Well, I have a Beard of Authority now, though I still use a double-edged razor to maintain the edges. Back when I didn't have the beard, I bought a couple of hundred DE blades for less than the price of a pack of five standard razor cartridges. A fairly plush razor to hold the was about £35. Since I don't plan on losing the BoA, no matter what my wife thinks, I'll have to live to about 300 at the current rate of usage before I need to restock.
Anyway, I found they gave a perfect, if not better, shave and, of course, far, far cheaper. You need a bit more care when shaving but you soon get the knack of it (or, I suppose if you don't, you die trying, exsanguinated on the bathroom floor).
There are entire forums dedicated to blokes being blokey-blokey about this stuff, the perfect blades (probably sharpened by Japanese ninjas on a mountaintop) etc. The basic stuff works fine and you can get a selection of blades to find whatever one works best.
