10 Ways to Look Hot Without Breaking the Bank

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One of the biggest expenses in a women’s budget comes from beauty and cosmetic products. Here are ten ways you can keep looking great without spending a fortune:

Shop at drugstores like Walgreens or CVS. It may seem that it is necessary to shop at big box stores like Wal-Mart to get the best price on cosmetics, but this is not typically true for the following reasons:

• Drugstores offer great sales. Each week, scour the advertisement flyers that come with the Sunday newspaper. Drugstores will often have “buy one get one free” or “buy one get one half off” deals. When a product you use regularly goes on sale, stock up and save big bucks.
• Stores like Walgreens, CVS, or even ULTA, can save you money because of their return policies. These stores allow you to open a cosmetic product, try it, and then return the used product if you don’t like it. Cosmetic products can be hit or miss. It is a huge waste of money to buy something and then abandon it with 90% of the product left.
• I am not sure about other drugstores, but at Walgreens the “beauty advisors” cut out the Sunday coupons themselves and have a stash behind the counter. Buy your cosmetics at the specific beauty counter and ask the cashier if there are any coupons for the products you are buying. Some of the cashiers are lazy and won’t offer them unless you ask.

If you find something you like, stick with it. The cosmetics aisle sings a siren song. There are a myriad of products found there, and each trumpets a different claim (Anti-aging! Anti-acne! Sunscreen! Moisturizing! Firmness!). The endless options can absolutely paralyze you. You will find yourself confused and vulnerable to an impulse buy. Just keep picking the old standards. You know they work. A new product will probably not change your life.

Use a concealer brush instead of your finger. The concealer will go on smoother and offer better coverage. Yet you will use 1/2 to 1/3 the amount you would with your finger.

Buy products that offer “2 in 1″ features. These products can save you both time and money. Here are some examples:

• Moisturizers or foundations with sunscreen.
• Facial cleansing wipes that remove your eye make-up and also clean your face.
• Foundations and concealers that offer “shade matching” properties. These are foundations like Covergirl Trueblend that are able to change color to match your skin tone. This is useful because you may typcially have fair skin, but might occasionally be out in the sun and get browner. With a shade matching product, you don’t have to have different foundations and concealers for your changing skin tones.

In most cases, store brand products work just as well as the pricey department store brands. Cosmetic products are not required to prove their efficacy or undergo scientific testing or approval from the FDA. So much of the higher price comes from sleeker packaging, marketing, and ingredients that apparently come from deep water springs in the tropics.

• For example: According to the NYT: “A study of wrinkle creams published last month by Consumer Reports concluded that there was no correlation between price and effectiveness. The study, which tested nine brands of wrinkle creams over 12 weeks, also concluded that none of the products reduced the depth of wrinkles by more than 10 percent, an amount “barely visible to the naked eye.”

• The Consumer Reports study also found that “a three-step regimen of Olay Regenerist products costing $57 was slightly more effective at reducing the appearance of wrinkles than a $135 tube of StriVectin-SD or a $335 combination of two La Prairie Cellular lotions.”

• Even pricey Proactive doesn’t work any better than a drugstore benzoyl peroxide product at taming acne.

Put your face on a skin care “diet.” Many dermatologists say that putting too much gook on your face is counteractive. According the NYT, Dermatologists are “prescribing simplified skin-care routines requiring at most three steps: soap; sunscreen every day, no matter the weather or the season; and, if necessary, a product tailored to specific skin needs, whether a cream for pimples or pigmented spots, or a vitamin-enriched moisturizer for aging skin. Each product, they say, can be bought at drugstores for $30 or less.”

It is okay to have a couple of splurge items. There are some rare cases where pricier products do work better than the drugstore brands. For example I once tried a friend’s MAC eyeliner and was hooked. It is by far the best eyeliner I have tried. Yet it costs twice as much as the drugstore brands. My solution? I ask for it as a stocking stuffer each year at Christmas. And it is such a great product, it lasts all year.

What are your tricks for saving money on cosmetics and make-up? Drop a line in the comment box and join the conversation!

I’d like to thank my sister Suzanne, a Walgreens beauty advisor and all-around beauty product guru for several of these tips. Check out her blog for more tips about make-up!

