The short version: If you shave using a razor more than once a week, then you can justify buying a $300 electric shaver and reduce your expenditure by more than half over 5 to 10 years.
I’ve been a little bit lazy when it comes to financial things. My main strategies have been misguided intuition, guesswork and ignorance. However, after reading a few useful books on accounting and earning, I have focused on more defensive financial planning.
I made some basic assumptions:
Electric razor
- Purchase cost: $300 (AUD)
- Lifespan: 7 years
- Service rate: once every 750 uses
- Cost per service: $50
Razor blades
- Cost per blade: $2 (AUD)
- Number of shaves per blade: 4
- Cost of shaving foam/gel: $4
- Number of shaves per container: 20
My motivation for doing this is an intent to increase the frequency I shave. At the moment, it would be once or twice a week. I’d like to believe that I can manage 5-6 times per week, so an assumption of shaving three times a week is good start.
I split the cost of the electric razor and the services for it into a yearly cost. As far as my accounting knowledge stretches, this depreciates the cost of the electric razor over its effective live, with no salvage life.
With three shaves a week:
- Electric: $53.29 per year
- Razor: $109.50 per year
That’s about 205% cheaper to use an electric shaver, and a reasonably expensive one at that.
In the interests of saving my brain, this was all calculated using a spreadsheet model, so changing the numbers is easy. This allows for different scenarios to be run rapidly.
Assuming six shaves a week:
- Electric: $63.71 per year
- Razor: $219.00 per year
It costs around 340% more to use a manual razor than an electric!
Playing around with the numbers a bit, I worked out that I can go from shaving on average 1.5 times a week to 4 times a week for the same outgoing expenditure by switching to an electric shaver.
Hopefully the time spent investigating this, and the time spent researching a good shaver is balanced by a time saving by using an electric shaver.
ps. thanks to the wonderful shop assistant at the shaver shop in the city for answering my questions about types of electric shavers and their useful life.