Unless you live in a shack off the grid somewhere, you probably spend a good deal of money on your body every day. Healthcare, personal care, looks. Teeth, hair, guts.
The whole business is just rife with opportunity—to take care of yourself less expensively.
20 percent more sunscreen, yours free
You think gas is expensive? You think Champagne is expensive?
Try sunscreen. A typical 3-ounce tube will set you back $12—or $18 if you have to buy it on site at the beach, pool, or hotel. That works out to about $768 a gallon!
Deep in your heart, you must realize that there’s no possible way to get all the sunscreen out of a tube just by squeezing it. About 20 percent of the goop you’ve paid for remains in there, clinging to the inside of the tube.
When it’s toothpaste, you probably don’t care. But at $768 a gallon, you might care a lot about sunscreen. At that price, it’s a little more disturbing to think about throwing away 20 percent of the sunscreen you’ve paid for.
That’s why nobody at the beach will laugh if you snip off the end of the tube and scoop out the leftover sunscreen with your finger. Think of it as scooping out SPF-30 dollar bills.
Savings ballpark: $3.60 per tube
$3.60 = Savings of 20 percent from an $18 tube of sunscreen
Blowing up the great toothpaste-ad lie
Wow, toothpaste sure looks great when photographed by a professional, doesn’t it?
How many times in your life have you seen toothpaste depicted like this?
And yet the proper amount of toothpaste to use is a “pea-sized” blob.
Who says so? Only the American Dental Association. And your dentist. And even the toothpaste companies!
“You’d think you need a lot, based on some toothpaste commercials on television. However, recommendations from the American Dental Association state that you only need a ‘pea-sized’ amount for effective cleaning.”
Guess where that paragraph appears?
On Colgate’s website.
“What you see in commercials is too much for an adult, and way too much for a child,” says Cheryl Watson-Lowry, D.D.S., on Dentistry.com. “Place a small pea-sized dab of toothpaste on the toothbrush; that’s all it takes.”
OK. So why on earth would toothpaste companies show pictures of toothbrushes loaded up with five times the correct amount of paste? Why would they want us to think we should use that amount every time we brush?
Come on, now—you know the answer to that one already. —Adele Mooney
Savings ballpark: $78 a year
$78 = Savings by using one-fifth the advertised amount of toothpaste (brushing twice a day with toothpaste from a 6.2-ounce tube costing $3.80)
Toothpaste: How to buy it
Packaging and marketing are huge components of any consumer good. But toothpaste—oh, wow. The price per ounce can vary so radically, you’d think the makers chose the digits by throwing darts.
If you’re an Amazon.com shopper, for example, your search for toothpaste is rewarded by a fascinating display: Each package of toothpaste displays its price per ounce. You’ll quickly discover how often the public is bamboozled into paying way too much for toothpaste. You’ll see prices like 19 cents an ounce, 31 cents, 85 cents, $1.15, all the way up to $2.51 an ounce, which you can assume is toothpaste made with genuine gold dust.
So your best bet is to spend the least on packaging and the most on the stuff inside. In short, you want the lowest price per ounce.
For home use, that means buying the biggest tube you can. And, of course, using Coupons.com to find deals on toothpaste, which are plentiful.
You’re always going to need toothpaste, right? In fact, you know at this moment how much you’re going to use for the rest of your life: If you brush twice a day, you’ll need 3 ounces a week. (The toothpaste companies say an ounce of toothpaste is good for three brushings. But who’s going to believe them anymore?)
Toothpaste doesn’t go bad in the sense of spoiling. However, according to the FDA, the fluoride in it may lose its effectiveness after two years.
At that point, don’t throw the toothpaste away! Toothpaste is still amazing for de-stinking your fingers after you’ve handled garlic or onions; removing scuffs from leather shoes (put a dab on, rub in with a cloth); getting crayon marks off walls; and cleaning things like faucets, sinks, and irons.
