It’s always easy to overspend on beauty and skin products. After all, skin and face is some of the most intimate body parts that shape people’s self image. Who doesn’t want to achieve the best representation of themselves? But, there are also smart ways of saving on your beauty expenditures without compromising on your skincare quality. If you find yourself inundated with uncontrollable beauty spending or a mountain of unused makeups, here are some tips that might be helpful in 2018.
Compare ingredients, not brands
One of the things that the beauty industry excels in is marketing. With an overwhelming number of brands and new products being launched constantly, consumers are always being encouraged to try the next big thing that can make their skins perfect.
However, one of the biggest secrets of the beauty industry is also that most products generally have the same ingredients. While it could cost a lot of money to develop new formulas, once they are created they are actually quite cheap to replicate and reproduce. Hence, it’s quite possible to find cheaper options that have the same ingredients as the more expensive ones that are always placed at the more visible, eye-level displays at beauty stores. As with any other purchases, you can do your own research to figure out what ingredients you want, and shop around the content of the products instead of blindly listening to brands’ their marketing activities.
Utilise multi-purpose products to replace specific purpose products
The beauty industry is incentivised to sell you as many different products as possible. To do so, they come up with all kinds of intricate products that all have their own “unique” use cases and charge a premium for them. However, the truth is that many of these products actually have the same functions as general purpose products that are essentially indistinguishable.
One of the most infamous examples of the beauty products with its own specific use case is eye cream. The only thing special about the skin around a person’s eyes is that it is a bit thinner than other parts. As such, most beauty experts now believe that eye creams are not necessary for everyone, and that gentle moisturizers or creams are perfectly suitable for the eye area as well. Multi-purpose oil is also a great example of a general purpose product that can replace many other specific ones. For example, jojoba oil, argan oil and even Vaseline can be used for cuticle treatment, makeup remover, moisturizer or even as a lip balm. By replacing premium products that are supposedly designed for specific usages with more general purpose products, you can avoid overpaying for brands’ elaborate marketing activities without compromising on your skincare.
Extend product’s lifetime
When it comes to beauty products, maintaining their quality for a long time is essential. For example, many active ingredients like Vitamin C can actually degrade quite quickly once they are exposed to light and air. As such, lotions that come with pumps or air-tight packaging tend to last much longer than jar packaged items. Organic or natural cosmetics can also benefit greatly from refrigeration, as they tend to lack preservatives and are sensitive to expiration.
Do-It-Yourself (DIY): recycle and reinvent
Even with the precautions we mentioned above, it’s very common to break your beauty essentials like eyeshadows, lipsticks or mascaras. Instead of throwing them away, you can easily revive them at home with a few tricks. For broken lipsticks, you can actually combine the pieces back together by heating them quickly with a hairdryer (or with a lighter). Broken eyeshadows, foundations and powders can be neatly put together with rubbing alcohol. Old mascaras that are too dry to use can be made as new by adding a few drops of salt water into the case.
There are many other things you can do at home to make your money go farther. For example, cutting your sponges in half can extend their life while still having plenty of surface area to use. When there’s not enough perfume to spray, you can still enjoy its scents by mixing it in with unscented lotion or body wash.
Change your habits
Lastly, the best way to manage your skin is actually prevention by instituting a set of habits that are conducive to good skin. For example, you should always refrain from exposing your face to come to touch with potentially dirty areas. Washing your pillowcase regularly, for instance, could greatly help reduce such exposure and reduce irritation over time. Touching your face is also a bad habit that you should try to replace, since your hands are always in contact with all kinds of things that can be irritable to your face.
Similarly, there are financial habits that you can institute to reduce the overall cost of your skincare over time. Besides the ones we mentioned above, it is generally advisable to find a credit card that provides great rebate on your beauty spending. For example, some cards provide rebates at drug stores like Watsons, while some others provide discounts on online shopping portals. You can cut your beauty expenditure even further by utilising some of these financial instruments.
The article 5 Money-Saving Hacks On Your Beauty and Skincare Spending originally appeared on ValuePenguin.
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