How NOT to blow your wad….on makeup

Good Morning all!

You heard it here first, we are going to not blow our wad’s in 2018. I have spent some time in the last month or so doing some considering of where I am at in life. Some reflection if you will, and I have made the decision to be more aware of my spending on makeup/hobbies. That being said I feel it necessary to provide the masses with some anti-wad blowing tips. My apologies for the wall of writing, but sometimes you just need to…

Be real with yourself.

Are you really going to wear that blue lipstick enough to make it worth your while? Do you love it because you love it? Or do you love it because you think you will look like the YouTuber/celebrity if you wear it?

There has been many a time when I know I love a product on someone. Lip gloss for example. I love lip gloss on many different people. I hate lip gloss, and yet I bought it constantly, because someone else made it look good. It will never work for me, so I have stopped buying it, and likely never will. Buxom gift sets be damned.

Possible money saved: $75 in Buxom holiday packs that will take up space in my drawers and NEVER be touched

Set other financial goals, and TRACK them

This one always works for me when I want to focus on saving. Reporting speaks to me, any kind of reporting. I have recently discovered and become fairly invested in bullet journalling, and they have some amazingly beautiful spreads on any aspect of life.

This has been a huge assistance to me (other than the new, possibly expensive hobby) 

Do you want to go on vacation? Buy something out of the ordinary you have been eyeing up? Retire early? Create a visual representation of what you are looking to achieve, and hold yourself accountable. Every time you want to spend money on makeup, look at this tracker and see how far you have come, and how much the item(s) would you set you back.

Would you take the cash if I handed it to you?

I have my boss to thank for this one, and I have applied it to so many purchases in my life. It’s a VERY simple concept. If I want something that I know I shouldn’t buy, consider how much it is, and if you would rather have the cash.

Eg- There is $600 on a desk. Right beside it is a puppy. You can only choose one. If you choose the $600, the value of the puppy is not aligned, and you didn’t really want it. (Let’s be real here friends I would have taken the puppy for sure)

Example #2- You want to pick up the new latest and greatest Natasha Danona palette, at $100. If I had $100 and I had the palette, would you take the cash from me, or would you take the palette? If you take the item, you truly want it, and the value is equal.

Always gives me something to think about with impulse purchases.

Fill your cart, and sit on it for a day.

I do this when I feel like shopping and I know in the long run it’s going to be a waste of money or I really don’t have the money to be filling up those shopping car

ts to the bring with all the colours of the rainbow.

No holds barred, I will put EVERYTHING I want in the cart, and just leave it there, it gives me the satisfaction of “yup I’m going to get all my hopes and dreams delivered to my mailbox in a matter of days”, while really not spending anything.

After I revisit it, there is rarely a time when I don’t take out more than half of those items I so loved, or delete the cart entirely, telling myself to give my head a shake.

Is your time value = to your purchase?

I learned this trick from an old friend as well. When I had first moved out on my own, he taught me to consider every purchase as my time valued into material goods. At the time I was making $14 an hour as an Assistant Manager of a pizza place, so money was always fairly tight.

There were things I was always sad I couldn’t buy when I wanted to, so the perspective I was given is… You want all these things, but the would you drop everything and work for them? There is a pair of jeans you want that will cost you $50 after tax. If I said I would buy them for you but you had to work for your hourly wage until they were paid off would you still do it?

$50/$14 Hr  = 3.5 hours of work to pay for those jeans. Did I find value in that? I can tell you I did not. No pair of pants at the time was worth almost four hours of my time.

Make lists  for Christmas/Birthday Ideas

I am the WORST for providing ideas for gifts for myself. All year I write notes in my phone/planner about things I can pick up for people they have talked about throughout the year that they will never buy themselves. It’s a great surprise for them at gift giving time, and really shows you were engaged when talking to them.

So let me ask you, why, when EVERY gift giving season comes around, do I sit here staring like a dead blank pickle going, I dunno? I don’t want anything.

YOU ARE A LIAR WOMAN YOU HAVE BEEN LOADING UP SHOPPING CARTS AND ABANDONING THEM TO GET YOUR PRODUCT FIX.

Write down your own wish lists, prioritize the products you really want throughout the year and see if they are still relative when someone asks you for gift ideas.

Shop your Stash, Use it or Lose it/Project pans

Your new Youtube search history should consist of Project Pan, Use it or lose it, Project Peep, Declutters and Shop my Stash. These will get you to come to grips with the speed we ACTUALLY use up our makeup. How long it lasts and when it starts to turn. It will give you a fantastic perspective of how much waste could be in your collection, and give you some shock value on how much money goes down the toilet, when we don’t use our existing packaging. There are Youtuber’s who ONLY do this, they aren’t reviewing every product known to man, they are here to show you that we can and we WILL love our current collections.

There is an App for that

Last but not least and I hope you have made it this far with me, there are a few really fantastic apps to track savings, and see where you are at financially.

https://www.mint.com/  is my all time favourite financial app next to my banking app. This budgets, categorizes and does all you need it to do for your finances. Theapp will connect directly to your financial accounts and through your financial institutions web based serves to do this for you. I have been using it for years and it’s FANTASTIC.

Keep an inventory of the makeup you currently have. I personally use My Beauty Cache, which is on the App Store for Apple products, It will actually let you add photos, and descriptions while tallying your inventory to see how much you have really spent on makeup, and what you had sitting collecting dust.

Thank you for your time, and I hope this is a successful financial year for you all!

@Ccosmeticchaos 🙂