5 extremely easy ways to save money on your skincare routine
In this economy? Save your pennies AND do less. THE DREAM.
1) Does your nose really need moisturising?
Unless it’s markedly dry/flaky, it probably doesn’t need it. The nose is a significant oil producer for most.
If you are using products from your nose that are too harsh and then having to re-introduce moisture, because you feel ‘stripped’, you should rethink your routine1.
If you stop needlessly spreading product on an area that doesn’t need it, you’ll use 5-7% less moisturiser per day, every single day2.
2) If you live at the gloomier end of the northern hemisphere3, seriously consider whether you need to use SPF during the winter.
From a skin cancer and skin-ageing perspective, the risk from UV exposure applies if you are outdoors when the UV index is above 3. So, unless the sun index is above 3, your SPF is largely redundant.
On days when you’re not leaving the house at all, amidst the depths of winter, there is really, really no need.
Now. There is always4 a US citizen5 who will pipe up at this point to tell you that - ACTUALLY - even 14 seconds spent without SPF in an underground bunker in Minsk in January can instantly cause skin ageing so severe that your own mother would not recognise you6. Or that if you spend an hour sitting by a window in winter on a cloudy day, wrinkles will beset you from all sides and you will DIE HORRIBLY within a fortnight7.
Look. You are a grown-up, I’m not asking you to adopt any behaviours that you think are risky. But be aware of the advice given by actual cancer organisations on this, please.
The WHO-approved sun index app is here.
Sidebar
If you have read the above and rubbed your hands together with glee, because you use a moisturiser that contains SPF, I have BAD NEWS.
You need to use at least 2 finger lengths of moisturiser to get adequate SPF protection. Virtually no-one uses that much. Especially if it’s tinted8.
So your moisturiser-with-SPF is not as virtuous or versatile as you might have expected.
Oh, and whilst I have you:
Layering SPF 15 + SPF 15 ≠ SPF 30
It just gives you SPF 15 protection.
Heartbreak over, there’s good news right around the corner
3) If you are using SPF every day, you might not need an additional moisturiser
Now… If you’re living in a country with a perpetually high sun index, or you have been specifically instructed to wear SPF every day by a doctor, your SPF might be able to pull double-duty for you.
We have all been told for years that moisturiser is THE MUST-DO, but honestly, modern SPF has become a decent substitute.
People of the US - you have limited access9 to modern SPFs. I wrote about this here:
Now, if you’re literally anywhere else in the world, facial SPF formulations10 have improved to such an extent that the tinted options can even rival your foundation/tinted moisturiser. I have written endlessly about my love of specific Biore and La Roche Posay products, and all links are in this post.
If you have specific skin conditions that your moisturiser needs to tackle, then keep using it. If, however, you’re being adequately moisturised by your high-performing SPF, you don’t have to use moisturiser as well.
If you’re reading and you’ve gone a bit squinty-eyed that I told you a) you can’t use a moisturiser with SPF instead of SPF, if you want effective SPF coverage, but I’m saying you can b) use SPF instead of a moisturiser and skip off into the sunset, this is why:
A moisturiser containing SPF won’t give you the SPF protection you need, because facial moisturiser isn’t formulated (or priced) to be used 2-fingers-at-a-time and that’s the quantity that you need for effective protection.
A facial SPF has been formulated so that the appropriate 2-finger volume will distribute well into the skin. So an SPF specifically designed to have moisturising/cosmetic properties in addition to its primary function as an SPF is far more versatile than its moisturiser-with-SPF cousin.
Still listen to what your skin needs - for those with very dry skin, for example, you may need an additional stand-alone moisturiser for some or all of the year. But if you’re in a climate that means you’re using SPF every day11, don’t feel you have to buy a moisturiser your skin doesn’t actually need, just because you keep being told that moisturising is important.
4) You do not, and will never, need to buy the skincare that they try to foist on you after a procedure/treatment
I know. We’ve all been there. You’ve had a facial or been for microneedling or even been to the fucking dentist in some instances, and someone in a white coat grins at you and tells you that, to maintain the results, you MUST buy this thing in a tiny bottle from a brand you’ve never heard of, that somehow costs more than the treatment itself.
You don’t. You CAN, if you want to.
But if you’re trying to spend less on skincare, this is a permanent out, from me, that you can save your money on these products. Even if they get weird with you about it. This is just a high-pressure sales tactic. Swan out of there with your head high and your credit card unravaged.
5) Don’t buy new products just because you’re bored
Social media has normalised (even fetishised) having a bajillion products on the shelf.
Please, please, please remember that people making skincare videos are almost always 1) full-time employed as influencers, are receiving free products and writing off anything they do buy against tax 2) want to be full-time employed as influencers, so are buying products to increase their visibility to those brands12.
You do not have to have a bajillion products on the shelf. Just the handful that are genuinely working hard for you.
It is not normal, necessary or appropriate for one human to own 47 serums.
If your product is doing its job, i.e. your skin looks decent and isn’t irritated, breaking out, flaking or regressing: don’t buy a ‘new’ product that performs the same function until you have used up the old one.
Every time you ignore/throw away a half-used product to try something new, you’ve effectively doubled the cost of whatever replaces it.
Until the next time! x
Not continuing with a skincare routine that isn’t working for you is another straightforward way to spend less on skincare, but I’m going to put this here because I really hope there are only a couple of you who haven’t figured that out by now.
My original nose - 7%. My current nose - 5%.
NB, getting a nosejob specifically to reduce your skincare spend would definitely be an example of false economy.
Basically: northern Europe and Canada/North USA. And whichever continent we’re sticking Russia in nowadays. (Yes, I know, Europe isn’t a ‘real’ land mass and its origin as a continent is fraught with messy and potentially racist origins. THIS IS A BLOG ABOUT FACES, not geopolitics. But OBVIOUSLY racism is bad. I am tired.)
Always
ALWAYS FROM THE US. ALWAYS.
It is my fondest wish that these people would just fuck off.
Like those shadowy creatures from Ghost that scared the living shit out of us all at a formative age.
Except maybe this guy.
I’m really straining every sinew to avoid talking about all the other things you currently have limited access to in the US, but your week has been hard enough over there. As - it occurs to me - is evidenced by the fact that I could have typed that sentence at any time in the last (and possibly the next) 10 years and it would have been applicable.
Do not slap on the dregs of the bottle of 70 SPF you bought for all the family last summer and then complain that it was sticky and dreadful. I am talking specifically about ranges of SPF that are formulated a) for the face b) to perform a skincare function in addition to their SPF powers.
Or at times of year or locations where it’s appropriate/necessary to wear SPF daily
Some influencers are even buying empty bottles on eBay etc to pretend to use. We are doomed as a species, I suspect.