The consultation quotes the session. The box quotes the device. Neither one is the number.
Almost nothing in aesthetics is bought once. It is subscribed to — in a currency of appointments, replacement tubes, gels, fills and follow-ups that the first quote has no particular reason to mention. Every line is affordable on its own. That is exactly how the total gets away from people, mine included. I have never once been talked into something expensive. I have several times arrived at an expensive total by way of six reasonable decisions made four months apart.
So this adds them up.
Tick what is already true, then tick what you are considering. Every figure loads as a mid-market estimate and every figure is editable — put your own provider’s number in and the arithmetic follows. It runs in your browser, it saves on your device, and nothing is sent anywhere. There is no email box at the end of it.
Add up what you are actually committed to
Every figure is an editable mid-market estimate rather than a quote. Change any of them to your own and the arithmetic follows.Nothing ticked yet. Start with what you are already paying for — that is usually the number that surprises people, not the thing they are considering.
Defaults are editorial estimates for a mid-sized US market in 2026, consistent with the figures used across the maintenance-math files; a major metro runs materially higher. They are inputs to replace, not quotes. Time is counted as the hours the thing asks for in a year, including downtime where downtime is the real cost.
What to do with the number
Take it into the consultation. Not to argue — to ask a better question than the one the room is set up for. The room is set up for how much is it. The question that actually changes the decision is what does this cost in year three, and what is left if I stop.
Three answers are all reasonable. Yes, comfortably, this is a considered purchase and I want it. Yes, but fewer areas, or a longer interval, or two sessions a year instead of four. Or: this was drift rather than a decision, and it can stop.
What is not reasonable is not knowing. A recurring cost you have never totalled is not a choice you made. It is a subscription you inherited from a version of yourself who was only ever shown the first invoice.
The lines that surprise people
It is almost never the treatment. People price the treatment — that number is loud, it happens in a room with a form to sign, and it feels like a decision. What goes uncounted is the quiet perimeter: the standing color appointment, the gel manicure every two and a half weeks, the lash fills, the serum that reorders itself. Those are rarely examined because each individual one is small, and collectively they are frequently larger than the procedure everybody agonizes over.
Which is not an argument for stopping any of them. Several of those lines are the most reliable pleasure in a given month, and a face is allowed to be a hobby. It is an argument for knowing which of the two piles the money is actually in.
If the total came out higher than you expected, the useful next read is the same modest goal costed four ways, and then the routine audit — because the cheapest saving available to most people is not giving something up. It is noticing that two things on the list were doing one job.
And if any line on your sheet made you wonder what you would actually be left with, that is the right question and it has its own file: what survives when you stop. Three things on the whole shelf leave you better off afterwards. The rest is rent.
Default figures are editorial estimates for a mid-sized US market in 2026, consistent with the maintenance-math files on this site; major metros run materially higher. They are inputs to replace, not quotes. Reviewed September 2026.