Do You Know How Much Your Partner Spends On Grooming?

Members of two couples test whether each has a sense of the other’s spending

Remember a couple of weeks ago when, during a Friday chat, Nicole Dieker and I speculated that it would be fun to see whether members of couples have an accurate sense of what their partners spend on upkeep? Like our version of the “Newlywed Game.”

The Cost of Keeping Up Appearances

Plenty of you emailed to volunteer, and some of you have come through with your data. Here’s what we’ve got so far!

VICKY AND BF

Our first couple consists of vicky austin and her boyfriend. Vicky writes, “My boyfriend walked into it pretty confident. He’s been married before so he thinks he knows what skin stuff and shoes cost.”

So, how’d he do? Vicky recounts:

Jack Rogers flip flops. His guess: $75–100. Reality: $117.95. (+$18)

His comment: “I know if they’ve got red soles they’re like $400!” Note: it was the ex who had the Louboutins, not me!

Lancome cleanser. His guess: $50. Reality: $20. (-$30)

Clinique cleanser. His guess: $50. Reality: $25.65. (-$25)

Bumble & bumble conditioner. His guess $25. Reality: $34. (+$9)

Hairdresser (includes cut, partial highlights, gloss. He’s seen my salon.) His guess: $150. I laughed in his face. Reality: $220, including tips for stylist and shampoo lady. He is definitely the nice one, so when I told him that, he was like, “Well, it looks nice!” (+$80)

All told, he was off by $52.

Since what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, I asked Vicky to run the experiment the other way as well. She complied:

Had to think about this a little. My boyfriend is in the military so grooming and clothing costs are really limited: soap, toothpaste, floss, razors, that’s about it! Haircuts are something like $8 (definitely, definitely sub-$10) once a week.

One thing he bought where the cost surprised me was a new dress uniform when he was promoted. His new rank means a new cut of jacket — how’s that for keeping up appearances? Of course there’s no way a new jacket will match old pants so you have to buy those too. Total cost: $1000. There’s an optional cape, $650. Before I knew the cost for either, I was like, “Get the cape, get the caaaape!” … and then he told me what it cost. Apparently nobody gets the cape, which, fair.

• USMC Men’s Boat Cloak | The Marine Shop
• Photo by Cory Shackelton

When we picked it up the saleswoman gave me the cleaning instructions. I wonder what she would have told him if I wasn’t there!

DREW AND JENNIFER

Our second couple is composed of Drew Spencer and Jennifer. Let’s let them tell their story.

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We, Drew and Jenn, have been living together for about a year and a half now, and we are getting married in the fall.

Jenn’s Estimates of Drew

• Periodic haircuts: Quarterly? Probably closer to three times a year. I’m going to guess it’s about $25 so $75 a year.
• Shaving cream: Seems to get this as gifts, so I don’t think he’s had to buy any for a long time.
• Razor blades: I’m going to guess half what I spend, so around $40 a year for him.
• Shampoo/Body Wash: No idea how much this costs or how often we buy it. Maybe we spend around $35 a year on this? So $17.50. (This may be hilariously off.)
• Deodorant: Currently Drew is using Herban Cowboy, though that may have been a circumstantial choice. At any rate, that’s around $8 a stick. I don’t really know how often we buy deodorant, to be honest, but let’s guess every other month, so $48 a year.
• Floss: About $1.25 a container, so maybe $12 a year?
• Toothpaste: I think we spend about $2.50 a tube, and one lasts us about a month, say. $15 a year, each.
• Clothes: Seems to vary a lot, but probably around $500 a year (mostly due to an expensive suit he bought).
• Shoes: I think he buys an average of a pair of shoes a year and I’ll guess they cost about $50.

