Saving Extra Money by Cutting my Hair at Home

So there I was, 2 months into quarantine with a fully stocked fridge, because I was eating snacks every hour or so, and a full head of hair. Now, as a young professional working in an office, I was used to the staying clean-shaven and getting a haircut every 4 weeks. This was an expectation as it would not be good for you as an individual and as a company if your employees looked like they had just come back from a camping trip in the middle of nowhere. So I was always expected to be clean and to have a nice haircut the moment my hair got a bit out of control.

Fast-forward 2 months into quarantine, no need to go into the office and no need to see anyone who would get mad at seeing a young guy with a crazy amount of hair flowing in all directions. Now I think it’s important to give some background, I have thick hair and it’s not curly but it does stick up when I wake up and unless I comb it back down, it doesn’t move for the day. So during quarantine, when I didn’t need to go out or see anyone important, I kind of let my hair go a bit crazy and told myself that I would just comb it if I ever needed to, which I didn’t.

Around the 3 month mark of quarantine, I soon realized that my hair, as crazy as it was, was actually bothering me a bit. Can you imagine having to keep putting your hair behind your ear every minute or so because it kept puffing over your entire head? Trust me, like those people back in the 2000’s with crazy bangs that covered their eyes (I personally never had hair that long before), I was going crazy and I needed to do something about this!

My biggest issue was that the barbershops and hairdressers where I live were still not open. Now don’t forget that I usually get my haircut once a month, so imagine 3x the amount of hair I’m used to right on top of my head! I knew I needed to go get it cut by a professional as I did not know what I was doing and I was a bit too worried to mess up by hair. So in my daily/weekly calls to my parents, I had mentioned my initial anger on how I could not cut my hair and how it was driving me crazy! Than out of the blue, my mom told me that my dad had gone through a similar crisis and had gone out and bought a barber kit to cut his own hair.

Hearing this was music to my ears! Finally I could get rid of some of this hair and be free. But, like any rational person, I needed to make sure I was in good hands. So I asked, like most people would do in my situation, for photos of the finished product before I agreed to going over and getting my haircut. As I looked at these two badly taken photos, some people have not mastered the art of selfies; I took the time to look at every single hair, analyzing to make sure that I would not look bald, or worse, uneven. Than I asked for proof of consistency, as maybe my dad was lucky enough to do a good job for himself but might not be as lucky with me.

So I had him to retest his artwork on my younger brother and again asked for proof of life in the form of a FaceTime. Now he had done a very good job on both himself and my brother so I felt like I had received enough evidence to trust that he would do a good job. So I went over, a nice sunny weekend, and sat down in the bottom of the shower, so that we would not make a mess of hair everywhere, and sat without moving for 10-15 minutes until the haircut was over.

I can truthfully say that my haircut from a man of many talents was as good as a haircut from a professional. Now keep in mind that my hair is not incredibly difficult to work with, it might have been extremely long but I usually keep my hair relatively short so there was not that much fading, fading being where you need to cut at certain places to make sure you do not have hair sticking out in one place and not the other, so it was not a impossible task or anything. But I will say that I was very happy with my haircut.

So now onto the important part of this entire experience: the money I was able to save! So as you know from reading my blogs, I am a big fan of saving money wherever I can. Now, for me, the average cost of my haircut is 30$. This includes the actual haircut, the taxes that are charged and the tip, about 4$, as a courtesy to the hairdresser. In some places, it might be a lot cheaper or a lot more expensive but since I have been in Montreal, I have always gone to the same woman so the price for me has remained consistent. So 30$ a haircut and I usually get a haircut a month so 30$ x 12 months = 360$ of after-tax money. So since quarantine has not been a full year, at the time of writing this blog it has been 5 months of quarantine. So 30$ x 5 months = 150$ of after-tax money or 280$ of pre-tax money saved. Wow that is actually quite a substantial amount of money to save from a 15 minute activity every month or so.

Now, I am not telling people to start cutting their own hair to save money but what I am trying to say is that if you have someone in your close family or in your friend group who has the tools and the skills to cut your hair, than you might as well take them up on the offer. I was lucky enough to have relatively easy hair to cut and was stuck in quarantine with no option whatsoever so it just made sense to me to just get my dad to cut my hair. For me, I think that as long as I am not back in the office for work due to the pandemic, I will definitely keep getting my haircut by my dad. But once I get back into the office and start seeing other professionals daily, I might go back to my barbershop, only time will tell! I might just start getting used to my dad’s haircuts or maybe with enough practice he might even be better than my barber! I guess we will wait and see and in the meantime, I will definitely save all of the extra money that I am not spending on getting my haircut, who knows, this money might be enough to pay half my rent one month!

Let me know down in the comments below if you would you trust a family member to cut your hair if they offered!