First off, thanks in advance to any help that is provided. I have briefly read over a few posts in this forum and have found everyone seems to be very helpful/kind about replies.

I would consider myself a very inexperienced shaver, father didn't teach me much (mostly learned from seeing him shave a few times) and I have only NEEDed to shave for maybe 5 years. I am 24 now in the military, and was required to shave in basic training even though I grew absolutely no hair on my lower face.

I have tried just about everything under the sun that is easily commercially available on military bases (this includes: disposables, mach everything, 3 blade/4blade variants, cheap electric razors, mid price electric razors, etc). The only commercial item I haven't tried is the more expensive brauns and such due to not wanting to waste the money on something that may not work.

My problem is that I get "razor burn" and white heads (looks like acne) after a day or so when shaving (So if i shave on Monday, and I have to again on Tuesday I have bumps/acne from the day before). This happens on my lower face (the neck area mostly). My cheeks and sideburns don't get irritated at all normally.

I have been reading a lot about safety razors and was looking at buying a merkur line after doing a lot of looking around due to decent quality/price ratio. I don't think I am ready for a straight razor yet, though I could be wrong.

My wife just bought me a cheap little brush/cup/soap set to use after I expressed some interest in the subject. So I have a cheap (don't know what kind of hair it is, but it definitely looks like hair) brush and some decent smelling/lathering soap. I tried using that after a nice hot shower and some decent time lathering up and it still caused the irritation with a disposable razor (brand new out of the package).

I am willing to try anything, if it is a decent price to start out with. So I am looking for recommendations on what you think are a good starter blade. I will probably continue to browser the forums to look for more answers, but I would love to hear others, that may be in the same boat as me and what your solution was.

Thanks again for taking the time to read through my dilemma.