Lemondrop

According to Newsweek, the average girl will blow around $449,127 on her looks over the course of her lifetime. In fact, by the time you hit your 20s, you've already spent $32,684 on your face alone.

My thought on this: "Holy [rhymes with knit]!! Am I already over budget?"

When I think about all the waxing, plucking, steaming, bronzing, lipsticking and eyelinering I do, half a mil doesn't seem like it's even close to what I need to ensure my status as the hottest broad at the Cedar Pines Retirement Home.

Time to start economizing on the number of uses in those beauty bottles. If you, too, would rather not have the equivalent of a stock portfolio in your makeup bag, try these tricks:

Click here to read Jenny's tips.

- Don't toss broken pressed powders or bronzing powders! Instead, transfer the remains to a small lidded container, then use the blunt end of a knife to crunch it up into a fine dust. There! Now it's loose powder.

- Cream shadows last longer, and longer-lasting = good for budgets. Turn any powder shadow into a cream by scraping the shadow into a small container (like a contact-lens case), then mixing in Vaseline until you reach the right consistency. If you want an extra dose of moisture, a thick, rich hand cream like Neutrogena's Norwegian Formula also works. You can do the same thing with powder blushes.

- Resolve to get every .0008th of an ounce out of your lipstick tube with a little help from kitchen appliances. Scrape the contents of the tube into a microwavable bowl, then mix in the contents of a lip-gloss tin. Nuke your potion for 30 seconds, stir, then pour the mix back into the gloss tin.

- You know that teeny-tiny squirt of shampoo that's always at the bottom of the bottle? Add a little water and shake.

Jenny Muller is a beauty writer from San Francisco, Calif.