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3 Grooming Mistakes That Cost You Hundreds

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3 grooming mistakes I was making for years and how I'm saving hundreds of dollars by changing my brand identification.

Brand identification is a powerful marketing tool. If I can make you relate to a particular product, I may have a customer for life. By 2015, the market for men’s grooming products will reach $33.2 billion. Companies like Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, and Unilever all have a hand in this growing segment.

In the process of creating brands we love, these businesses have capitalized on directing us to more and more expensive beauty/grooming-related items. Every day, we meet purchasing decisions that require a frugal eye. Here are 3 grooming mistakes I was making for years and how I’m saving hundreds of dollars by changing my brand identification.

1. Buying the first deodorant you know, see

The average price of deodorant costs $4-8 (DailyFinance). Approaching the aisle, and you’ll find these sticks screaming at you with bright labels and translucent containers. Sometimes there are twin packs that advertise a deal. Don’t fall for the first available or the twin pack – these aren’t deals.

Axe sprays have become popular options for adolescents. These powerful coverups double as cheap colognes. Comically, Axe products are advertised to attract women and cover up the bad natural scents, but some natural pheromones are important in the attraction game:

For that reason, excessively masking your natural scent could become a detriment (Lifehacker).

A day without my deodorant is scary – it’s a must. But unlike the movement towards gels, liquid, and spray deodorant, the classic stick is still your most frugal option. Oftentimes, I can find clearance deodorant at Target stores for under $1 per stick.

Savings: $2-6 per stick.

2. Washing with liquid soap

Demonizing the old soap bar has been a crafted, effortful, and deceitful advertising campaign conducted for years. Companies realized that liquid soap could be sold for more money, used more frequently, and dispensed inefficiently. The combination is a boon to business.

I spent years buying into these wasteful products before I realized this err in thinking. Nowadays, buying bar soap is exceptionally affordable. I purchased 12 bars of Dial for about $3. That’s a steal compared to the $3 bottle of body wash.

Savings: ~$2 per bottle.

3. Shaving with razors

Buying refill blades/cartridges for an inexpensive Gillette razor can cost you over $30. Most everyone knows that these razor refills are a complete rip off, but the solutions can seem circuitous. The simple answer is changing your shave, style.

By opting for a trim versus shave, you’ll be saving your skin and budget. Shaving is incredibly tough to that outer epidermis, and often moisturizers and post-shave creams are advised. This should all be included in the price of shaving.

Instead, use a beard trimmer and select an appropriate length. Most trimmers offer a baseline standard for the popular shadow look. For a $20 trimmer, I have saved literally hundreds of dollars in shaving over the years.

Savings: At least $300.

Media Confuses Consumerism And Ads With Success

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Related post: Too Poor To Protest: How Income Inequality Silences Your Voice

The Daily Show CNN Walk to the Couch Ads
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart makes fun of CNN’s walk to the couch ads

Reader happiness versus advertising revenue

This is infuriating and intoxicating all at once. When you start a site and begin to build an audience, monetary consequences become more important. There’s serious money to be made. If I place in-text ads in front of my readers’ eyeballs, I risk alienating them while also skyrocketing my earnings. As an author, I constantly wonder what’s more important: A comfortable reading experience or pure profits?

This equation is delicate for any news source. Without ads, they cannot operate. Share too much, and you may lose your avid readership. There’s been a push in recent years to make ads more seamless – an effortless part of the process of consuming media.

CNN took this to the extreme recently, as they turned a simple walk to a couch into an advertising opportunity. A satirical critique from The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart ripped the idea apart and brutally made fun of the network. Clearly, the balance and boundary for advertisements had been crossed. Shortly after displaying this depraved attempt at money making, CNN cancelled the in-show advertising segment.

Ad revenue is falsely, grotesquely linked to success

A recent article in Business Insider catalogued the many ways Android was failing in comparison to the iOS/iPhone platform. In particular, the article focused on the Christmas shopping season purchases between the platforms:

Apple users on iPhone and iPad accounted for five times what Google’s Android users did when it comes to online shopping.

This is certainly a story and interesting financial question: Why are Google’s Android users spending less than their iPhone carrying friends? But here’s where many media outlets take this one step further and assert an ad-friendly correlation that doesn’t necessarily exist:

What the heck is wrong with Android users?

