“High-Maintenance” is Expensive: How I Cut $320/mo. in “Girly” Expenses
This is one of those articles that feels like it requires a disclaimer, but I’m trying to get away from explaining away my opinions, so I’d encourage you to take this as one individual’s perspective on a purely financial basis and not a personal attack on your spending habits. (Strong start, right?)
That said: Being a woman is expensive. There’s nothing inherently good or bad about being “all natural” or “all made up,” but one certainly costs more.
I don’t even just mean the “pink tax” – I mean the baseline existence of being a woman costs more. Men don’t budget for manicures, pedicures, highlights, waxes, spray tans, facials, or eyelashes – they budget for haircuts. That’s it.
I calculated how much money I used to spend on my general female upkeep:
$200 every three months for my cut and color
$100 per month on eyelash extensions
$15 per month on eyebrow threading
$100 per month on manicures and pedicures
$500 per year on makeup
When I broke it down and looked at the average, it equated to about $320 per month (or $3,840 per year) that I was spending on literally being pretty.
Are you kidding?
That’s not negligible. That’s also not fair. I don’t see my boyfriend traipsing to the salon every 12 weeks to get his highlights re-done or schlepping it to the pedicure chair to get his callouses scraped off by a stranger.
After I got super into frugality, I essentially said f*** it – I’m not paying for this shit anymore.
And to just drive home the point about how much this costs over a lifetime, if you assume I’m that high-maintenance for merely 5 years, that’s nearly $20,000 invested in being an attractive woman. I won’t even run it through the investment calculator because I don’t want to become a personal finance guru meme, but if you’re reading my numbers and thinking, damn, that feels in line with (or lower than) what I spend, hopefully your attention has been sufficiently #piqued.
The sad thing is, nothing feels that terrible in the moment. $45 here and there for a gel manicure doesn’t feel like it’s going to derail your retirement goals.
But (okay, screw it, here comes the calculator) my annual hot girl budget (at $3,840 per year, conservatively) would become $62,000 if invested over a 10-year period (investing $320/mo. for 10 years with a 7% rate of return).
UGH! Being a woman is so dumb!
The initial shift
I know that, while seeing the power of your investment is a strong start, it often pales in comparison to the allure of feeling attractive (we’re being totally candid here, right?). I had gotten USED to looking a certain way – fake eyelashes, blonde hair, perfect eyebrows, pink nails. The works.
Then I listened to a podcast about (are you ready for this?) how we’re all essentially being sold lies by the very profitable beauty industry. Exploiting insecurities is LUCRATIVE. And we all know it, sure, but we still play along, because all the OTHER women around us are doing it, too, and we don’t want to be the ugly ducklings combing our unibrows in the corner. But this time, I had never heard someone state the facts so simply.
This female blogger who goes by “Mrs. Frugalwoods” did an interview where she essentially was like, “I mean, sure, I can spend hundreds of dollars every month on hair and makeup, but I’d rather invest it so I can retire earlier and do what I want with my life. I’d rather be free to not work and explore the world than pretty and chained to a desk for an extra 15 years.” That’s an oversimplification, but… it has some merit, and I was like, shit, she’s right!
That stuck with me, and then I noticed not only the amount of money, but the amount of time and planning that had to go into maintaining all these various things. It was all on a schedule that had to be accounted for. In some ways, it felt like an additional chore to schedule the manicure into an already-busy day.
When I decided to pull the plug, I did it little by little – but immediately, I noticed it was just less… stressful. I felt like I had been freed from this weird, subtle obligation.
How I started
The first thing to go were the eyelashes because they were (a) really expensive and (b) stupidly time-consuming. I had this realization rushing to a lash appointment to which I was about to give an hour of my time and $50… for two weeks of long eyelashes. I remember thinking, How long do I feasibly plan to continue doing this? This feels inherently short-lived.
So I did what any reasonable person would do: When it was time for the next one, I canceled, and I literally pulled them off my face one by one, leaving me with a lash line a la Rufus the Naked Mole Rat.
I was HIDEOUS, and mortified.
Enter Latisse, an eyelash solution that helped me grow my natural lashes back to a state of normalcy. Latisse (the generic version that I get is called Bimatoprost) is $75 and lasts between 3-4 months, giving it a cost of between $20 and $25 per month on average. After I noticed how beautifully my lashes regrew, I kept using it – and now they’re insanely long and dark. I know if I stop they’ll go back to “normal,” but I’m good with $20 per month for this prescription – especially because I can use my HSA to pay for it.
