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WEALTH HEALTH - Flushed away: Rising cost of toilet paper will affect your bottom line
By CHUCK JAFFE
Last winter, I saw a television commercial bragging about an ‘‘improved’’ toilet paper brand that was so good the consumer would actually use less, so that they would save money.
Saving money by using less toilet paper struck me as odd, if only because I presumed that most people take whatever amount of paper they use by habit, and then take a little more than normal if they think they need it.
After a day of discussing it on my radio show, I forgot about the whole thing, until Kimberly-Clark announced Tuesday that it is raising the price of its Cottonelle and Scott bathroom tissue effective next February. Prices on toilet paper and a number of child-care products will rise between 4 and 7 percent.
Now that may not seem like a lot of money, until you consider that you are flushing it away. And it got me to thinking about how so many consumers want to save money, but find it hard to squeeze just a little bit more out of their paycheck. Moreover, it made me focus on how hard it can be to ‘‘change your habits,’’ the standard advice every savings guru offers.
In some instances, finding a way to make your money go a bit further requires real thought and life-altering decisions.
Nowhere is that more evident than with toilet paper, which is precisely why it is a great example for making spending decisions about other ‘‘needs.’’
Consumers tend to think of rising prices for ‘‘necessities’’ as being the cost of gasoline or eggs, but it includes staples like energy costs or toilet paper. Regardless of which commodity is involved, cutting costs is theoretically a good thing.
Still, the idea that people might use some newfangled toilet paper to reduce their use of the stuff seems highly dubious. Aside from asking countless people back when I first saw the television commercial, it seems like the experts are on my side.
‘‘Toilet paper is a tactile thing, where the instant you touch it you know what you need from it,’’ says Dave Praeger, founder of poopreport.com and the author of ‘‘Poop Culture: How America is Shaped by its Grossest National Product.’’ ‘‘While we now have an economic incentive to use less, people forget that incentive in their moment of need. They touch the paper, take what they think they need - which is always going to be the same amount - and then decide from what it feels like in their fingertips if they need just a little more to do the job.’’
Praeger’s research goes a bit further. Without getting too graphic here, Prager breaks toilet paper users into two types, the ‘‘scrunchers’’ and the ‘‘folders.’’ The former pretty much just wads up the paper, while the latter folds it neatly, getting more surface area to use which, theoretically, cuts down on use.
‘‘Folding takes more time than scrunching, and research already shows that you spend 47 minutes a day in the bathroom,’’ Prager says, ‘‘so if you add 10 or 20 seconds to fold, it will add up to more lost time. And I don’t know that you will actually notice the savings from using less paper that way.’’
Kimberly-Clark officials did not return my phone calls asking for comment on toilet paper usage or price inflation. But previous estimates released by the makers of Charmin brand paper showed that the average person uses 57 sheets of toilet paper per day.
A typical brand’s 12-pack retails for $6.99 and has 352 sheets per roll, meaning that a family of four needs to buy a 12-pack 21 times per year, putting the annual toilet tissue costs at just under $150. For the typical consumer, the idea of cutting back on bathroom spending by $50 or more per year can be attractive. Changing brands, buying in bulk, using coupons, and stocking up during sales are all common approaches.
Saving bits of cash isn’t always about sacrifice; it’s not that you must brown-bag your lunch or give up the drive-thru coffee on the way to work, but rather that you must limit the lunch bill or stick with a small cup. If toilet paper prices are going up, it simply means that the wise consumer will try to see how to sidestep the increase.
Chuck Jaffe is a senior columnist for MarketWatch. He can be reached at cjaffe@marketwatch.com or at Box 70, Cohasset, MA 02025-0070.
Copyright 2007 The Patriot Ledger
Transmitted Saturday, October 13, 2007
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