Musical Vibe: Jay-Z – The Story of O.J.
Spirit: Remy Martin 1738

Guys and their hobbies…SMH
It makes us tick, it is the topic of our conversation. We have to be enthusiasts, aficionados regarding the things we say we care about. This often comes at a price. I don’t have to quote Fortune Magazine or dig up any specific statistic to tell you that men spend an awful lot of money on their hobbies each year. Take your pick, and you’ll see the same trend. Whether it’s video games and accessories, watches, pens, cigars, scotch, wine, automobiles, or the countless gadgets marketed to men, we are big spenders for the things we like.

Maybe we want to bond on shared interests with our crew, maybe we want to impress the ladies, maybe it’s a combination of the two. No matter our motivations for the things we buy, shouldn’t we always strive to be more efficient aficionados? Did the late Tony Stark not teach us that a major part of improvement is eliminating waste, before his untimely demise? That’s right! In the first Iron Man movie, the first metal suit started off as a junkyard-style scrap project for the survival of self. By the last Infinity War, the Iron Man suit was improved to an elegant, life sustaining, masterpiece of technology for the survival of the UNIVERSE! And it wasted less energy.

I digress. As men, we should be mindful of when we’re being taken advantage of as consumers, and avoid being wasteful. Today, I saw a device that retails for $18, advertised to men as a beard filler. This beard pencil could easily be replaced by a $2-5 eyebrow pencil from the drugstore and yield the same results. We’ll pay the 20 bucks because it’s “For Men”, and that isn’t being a wise consumer, it’s being wasteful. The same goes for many other products advertised to men for their beards. Pretty much any product that is good for the hair on top of your head, is good for your beard, but we spend crazy amounts on beard oils, balms, and other treatments, to achieve the same results, when these products often come at more expensive prices and with much less volume per unit than the products advertised for our head-hair.

Part of being an enthusiast, is being savvy. Ask any “car guy” you know, and he’ll tell you. Beyond the benefit of money saved on labor when doing maintenance to your car yourself, it’s harder to be taken advantage of in the case that you actually need to take your car into the shop for repairs if you “know your stuff”. Let’s stop being chumps for marketers, and start being savvy consumers. The prices and quality of the “For Him” product will reflect our wise decisions, and companies will have to work harder for our hard-earned dollar.

Cheers Mates!