Comments on: Tip #26: Gardener? Cleaning lady? DIY instead

By: 30 Tips That Can Save Your Money This Month

30 Tips That Can Save Your Money This Month — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:21:02 +0000

[...] #24: Cut your commute expenses by 40% Tip #25: Earn more money using your God-given skills Tip #26: Gardender? Cleaning lady? DIY instead Tip #27: Use barriers to prevent yourself from spending money Tip #28: Use price-protection [...]

By: Ramit’s IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com Series — Tip #26: Gardener? Cleaning lady? DIY instead — NMBankruptcyBlog.com | New Mexico Bankruptcy Law Blog

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:30:01 +0000

[...] This is a link to the twenty-sixth in an ongoing series billed as 30 Day Challenge to save $1,000 by Ramit Sethi at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com, his blog on personal finance (banking, saving, budgeting, and investing) and personal entrepreneurship. His series outlines the various ways we can keep money in our pockets. Tip #26: Gardener? Cleaning lady? DIY instead [...]

By: Budgeta

Budgeta — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:04:42 +0000

I cut my own hair. Recently I started to color my own hair because of the ongoing cost and the ongoing damage to my hair.
I do have a leg up on most of you because I am a licensed cosmetologist. Still, they don’t teach you how to cut or color your own hair in beauty school. I just figured out how to layer it myself pretty early on and have done so most of my life. I have taught my 2 oldest daughters how to cut the back of my hair. So one of them does it for me. TOTAL COST: FREE. Don’t hesitate to teach your kids some tricks of your trade. Chances are they can do it too and you all will save money.
Let me make this clear, MY HAIR LOOKS GREAT or I would not do it myself! I am frugal, but I don’t like to look poor or unkempt.
My teenage daughters only allow me to cut their hair. I also taught them how to cut their own bangs . These 2 girls are very beautiful and stylish and I like to think I am too. I get compliments on my hair all the time and so do my daughters. Now I’m having them recruit their friends for haircuts. Easy because they love my daughters’ hair.
With regard to the hair coloring part, I was a little fearful to foil it myself, but I found a great website to help me. Go to killerstrands.blogspot.com. There’s a demo on how to foil “slices” of color into your hair. I followed that. I have a great bathroom with 3 mirrors and bright lights so I can see the sides and back of my hair easily. I did the front and top parts of my head and it turned out great. I was paying $125 every other month to keep it foiled. The hairdressers got lazy and always overprocessed my hair while they did someone else, so I always had breakage and split ends. I have long curly hair that I flat iron most of the time, so too much bleach and heat would fry it. Why pay $750 per year for someone to damage my hair?
This hair color tip may not be useful for everyone, but it sure helped me!
Cutting my hair myself saves me at least $150 per year. Cutting the whole family of 6 saves me at least $700 per year.
Cost of hair foils at salon w/tip 6X per year: $750
Cost of hair foils at home per year: $60
Cost of hair foils at home per month: $5
Total haircut and color savings per year: $1540
Take a look at the back area of your hair ladies, pull up the layers and take a good look. It may not be a pretty sight. When I saw the stripes and uneveness in my own hair, I realized that I could do it just as well myself. And I have! Again, go to killerstrand.blogspot.com and see if being a crib colorist is in the cards for you.

By: Danielle

Danielle — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:44:17 +0000

Good advice. I do my own nails and recently got rid of my expensive gym membership. For some people though, I feel a cleaning person is more than just an expense. It can save tons of time that people can use to spend with their family.

By: mike c

mike c — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 05:42:23 +0000

Been cutting my own hair since 1999. These days, it’s mostly a buzz cut, since higher powers have taken it upon themselves to create a receding hairline where my bangs used to be. But in the beginning, it was just a normal short-haired guy cut. Just took some clippers, some scissors, and a good hand held mirror. And a dust pan and broom to clean up when I’m done. Initial cost, about $40. I easily made up for that in the first year.

A few months ago, I helped my inlaws sell their lawnmower, because my MIL decided she had earned the right to never have to mow the lawn again, despite having two kids to put through college over the next few years and having a whole lotta mortgage debt piling up. Instead, she pays a landscaping company to mow the lawn… ridiculous waste of money considering the benefit they receive for the service. I told her she should have the kids mow it, since she already gives them money for doing absolutely nothing anyway. Did I mention that their lawn is also only about the size of a large post-it note? Frustrating!!!

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:21:21 +0000

I think this makes sense to a lot of people, but not all. If a cleaning lady charges $20 to clean your house, and it would have taken you say 2 hours to do the same work, but in order to make time to do that cleaning, you’d have to leave some overtime on the table, it just might not make that much sense, financially speaking.

By: Anne Howe

Anne Howe — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:20:16 +0000

In principle this is a good tip however, but it puts money as the only value you get from that service. If you make more money than you pay the cleaning lady per hour I would just work an extra hour and bank the difference.
win win, the cleaner still has a job, you continue to invest in community and you get to do something you like better, maybe? If that does not sit well, do the cleaning at surface level, cut the cleaners hours.You could lose your cleaner, find that you really hate doing that cleaning job and then what?

By: Grumpy

Grumpy — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:02:32 +0000

Mike – I’m not saying that saving money is bad, just that some ways of saving hurt your community more than others.

How much of your cleaner’s business do you account for? One-tenth?

So your decision has a big effect on her (or his) life. She has practically no capital tied up in the business (I’m told that round here, cleaners use their client’s equipment and products), so if you drop your cleaner, that’s money straight out of her pocket.

But your haircut is maybe 1/1000 of an individual hairdresser’s work. (Ten minutes once a month is probably typical for guys.) And he or she probably has more than you’d expect invested in equipment – next time you’re in the salon or barber shop, ask how much those scissors cost, and how often they need replacing! And on top of that, the franchisor and/or owner plus the mall owner are taking their cut (sorry!).

Anyway, when you drop your cleaner, dogwalker or gardener in tough times, then believe me, it IS personal.

If you really need to make sacrifices, then go ahead.

But if you’re dropping the dogwalker so you can continue to waste money on (eg) unnecessary cellphone calls, pay tv channels that you never watch or magazines you never read, then you’re begging for bad karma.

By: styleosophy

styleosophy — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:44:18 +0000

I hired my niece to do my housekeeping. Helps her and the economy as she is in college and looking for a job.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:54:11 +0000

I do cut my own hair, buzz cut.

If you can’t cut your own hair check to see if a friend or family member can do the job. Instead of paying them, barter. See if there is something you can do for them.

While what Grumpy said is true it reminds me of this video
‘The Good Consumer’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ut93YYZu8

Don’t let Grumpy and other people make you feel bad because you decide to save some of your hard earned money.