Tiny House Life Frugal Tips - Cut Your Own Hair

I've been pondering for a bit a lot of the questions and comments I get that relate to something along the lines of "how do you afford to buy a tiny house/do what you're doing/etc." Well, in general, there's two basic ways to be able to have what you want I've found. Earn more money, or spend less money. Now there's lots of experts out there who have much advice and ideas on all aspects of the "earn more" side of things. From jobs and skills training, to the most profitable fields to work in, to investing and more. All of that is far from my area of experience for the most part. I've generally found that personally, it's easier and more fun to find ways to spend less than earn more. 

Now I certainly don't have a goal of spending as little as humanly possible though there are folks out there who can advise you on how to do that as well. For me, my goal is more about spending money only when I find my life benefits greatly from the thing that money buys. And for many things, I just simply enjoy doing them myself more than paying someone else to do it for me, not having them, bartering for things, or using a different/older/second hand item versus buying something new. Some things I would still rather pay someone else to do. Like I just really don't enjoy
doing oil changes, so I pay the guys in a local shop to do that for me when my vehicle needs one. Overall though, my goal is to live a frugal life. Webster's dictionary says:

Frugal adjective - fru·​gal | \ ˈfrü-gəl \

Definition of frugal

: characterized by or reflecting economy in the use of resources

And then I'm thinking of the slightly archaic definition of "economy," meaning the management of household or private affairs and especially expenses. So I thought it would be fun to do a bit of a series over time of different things I do to require less money in life. This is in no way saying I think all of you should do the exact same things, but more to maybe inspire ideas about what money might be spent on things that you don't actually derive a lot of value from in your life. That you might just wish to either have for something else, or not have to earn in the first place. :) 

One of these things is I learned to cut my own hair. When I looked up salons in my area, since I've never gone to one, it appears a basic hair cut starts at $60 and can easily climb north of $200 depending on what you are looking for. 

My requirements for my hair are that I like it long and pretty much don't want to spend any time doing anything to it. Like wash it once a week, go to bed with it wet, and some days run a course comb through it. :) Disclaimer here, I'm not a professional hair stylist, this is just what I do.

For a bit of history, as I was growing up, my hair was never cut or trimmed in any way and from the age of nine, I wore it up and covered any time not at home in my own bedroom. So getting haircuts was just not a thing. Though mine was never as long naturally as any of my three sisters. Below is a rare photo snapped at night with one of them in the bedroom all four of us shared. This is not how either of us ever wore our hair, we were just goofing around, I can't remember why. But it's about the only photo I have of my hair from that time in life.

The first time it was ever cut, and only time I've had a professional hair cut was in my late teens, when two good friends and I donated hair to wigs for women with cancer. The above photo was after taking off 12 inches for me and more for both of them. Since then I've donated hair once more, but tried to quickly grow it out again as I do much prefer it long. 

 I looked up various directions and tutorials for cutting your own hair and experimented with several. Preferring it long certainly helps as it's fairly easy to do yourself. Short is easy too and many of my male friends cut their own. In-between lengths are more challenging to do yourself I would think due to the challenges with being able to see what you're doing. But I know some who have gotten together with a friend and learned to cut each others. 

My hair is very fine, slightly wavy (or super frizzy!) when damp or humid, pin strait when the air is very dry, and somewhat fragile due to how fine it is. But I've found a style that I like and that checks all my boxes. I can do it myself, keep it long, wash it once a week, go to bed with it wet, and some days run a course comb through it. You might think it looks terrible and unprofessional, but I'm happy with it. And if you do think that, remember that it's probably not just the cut, but the fact that I'm not going to use (all take way too much time for my taste, effort, appliances, and most are toxic to your health) any products, colors, hair driers, styling, etc so this is it's natural look. You could certainly do a similar (or very different!) cut, yourself and still use all that stuff if you are so inclined.

And here is my favorite! This lovely lady has several great tutorials and and natural hair care tips. While her hair is much thicker and more luxurious than mine, these instructions still work well for me. Some of those twenty million views are from me as I usually rewatch her directions every time I cut my hair. :) Which I do every two to three months, mostly keep split ends in check as I'm never looking to lose length.

Hair cutting (My Favorite Tutorial Here!)

I'm sure not everyone wants to choose the same style as me, but there are lots and lots of how-to videos out there for all kinds of cuts. If cutting your own hair interests you at all, I'm sure you can find one for whatever style you choose. 

The only tool I use for this is a little hair cutting scissors I picked up 13ish years ago and have been using ever since. You could probably use any old scissors, but it is nice to have a good sharp one. Cutting things like paper dulls a scissors rather quickly since it's having to cut through wood fibers. So this one is strictly only ever used for hair and it stays sharp. A dull one can pull, break, and split hair. You can probably find a decent one in any store that sells things like combs and shampoo, but this is the closest to the one I actually have that I could find. https://amzn.to/2TlWMd0 I'm sure there are much nicer scissors out there too, but I already have this one and it's been working well. 

One other thing to note if you are going to give this a shot, it's always safest to start with just taking a tiny bit off. You can always go back and trim more. A lot faster than you can regrow length you didn't want to lose! And... if your hair is wet when you cut it which some prefer, it will look shorter once it dries. This is especially important to note if you're cutting any kind of bangs and don't want them to look ridiculously short after your hair dries. 

I can't seem to locate the video tutorial I first used to learn to cut side swept bangs, as they were so simple I never went back and rewatched it like I do with the cutting long layers video. But this is pretty much what I do. Minus the crazy colored hair. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGb17ih6f4A

The results, with the noted variations depending on the weather and humidity at the moment. 

So to do the math, cutting my own hair saves me at least $240 per year, or if what I wanted was one of the pricier options, maybe as much as $1200 per year. 

Every three months or 4 hair cuts a year @ $60 = $240

Every two months or 6 hair cuts a year @ $200 = $1200

None of that accounts for little bang touch ups which seem to generally cost $10 each. I've been doing this now for about 13 years and the only cost was my scissors which was about $8. So over those years I've saved between $3,120 and $15,600. Minus that single eight dollar expense. Pretty cool right? And now that I have learned this skill, those numbers will just keep going up every year of my life that I continue cutting my own hair. Which I expect will be as long as I'm alive. 

I don't know about you, but I can think of a handful of things to do with that cash that are worth way more to me than the few minutes a handful of evenings a year that I spend on cutting my own hair! See what I mean about finding ways to be more frugal and not need money being more lots more fun than most of the ways to earn more? I think this overall is one of the big benefits of tiny house life too. Not that a tiny house specifically has anything to do with hair cutting, but it does provide a lot of great opportunities to spend less on things that might mean less to your actual quality of life than other stuff you value more. 

Have you ever cut your own hair or traded with a friend to cut each others? Share your tips for others below!