Different military bases will charge different rates for haircuts. There's a formula for figuring such things out, it takes into account the most common pay grade at the base, the local economy, yada yada. It's around six dollars here on Parris Island, for some reason I recall it being 10ish at Quantico.
I've only bothered to have it done on base once here. The trick to getting a somewhat better result is to say that you want a Navy haircut, since they only conceptualize two kinds - Navy and Marines - and the Navy variation allows more hair.
These days I just let my wife do it. It always turn out horrible and looks terrible. But it is free. I just use the money that I save on haircuts to buy hats. I'll get mine cut every two or three months, whenever the heat becomes unbearable or it gets too mangy.
Back in Lansing, I used to go to the Barber's College. Five bucks or so and the apprentice barbers would cut your hair. It was a great deal, even if the ambience and clientelle did seem to be a bit prison like.
I remember when hair cutting was an event, albeit a somewhat dreaded one, as a child. My grandfather would generally take me. Red the Barber (I have no idea what his real name was) used to give a discount for cutting the hair of other redheads (hence the nickname) and my grandfather had been a redhead before it all turned white. I remember the ashtrays on the chairs and copies of Guns and Ammo. There may have been Playboys, I don't know, I was just a kid so maybe those were hidden.
Red died while I was in college. I'd had a haircut not long before he died, best one that I ever had. I didn't get my hair cut for over a year afterwards since I just didn't know where to go. I remember he was still smoking in his shop, even though it was against the law by then. He had a collection of hats on the wall. (Only now do I realize that there may have been some irony present in that.)
Years early he'd worked with Slumkowski the barber, who last I knew was still alive. They'd had a shop together. Then something happened and they had a falling out. Each ended up running their old barber shop. I never did find out what happened, from what little I gathered, I think that a woman was involved.
Red had been an MP stationed in Oklahoma guarding something or another during WW2. He would tell politically incorrect stories about Indian girls of the time. Slumkowski had been an infantry Sgt. during the Battle of the Bulge and would talk about freezing while riding on the back of a Sherman tank. Maybe they just liked different styles of anecdotes.
Before I got married, I toyed with the idea of attending barber college. You had to purchase your own tools, but you got to keep them. (And yes, being a barber is far more involved than being a mere stylist/cosmetologist/etc). Seemed a steady income, and the oldest of the old timers spoke of still having fed their families by cutting hair even during the Great Depression.