Her estimate of his monthly total: 757.5/12 = $63.13

Drew’s Actual Expenses

• contact lenses — $400
• razors — $30
• shaving cream — $28
• clothes — $200
• formal clothes — $300
• underwear — $40
• socks — $20
• activewear — $100
• hair cuts — $80

Drew’s actual monthly total: $1198/12 = $100, or about $40 more a month than Jenn guessed

Drew’s estimate of Jenn’s expenses:

• contact lenses and solution — $260
• razors (about $3 each, about six shaves per) — $40
• clothes — $500
• underwear — $20
• bras — $60
• socks — $20
• activewear — $200
• brushes/hair ties — $20
• hair cuts — $15

Estimated monthly total: 1135/12 = $94.58

Jenn’s Actuals

• Razor blades: Expensive ones from Gilette. (I tried his once, because I discovered they fit my razor, but I didn’t like the feel.) $20 a quarter, $80 a year.
• Shampoo: We use the same shampoo, though I think that I use less. Let’s say $17.50. Drew buys this, and he goes a combined shampoo-bodywash from Bath and Body Works. It’s technically labelled as “for men” but works perfectly well for me. I don’t use conditioner, though I suppose I should. I don’t really know.
• Hair brushes and hair ties: Probably around $15 a year.
• Haircuts: I get my hair cut about once every three to four years, and it costs about $100. This is an off year, so I could put $0 or pro-rate and put $30 or so.
• Toothpaste: same as him, so $15 a year
• Floss: Same as him, so $12 or so a year
• Deodorant: I use Secret, and I think it’s around $7 a stick; using the same rough guess that I used for him, this would come to around $42 a year.
• Clothes: In the first half of the year, I bought pajamas, workout top and capris, four dresses, new underwear, and bras, and it came to around $500, which is probably a bit high but not totally off for my typical pattern, so let’s say $1,000 a year. That’s so much money, sigh.
• Shoes: I think that I spend around $80 a year on boots and $40 a year on sandals. I wear through a pair of boots each fall/winter and wear through a pair of sandals each spring/summer. It’s not a great system.

Jenn’s actual monthly total: 1331.5/12 = $111, or only slightly north of Drew’s guess

NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

Jenn writes:

In case anyone wonders: I don’t wear makeup. I never learned how to put it on, so when I say I don’t wear makeup, I really mean it. No mascara, no lipstick, nothing. I do not have a skincare regime; I know I probably should wash my face with some sort of specific something, but I don’t. I bite my nails and have never had a manicure or pedicure in my life; I don’t paint them myself, either. I tried once as an attempt to not bite at them, but it didn’t work and I hate the smell and feel of polish. Basically, I’m a mix of lazy, not skilled at things like makeup, and blessed with never having had acne even as a teen.

The exercise was challenging, largely due to our economic/class privilege. For example, Jenn has no idea what we spend on shampoo each year. (Drew looked it up for his estimate, and we were pretty close to each other.) Drew had to look up his contacts. Jenn looked up deodorant. We both looked up floss and toothpaste. We have enough slack in the budget that we don’t need to know how much a lot of what we buy costs. This privilege aspect stood out the most.

Most of the variation in what we estimated for each other can be explained by the fact that we did estimate rather than price out exactly. Overall, we had a good sense of everything each person spends money on and a decent ballpark of how much. For example, Drew estimated the cost of Jenn’s razors based on Amazon, which is cheaper than CVS, so Jenn is now planning to switch how she buys these.

Drew concluded that we are probably a really boring couple to do this exercise. We are super open with each other about money. Maybe because we have separate accounts for personal purchases or maybe just because of our personalities, we also don’t ever bicker about what we buy so there is never any temptation to hide anything.

Neither of us considered looking at May expenses and tabulating rather than estimating for the year and pro-rating. We buy a fair amount in bulk, so any given month fluctuates quite a bit.

Jenn pro-rated Drew’s clothes, largely because he just bought a pricey suit but he only does that every 5+ years. However, she didn’t pro-rate her own; on one hand, she doesn’t tend to have such large but rare outlays, but on the other hand, she also doesn’t buy bras, activewear and pajamas annually, so her own estimate of clothes is likely about $300 too high.

We have no idea how we might compare to other people. We are in our late 20’s (Jenn) and early 30’s (Drew); we live in a major city; we both have professional jobs; we have no children. Are we about average for that demographic group? For example, Jenn feels like her clothes spending is high, but on the other hand she doesn’t spend much on shoes, she doesn’t buy purses, and she doesn’t wear makeup, so it might balance out?

Wanna test yourself and/or your partner? Let us know! Email notes@thebillfold.com

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