Miss Thrifty

You know how, if you take one simple financial decision out of the ordinary, it can snowball really easily?

Well, a few weeks ago I went and had a haircut. This didn’t turn out quite as I had hoped. I told the hair stylist that I’d be happy as long as he didn’t give me “a mullet or one of those godawful Rachel-From-Friends cuts”. (Hello! the 1990s were over years ago!) Anyway, for reasons best known to himself, the stylist decided to translate this request into a mullety Rachel-From-Friends cut. It looked okay in the salon but after I washed my hair at home, I looked like this:

(Without the facial hair, obviously.)

I like my follicles foxy, so this look did not go down well.  With a heavy heart, I began rummaging around for my dusty old hair appliances. Unfortunately my aged hair straighteners aren’t very good. They are more “straightening irons”: big metal plates that don’t get very hot and aren’t very good at taming my hair. They even squeak when I clamp them shut!

Heated hair styling technology has moved on since I last had any call for it. Now everyone is using these fancy ghd hair straighteners, with their super-heated ceramic plates. They are so popular, the company even has special “limited edition” straighteners, as pictured above. This amuses me a little: how much of a spiritually-unfulfilled sucker do you have to be, to want to splash out on “limited edition” straightening irons? But I thought I’d look into getting some of the standard straighteners.

Then I found out how much they cost:£120 (nearly $240).  Hmm, maybe not! (The limited edition straighteners cost another £15 on top.) My little sister, who knows about these things, suggested that I go for the fhi straighteners, which are apparently as good, but cheaper. But they’re still overpriced at £80 - that’s my household’s monthly food budget.

This was a shame because when I tried out the ghds and the fhis, both sets of straighteners gave lovely sleek hair.

But now I’ve found that it doesn’t have to be this way. I picked up some slinky Vidal Sassoon straighteners like these ones from Morrisons for £20.00 - a sixth of the price of the ghd version.

And guess what? They work just as well!

Let’s face it, there is nothing fancy about ceramic straighteners - despite all the marketing mumbo-jumbo. In essence they are two ceramic plates on a wire with a plug, which heat up to 230 degrees centrigrade. Why fall for the overinflated prices?

UPDATE: This post was selected for the 29th Money Hacks Carnival, hosted by Living Almost Large.