Another "Isn't My OCD Quirky?!" Post
Ohhhhkkkkaayyyy.
So a few weeks ago I let a little something slip to The Clam that I am now going to share with y'all.
I have done market research into the relative costs related to various personal care products - things we all use, like shampoo, toothpaste, soap and/or bodywash and lotion. Now, when I say "market research," this is what I mean:
I look at a category, like bodywash, and I take several brands and compare prices. But you cannot just compare prices, because everyone packages theirs in different sized bottles - Suave is 12 oz, St. Ives is 13.5 oz, Dial is 18 oz and Ivory is 24 oz, for example. So I take the price of the product and divide it by the number of ounces to get the cost per ounce. (I learned this trick from The Frugal Zealot, Amy Dacyzyzn.) THEN, I multiply out how many bottles of the product I would use in a year, based on the ounces. (Clearly, I would only need to buy half as many bottles of the Ivory, at 24 oz, as I would of the Suave, at 12 oz.)
Bar soap is even more complex, because not only are the bars themselves different sizes ( anywhere from 3 oz to 4.5 oz, depending) but they come packaged in different quantities (so, for example, the 12 pack of Dial is a better buy than the 4 pack, but Dial is still way more expensive than Ivory). So I take the number of ounces per bar, multiply it by the number of bars to get a total ounce figure, then divide the cost by that number.
It's actually fascinating. First of all, bar soap is much cheaper than body wash. Now, I pretty much only looked at drugstore brands, because I don't have the money to be buying $10 bars of gourmet soap. But the most expensive bar soap I looked at (per ounce) was Lever 2000, 8 pack of 4.5 oz bars, at $8.49, which breaks down to 24 cents an ounce. The cheapest bodywash I found was good old Suave, at $2.29 for 12 ounces, which breaks down to 19 cents an ounce. (The cheapest bar soap was a mere 10 cents an ounce.)
I have been looking at all of this for a while, not because that extra 9 cents an ounce is really going to break my budget, but rather because, especially after reading The Tightwad Gazette, I felt it was important to be conscious of the differences in prices. And I have come to a couple of conclusions.
1. The different companies do the size shift on purpose. I mean really, what's the point of 13.5 oz? It just makes it that much trickier to compare prices. You're standing there looking at the 12 oz for (say) 2.99 and the 11.5 oz for 3.79 - are you really going to whip out your calculator to see which one's the better buy? (Yes, I do! That's why the list got started!) You think, oh, well, it's just a little more money for a little less product.
If I ran the zoo (I love that concept), liquid products like bodywash and shampoo would come in 12 oz, 18 oz and 24 oz and bar soaps would be standard weight and be sold individually, in 4 packs and 8 packs. None of this flimflammery!
This is most obvious in the case of things like lip balm - for example, most lip balms, like Burt's Bees and Chapstick, are .15 oz per stick. The best buy I have found is Vaseline Lip Therapy, which comes in a .35 oz tube, not a stick. It's $1.79 for .35 oz, which equals $5.37 an ounce! Whereas Vaseline (in the tub) is about $3.69 for 13 oz, which is 28 cents an ounce. See the difference?! OK, OK, so I'm not going to haul around a pound of Vaseline in my purse everywhere I go, but it is still an eye opener, and when I'm home, I reach for the jug o'vaseline, not the little tube of goopy gold! (BTW, the generic is even cheaper.)
2. It may not seem like such a big thing, but remember, small holes can sink a big ship. It's like the people who buy the $3.50 Latte on their way to work every morning. Listen, if you recognize that $3.50 x 5 is $17.50 a week, and that, over the course of a year, you could be spending over $800 on COFFEE, and you still want to do it, fine. I'm not going to tell you how to spend your money. I probably make choices with my money that you wouldn't, and that's ok too. The idea is to BE CONSCIOUS. Know where your money is going. (It doesn't grow on trees, you know!) So, I tend to choose to brew my coffee at home, knowing that even expensive coffee homebrewed is going to be much cheaper than cheap boughten coffee. And I'd rather skimp on things like body wash (cost wise, not quantity wise) so I can afford other things. For example, I'd like to retire someday, and since Social Security is going to be as dead as the dodo by then, I'd rather not be chowing down on Mighty Dog thinking about the $20 shampoo I used to wash my hair with.
