Spending money on yourself once you’ve got kids comes with a strange guilt attached. You’ll happily hand over £40 for a pile of party bag fillers that’ll be thrown out within the week. Then you’ll look at a £25 moisturiser for yourself, one that’ll last three months, and decide it’s a bit much.
The odd thing is that the purchases people get the most out of tend to be the dull ones they’ll use every single day. Break them down by cost per use and plenty of them will come in cheaper than the takeaway coffees nobody bats an eyelid at. Here are a few small splurges that’ll quietly earn their keep.
A Moisturiser With SPF You’ll Actually Use
Skincare doesn’t need to be complicated, and nobody’s asking you to build a ten-step routine. One thing that’ll earn its spot on the shelf, though, is a decent moisturiser with SPF already in it. A tube at £25 to £35 will see you through two or three months of daily use, which comes to about 30p a day for sun protection, less pigmentation and skin that isn’t parched by lunchtime.
You’ll only get that value if you like using it, mind. If it balls up under makeup or leaves you looking faintly ghostly in photos, the tube will gather dust at the back of the cupboard and the formula won’t matter one bit. Spend a few quid more on something you don’t mind putting on, and you’ll keep reaching for it.
One Pair of Shoes That Do Both Jobs
Most parents end up with two options by the front door and neither will do the job. There’s the pair of trainers that have been through the wars, and then the “nice” ones that start biting somewhere around the twenty minute mark. Somewhere between the two, a well-made pair of leather shoes or boots at £80 to £150 will last years with a bit of polish and won’t have you hobbling by the time the bell goes.
The maths won’t take long. Wear them three times a week for two years and a £120 pair works out at under 40p a wear. Cheap shoes that fall apart twice a year will cost more over the same stretch, so the expensive pair turns out to be the tight-fisted choice.
A Properly Fitted Bra
UK surveys will tell you the same story again and again, that somewhere between 80% and over 90% of women are wearing the wrong size. That does more damage than a top hanging badly. Poor support can mean back pain, grooves dug into your shoulders and a low hum of discomfort that most women simply learn to live around.
Book a proper fitting, buy two or three in your actual size, and you’ll notice the difference in how you hold yourself. A good bra will cost £30 to £50 and you’ll wear each one a couple of times a week for a year or more, so you’re talking pennies a wear. Most women who finally get measured will spend the drive home wondering what took them so long.
Professional Teeth Whitening
Cost per use is where this one catches people out. Popular clinics like Harley Teeth Whitening will do professional laser whitening in roughly an hour, and prices generally start from around £200. How long it holds will come down to your diet and your aftercare, but six months to three years is the usual range.
Get a year of noticeably whiter teeth out of one session and you’re well under £1 a day. Strips and whitening toothpastes promise plenty and deliver very little, while an hour with a GDC-registered dentist will show you results before you’ve left the building. For something that changes the impression you make every time you smile or open your mouth, the numbers stack up nicely.
Eyebrows Shaped by a Professional
You can spend the next decade tweezing your brows into a shape that sort of works, or you can hand £10 to £20 to someone who does this all day (nearer £25 in London) and let them fix it properly once. After that, you’re only maintaining it.
Threading or waxing will take about ten minutes and you’ll only need to go back every four to six weeks. A good brow shape frames your whole face, and the gap between a kitchen mirror job and a professional one is usually visible from across the room. Pound for pound, very little else will do that much for so little.
The Real Cost of Not Spending on Yourself
Putting yourself last comes easily, and plenty of parents will keep doing it for years without clocking it. Nobody hands out medals for it either. The cost does creep up, though. You’ll end up flatter, more tired, less sure of yourself and quietly narked at the very people you’re doing it all for, which does nobody any good at all.
Nothing on this list counts as luxury in the champagne sense. They’re small, daily-use things that’ll change how you look at yourself in the mirror, how you carry yourself down the street and how you get through an ordinary Tuesday. Break the numbers down and most of them will cost you less a day than a pint of milk. Better still, they won’t end up shoved in a drawer like that last impulse buy.