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20 Comments

1. Christine on 26.11.2007 at 10:08 (Reply)

   A good tip for saving money on makeup is to look for packaging recycling deals - for example, if you return 6 empty MAC containers, you get a free lipstick. The Body Shop has a number of similar deals. Although I use drug store makeup, there are a few MAC products that I can’t live without… so it’s at least nice to know that eventually all those empty powder and bronzer containers will get me a benefit.

   Also, like using a concealer brush, also use a lip brush for lipstick application. Not only does it guarantee a better application, you use less lipstick to achieve the same look.

   Maybellene makes the best mascara on the market - the one in the pink and green tube. No need to spend a fortune on fancy brands.

   If you colour your hair, it’s worth the investment to pay a little more for a colour protection shampoo. Not the salon brands, but a nicer drug store brand. You hair colour will last longer, so you won’t have to pay to touch it up as often. I like the L’Oreal Colour Vive… my stylist recommended it to me as an alternative to salon products.

2. vh on 26.11.2007 at 11:07 (Reply)

   The Beauty Advisors are hands-down THE best thing about Walgreen’s! Those women are great.

   One of them told me that L’Oreal is essentially the same as Lancome. Looked this claim up on the Web, and lo! Truth!

   This happened shortly after I visited a department store with a high-rolling friend and watched her drop HUNDREDS of dollars on Lancome face cream and lipstick. So, I trotted back to Walgreens, bought a bottle of L’Oreal foundation, and discovered to my delight that it’s very, very nice stuff & it comes in colors that work with my complexion.

3. Helen on 26.11.2007 at 19:18 (Reply)

   I think Walgreens is the best place to shop for just about everything. I’ve found a cosmetic item, buy one get one free at Walgreens, then also found a coupon for the same product in the Sunday paper. I’ve saved quite a bit of money!! Didn’t know about the return policy on cosmetic items. Good to know!!

4. Frugal Duchess on 26.11.2007 at 19:25 (Reply)

   You are so right.
   I once interviewed a professional makeup artist and he told me that a lot of his peers use low-end products because there is really little difference between the low-end products and the high-end products.

   The big difference: celeb endorsements, expensive packaging and the marketing budgets.

5. Mrs. FLS on 28.11.2007 at 00:32 (Reply)

   Truthful-I am glad Proactive has worked for you. However, as Betty B pointed out, my comments about the product were not research-less. It was the opinion of a dermatologist.

   Betty B-Thanks for leaping to my defense! And I’ll let Suzanne know you enjoyed the tips. (By the way, I am the one who wrote the post-I hope Brett doesn’t use MAC eyeliner! I might be worried! )

6. Elizabeth on 28.11.2007 at 00:36 (Reply)

   I have a fool-proof way of saving a ton on beauty products — I don’t use any! No special soaps or lotions. And never any make-up. At 43, I don’t get carded much any more but I still look younger than my actual age.

   I know a lot of women just CANNOT leave the house without “putting on their face” first and I don’t judge that. But living a life without make-up is a viable option and I do wish our society were a little more open to it.

7. Suzanne Davis on 29.11.2007 at 21:41 (Reply)

   First off, before you write an angry post telling the writer that she had an “uneducated opinion,” you should really proofread your writing first. After your idiotic post with spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes, really the only person that looks uneducated is you. This site is a blog, full of opinions. This was the writer’s opinion about how to look hot without breaking the bank. You must not know what an opinion is. How sad. I found her tips very insightful and interesting. She got her facts from Consumer Reports and The New York Times, two notable publications. You should probably think about moving to North Korea. Opinions aren’t allowed there.

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18. shannon sheppard on 26.06.2008 at 17:39 (Reply)

    This is a pretty good article. It is very hard to look good these days,if you don’t look one way you cannot be accepted, well you can just not like everyone else. Thanx for the article it was very nice!!!!
    Heart, Shannon

19. Vivien (Loves cosmetics) Timson on 27.08.2008 at 16:47 (Reply)

    Awesome post! Seriously you give some top quality high content which is awesome. Thanks for sharing with us and keep it up!

20. Cosmetology Degree on 02.10.2008 at 12:26 (Reply)

    Like every other college student, I’m broke - I have little money to spend on make-up and beauty products. Your list really helped. I also save money by using baby oil to remove eye make-up and using baby wipes to wash my face. Even though it may initially cost more, long-wearing make up (like Revlon ColorStay) requires less re-applications - and you end up saving money in the end.

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