Android people just seem to be sitting on their hands. Their phones are just as powerful as iPhones are. They have bigger screens, too. But they don’t do anything with them.

Simon Khalaf, CEO of Flurry, one of the larger mobile ad companies…had a surprising answer for us: Androids are simply dumbphone replacement devices…

…It seems like the users on the majority of the island aren’t interested in modern life.

By not supporting big business – as much – this Christmas, Android users are being vilified. This contempt for a population seems to be solely motivated by advertising revenue. They’re described as inferior and worthless in the eyes of this media outlet. Why look for Android users when iPhone users will buy more?

Unfortunately, this is an incorrect, vapid conclusion. The author seems to stop short of actually looking for reasonable conclusions about what is happening. Androids make up about 80% of all smartphones. There’s a great diversity in Android users, as many are more affordable than iPhones. Androids can be applied to less expensive prepaid cell phone plans and off contract. These options cater to a different, more frugal audience than iPhones. Shouldn’t these frugal users be exalted for spending less?

Apple appeals to many audiences, but its affordability is better suited to the wealthy. The company’s margins are well known for being industry setting limits, with some products garnering 50% or more markup on actual build value. The person that buys an iPhone is likely in a different income class than an Android user.

But all these reasons are simply a defense of Android users, and that misses the greater point. Larger media outlets often get distracted by revenue and profits as the sole barometer of success. These news sources even go so far as critiquing less ad-friendly executives as being childish.

Embrace ads and be revered by Wall Street

If you’re not developing a way to monetize your platform, Wall Street isn’t interested. When technology darlings rise beyond startup status and begin entertaining an initial public offering (IPO), investors analyze the earning potential. For instance, Snapchat may have a multi-billion dollar valuation, but it’s not making money yet.

Angel investors have pumped hundreds of millions into the company for development. The future looks similar to Facebook: mine user data without explicit permission or choice (accept the terms or get off the app), and plaster intrusive ads that capture your attention and wallet. But who decided Wall Street was the bastion for business acumen and respect for users’ wants?

This is a narrative that major media outlets across the board tend to support. One of my favorite websites, The Verge, suggested that Mark Zuckerberg was childish when he didn’t support advertising as much. Likewise, they suggested that the major turnaround in Facebook’s stock was associated with his new embrace of ads:

Zuckerberg decided to buckle down, grow up, and start focusing on the nitty-gritty of the business.

He got trusted engineers to give up coding and start working on spreadsheets and mobile ads instead. He began taking face-to-face meeting with important clients like McDonalds. And he embraced more ads in both the news feed and in the company’s mobile products. The result has been a strong turnaround that has boosted the stock to new highs. (The Verge)

The Verge’s article seems to portray an atypical business desire as wrong or inferior. Zuckerberg is painted as an idiot that needed to “grow up” to recognize the basic business needs. Instead of being considered a hero for trying to stand up to investors, the media tends to focus on something that supports the mass-media-advertising model.

Consumerism, ads, and real progress

Corporate America would like you to think you’re merely an employee that aids profitability. Why exist if you are not contributing to a bottom line? As a company, there’s this assumption that you should take any and all profits you make – no matter the cost. But there are limits to corporate greed, and a backlash may result from poor planning.

CNN was privy to a major critique of their strange advertising practices. Clearly, a line was crossed. It’s easy to confuse advertising revenues with success. Honestly, when I have months that make me less money on Frugaling, I wonder what I did wrong. Fortunately, there’s a healthier reality that includes the users’ perspective. Success should be gaged in sharing and commenting rather than the profit model.

When your goal is a powerful reading experience – versus profits – you’ll likely end up with more in your pocket anyways.

Buy The Expensive Shoes: Cost Per Wear

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By buying shoes that are initially more expensive, I'm actually saving my wallet and helping the environment.

I’m a big supporter of Florsheim dress shoes. They cost a small fortune on my paltry budget, but something keeps me coming back to them. I recently purchased another pair on Zappos.com. Remarkably, these $125 dress shoes are one of the best values I’ve ever found. Before I buy anything too expensive, I try to calculate the true cost per wear.

I’m stupid, brutal, and ruthless with my dress shoes. They go with me everywhere – through the slush, snow, rain, and muck. I live in the Midwest, where snow is constantly falling and ice cakes the sidewalks. Nonetheless, I’m expected to dress nicely for work and school.

