIPLINED WAYS TO SAVE ON SKINCARE AND COSMETICS

FIVE EASY WAYS TO SAVE ON COSMETICS

There are thousands of articles on saving money in hard times. Many of them tend to be time intensive, or require making charts, sticking post-it notes everywhere and in the end, they are sometimes more trouble than they are worth.

Saving money in hard times often requires discipline, which most of us don’t have enough of. So, I thought, there must be ways of saving money EASILY. (And then not thinking ‘well I’ve saved $20 this week, I’ll go celebrate with a nice bottle of wine.’)

Saving money has to have a reason. Reducing the credit card, paying off the mortgage a bit earlier, being able to finally move out of home and live independently, starting that business you always dreamed of without worrying about bankers.

The only thing you will need to cut your bills down and KEEP them down is a good money box that you’ll have to smash to get into!

If you are young and living on a low wage, or older and living on a fixed pension, saving money needn’t be a struggle. It is as easy as simply not spending it needlessly.

Here are the five EASIEST ways of saving money on everyday personal care.

Shampoo, that necessity which, like soap has a markup to the manufacturers of up to 5000 times the cost of the ingredients. In fact, the packaging costs many hundreds of times more than the stuff inside the bottle. Well, you know that stuff that comes in the big bottles and is punted as “salon” quality or ‘professional’ quality? No matter what the hard sell hairdressers tell you and no matter what price you pay, whether it be $8 or $50 for a 500 ml bottle you don’t have to stint yourself on your favorite brand if that’s what you want. (Personally I still buy the cheapest there is, and being a bloke over 65 I still have a good head of hair, and I wear it long, so cheap has never done me any damage, so long as my good lady trims the ends regularly for me.)

The secret of saving heaps on shampoo is that almost everyone uses far too much of the stuff! You really don’t need to. The average person uses double the amount you really need to use for clean, healthy, glowing hair. So the answer is simple. Take an empty bottle of your favorite brand, fill it halfway with WATER and then top the bottle up with shampoo from a new bottle. Then add the same amount of water to the other bottle and you have TWO bottles of your shampoo of choice. If it’s a $50 bottle you’ve just saved yourself $25. If it’s a cheap brand at say $8 a bottle you’ve still saved yourself $4.

Soap. Whether you use the good stuff, or just the cheap product, save the slivers you have left, and drop them into a jar half filled with water to which you can add a couple of drops of glycerin or eucalyptus or tea tree oil. When the jar is full, give it a good shake, transfer it to a pump bottle and there you have a very nice soft soap. If you want a nice smooth mix, you can use a blender to whip it up.

How much do you spend on make-up remover? Probably a heap, and it’s not cheap. Here’s a cheap, (almost free) make-up remover that will leave your skin feeling smooth and silky and add more pennies to that unbreakable money box. Mix a tablespoon of petroleum jelly or baby oil with two drops of eucalyptus or tea tree oil, OR a few drops of concentrated lemon juice. You’ll have enough make-up remover to last a month , and a lovely smooth skin.

Perfume. That most individual and expensive of all. (Blokes, you can use this with your aftershave too, and given that most men tend to splash the stuff on and stink up the entire nightclub, you might like this money saving method too!)

Perfume tends to evaporate quickly and trips to the ladies room to ‘freshen up’ can be annoying. But whether you use White Diamonds or the heady aroma of something cheaper you can make it last TWICE AS LONG . Just mix a drop of perfume with a tiny dab of petroleum jelly and rub it into the skin. It turns your perfume into a slow release without diminishing it, so you can double the life of a bottle of your most expensive (or cheap) perfume.

Watch that money box fill, and you didn’t need lots of discipline. You’ve already saved at least 50%, so if you would normally have spent $100 on all the above, you’ve cut that cost to $50. And it didn’t hurt a bit did it? Time to settle into a nice relaxing bath with lots of bubbles and bath oil. Those teensy weensy little bottles of bath oil that cost you between $4 and $20? Nah! Forget it. Here’s the recipe. While you are running the bath just add three tablespoons of ordinary cheap vegetable oil, or olive oil, (you can use baby oil if you want.) If you want it full of suds just add two or three teaspoons of shampoo and watch the bubbles rise. Don’t use those ‘special’ shampoos’. No anti- dandruff stuff for example, they don’t work very well.