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Shaving for Real

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When you look at a safety razor, you see the mostly-unguarded blade. When you look in the mirror, you see your throat and you see this blade–by definition, razor-sharp–and you realize that you are about to put a knife to your own throat. Why?

Because shaving sucks.

For my 18th birthday, I received 2 Mach3 razors. I used them for more than 10 years. It certainly beat disposable Bics, but not by much.

I liked it, but only because I didn’t have anything good to compare it to.

I’ve start using an old-fashioned safety razor. Now, I can shave smoother and with less irritation than I ever could with a modern razor and it only takes a few extra minutes.

Why would you want to abandon modern technology to put a blade against your jugular?

Modernization isn’t always an improvement. There is something about reaching back in time a couple of generations and doing things, not only the way they used to be done, but the way they should be done. It’s the same feeling I get handling an old rifle or sitting in an antique car.

A real shave is 15 minutes of peace and focus. Lock the kids out of the bathroom and focus on the task at hand. The concentration will usually give you a chance to forget about the rest of the world for just a few minutes. This is pure meditation.

As a benefit, when you’re done, you feel refreshed and well-groomed. It feels good to take care of yourself.

What do you need to shave like a real man?

Start slow and ease your way into it. Put a cup in the bathroom. If you shave with a modern razor, the easiest way to improve your shave is to use hot water. Put your shaving cream in the cup and add a bit of hot water. Mix that up and use it to shave. The hot foam will do wonders for your skin and the closeness of your shave. I did that and immediately start trolling antique stores looking for a good, cheap shaving brush.

A brush makes applying your shaving cream a small pleasure. Spreading the hot foam on your face with a brush gets in on all sides of each hair, softening it for the razor. Ideally, you want a badger-hair brush, but I’ve been perfectly happy with boar hair. I found one at an antique store for $5.

Shortly after acquiring my antique shaving brush, I decided to go even older-school and upgraded to an old-fashioned safety razor. I took my life, and my life-blood, in my own hands to shave for real. I went with a Merkur 23C Long Handle Safety Razor. It’s a basic razor with a longer handle, because I have large hands and long fingers. Don’t worry about getting an adjustable razor. There’s no point. It cost $29 at West Coast Shaving*.

You will need blades for the razor. West Coast Shaving sells a variety pack of 45 blades for $15. Try them all and stick with the one that works best for your facial hair. I tend to change blades every 4-5 shaves. More than that, and they get a bit dull and make me bleed. I try to avoid bleeding.

Now that you’ve got a brush, a razor, and blades, it’s time to get rid of the worthless can of shaving foam. Shaving soap works much better. You can get 3 discs of Col. Conk’s soap for $15, and they will last 6 months each, easily. They are almost exactly the same diameter as a regular coffee cup, so guess what? Just drop it in your cup.

That’s everything you need to shave for just $65, and of that only the blades and soap are recurring costs. Your razor and brush will last forever. I figure it costs me about $1 per month to shave, now.

How do you avoid killing yourself while getting ready for work?

It’s all a matter of technique.

Dampen your cheeks with hot water to soften the hair. I prefer to shave immediately after I shower.
Run hot water over your brush. Get it thoroughly soaked, then shake off the excess water. You want it hot and wet, but not dripping.
Briskly brush the soap disk until the brush picks up as much soap as it can. It may or may not form a lather in the cup.
Put the brush on your face and whisk it around. I use a quick circular motion to build up a lather on my cheeks. This works the hot soap into each hair. Keep brushing it onto your face until it forms peaks.
Pick up your razor. I run it under some hot water, just so the cold metal isn’t a shock after the hot foam. From here, you need your full attention on what you are doing.
Shave.

When you are shaving there are a few things to keep in mind.

Take your time.
Never, ever, ever, ever turn the blade while it is in contact with your face. You will bleed. Once the blade touches your face, it goes in a straight line.
Keep the edge of the blade as close to parallel with your face as possible.
The goal is hair reduction, not removal.

I make 4 passes when I shave. First, I shave from the top down. Next, from the back towards my nose and mouth. Then, from the front to the back. Finally, I shave against the grain from the bottom to the top. This results in a closer shave than anything I’ve ever had with a modern razor.

When I think I’m done, I dip my fingers in some warm water and run them around my face, in all possible directions, to see if I missed a spot.

When the hair is gone, wipe of the remaining cream and splash cold water every place the razor touched. This closes the pores and will help prevent infections and razor bumps.

The last step is aftershave. Aftershave disinfects your face. It also prevents infections and makes you stink nice.

