Starting tomorrow, May 20, you can get a fun and flirty Trina Turk makeup bag packed with Clinique goodies (a value of $65).  It’s free with any $25 Clinique purchase from Nordstrom online and in stores. 

The bag comes with:

• Take the Day Off Makeup Remover for Lids, Lashes, and Lips (1.7 oz)
• Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion (1 oz)
• Blushwear Cream Stick in Rosy
• Colour Surge Eye Shadow Duo in Sun Burst
• Lash Doubling Mascara in Black (0.14 oz)
• Different Lipstick in Tenderheart
• Superfit Makeup (0.5 oz)

It’s perfect for any summer travel you’ll being doing in the coming months.

Mascaras need to and should be replaced every three months, so there’s really no need to be spending big bucks on them.  There’s very little difference in mascara formulas between luxury and drugstore brands.  Drugstore mascaras have great pigment just like department store brands.  And in reality, it’s the brush that maximizes the mascara’s performance.  Since there’s so many great drugstore finds, why invest in a mascara that’s over $20?  There is an except though, if you want to go out of the normal black-brown spectrum, you might have to go for a pricier brand, since they have a greater variety of colors available.

Now I’ll start off, by saying, that I love love LOVE ReVive Cleanser Gentil.  It is absolutely one of my all time favorite facial cleansers.  But if you look in my bathroom right now, you won’t find a trace of it.  Why?  The price.  At $65 a pop, I only use it every now and then, when I feel like splurging.  

The fact is, when it comes down to it, facial cleansers are a save not a splurge.  A cleanser stays on your face for a minute or less, so it makes no sense to use an expensive one.  You are literally washing money down the drain.  The best cleansers are gentle and noncomedogenic.  Most dermatologist recommends Cetaphil, a cleanser that is less than $10.  So there you have it, save your money to invest elsewhere in your skincare routine. 

Okay, so with the stock market tumbling and the economy crumbling, a lot of us are taking a closer look at what we’re spending our money on.  There are a lot of cheap products that are just has effective as their costly counterparts.  So I’ve created this series in order to help distinguish which products aren’t worth their hefty price tags and which products are.  

Nail polish

So instead of getting mani pedis, you decide to save some moolah and do it yourself at home.  But then there’s the nail polish that has to be bought.  Sorry to say, but some nail polish aren’t worth their expensive price tags.  It will cost you $20 for a bottle of nail polish from Chanel and $19 for nail polish from YSL.  Sure the colors are great, but you can pretty much get a similar color for less than half the price.  For less than $10, you can get great results with brands such as OPI, Essie, or CND.  And then for $5 or less, you can try brands such as Revlon, Sally Hansen, NYC, or even Wet’n Wild.  So you see, there’s really no reason to pay more for nail polish when there so many great selection for the cheap.  Nail polish is nail polish, in the end they all chip anyways.