If you’re interested, I’d recommend asking your doctor at your routine physical. I have a friend who works for a plastic surgeon, so he prescribed it for me. It’s pretty easy to get your hands on a prescription, and it works.
The next thing to go were the manicures and pedicures. This one was easier to let go of, and I didn’t really replace it with anything. I tried painting my own nails for awhile but ended up enjoying (pretty quickly) the freedom of not being beholden to a gel nail polish schedule. Now I have naked nails and it truthfully doesn’t really bother me. Shedding that $100 expense didn’t hurt too much.
Creative solutions abounded
Some things, like eyebrow threading, were relatively cheap – but I found I could maintain the same shape with tweezers pretty easily. Every once in awhile I’ll go back to get them reshaped, but for the most part, it’s pretty easy to maintain your own eyebrows once they’re properly and professionally snatched once.
I had just become intrigued with full face waxing and threading when I decided to go full Man Mode on my beauty regime, but luckily, I discovered these Tinkle razors (they’re a few bucks for a pack). They have a straight edge, and you essentially lather up with face wash, then scrape the peach fuzz and dead skin cells off your face. It’s extremely exfoliating and creates the most beautiful base for any makeup you end up wearing (more on that later).
There are tons of videos on YouTube that explain how to do it (I’ll link an entertaining one). Between tweezing my own eyebrows and using the straight razor to do a baby “dermaplane” on my face at home every month, I really don’t feel tempted to go get facials or fancy treatments because my skin looks and feels fine.
I used to have terrible acne (and was on Accutane for 8 months), so I understand the allure of facial treatments and expensive products – but at the risk of sounding insensitive, the best thing I’ve done for my skin in adulthood is simplifying the routine. Basic cleanser, basic moisturizer, once-a-month exfoliation. Done.
Where things became more difficult
I’ve always said that my hair is one thing I’ll always continue to pay for, but I’m starting to feel differently now that it’s just about the only high-maintenance thing left about me. I don’t know if I’m competitive with myself or just cheap, but I’m getting to the same point with my hair that I reached with everything else – a mix of “Who cares?” and “I don’t feel like paying for this.”
It’s funny how over time I’ve pulled away all the layers of artificial femininity through either frugality or laziness, and now I’m at the last bastion – the last stake in the ground. Being BLONDE. Growing up, all the prettiest girls in my high school were blonde – even the cool girl friend group was nicknamed “the Blondetourage.” Is it any wonder why I decided to start coloring my hair? Somewhere deep down, I’ve equated blonde with beautiful and popular, and now – 10 years later – I’m still paying someone else to help me keep up appearances. It makes me sad for younger me (and her natural hair color), who I deemed wasn’t sufficient or good enough on her own.
My strategy for prolonging the time between highlights visits was using the purple shampoo from Joico – it’s cheap at Ulta (I think you can get 32 oz. for $20) and it makes your color super vibrant, which helps distract from your roots. That works fairly well, but after you go six months without highlights, it becomes obvious that you’ve abandoned your colorist.
Now I think I’m going to pay for one final appointment to have my roots blended with the blonde so, as it grows, it looks natural, and eventually it’ll all be my natural hair color again.
The undertones of these suggestions
My intention is never to tell you what to do. My intention is always to get you to think critically about how you spend your money, and why.
When it comes to spending on beauty products and treatments, I (personally!) arrived at a point where it felt like it was more trouble than it was worth. I wanted to be more comfortable (naturally) in my own skin, and I didn’t want to feel beholden to treatments and appointments that I scheduled with the consistency and devotion of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders’ practice schedule.
There are certainly times where I see other women with perfect nails, a beautiful blowout, a glowing tan and eyelash extensions and think, Damn, she looks GOOD, but in a lot of ways I’m trying to wean myself off caring about the artificial so much. Having gone to school in Alabama where every girl looked like she grew up in the pageant system and had the flawless skin and pearly white smile to prove it, this was a little bit of an uphill battle.
My “Girly” budget now
Really, it’s just the Latisse every few months – and haircuts where necessary. Clearly, the goal is to get my spending habits as close as possible to that of a man. We’re almost there!
And to bring this full circle: Yes, I do invest the money that used to get washed down the drain with the salon shampoo. My current contributions to my various accounts are:
$660 per month to my 401(k) + $500 employer match ($1,160/mo.)
$500 per month to my IRA
$880 per month to my General Investing account
Obviously, not ALL of that came from my reformed Girly budget, but man – it sure did help. And you know what? I feel more genuinely pretty and like myself than I did before, which was an unintended “win” that came from this female social experiment. Worth a shot, right?
