“I wasn’t a great student. I was an average student, but I enjoyed the heck out of it,” David Weimer, 1992 Nicholls finance graduate from Thibodaux, said. “If I could have continued to go to school and get paid for it, I’d still be in school.” Weimer is now the owner of Budget Kuts on Martin Luther King Boulevard in Houma. Budget Kuts, however, is not his main business.

Since graduation in 1992, Weimer has worked for his family’s construction business, Weimer Contractors.

Budget Kuts, he thought, was a good investment. He knew people who cut hair for chain salons, and they showed him how those businesses were operated.

“It was not run well, I found,” Weimer said about the way chain salons were operated. “So I decided that I could do that, too, and that’s what I did.”

Last December, Weimer opened Budget Kuts. His business offers the same services as chain salons but with a cheaper price of $9.95. That is the standard price that his customers can expect compared to a chain salon’s $15.

“I was tired of paying too much money for a haircut. I get my hair cut every two weeks; that’s $30 a month to get a haircut,” Weimer said. “That is kind of ridiculous, I think.”

Weimer said the name came to him first. “I woke up from a nap and thought, Budget Kuts.”

Budget Kuts offers haircuts, colors, highlights, waxing and tanning. These extra services are bringing in more customers.

“It’s starting to pick up a lot,” Weimer said. “It is progressively doing better. Every month is better than the month prior. It’s taken a while, but it’s building and building.”

Weimer said that his business was extremely busy after the hurricanes, and with tanning season just around the corner, it will get busier.

Though busy, Weimer says that his business is where one build clientele, and people still enter the salon saying, “I didn’t know y’all were here.”

Weimer said that his degree in finance and the extra classes that he took at Nicholls helped him in starting his business. “College gives you a good overview of everything, even the classes you don’t need,” Weimer said.

Weimer said that a degree in finance theoretically teaches how to raise money for a particular project through investments in various things.

Weimer said that the finance degree is broad. Students take marketing, business and accounting classes.

Weimer said students need a whole lot of marketing because they need to know how to promote their product or service. He said students need to understand where money comes from and where it goes, including taxes.

He also said that he needed to be able to crunch numbers. That’s where his accounting classes came in.

“It’s a combination of things,” Weimer said. “Knowing how money works, making sure you pay your bills on time to where you have good credit and working relationships with banks and real estate agents.”

Weimer plans on eventually opening another salon. In a business plan, Weimer contacted the U.S. Small Business Administration, from whom he received a partial loan, and he told them that if his current salon worked out and once it got on its feet, he wanted to open another one.

“I will try to stay local, as close to home as possible. I want it to be close enough to where I don’t have to drive all over, but far enough to where it won’t compete with another one of his stores.

Weimer does not cut hair, but he said he wishes he did.

Weimer is not married. “I’m always busy,” Weimer said. “I work about 70 hours a week and have done so since graduation.