Great tip, thanks! I'll have to try this out sometime soon.
I'm not sure if it's already been suggested, but for a cheap moisturiser, just grab one of those massive tubs of body lotion - works just as well as the expensive stuff, though may be a bit greasy if you have acne/struggling with greasy skin.
For instance, this study found the expensive anti-wrinkle creams hardly worked much better than the cheap ones:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/beauty/article-1207797/The-3-wrinkle-buster-How-budget-moisturiser-outperforms-pricier-rivals.htmlDon't have any links to the research done, but if you read "Bad Science" by Dr Ben Goldacre -
http://www.badscience.net/ - he explains how there's been hardly any breakthroughs in beauty products in the past few decades. Basically it started with Vaseline/petroleum jelly, which is very greasy, and the last breakthrough was in something that made the moisturiser less greasy. I seem to remember it being called "Hydrobase" or something like that - apparently you can just buy it in a tub and basically that's all you need to keep your skin as healthy as possible. Anyone know the name of that stuff?
The effective product in most of those creams are vegetable proteins - as they dry out, they contract, which makes your skin look wrinkle free and smooth, but that only lasts for a while. You could get the same effect adding some pumpkin juice to your cream - I'm not even kidding!
Have fun growing that stash! :)
Edited to say that this was my Hubby's idea - I thought I'd never put that greasy cheap stuff on my face - and now we both use it quite happily. The cheap stuff gets absorbed pretty quick if you just use a little bit. We bought one bottle last year for a few bucks and we're still using it!