Let me tell you about the day I paid $89 for a haircut and beard trim. Yes, $89. My pop would’ve choked on his Sunday roast. Back in the day, Pop cut my hair. He would wedge a bowl onto my skull, trace the perimeter with kitchen scissors, and voilà – every two weeks, like clockwork, free of charge and full of nicks. God help you if you wriggled.

Fast forward to last Thursday. My wife, always one for a bargain and a recommendation, insisted I try the “best barber in town”. I walked in feeling quietly optimistic; walked out a lighter man, not just on the head but decidedly in the wallet. The barber trimmed my three (only joking) remaining hairs with surgical care, filled my nostrils with wax (which he yanked out gleefully, as if searching for buried treasure), then took to my ears with actual flame – not the poetic kind, but real, fire. “Need any product?” he grinned, gesturing to a shelf of pomades. Product? On what, exactly – my scalp?

Eighty-nine dollars. And that didn’t include a head massage or a beverage. That’s a small fortune in haircut parlance, unless your surname is Kardashian or you’re getting your locks jazzed up by Vidal Sassoon’s ghost. But in 2025, this seems almost ordinary.

Wayne, my mate, millionaire and skinflint extraordinaire, reckons anyone paying more than $20 for a haircut needs counseling. He’s the sort of bloke who will plop in the cheapest pensioners’ chair, whether he qualifies or not, scowling if they dare ask for $5 extra. Wayne’s got more hair than me, but each strand is counted like a ten-dollar note.

So what’s a mature gent actually shelling out these days? Well, if you’re in Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane, the cost of the old snip ranges from your classic cheapo buzz ($20-$35 at a budget barber or pensioner deal), up to $85 or more for a “CBD experience”- complete with coffee, hot towel, and the kind of chat that comes with a philosophy minor. My $89 was on the high side, but not as outrageous as you’d think: in premium salons, men’s cuts can reach $85-$120, especially if you’ve wandered into a place with velvet seats and Italian water.

So why does a haircut cost more than a steak dinner now? Blame inflation, rising rents, and Australia’s love of boutique everything. Barbers tell me their rent’s gone up 40 percent in five years; they’re paying super, insurance, marketing, and occasionally for their staff’s existential therapy. If you want a bloke with a tattooed neck and a comb-over sharper than his wit, you’ve got to pay the price.

On the flip side, for many men the haircut is now also an experience – a ritual. The modern barber is part stylist, part therapist, part local anthropologist. He offers warm towels, cleans up your eyebrows, shapes the beard, and sometimes saves you from looking like a geography teacher on heat. For some, that’s worth the $50-$100 hit. You walk out feeling less like a grandfather and more like a gentleman.

And then there’s the “pensioner cut”. Somewhere in every suburb, tucked behind the butcher or within a strip-mall, is a salon where the wise (or tight) congregate. Pensioner and senior cuts run from $27-$35, no wax, no flame, no existential chat – just a cut, quick and (sometimes) lopsided. If you’re lucky, you get the same woman who’s been hacking at Wayne for 20 years.

Let’s be honest: no one knows the true value of a haircut. It’s more than the length snipped; it’s your dignity, your self-image, your shot at not being mistaken for a retiree who’s embraced wild hair as a statement of independence. At $89, is a haircut worth it? Maybe, if you enjoy the pampering, the nostril wax and the thrilling terror of open flame near your ears. But if, like Wayne, you’re counting pennies, well, grab the clippers or marry someone handy with scissors.

The real question is: how much is too much? If you look forward to the banter, the hot towel and feeling like George Clooney for 10 minutes, maybe it’s worth splashing out now and then. But if you feel the sting every time your bank app chirps, remember, there’s an art to the home snip. Bowl optional.

As for me, I’m still finding bits of wax in my pillowcase. Next time, I might just call Wayne and see if his pension barber can fit me in. Or maybe I’ll dig out that bowl, for old times’ sake, and see if my wife fancies wielding the scissors. At least then, the only flames are in the oven.