Great Financial Decisions in DelMoniq History #4 - Buying Hair Clippers

I just got done cutting my hair, and while I was in the shower afterward, I thought of Great Decision #4 -- Buying my own hair clippers.

Back during my time at my first job after graduate school, I was poor -- way poor. My rent was more than I could afford and paying back my debt was taking nearly ALL of my salary, post-bills. Part of this was that I was being paid crap and part was because I still had not managed to get my spending under control.

Anyway, one day back in December 2004, I decided that a great way to save money was to start cutting my own hair. All through grad school, I was being cheap, by going to SuperCuts. There was one close to my apartment and one across the street from school. Initially, a haircut would cost me about $12-15. I could walk over when I had downtime between experiments or during lunch or whatever, and that was just fine. But over the years, the cuts got more and more expensive. I think my last one was $25. I only cut my hair every 4-6 months, so we're only talking about $50-120/year. It's not THAT big of a deal.

However, my situation had become so pathetic, that come the end of 2004, I was looking for ANYTHING that could possibly save me money. On my way home from work one day, I had this thought. I need a haircut. But why pay $25 for one haircut, when I could potentially do it myself for cheaper. I got a couple of friends to come over, one of whom cut his own hair for quite some time, and I went to Target and bought my very own hair clippers for about $25. My buddy EO cut my hair for me in my bathroom, and not only did she do a great job, we had a blast. I think that her boyfriend even cut his own hair, but I may be remembering that wrong.

Anyway, ever since, I've been cutting my own hair. I have been able to do it myself and get cuts about as good as SuperCuts, for FREE! Sure, sometimes, I frak it up and look like ass for a few weeks while it grows out, but it's just hair; it does grow back. It's now nearly five years later, and I still have not paid for a hair cut since.

It's been great on days (like today), when I come home and am very annoyed with my hair, and I just say, "Today, Hair, you're going DOWN!" And I just cut it all off (I pretty much shaved it all off today, but I have cut with more style in the past). Plus, I get to just hop right in the shower afterward and wash all those irritating, itchy loose hairs right off, instead of having to go around for the rest of the day being irritated.

Plus, over the past year, I've cut a friend of mine's hair several times. So, not only am I getting free hair cuts, my friends can too. Granted, this works mainly because I'm a boy, and I'm not terribly picky about my hair. There are those out there that would rather just suck it up and pay to have a pro coif his or her mop. But for me, this has be absolutely great.

So, to recap... $25 for hair clippers at Target = 5 years of free haircuts (and probably many more to come; that sucker is still going strong). OOH! And I totally forgot! I also use it to trim down my beard. That's another thing I started doing at that time. Instead of forking over $15-20 per pack of razors and shaving gel, I'd just trim the bushy face down to a uniform layer of stubble -- FOR FREE! Personally, I think I look better with stubble, but what do I know? And yes, sometimes, I just have to shave it all off and be smooth. But I have drastically reduced the amount of money that I spend on shaving supplies. I really only buy razors about once a year (for a 4 pack), and that works great.

So yeah, buying my own hair clippers. EXCELLENT FINANCIAL DECISION!

Fun for Cheap

Yesterday, SS4BC and I went with my friends J&L to Six Flags. OMG! So. Much. Fun! But, amusement parks are known for sucking the money out of your in exchange for said fun. However, I think the way that we handled it was perfect.

We got discount park tickets through L's work ($25 each). Parking was $15. We rented and shared a large all-day locker ($16). We managed to get a large, good lunch for about $15/person. Plus, instead of getting lots of drinks all day long, we splurged for the souvenir cup ($13), but it came with free refills all day! So that $13 covered all the drinks for the rest of the day for all four of us. And that's all it was for spending for me. L got a snack at the end of the day and shared. And for some reason, adrenaline or excitement or the heat (who knows?), none of us were hungry for dinner.

So, total cost for me at one day of awesomeness: $51 (Plus, an extra $28.75 for me, because I paid for SS4BC's ticket and parking for her birthday)

Seriously, not bad. We would have paid around that much per person just for tickets at the gate!

The downside of living in a region of the country where the park isn't open year round (curse you WINTER!) is that it's PACKED as all hell in the Summer. And Six Flags capitalizes on this by offering "Flash Passes". For a tiny fee of $159, you and a friend can skip ahead to the front of the lines for the big roller coasters at scheduled times. If money were no object (dare to dream), I would have been on that like screams on a little girl, but I was totally okay NOT spending an extra $159 to wait in line for about an hour. Really, on one line was totally horrible in the grand scheme of things. And judging by the facts that (1) I can't talk today, (2) my face is sunburned, and (3) I'm totally sore, I'd say that we had an awesome time!

Now to relax today enjoying a lazy day with SS4BC and recuperate from all that fun.