Saving Money Shaving? Ha!

I got into this type shaving to save money.  I was tired of that check to Gillette every month.  Hahahahahahaha.  I now have, I don't know, maybe 35 razors between straights, DE, and SE.  I have enough soaps to keep several Mahoots elephants clean for months.  I have enough blades that I'm thinking of having the floor below "that cabinet" reinforced so it doesn't go into the basement.  My den has enough stone in it to be rendered a quarry.  I've not added up the total nor am I going to.  Sure I budget what I do and I'm settled into my favorite makers.  I not only haven't saved one thin dime but shaving has become as expensive as my wife's nail and spa days with her girlfriends.  And I don't care!  

What I didn't know was that it wasn't so much the expense of cartridge shaving that I disliked, it was the poor quality of shaves I got from the ever-increasing blade count on the razors.  Hey, I know some guys will get along swimmingly with all these new carts but they are not for me.  I started shaving way back in the early 70s with a Shick injector and some sort of brushless cream that worked ok for me.  When Gillette brought out the tracII I swapped and got great shaves.  But then came the swivel head which was an unmitigated disaster for me,  the first blade would catch the hair and rotate out. The second would rip the hair out by the roots.  I stayed with the Trac II until I could no longer find them and had to rotate into the swivels.  Darn things trained me to push hard to keep the cart flat on my face.  I tried every blade that came along and became more and more discouraged and ever more disgusted with the quality of my shave and the cost to do it.  I hated shaving but wanted to stay groomed up.  Tried the stubble thing but my face is either clean or beard.  In between those two I resemble a hobo.  

I've found it wasn't the cost of shaving but the cost combined with the crappy benefit.  I spend much more now than I did then and am more than happy to do it.  I'm assuming most of you fall into that same category? Hey, if carts do it for you that is great.  I'm not dissing carts at all.  For me?  It was like waking up everyday looking forward to a wrestling match with a Merkur blade.  No thank you.  (Man Merkurs and I don't get along.). Love their razors though.

I got into wetshaving about 6-7 years ago because I absolutely hated shaving with my Gillette ProFusion/Fusion style razors. They would provide 2-3 good shaves and would provide the worst razor burn after that.

I was tired of spending so much on cartridges that I started to Google alternatives to the 5 blade razors. I almost bought an electric razor but didn't want to spend several hundred dollars for a quality razor.

I tried wetshaving with a DE Merkur razor and never looked back to multiple blade razors.

I got into this type shaving to save money.  I was tired of that check to Gillette every month.  Hahahahahahaha.  I now have, I don't know, maybe 35 razors between straights, DE, and SE.  I have enough soaps to keep several Mahoots elephants clean for months.  I have enough blades that I'm thinking of having the floor below "that cabinet" reinforced so it doesn't go into the basement.  My den has enough stone in it to be rendered a quarry.  I've not added up the total nor am I going to.  Sure I budget what I do and I'm settled into my favorite makers.  I not only haven't saved one thin dime but shaving has become as expensive as my wife's nail and spa days with her girlfriends.  And I don't care!  

What I didn't know was that it wasn't so much the expense of cartridge shaving that I disliked, it was the poor quality of shaves I got from the ever-increasing blade count on the razors.  Hey, I know some guys will get along swimmingly with all these new carts but they are not for me.  I started shaving way back in the early 70s with a Shick injector and some sort of brushless cream that worked ok for me.  When Gillette brought out the tracII I swapped and got great shaves.  But then came the swivel head which was an unmitigated disaster for me,  the first blade would catch the hair and rotate out. The second would rip the hair out by the roots.  I stayed with the Trac II until I could no longer find them and had to rotate into the swivels.  Darn things trained me to push hard to keep the cart flat on my face.  I tried every blade that came along and became more and more discouraged and ever more disgusted with the quality of my shave and the cost to do it.  I hated shaving but wanted to stay groomed up.  Tried the stubble thing but my face is either clean or beard.  In between those two I resemble a hobo.  

I've found it wasn't the cost of shaving but the cost combined with the crappy benefit.  I spend much more now than I did then and am more than happy to do it.  I'm assuming most of you fall into that same category? Hey, if carts do it for you that is great.  I'm not dissing carts at all.  For me?  It was like waking up everyday looking forward to a wrestling match with a Merkur blade.  No thank you.  (Man Merkurs and I don't get along.). Love their razors though.