Anyway, the bottom line is this: Buy a lot of toothpaste when the deal is favorable. You’ll generally find it most favorable when the quantity is large, the toothpaste is basic, and the coupon is generous.
Savings ballpark: $78 a year
$78 = Savings on one year’s supply (156 ounces) of Crest Complete Multi-Benefit Whitening + Scope by buying 8.2-ounce tubes on Amazon, at $15.30 per five-pack, vs. 58 individual 2.7-ounce tubes from Walgreens for $2.29 each
Drop your prescription copay by two-thirds
Most medical insurance plans pay for only part of your prescription medicines. You’re expected to do your share by coughing up a copay (a chunk of the price, maybe $10 or $20) for every prescription you pick up.
So here’s the trick: When possible, buy your prescriptions in 90-day supplies instead of 30-day. Guess what? You’ll pay that copay only four times a year instead of 12!
Savings ballpark: $80 a year
$80 = Savings on four $10 copays a year instead of 12.
How to profit from the broken dreams of treadmill buyers
In an age when two-thirds of all Americans are overweight, it’s no surprise that treadmills are hot sellers. People think: “Hey, a treadmill can give me exercise anytime I like, no matter what the weather outside, even while I’m reading or watching a movie!”
That’s what they think. But as you and every stand-up comedian know, that’s not how it works out.
According to Consumer Reports, about 40 percent of us stop using our home-gym equipment. (At least as exercise equipment; we make excellent use of them as clothes racks.)
Why don’t we stick with our treadmill ambitions? It has to do with psychology. It’s much harder to develop a new habit than we think, and buying new gear doesn’t actually guilt us into using it the way we expect it to.
The point of all this: Treadmills and other home-gym machines are some of the most inexpensive, plentiful, and easily found used goods available. Hop onto Craigslist.org (the global site for free local classified ads), for example, and you’ll be amazed at how many people are trying to unload their treadmills at any given time.
As a bonus, technology doesn’t advance much from year to year with these machines. Buying a four-year-old treadmill isn’t like buying a four-year-old smartphone; it’s likely to work just as well as a brand-new one that costs twice as much.
Savings ballpark: $775
$775 = Savings by buying a Yowza Fitness Lido Superfold Treadmill “lightly used” on eBay for $425 (retail price is $1,200)
Stop raiding your life savings for razor cartridges
It’s unbelievable how much razor-blade cartridges cost: $18 for four cartridges! You’d think these things were forged from virgin unicorn horn.
The blades are engineered to need replacing incredibly often, too, as you well know if you’ve ever taken up shaving. A new cartridge gives you a really clean, close shave—for about three days.
What few people realize, though, is why the blades go dull so fast. It’s not because you’re wearing them down. It’s because they’re rusting.
Wet metal, left exposed to the air, oxidizes (rusts). At the microscopic level, the blades of your cartridge are rusting, weakening, and eventually flaking—and the result is rougher shaving.
So how do you make wet metal razor blades stop rusting? Dry them. After each shave, blow them dry with a fan or blow-dryer. Or swish the head in a little jar of rubbing alcohol that you keep on your sink for this purpose (a baby-food jar works great). Alcohol blasts away the water molecules and then evaporates very quickly.
You’ll be amazed at how much longer your razor cartridges last when you stop them from rusting like this. At least three times as long. Some people get months out of their blades.
There are even less expensive ways to shave. Instead of expensive Gillette razor cartridges, you could buy cheap plastic two-blade disposables. You could use an electric razor. You could learn to shave with a single blade, like your grandfather did, and sharpen it manually. You could sign up for Dollar Shave Club, which ships you new cartridges every month for $3, $6, or $9 a month, depending on how many blades they have.
Most people find that none of these methods gives as smooth, close, or convenient a shave as the commercial cartridges, though.
Savings ballpark: $175 a year
$175 = Savings by buying one-quarter as many cartridges each year, at $14 for a four-pack