Well hello! I’m currently considering returning to my former sport of figure skating on the “adult” track. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this, mainly because it’s a really big financial commitment. I’m curious to see how other people have prioritized hobbies in their adult life. I’m pretty naturally frugal, except travel, which somehow feels less frivolous to me than dressing up in glitter costumes to do double axels.
I’m looking at:
$85 - $125 per month in ice time
$20 in transit per month
$15-30 per month in random expenses (tights, foot bandages, skating association fees, etc)
That’s not even including coaching, which at some point I’d probably need, and runs about $40 an hour (I’d probably barter for it.)
So, what are your spendy hobbies and do you know how much you put into it? Do you do Taekwondo or throw pottery or Krav Maga or brew your own beer or knit fancy scarves? Do you have a kiddo in activities?
I’m always eager to hear how others prioritize their hobbies in their budget! (Maybe yours actually saves you money?) Please let me know below!
Right now:
Me- yoga- $80/mon
Husband- BJJ- $150/month (ouch)
We also buy some gear for him and pay for periodic competitions, so I’d guess another $150-200/year.
Otherwise we have really cheap hobbies. Hiking ($36/year wilderness parking permit), gas prices, some hiking shoes. Camping (gas, propane for our stove, gear replacement).
I suppose the dog might count as a hobby, in which case she’s very expensive
I just started to crochet, I haven’t figured out how much it will cost. Start up wasn’t too bad, I bought a kit for $12 that came with 5 or 6 hooks and a few other basics pieces of supplies and a how-to guide. I also bought a few skeins of yarn, seems like you can go crazy on yarn $$$$. I’m hoping to stick to 1-2 projects at a time, so hopefully cost won’t get out of hand. I also plan to use a lot of projects as homemade gifts for Christmas/showers etc so that should offset the cost a bit as well since I won’t have to buy other gifts.
Cooking - which may save money vs buying the same thing, but fancy cheeses are not cheap.
My dogs? Are they a hobby? They weren’t that expensive until senior health issues kicked in. Though we take them on vacation with us, which typically adds $15-$30/night to any lodging. Easy money for the hotels…
I used to crochet, crossstitch, knit (a little), B&W photography (could do my own developing), drawing. But those all fell by the wayside when full time work kicked into gear. Now that I’m retired, I’m not that interested in picking any of these back up because I don’t want to deal with getting and storing the inputs or outputs.
I’m a hobbyist game developer. When we’re talking video games, it’s really a pretty cheap hobby (I would own the hardware anyway, and I’ve spent literally $30 on software tools), except that now that I’m part of the indie game dev scene I’ve ended up buying/kickstarting a lot more games. I have a $50/month games budget. The scene’s social events run me ~$50 more, mostly intransportation to/from the events.
Now I also make IRL games sometimes, like larps and escape rooms - that can be much more expensive because you need to construct physical props. For example, I just bought a batch of custom fortune cookies containing encrypted messages that will lead you to a secret twitter that is an in-fiction news feed for the project I’m currently developing. (Could I have made them myself? I tried, and the answer is no, fortune cookies are hard to make.)
I have learned over too many years that my biggest hobby is learning something new. So now I let myself spend $100 a year on something new that I’m not sure I’ll like or stick with, and evaluate after six months or so. And to limit to ONE new thing that I can spend on. One year it was gardening; another making hard cider; another paddleboarding rentals. Gardening stuck until last year which was full of bike camping.
My current infatuation is my new gym. I’ve been going since the end of November and didn’t pay until this month. The monthly membership fee s more expensive than any other bill aside from my mortgage at $120/month. It’s so worthwhile to me right now though, and has regained mobility in my injured arm where months of PT didn’t. Plus post workout donuts and gym founders that are very committed to building the local community.
I play tennis regularly, as does my husband.
We belong to a tennis club that costs $150/ month. They also have a pool, so in the summer my kids swim there pretty regularly. I play 4 or so days/ week and my husband plays twice. They also have a workout room that I use maybe 1-2 month.
$120/ month for lessons – usually about 3-4 group lessons/ month at $35/ class
$30-$50/ month for miscellaneous – I play in leagues that cost about $30 a season, I have to buy balls, bring snacks to home matches, have my racquet restrung about every 4 months, buy new shoes about every 6 months.
I also belong to a gym with HIIT classes. It costs $150/ month. I average around 20 classes a month, so it costs between $7-8/ class.
My husband also belongs to a climbing gym – I don’t know how much he pays, but probably abpit $150/ month.
So, together my husband and I are probably paying about $600-$700 for our major hobbies. But, since our hobbies are all fitness related, they are probably helping with our overall health, thereby reducing our healthcare costs…
My other major hobby is reading, and I probably spend $30/ month on this.
Like things other than work and sleep and chores and family?
I do groceries. I like that
I read a book a week (50/52 library)(20/year)
I watch YouTube
I talk to friends online
I eat fancy restaurant meals with friends (20-100/month)
I nap
I Percy (100/month including vet)
I do yoga and meditate
I camp (200/year)
I apply bath products and take baths
I swim and hike mostly in summer
I write a little
Honestly, I’m super exhausted 99% of the time. So my hobby budget is super low
Hmm. I do Tai Chi, which is $500/year but it’s more mental & physical health management than a hobby. Kiddo has started swimming lessons, which I think is working out to about $700/year for lessons + an adult’s entry fee. I spend money on art and craft supplies sporadically - currently in need of new brushes to try a particular painting style, but mostly I need to just finish the dozen projects I’ve got hanging around.
