If you have short hair with a "neckline cut" meaning that the hair does not hang down your neck, when your neckline is scraggly, here is what you can do.

With a hand held mirror and your bathroom mirror, look at the back of your head. See where the neckline cut ends, and just your skin and the grown-out neck hair start. Put your hand on your neck and slide up until your longer, styled hair is hidden under your hand. Slide up just until some of those hairs start to escape from under your hand. Stop. Now look with the hand held mirror. Your hand will be right where the messy neck hairs start at the neckline and go down your neck. When you let your hand go, the styled hair will fall down onto your neck. The following trick works very well for men so they can get an extra week or so out of a haircut.

In the shower, lather up your hair. Now slide your hand up to the beginning of the styled hair and push up just a bit to hold the styled hair up away from the straggly hairs on your neck. Take your razor and start right at your fingers and shave down. You will need to move your hand at least from one side to the other because the neck hairs grow on both the right and the left of your "neck bones." Rinse, condition, and comb out. Now with the mirrors, check your neck. If there are any stragglers, shave them off. Do NOT shave the regular hair of your hair style, just the grown-out neck hairs. By shaving your neck, you will look cleaner. This will help your style cut to last longer. If your neck is irritated by shaving, put on some soothing lotion afterwards.

If you have medium length hair, set your hair on rollers. This method works best on wavy or curly hair. Curly hair hides mistakes better than straight hair does. Be as tidy as you can as you roll. Use the most rollers that you can roll. Use small rollers even if you usually set your hair on large ones. You are sectioning your hair for cutting; you are not rolling it for a style. Have your sections even without dragging hair from the sides to the back or the back to the front. This cut will work only if you started with a good cut a month or so ago. Unroll one roller. Holding the hair straight out from the scalp, cut straight across following the line of the original cut, taking off about ½ inch to 1 inch. Notice that if your hair is angled, when you unroll it, it will be angled, and you need to cut it angled. If you cut it straight, you will snip off ¼ inch in one part and 3 inches in another. This will change your style. Notice how much you are snipping off.

Put the cut lock out of the way and unroll the next roller. Pull the hair straight out from the scalp. Cut off the same amount of hair that you cut from the first lock. Put that cut lock out of the way. You may need to use a clip to hold it out of your way.

Unroll the next roller. Hold the hair straight out from the scalp. Cut as above. Continue until all the rollers have been removed and the hair has been cut. You will end up with the same style that you had before, only shorter.

With long hair if you like a gypsy or layered style but your ends are icky, you can use the following method to cut it dry. This works best on wavy or curly hair. Brush your hair well so all backcombing and teasing is out. Brush it smooth. If you don't want your bangs cut, then pin them out of the way or roll them forward with a roller so you don't grab them when cutting. Bend over at the waist and brush all your hair up to the top of your head. Make sure that your sides and back are smooth.

Brush your hair into your free hand as if you were making a pony tail, but grabbing much closer to the ends. Gather all the ends together in your hand. You are still bending over at the waist so your hair would be falling straight down, toward the floor. If you stood up your hair would be covering your face.

OK, with the ends of your hair protruding from your hand about one inch, cut straight across. Take off one inch of hair. When you stand up and brush your hair into place, you will have a layered or gypsy cut.

How? Your hair from the back of the head was pulled all the way to the front. This left it long. The hair at the sides was pulled up. The hair at the bottom of the sides, just above the ears had to go all the way up while the hair that was closer to the top didn't have as far to reach to be caught up in your hand.

The hair near the top of your head didn't travel as far to reach your hand, so it was cut off shorter. This is how you achieved the layered cut.

To cut short bangs, comb the bangs in place. Scotch tape the bangs to your forehead, straight across. Put the tape almost at the very ends of the hair. Make sure that the tape is not slanting downhill on one side. It must be straight. Snip the hair below the tape, using the tape as a guide. Remove the tape and brush your hair. Warning. If cutting your hair wet, remember that hair shrinks as it dries. When you comb your bangs flat on your forehead, you plaster them down flat. Later when you brush them, you fluff them up shorter. So cut your bangs LONGER than you actually want them. You can always take off more later. But you can't glue it back on.

With all the money that you saved on haircuts, you can afford some other pampering. Even in tough economical times, you deserve to be good to yourself. Look at past columns for ideas for a Spa at Home and low cost beauty ideas.