You and 99.99% of DE shavers.

I got into this type shaving to save money.  I was tired of that check to Gillette every month.  Hahahahahahaha.  I now have, I don't know, maybe 35 razors between straights, DE, and SE.  I have enough soaps to keep several Mahoots elephants clean for months.  I have enough blades that I'm thinking of having the floor below "that cabinet" reinforced so it doesn't go into the basement.  My den has enough stone in it to be rendered a quarry.  I've not added up the total nor am I going to.  Sure I budget what I do and I'm settled into my favorite makers.  I not only haven't saved one thin dime but shaving has become as expensive as my wife's nail and spa days with her girlfriends.  And I don't care!  

What I didn't know was that it wasn't so much the expense of cartridge shaving that I disliked, it was the poor quality of shaves I got from the ever-increasing blade count on the razors.  Hey, I know some guys will get along swimmingly with all these new carts but they are not for me.  I started shaving way back in the early 70s with a Shick injector and some sort of brushless cream that worked ok for me.  When Gillette brought out the tracII I swapped and got great shaves.  But then came the swivel head which was an unmitigated disaster for me,  the first blade would catch the hair and rotate out. The second would rip the hair out by the roots.  I stayed with the Trac II until I could no longer find them and had to rotate into the swivels.  Darn things trained me to push hard to keep the cart flat on my face.  I tried every blade that came along and became more and more discouraged and ever more disgusted with the quality of my shave and the cost to do it.  I hated shaving but wanted to stay groomed up.  Tried the stubble thing but my face is either clean or beard.  In between those two I resemble a hobo.  

I've found it wasn't the cost of shaving but the cost combined with the crappy benefit.  I spend much more now than I did then and am more than happy to do it.  I'm assuming most of you fall into that same category? Hey, if carts do it for you that is great.  I'm not dissing carts at all.  For me?  It was like waking up everyday looking forward to a wrestling match with a Merkur blade.  No thank you.  (Man Merkurs and I don't get along.). Love their razors though.

Agree completely. I have spent more on wet shaving than I ever imagined, but I have never enjoyed shaving as much as I do now. Well worth the exchange.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Yea, when you get so into it you start a company. “Yea, honey. I’m savin’ money!”


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I was thinking about this the other day. And it occurred to me that even if we are spending more actual money, it feels like we're saving since we are actually ENJOYING out purchases.

This is in contrast when we were using carts it seemed like a chore that we didn't look forward to and made those purchases that much more noticeable.

Kind of like medicine. People always give the pharmacy a hard time over a $XXX copay as if we're the problem that something is not going smoothly, but if it was say a purchase they actually WANTED (eg a hamburger) people have more patience and more willing to shell out $xxxx happily.

/rant.

Yea, when you get so into it you start a company. “Yea, honey. I’m savin’ money!”


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Now that's funny right there! Hey, all us "money savers" are pitching in to help you keep your den at a manageable level. Great soap by the way!

Yea, when you get so into it you start a company. “Yea, honey. I’m savin’ money!”


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Now that's funny right there! Hey, all us "money savers" are pitching in to help you keep your den at a manageable level. Great soap by the way!

Thank you very much.

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

Saving money is just the hook that pulls you in but as you know its the quality of the shaving experience that keeps us here. If I got the same shave from DE shaving as I got from carts I'd probably have stuck with the carts. I'd still be using brush and soap though. The quality of the lather, the variety of the scents, its all so much better than the 2 or 3 generic inoffensive scents coming out of a can. The thought that a million men (a billion?) are all using the same smelling shaving lather as I am every morning all over the world just leaves me cold.

3 years a go I bought my first pack of those cheap disposable handle cartridges in order to try and avoid spending $20 on a Gillette cartridges every month or stretching it up to 2 months and deal with tugging... Bad Idea with the cheapo ones so I ordered Harrys pack, didn't liked it and my search continued until I saw somewhere the DE shave raving... I was like hey I was DE shaving when I was in the military, so time to save money baby!!!!

3 Years later