There you have it: the secret to a baby-butt-smooth shave and 10-20 minutes of masculine meditation. If you are looking for a present for someone, you could do a lot worse than a real razor set.

*I have absolutely no affiliation with WCS. I am just very happy with the service and the product.

Side Hustle: Garage Sale Management

Finance

Pre-sale preparation and marketing are important, but ultimately, the money comes from how you manage the sale.

How many people will you have staffing the sale? There are a few considerations here. How many people are involved in the sale? How many people can take the time off? It’s best to have three people at the sale at all times. Two people can manage the money while the third plays salesman and security. Staffer #3 is in charge of watching for price-tag swaps or other theft, answering questions, and trying to upsell. It also allows for breaks, which, if you’ve ever spent a day in a garage drinking coffee, is important.

When are you going to be open? You don’t want to open so early you don’t have time to wake up and get ready for the sale, but you don’t want to open so late the professional garage-salers drive past and forget about you. Plan to open sometime between 7 and 9. When will you close? Staying open until 6 will catch most of the after-work crowd, but it makes for a long day, but closing at four cuts out a lot of the late-day shoppers. Our hours were 8-5, which seemed to be a good compromise between a long day and the best sale.

[ad name=”inlineleft”]Don’t be afraid to shut down. The first day of our sale was cold, wet, and miserable. We had to canopies in the driveway, but everything was getting wet, anyway. Traffic was slow and we weren’t enjoying ourselves, so we shut down. Lunch and a nap improved our outlook considerably. At the end of the day, we start packing up, even if people were there. We tried to only pack what they had looked at, and we didn’t try to rush the potential customers, but we did let them know that the sale was ending for the day. The folks who came in half an hour after close on the last day seemed upset that we didn’t unpack everything for their amusement.

Our layout was designed to get everything easily visible while maximizing traffic. The first day, we were confined to the garage and tents, so space was limited. There were baskets under each of the tables. That forced people to crouch and block each other. The second day, we expanded to fill the driveway. Our tables were organized in 3 rows–a “U” shape with a double-wide row of tables in the middle. This allowed people to see everything in one pass. The middle row had periodic breaks so we could move around to help the customers. The pay table was in the middle of one of the outer rows, which let us monitor the entire sale.

Find someone to watch the kids and pets. If you have to keep an eye on your children, you aren’t watching the customers or giving them the attention they need. Your dog–no matter how well-behaved–is a liability. It will be stressed at the people. Some customers will be allergic or afraid. Just don’t do it.

Ideally, you will have someone who isn’t taking money, knows a little bit about most of the merchandise, and isn’t too shy to talk to strangers. His job is to wander around, answer questions, and help people decide if they want an item. He’s the sales-weasel. If he’s pushy, he’ll chase off the customers, but if he’s hiding, he isn’t making any money. Unusual items should have a sign attached explaining why they are special, so the sales-weasel doesn’t have to explain it to everyone.

Every single item should be priced, but not everything needs to be priced individually. We priced all of the movies in a group. “VHS: $0.50 or 5 for $2, DVD $3 or 4 for $10”. Nobody should have to ask what an item costs. If there are multiple people doing a sale together, make sure everyone is using colored price tags to identify who is selling what.

People come to garage sales expecting to find good deals. If they don’t, they’ll leave. Our rule of thumb for pricing was about 25% of retail, with wiggle-room for the item’s condition. New-in-the-box sometimes made it up to 50% of retail. Our goal was primarily to reduce clutter, so a lot of items were priced at 10%. You have to keep in mind that, if you price things too low, people will assume there is something wrong with it and not assign a value in their own minds. Price it at what you would be willing to pay in a garage sale, then mark it up–just a bit–to account for haggling.

People love to haggle at garage sales. It gives them an opportunity to brag about the great deal they fought for. Try to accommodate them. One of the people participating in our sale was selling antiques with a definite value. She didn’t want to haggle on any prices, so we simply hung up a sign that read “All white-tagged prices are firm.” Everyone else was willing to accept almost any reasonable offer. Our most important rule for accepting a price? If you pissed me off, I didn’t budge on price. Insult me, or offer 1/10 of the price, and my defenses go up, bringing your final price with it. Talk nice and use some common sense while haggling, and you got what you asked for.

[ad name=”inlineright”]Could we have maximized the sale more? Probably. I had intended to hang up a sign that simply said “$100” to set a high anchor-price on everything, but I forgot.

Note: The entire series is contained in the Garage Sale Manual on the sidebar.

Update: This post has been included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

Anchor Price Your Salary

Finance

: Image by Dalboz17 via Flickr

Conventional wisdom says that, when negotiating your salary or a raise, you should make whatever crazy ninja maneuvers it takes to get the other person to name a number first.

