investment thru cost savings (make the case for laser hair romoval)
Laser Hair Removal
At its core, laser hair removal (like many medical procedures) is an investment. Sometimes, the investment makes sense. Other times, it doesn’t. In this blog, we’ll explore under what conditions it makes sense. We should begin by considering the alternatives.
Shaving
Intuitively, shaving seems the most affordable option for body hair management. And if your time has no value, it is. The average person would spends just $8000 on shaving over their lifetime.
Let’s start with some facts. According to Gilette, a woman should replace her body razor every two weeks (assuming she shaves every-other-day, which is the most common frequency today).
Let’s also assume that she usually purchases replacement blades ($3), but she replaces the whole razor every couple of months ($10). On average, a replacement (once you factor in the cost of cream) costs her $5. If she followed Gilette’s recommendation to replace every two weeks, she’s looking at $130 each year. If we expect this 20-year-old to live until the age of 80,
Now we turn the “implicit cost” or the “time cost,” the real cost of shaving, as most women know.
Let’s assume that a typical young woman professional needs to be well-groomed to perform her job. At her job, she earns $22.5/hour on average. (this amounts to a salary of roughly $40k)
According to a study, on average, women shave three times a week for an average of 10.9 minutes each time. This amounts to 32.7 minutes per week, 131 minutes per month, or 26.2 hours per year. If she makes $22.50/hr, she’s paying $590 each year with her valuable time.
When you combine the explicit and implicit costs, shaving will cost you $720 per year. If she were to get laser hair removal, none.
Besides the damage done packaging and transporting shaving accessories, shaving’s highest environmental cost is water-use. Hence why, laser hair removal is a procedure that help conserve water. The electrical
Fifty-two percent of women surveyed reported shaving with the water running the entire time. Women surveyed reported an average shaving time of 10.9 minutes and an average of shaving 12 times per month. With the average shower using five gallons of water per minute, the average 20 year old woman will use 8,000 gallons each year and a total of 420,652 gallons of water shaving throughout their lifetime, nearly enough water to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool. According to SOURCE, only 2 percent of women shavers do not use water when shaving.
| for 60 years | RAZOR | RAZOR | ||
| Discount Rate | PV of Shaving’s Total Cost | PV of Shaving’s Implicit cost | PV of Shaving’s Explicit cost | Undiscounted Explicit cost |
| 2% | -26k | 21k | $ 4,600 | $ 8,000* |
| 3% | -20k | 16.5k | $ 3,653 | $ 8,000* |
| 4% | -17k | 14k | $ 2,977 | $ 8,000* |
| 5% | -14.5k | 12k | $ 2,500 | $ 8,000* |
| 6% | -12.4k | 10k | $ 2,100 | $ 8,000* |
By this logic, you should be willing to spend around $17,000 to bypass a lifetime of shaving body hair. A conclusion that might leave some (me included) questioning why they still use a razor.
Waxing
Now, calculating the time cost for waxing is a bit more complicated. According to American Lasers, waxing is three times more costly than shaving. Like the cost of shaving, the costs of waxing is evenly spaced out over time. So we can use the same discounting method applied above.
According to a study, on average, women wax once to twice a month for an average of 42 minutes each time. This amounts to 15 minutes per week, 65 minutes per month, or 13 hours per year. If she makes $22.50/hr, she’s paying $300 each year with her valuable time (not to mention the pain!)
| for 60 years | WAX | WAX | ||
| Discount Rate | PV of Waxing’s Total Cost | PV of Waxing’s Implicit cost | PV of Waxing explicit Costs | Undiscounted Explicit Cost |
| 2% | $ 13,800 | $ 24,000* | ||
| 3% | $ 10,959 | $ 24,000* | ||
| 4% | $ 8,931 | $ 24,000* | ||
| 5% | $ 7,500 | $ 24,000* | ||
| 6% | $ 6,300 | $ 24,000* |
*= These are the number reported by American Laser Center, a group that aims to make Laser hair removal the most attractive option.
Summary
Those that
Practical Recommendations
Consider financing investment in yourself if any of the following applies to you:
- You are a high-earning lady professional (your time is valuable)
- You despise the waxing/shaving experience.
Sources:
https://sites.google.com/site/americanlasercenterssite/shaving-stats
asides to consider
pink tax
Sometimes it feels like a zillion hours. But British beauty brand Escentual surveyed British women to find out just how much time they devote to beauty rituals… and how much they hate doing them.
The most startling finding? Women spend 72 days shaving their legs over the course of a lifetime, meaning approximately 1,728 hours. What’s more, shaving also ranked as women’s most hated beauty ritual, with 35 percent of women polled saying they loathed shaving their legs more than anything else (doing their hair, tweezing their brows, etc).
Perhaps women hate shaving so much because it feels like time wasted — many people will never even notice your smooth legs, plus that hair will inevitably grow back in the blink of an eye. Is it really worth the 1,728 hours?
Of course, as the Telegraph notes, the finding is based on the premise that a woman spends about 4 minutes shaving her legs each time and does it six times a week. (Who are these smooth-legged ladies and how do they find the time??)
And then there are superwomen like Chrissy Teigen who shave twice a day.
So how else are women — or at least the British women polled by Escentual — spending their beautifying time over a lifetime? The break-down includes:
Styling hair: 294 days
Removing makeup: 52 days
Moisturizing: 44 days
Tweezing eyebrows: 30 days
Painting nails: 20 days
Self tanning: 12 days