So a few weeks ago I let a little something slip to The Clam that I am now going to share with y'all.
I have done market research into the relative costs related to various personal care products - things we all use, like shampoo, toothpaste, soap and/or bodywash and lotion. Now, when I say "market research," this is what I mean:
I look at a category, like bodywash, and I take several brands and compare prices. But you cannot just compare prices, because everyone packages theirs in different sized bottles - Suave is 12 oz, St. Ives is 13.5 oz, Dial is 18 oz and Ivory is 24 oz, for example. So I take the price of the product and divide it by the number of ounces to get the cost per ounce. (I learned this trick from The Frugal Zealot, Amy Dacyzyzn.) THEN, I multiply out how many bottles of the product I would use in a year, based on the ounces. (Clearly, I would only need to buy half as many bottles of the Ivory, at 24 oz, as I would of the Suave, at 12 oz.)
Bar soap is even more complex, because not only are the bars themselves different sizes ( anywhere from 3 oz to 4.5 oz, depending) but they come packaged in different quantities (so, for example, the 12 pack of Dial is a better buy than the 4 pack, but Dial is still way more expensive than Ivory). So I take the number of ounces per bar, multiply it by the number of bars to get a total ounce figure, then divide the cost by that number.
It's actually fascinating. First of all, bar soap is much cheaper than body wash. Now, I pretty much only looked at drugstore brands, because I don't have the money to be buying $10 bars of gourmet soap. But the most expensive bar soap I looked at (per ounce) was Lever 2000, 8 pack of 4.5 oz bars, at $8.49, which breaks down to 24 cents an ounce. The cheapest bodywash I found was good old Suave, at $2.29 for 12 ounces, which breaks down to 19 cents an ounce. (The cheapest bar soap was a mere 10 cents an ounce.)
I have been looking at all of this for a while, not because that extra 9 cents an ounce is really going to break my budget, but rather because, especially after reading The Tightwad Gazette, I felt it was important to be conscious of the differences in prices. And I have come to a couple of conclusions.
1. The different companies do the size shift on purpose. I mean really, what's the point of 13.5 oz? It just makes it that much trickier to compare prices. You're standing there looking at the 12 oz for (say) 2.99 and the 11.5 oz for 3.79 - are you really going to whip out your calculator to see which one's the better buy? (Yes, I do! That's why the list got started!) You think, oh, well, it's just a little more money for a little less product.
If I ran the zoo (I love that concept), liquid products like bodywash and shampoo would come in 12 oz, 18 oz and 24 oz and bar soaps would be standard weight and be sold individually, in 4 packs and 8 packs. None of this flimflammery!
This is most obvious in the case of things like lip balm - for example, most lip balms, like Burt's Bees and Chapstick, are .15 oz per stick. The best buy I have found is Vaseline Lip Therapy, which comes in a .35 oz tube, not a stick. It's $1.79 for .35 oz, which equals $5.37 an ounce! Whereas Vaseline (in the tub) is about $3.69 for 13 oz, which is 28 cents an ounce. See the difference?! OK, OK, so I'm not going to haul around a pound of Vaseline in my purse everywhere I go, but it is still an eye opener, and when I'm home, I reach for the jug o'vaseline, not the little tube of goopy gold! (BTW, the generic is even cheaper.)
2. It may not seem like such a big thing, but remember, small holes can sink a big ship. It's like the people who buy the $3.50 Latte on their way to work every morning. Listen, if you recognize that $3.50 x 5 is $17.50 a week, and that, over the course of a year, you could be spending over $800 on COFFEE, and you still want to do it, fine. I'm not going to tell you how to spend your money. I probably make choices with my money that you wouldn't, and that's ok too. The idea is to BE CONSCIOUS. Know where your money is going. (It doesn't grow on trees, you know!) So, I tend to choose to brew my coffee at home, knowing that even expensive coffee homebrewed is going to be much cheaper than cheap boughten coffee. And I'd rather skimp on things like body wash (cost wise, not quantity wise) so I can afford other things. For example, I'd like to retire someday, and since Social Security is going to be as dead as the dodo by then, I'd rather not be chowing down on Mighty Dog thinking about the $20 shampoo I used to wash my hair with.
posted by The Big Seester | 1:46 PM
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