I Have ₹10,000 for Fragrance, Wax and Wicks but Already Own Jars — How Should I Allocate the Budget Differently?

How the ₹10,000 moves when the jars are paid for

The title gives the budget and the fact that jars are owned, but not how many or how big. This page uses 45 jars with a weighed fill of 150 g as a labelled example — replace both with your own count and a weighed test pour before buying. Your jars are not CSI products, so we know nothing about their diameter, glass or fill; everything on this page that depends on them is a figure you supply.

Owning the jars removes the 25% jar line. The money does not disappear into more of everything: it moves almost entirely into wax and fragrance, because those are what turn 45 empty jars into candles. Wax rises from 35% to 45% of the budget and oil from 25% to 31%. The candle count climbs from 22 to 32. Buying 45 White Matte jars at ₹70.80 would have cost ₹3,186.00 — that is the value your shelf is contributing.

What does not change is the wick budget. In fact it is a little larger than usual, because jars bought from a supplier who publishes nothing about their diameter need a wider ladder: three wick types instead of two. That is the first way an owned-jar budget is allocated differently, and it is covered below.

The jar count is the ceiling — work backwards from it

When jars are bought, the order runs forwards: decide the candles, add allowances, buy jars to match. When jars are owned, it runs backwards: start from the jars, take out what the tests and breakage will consume, and size every other material to what is left.

Then the consumables are sized for the 44 pours, not for 45: wax and oil for each poured jar, divided by (1 − 5%) so a rejected candle can be cleaned out and re-poured into the same jar (an example reject rate), and multiplied by (1 + 4%) for pour loss on wax and oil only. That gives 6,647 g of wax and 578.0 g of oil across three scents. Rejects are handled by re-pouring rather than by extra jars because there are no extra jars.

Why owned jars need a wider wick ladder

Wick choice depends heavily on the jar's internal diameter and shape, and CSI publishes no wick sizes per diameter for any jar — ours or anyone else's. With a CSI jar, at least you and other buyers are testing the same container. With jars from another source, no one has tested your exact jar with your wax, so the first ladder has to cover a wider range.

The ladder costs ₹332.40 in wicks, but its real cost is jars: 9 of your 45, or 20% of the shelf, burned rather than sold. A two-type ladder would save three jars (and give 35 saleable candles instead of 32), but if neither type passes you would need a second round from the same shrinking stock. With jars nobody has tested, the wider first ladder is the cheaper bet. Measure the jar's internal diameter and write it on the ladder sheet; how many sample wick sizes to add goes deeper on ladder width.

The priced list — exactly ₹10,000.00

CSI 468 is ₹650.00 a kilo in 500 g and 1 kg bags and ₹637.00 in 5 kg and 10 kg bags, a small real break. The 6,647 g need is covered most cheaply by 1 × 5 kg + 2 × 1 kg at ₹4,485.00. CSI's product page states a melting point of 50–53°C, a pour temperature of 58–60°C, fragrance load up to 13% and a 60-month shelf life in cool, dry storage; 8% sits well inside that ceiling. Those are the maker's statements, not CSI test results.

Two pack notes. Love Spell has no 15 g size, so its smallest step is 50 g; and its 500 g costs slightly more per gram than its 100 g on the listed catalogue — so for this quantity, 100 g bottles are the right buy. Mahogany Shea has a steep 15 g premium (₹10.93 a gram against ₹4.89 at 100 g), so the cover avoids its 15 g bottle. Per-gram breaks above 100 g are rare at CSI; only some oils get cheaper at 500 g or 1 kg.

Buy now, buy after the ladder

If your jar count leaves money over

With fewer jars, or a smaller fill, the wax and oil will cost less and the reserve will grow. The rule for the extra money stays the same: spend it only on things that make the owned jars sell, never on materials for jars you do not have. In order of value:

If your jars are larger — say 200 g — the opposite happens: the wax and oil cost more per jar and the budget may not fill every jar. Then the ceiling is the budget, not the shelf, and you choose how many of your jars to fill this round. The 100-jars-and-wicks post works that case, the ₹10,000 starter split shows the allocation when nothing is owned, and larger packs or reorder cash argues how big a reserve should be. For the allowance logic behind the backwards stack, see 105 or 110 pieces?.

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