The roads can be devastating to most shoes, but somehow my $125 Florsheims can make it through a couple seasons. When I calculate the cost per wear for these shoes, I realize the true value. I wear them for about two-thirds of the year. That equals about 243 days – at minimum – of wear. Amazingly, the Florsheim’s can last about 2 years like this (at least 486 days). Conservatively, that means that each time I slide my dress shoes on, I spend about $0.25 per wear.

Many would suggest buying beater shoes for terrible weather. Maybe I could get a cheap pair of shoes at Walmart or Target for $40? Likely, a pair of cheap shoes could last me one season and then I’d need to retire them. Most winters last about 90 days. If I wore the inexpensive shoes every day of winter, I’d still be spending about $0.45 per wear.

At the end of 90 days, I’d be sending my shoes to Goodwill or to the dump. From the packaging, rubber, materials, store resources, etc., buying a pair of shoes and throwing them away is far less green. This buying of cheap materials with poor true value is part of the reason why we’re aiding climate change and adding to our conservation problems.

By buying shoes that are initially more expensive, I’m actually saving my wallet and helping the environment. While I focused on shoes today, you could certainly branch out and apply it to the rest of your wardrobe. When you can calculate cost per wear across domains, some serious savings will be in store.

Have you ever calculated cost per wear? Are there ever items that you choose to purchase that initially more expensive, but a better value?

Poor Man’s Guide To Failing At Investing

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Wall Street Bull Money
Photo: thenails

Addicted to the stock market

As a high school student, I envisioned entering the world of finance. I enjoyed watching the market movements, and loved reading Jim Cramer’s Confessions of a Street Addict. After I matriculated to college, I made a sudden switch to psychology and never looked back until I began writing, firsthand, about becoming more frugal.

Investing held a special place in my heart and I had amassed about $4,000 in a Roth IRA prior to graduating college. The funds were invested in a diverse array of stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Unfortunately, financial demands grew every day as a graduate student and I opted to liquidate much of my portfolio for tuition payments and living expenses.

Graduate school and my sinking portfolio

In capitulating to serious financial demands and poor budgeting, I lost something I loved. I know it sounds funny, but investing wasn’t about the money for me. The money was the medium necessary to engage in a mental game I enjoyed. If I could research, understand, and time an investment well, I could profit greatly from it. This spoke to me on an intellectual level.

But by selling off my stocks and ETFs to pay for the present, I no longer had the impetus nor motivation to research and select stocks. With a measly $1,000 left in my Roth IRA, no investment could be diverse or well-balanced across sectors. Investor fees would eat up any gains I saw. Even as I try to become financially fit and solvent, there are parts of me that feel this incredible pressure because I don’t have enough to invest smartly.

The final $1,000 and failing at investing

With my final $1,000 in a Vanguard account, I’ve made some interesting investment decisions. I was invested in Tesla (TSLA) for years and years, it doubled to $55 a share and I decided to take the profits and sell the position. Honestly, I didn’t want to sell the whole position – I just wanted to conserve some gains and let the profits run.

But when you have next to no money for investment purposes and really small positions in different stocks, you can’t smartly buy and sell stocks. I still believed in Tesla’s business model and future, but wanted to prevent from losing all the gains. This Catch-22 of investing is dangerous and subverts your ability to realize significant financial gains. Over the next month or so, Tesla would go on to about $150 per share – tripling from my sale point and increasing about 500% from my original investment. I had missed the largest gains.

In high school, I invested in Apple when they were around $20-30 a share. Unfortunately, I only had a few hundred dollars in my name. To conserve the profits, I sold the position after the market madly invested in Apple’s iPhone release and catapulted it to $80-90 per share. While I appreciated the 300% gain, I wanted to see the investment continue – I needed more money to defend the profits and position.

It takes money to make money

This trite cliche is entirely true when it comes to investment decisions. Sure, you could get lucky, have an individual stock run up big and take the profits at the perfect time, but you could also miss out on ever-increasing gains and opportunities. The reality is that investing takes a certain amount of funds – $1,000 is hardly enough. While my student loans loom, I’ll be focusing my energy on paying those off first.

There’s still a part of me that misses being involved actively in investing and dedicating a portion of my week to researching and studying up on the market’s developments. This is a very clear consequence to the financial situation I find myself in nowadays. Until then, I am stuck kicking around $1,000 in a Roth IRA, waiting for small gains here and there. This is not a recipe for success.

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