Horse pellets.

Have you ever watched an infomercial? Those masters of of impulse marketing geared towards insomniacs, invalids, and inebriates?

“How much would you pay for this fabulous meat tenderizer/eyelash waxer? $399? $299? No! If you call within the next 73 seconds, we will let you take this home for the low, low price of just $99.99!”

That’s the magic of anchor pricing.

The first number you hear is the number you will base all further numbers on. If you hear a high number, other lower numbers will feel much lower by comparison. The number doesn’t even have to be about money.

There was a study done that had the subjects compare a price to the last two digits of their social security numbers. Those with higher digits found higher prices to be acceptable, while those with lower prices only accepted cheaper prices.

What does an infomercial marketing ploy have to do with your salary?

If you are negotiating your salary and your potential employer gives a lowball offer, every higher counteroffer after that will much, much higher than than it would otherwise. On the other hand, if you start with your “perfect” salary, they amount you will be happy to settle for won’t seem to be nearly as high to the employer. At the same time, you will be less likely to accept a lowball offer if you set your anchor price high.

For example, if you are looking to make $50,000:

The employer offers you $40,000. $60,000 seems too high by comparison, so you counter with $50,000, then compromise and settler for $45,000. Or, you could start at $60,000, making the employer feel that $40,000 is too low, so he counters with $45,000, leaving a compromise at $52,000. That’s a hypothetical $7,000 boost, just for bucking conventional wisdom and taking a cue from the marketing industry.

How have you negotiated your salary?

Side Hustle: The Garage Sale Preparation

Finance

We had a garage sale last week, as a wrap-up to the April 30 Day Project. We got rained out halfway through the first day of our 3-day sale, but we still managed to clear $1500. We held the sale in our neighbor’s garage because it had more space and better visibility.

Wednesday night, while carrying boxes over, I missed the step to their property from our driveway and crashed while carrying three boxes. That’s a twisted ankle and a bleeding knee. Naturally, while I’m hopping and swearing, everyone is concerned that I’m okay. The worry-warts. Anyway, it hurt, so we stopped setting up while we still had a few boxes left in the basement.

[ad name=”inlineleft”]Thursday morning, I decided to show them all. At 5:30AM, before anybody else is strongly considering the possibility of maybe thinking about getting ready to hit the snooze button, I decided to get the rest of the boxes ready. They’d all wake up, worried about how I’m feeling, asking if I’m to stiff to carry boxes. The best way to show them they don’t need to worry would be to have all of the boxes dealt with before they woke up. So I started. Up and down the stairs, with a stiff, twisted ankle, gloating to myself about how tough I was…BOOM, down the stairs. I was on my back, sliding down the stairs. I caught a stair-tread in the small of my back and another on the point of my tailbone. Mommy?

After I stopped twitching on the floor at the base of the stairs, I managed to get the last of the boxes ready. Instead of sympathy, I spent the rest of the weekend getting asked if I needed an inflatable doughnut to sit on. There are places I’d prefer not to have bruised.

Unpacking the boxes made me glad that everything was priced. We spent 6 weeks going through our entire house–every room, every dresser, every drawer–to eliminate the clutter. As something went into a box, it got priced, so we didn’t have to do it all at the last minute. That is the most important time-saving step for a garage sale. Price it as you pack it. You don’t want to waste hours pricing stuff while tripping over potential customers.

Another preparation tip to do early: Find tables! Ask around. You’d be surprised at who has a dozen folding tables collecting dust in his basement. It’s better to borrow that to rent. The best price I found was $17.50 to rent an 8′ X 30″ table for a week. We didn’t have to do that, but we thought we would have to. I borrowed a few, found a few, and built a few out of sawhorses.

The week before the sale, we placed an ad in the paper. When I placed the ad, the paper called to suggest we change it from running the weekend before to running just the days of the sale. I agreed, to a point, but their Sunday circulation is miles ahead of the weekday circulation, so why pay to run an ad nobody will see on Thursday? I ran it Sunday through Tuesday, because I wanted the Sunday ad and we got 3 consecutive days in the price. Did I actually know better than the paper’s sales-weasel? Who knows? I think I made the right decision.

The Sunday before the sale, I posted an ad on Craigslist. Interesting fact: little old ladies use Craiglist to plan their garage-sale adventures.

Two days before the sale, we made signs. Bright pink signs with brighter yellow starbursts. They were all simple. “Mega Sale! 8-5” followed by an arrow and our address. Simple, easy-to-read, and bright. The morning of the sale, after the ibuprofen kicked in, I put the signs up. When you make signs out of paper, always include a crossbar. It rained a lot the first day of the sale, so the signs wilted. The second morning, I went out with some duct tape and crossbars and fixed them all.

