Close Shave

I've just finished shaving, sort of the old fashioned way, soap and razor.

Well, sort of the old fashioned way, the soap being the aerosol kind and the razor was a kindly donated Gillette Fusion, five blade, twin lube strips, all bells and whistles.

It must be, I've just seen Tiger Woods on the telly with one, and yes, by golly the thing gives an excellent shave. It's quite the coincidence that I received the razor as a freeby at the last company golf tournament.

What has this to do with a financial blog and the Millionaires Club?

It appears to me, that every time we receive something free, or amazingly cheap, there is a big catch and often a financial penalty if we don't do our homework.

Gillette make great razors and Hewlett Packard make great inkjet printers and both companies use the "loss leader" approach to selling their products. There may be other examples, but these two come to mind.

This is how it works, basically, the original product is free or very cheap, and it comes with an introductory blade cartridge. Thanks very much. The shock comes when you need to replace the cartridge and you realise that the product is "back end" loaded, that is, the replacements are incredibly expensive.

The same is true with inkjet printers and is particularly painful with the color printers. HP have been giving these printers away in many of the major electronics chains, buy a laptop or desktop PC and hey, here's a free inkjet printer. If they're not giving them away, well, I've just checked and you can buy one right now for sixty bucks at Future Shop.

You probably get the point, the cheap printer comes with introductory ink cartridges with about a 25% loading of ink, when you've cranked through those in the first month and need replacements, you'll find that, combined, they'll cost more than the original printer purchase (if you paid for it).

If you receive a "gift horse" take your time to look into your financial consequences, a free razor is fantastic, as long as you don't play their game, a free printer is excellent, but take it down to Goodwill when it's empty.

Jimmy says, If you really need a quality printer, see what the best deal is out there, do your homework, find out how much it costs per page and hey, once you realise that, don't buy another, just take all your documents to work on a USB stick and print them out for free.