A few years ago I got tired of spending tons of money on fancy razors with ten blades on them, and lotion dispensers, etc. They didn't last very long before I had to get a replacement and the replacement blades were ridiculously expensive. Needless to say I was desperate to find an alternative.
I found my answer on a very entertaining site; http://www.artofmanliness.com/. I love this site, it has all kinds of interesting and entertaining content. But the article that changed my life happened to be one of their most popular, which explains how I found it so easily. The article How to Shave Like Your Grandpa discussed my exact problem. I was tired of wasting money on expensive razors. Shaving should not cost this much! After I read this article I asked for all of the items suggested for Christmas. As the article mentions, my Grandma was able to find me a cheap used safety razor at an antique store. Needless to say, if you buy one new or used (new Safety Razors will run you between $20-$35) it should last you a lifetime. My grandma also found a cool vintage Old Spice shaving mug too. She also found a used boar hair brush. In this case I recommend going new, the used one was constantly shedding and I could tell it wouldn't be around long. A new badger hair brush (Manliness approved) is about $13 and should last you a few years. I have had mine for about a year and a half and it's going strong. I was able to find decent shaving soap for about $4 at Target and Kroger as well. Now for the blades. I went with a razor blade variety pack because I was new to this and didn't know if there would be much difference between blades so I figured I might as well try a few types. Some people seem to have a preference, personally, I couldn't tell the difference. I replace my blade about once a week and I shave about every other day. So my 100 blade pack that cost about $25 should last about two years. You could probably stretch it to 2.5 years pretty easily as well.
So after an up front cost of about $76 you should have enough to shave for about two years, because all of this equipment will last at least that long, except the soap of course. The soap seems to last about 3 months I think. So my estimate is about $61 (razors, soap, brush) every two years. I looked up the cost of Gilette Fusion blades, and its about $28 for an eight pack on Amazon. Assuming you replace those weekly, you are looking at about $182 a year just on blades. You would still need to buy shaving cream anyway. Even if you stretched the Gillette blades out, each one would have to last you about six weeks to even out. Some people also like that you aren't wasting plastic and packaging when you use safety razors.
So it turns out grandpa was on to something. If you shave like grandpa, not only will you save tons of money, its also cool and seems to provide a closer shave than those expensive blades anyway. Maybe if I were a real badass I would try a straight razor, but I am not there yet!
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