Pre-baby mine was spinning (indoor cycling) I paid I think $120/month for unlimited classes and I went 4-5x/wk. It was easier to stomach the cost since it had a direct positive impact on my health.
Another would be knitting. I don’t really budget for it but I’d say I spend a few hundred per year on it. I only buy yarn if I have a specific project I want to do, and I only work on 1-2 projects at a time. I’m pretty strict with myself that I have to finish my projects before starting another one so that my yarn spending doesn’t get out of control. It helps there that my project spending replaces another category of spending - I’m either making something for myself that I’d otherwise buy or making a gift
Knitting : My spending on this has gone way down in the last few years, a combination of having a stricter budget and just not knitting as much. I have a lot of (often very nice!) yarn that I’ve bought over the years “for specific purposes” that has not yet been knitted. There are a couple of big yarn events that happen near me every year, but I don’t think I bought any yarn at them last year–we’ll see what happens this year!
Fountain pens : This is a more recent hobby. I think I’ve spent about $200 in the last two years. That includes two fountain pens and a whole bunch of ink, but most of the ink is small samples. Trying out new samples provides a great deal of satisfaction so it’s been easy for me to resist buying anything else… though who knows what will happen later this week, since I’m planning to go to a fountain pen meetup!
Bullet journaling/notebooks in general : This doesn’t feel like a hobby (it’s just “having a planner” which is part of me existing in the universe), but it doesn’t fit into any other budget category! I like notebooks and pens (well, I used to like pens, now I just like ink–see above), and stickers, and washi tape. But again I haven’t spent much on this in the past few years. Maybe $20/year?
I’ve also gone roller-skating and done yoga in the past, but I put those in a fitness category in my budget.
ETA: I forgot about READING BOOKS! Mostly I go to the library and receive books as gifts, but I probably spend another $20 or so on books. This is truly impressive when you consider the fact that there is a small but lovely new-and-used bookstore that I can easily walk to.
Knitting (currently free as I’m knitting exclusively from a lovely stash of previously purchased yarn)
Sewing (excluding initial start-up costs incurred in 2018, averaging $25/month in supplies)
I used to do hot yoga ($45/month) but my doc said no hot yoga whilst pregnant, so I cancelled it. I may rejoin post-baby, but with two kids 2 and under, I’m not sure I’d get to go very often. I also used to drink wine, but alas, pregnancy again! I’ll probably pick this up again post-baby to the tune of $40-50 a month. I also spend a lot of time watching Netflix. I wouldn’t call it a hobby, but I usually have it on in the background while I’m knitting… so that’s another $12/month. Guess my hobbies are more expensive than I thought.
Oh hmm, my $$ hobbies. There are really four that I’ve had over time that have cost me the monies and have also been a fairly big factor in my life:
Fiber arts
Various forms of exercise
Books
Eating out
(I don’t count pets as a hobby – Cat was family, not a hobby – but if you do count pets as a hobby, then I have spent SO MUCH money on vet care in the past, and will again in the future when I again have a fluffy animal companion.)
Fiber arts: I’ve been doing some sort of fiber art since I was maybe 10, so I have a stash built up. Not ridiculous, but plenty of yarn and it needs to get used! I’ve historically spent somewhere between $0-$250/year on fiber art supplies. At some point I learned that buying a skein of yarn because it was pretty, not because I had a specific project in mind for it, was a TERRIBLE idea – that’s how you end up with beautiful wools languishing in your closet. I’m now fixing the languishing wools situation.
Exercise: I have weightlifted and played in a co-ed soccer league as an adult. I’m not currently doing much exercise other than walking, but I would like to get back into weightlifting – I used to lift multiple times a week and I just felt so.badass. when I was lifting. That would run me ~$32/month for the gym. I already have workout clothes, so no need to replace anything there anytime soon. (@katscratch’s gym makes me swoon, it sounds so wonderful. :))
Books: I used to get everything out of the library, and then there were three or so years where I bought books. That was expensive (I spent over $1k one year! holy fuck), and I now have a very extensive collection that I am reading down and slowly winnowing out. I now spend much less per year on books – it’s basically just spending on books for book club that I can’t get out of the library.
Eating out: I’m resistant to call this a hobby but I think that’s because I don’t want to think of myself as spending $200/month on a hobby. I… yes. That’s where it is.
I like calling eating out a hobby! Rather than lump it with food overall. For me restaurant eating is usually linked to socializing so it’s performing an entirely different role in my life than groceries and cooking
: My spending on this has gone way down in the last few years, a combination of having a stricter budget and just not knitting as much. I have a lot of (often very nice!) yarn that I’ve bought over the years “for specific purposes” that has not yet been knitted. There are a couple of big yarn events that happen near me every year, but I don’t think I bought any yarn at them last year–we’ll see what happens this year!
: This is a more recent hobby. I think I’ve spent about $200 in the last two years. That includes two fountain pens and a whole bunch of ink, but most of the ink is small samples. Trying out new samples provides a great deal of satisfaction so it’s been easy for me to resist buying anything else… though who knows what will happen later this week, since I’m planning to go to a fountain pen meetup!
: This doesn’t feel like a hobby (it’s just “having a planner” which is part of me existing in the universe), but it doesn’t fit into any other budget category! I like notebooks and pens (well, I used to like pens, now I just like ink–see above), and stickers, and washi tape. But again I haven’t spent much on this in the past few years. Maybe $20/year?
Mostly I go to the library and receive books as gifts, but I probably spend another $20 or so on books. This is truly impressive when you consider the fact that there is a small but lovely new-and-used bookstore that I can easily walk to.
