Trimming those Expenses

In the spirit of cutting down on our monthly expenses, I wanted to share with you a few more ideas which help us trim away those monthly expenses, literally!

About seven years ago, and I remember this quite clearly, we were on a very, very tight budget. My husband went to have his hair cut one day and he had to fork out R100 at the barber shop for this. Not only did this seem expensive to us because we were on such a tight budget at the time, but this actually was expensive. So we decided to invest in hair clippers as soon as we could so that my husband could cut his hair at home. This particular set of hair clippers cost us about R300 back then. While they do need a bit of a clean and a bit of oil from time to time, they’re still used regularly to this day! Spending those R300 at the time has actually given us a saving of R8,400 worth of monthly hair-cuts that we would have otherwise spent at the barber shop over the past 7 years.

Two of our four pooches have long hair, and one of them in particular needs to have his hair cut every two months or so because his hair just grows so quickly. But they don’t enjoy going to the parlour and it’s always such a mission getting them to sit still while the professionals cut their hair! So we give them a haircut at home instead. Personally I think they just enjoy all the treats they get for sitting still at home! Although dog hair clippers will probably set you back a few hundred Rand to start with, with proper care they will last you a very long time. They have certainly been a worthwhile investment for us and our two long-haired pooches are much happier having their hair cut at home!

As for me and my hair, well, believe it or not, I’m really not that fussy. I will have a hair-cut at the salon probably about once a year, possibly twice a year if I I’m in the mood, but that’s really all that I need. What I also do sometimes, to save myself some money, though I must admit I haven’t done in a long time, is have my hair cut at one of L’Oreal training institutes. The hair-cuts are cheaper if done by a trainee hairdresser! The trainees are supervised at all times though so there’s really no need to worry. Check out their price list here and you’ll be surprised at how much cheaper your next hair-cut, blow-dry or colour could be.

One last thing which helps us trim away those expenses each month is: we don’t use a gardening service to mow our lawn. We do it ourselves. This is a huge, huge saver for us! Yes, I know it’s very convenient to use a gardening service and yes you can just relax on a Sunday and have someone else take care of it for you, but we’ve found that this is just such a waste of money – hundreds and even thousands of Rand over the years. Think about how much a gardening service will charge you per visit and multiply that by however many times a year you use a gardening service from your neighbourhood to see how much it actually costs you in the long run. In summer, you would probably need to have your lawn mowed once a week because it just seems to shoot up 5-10 centimetres, or more, each week.

We’ve decided that we would rather save all that money, invest in a good-quality lawn mower and an edge trimmer and mow our own lawn – probably one of the best things we’ve done. Investing in a manual push-mower, if this is an option for you, would be an even better idea as you wouldn’t be using any electricity to mow the lawn, so saving even more money while giving yourself a bit of a work-out over the weekend, for free!

If you have any other tips on how to trim away those expenses each month that you’d like to share, please leave a comment below.

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