The day before the sale, we got cash and change. We had $50 in 1s and 5s and $25 in silver change. No pennies. Nothing was priced to make us need them.

The morning of the sale, we set up two canopy tents in the driveway and pulled the prepared-and-filled table out under them. We finished stacking as much as we could on the tables and called it “open”. There were a few boxes we couldn’t put out due to the rain. We simply ran our of room. At noon, $65 into the sale, we decided enough was enough and shut down–cold, wet, and miserable. Lunch and a nap made the day better.

Later, I’ll discuss the other parts of our successful sale.

Note: The entire series is contained in the Garage Sale Manual on the sidebar.

Update: This post has been included in the Money Hacks Carnival.

Side Hustle: Garage Sale Tips

Finance

Garage sale week wasn’t enough. There are so many little things that I did–or meant to do–that I forgot to include them last week.

Advertise everywhere. I do mean everywhere. Take out an ad in the paper. Put an ad on Craigslist. Have fliers in the grocery store, the laundromat, and any place that has a publicly-accessible bulletin board. Put big, bright signs at every possible turn to get to your sale. Assume the drivers a dense. Don’t give them an opportunity to make a wrong turn or–like I did–put conflicting arrows on different sides of a sign.
Use bait. Set out tools and furniture where they are visible. Lots of people drive past if they only see knick-knacks. Tools get the men to stop, furniture gets anybody running a household to stop. If you don’t actually have any tools to sell, put your lawnmower out with an insanely high price on it. Heck, if someone wants to pay you 125% of retail for your mower, take it! I had a number of tools and lawn-crafting gear–actually for sale–near the end of the driveway. If I can get the people out of the car, someone will find something worth buying.
Price it like you’d buy it. People don’t come to garage sales looking for sale prices. They come looking to pay as little as possible. They want the crazy deal. You’ll have to oblige them, at least a bit. Price some things very low, and everything else almost very low. Aim for 25% of retail or less, except for a few special items that you won’t mind keeping.
Don’t be afraid to say no. Some hagglers are jerks. If the offer is insulting, don’t feel obligated to take it.
Bag the little stuff. Instead of pricing every toy 10 cents, put a handful of toys is a zip-lock bag for a dollar. Mix some of the bad with the good so the crap goes away, too. Reject every offer to open the bag and sell the stuff separately.
Put the bags of toys on a table in the driveway. Kids stay out of the confined garage and entertain themselves digging. Kids are clumsy. They can’t break your lamp if the don’t come near it. Parents will welcome something to keep their little brats occupied while they shop. It’s a win for everyone!
Describe anything that isn’t obvious. Make a lot of signs. To be clear, make a lot of signs. Describe the furniture. Show a current ebay auction for the item. Identify the antiques. You don’t want to be forced to sell everything yourself. Let the signs sell for you.
Start early. Price and sort your stuff a month in advance. The night before the sale, all you want to have to do is set up tables and unbox your stuff. Don’t try pricing it then.
Multi-day sales are best. It gives people a chance to tell their friends about it, or to come back and buy the thing they passed up. Don’t lose out on the buzz!
Save your grocery bags. A few weeks before a sale, I go to the grocery store and ask if they mind if a bundle of plastic bags goes home with me. The manager has always said it’s okay. If that doesn’t work, just double bag your groceries and save the bags for a few weeks.
Use blankets and tarps to hide anything that isn’t for sale. People will ask about everything they can see. Save yourself the hassle.
Plan your layout to let people browse and move. You don’t want a traffic jam in the garage. Give it a clear flow, with enough room for people to pass each other comfortably. Three people should be able to pass each other in every row. It’s not always possible, but try. If two people can’t pass, start over.
Clean your stuff. Clean items sell better. Dirty stuff will have to be sold for at least 25% less than clean stuff.

That’s it for now. More to come, I’m sure.

Note: The entire series is contained in the Garage Sale Manual on the sidebar.

Update: This post has been included in the Money Hacks Carnival.

Garage & Yard Sale Manual

After months of research and planning I recently had a successful garage. Here’s my how-to yard sale manual.

Step 1: Preparation. You can never be too prepared. I detail advertising, setup, planning and more.

Step 1.5: Marketing. Here is the text of the ads I placed.

Step 2: Management. Pricing, haggling, staffing, and other “Day Of” issues.

Step 3: Wrap-up. It’s done. What now?

Finally, we’ve got a Page of Tips. This is sure to grow over time.

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