My hobby is buying materials for projects and then not doing the projects.
Ah, a fine hobby indeed! I have so many arduinos, pis, and various modules strewn about with little to show for it.
Is this the more adult version of buying games on Steam and never playing them?
yes, but I do that too.
If you want to save money, don’t get into bird photography as a hobby. Gear Acquisition Syndrome is fatal to your wallet.
Oh no, the birb left a leg on the beach. Gotta buy a new lens to do better next time.
Please no. I like my kidneys. The next lens up in quality is over $15,000.
That’s why you steal someone else’s kidneys!
Of course, then you’ll need to develop a collection of surgical gear, and likewise you would want to improve that with time…after all, why not take pride in your work?
Ope, time to switch to a new body with a different lens mount then, haha
You could fit so many more birdies into a medium format sensor!
My ex decided to take up photography. She’s now essentially semi-pro and it was a terrible financial decision for all involved.
Christmas lists started to get reeeal aspirational. No, you are not getting a lense that’s the financial equivalent of a decent used car for Christmas. Go shoot more gigs and weddings.
I’m not doing much photography now but I was way into it a decade ago. I did it professionally on the side, which helped justify some of my nice full-frame gear. It’s nice when taking photos at a dimly lit wedding reception.
Your mention of Gear Aquisition Syndrome followed by a picture of a motherfucking peregine falcon in flight still took my breath away for a second there!
It’s a Barn Swallow, not a Peregrine. Closer, faster horizontally, and smaller. I’ve got a few Peregrine photos, though none I’m particularly happy with yet.
Ah, my mistake. Thanks!
Nope, if you can’t do it adequately with a cell phone camera, it’s gonna eat you alive.
“Turn your hobby into a business!”, they said. “It’ll be fun!”, they said.
For over a year I’ve tried to sell jewelry I made mostly because the proper materials cost so much, but there isn’t any-fucking-where where you can sell crafts without being a professional for a fair price that covers all materials and gives tiny compensation for the time and work.
You may have already looked into it and I’m not sure what the farmer’s market scene is where you are but I often see small scale makers selling wares at mine!
Hmm… Well I could look into markets, but I’m not sure how hard it’s going to be to get a table.
Another idea could be to see if local small businesses would be willing to sell your wares! I’ve seen stuff like handmade earrings and trinkets for sale at the register at small coffee shops in my town, plenty of other businesses also have paintings and photographs by local artists on the walls for sale. I have no insight on those agreements are made but I’d imagine they would ask for a commission.
Piracy saves money if you’re already paying for subscriptions. Self hosting adds another way to save money.
But I can’t pirate salt water aquarium fish and corals.
yet
No fishing pole?
Landlocked state. Best I can do is pond, lake, and river fish, definitrly not corals. I would like to try bryozoans in my freshwater tank.
i thought you wrote “self hosting ads” which would be an interesting choice
Yeah, imagine the situation of “I don’t want anyone else’s ads, I’ll host my own and look at them by myself”.
Probably helped of the common misspelling of “ads” as “adds”.
Piracy saves money
Precisely. I don’t see torrenting wrong if you really can’t afford digital streaming or games. Netflix has made piracy less popular when it first came out, but with the proliferation of copy cat rival services, piracy became vogue again.
I prefer not to torrent games unless the game is owned by huge asshole companies like EA or Ubisoft. These big companies could absorb financial losses from torrenting because there are always idiots who will pay for their bog standard games. Small devs should be supported instead (also, small time filmmakers should be supported by paying to see their movies as well).
My friends think I am rich despite circumstances. But no, I just save money by torrenting. I use the money that I don’t buy essentials with, on learning new skills, socialising and developing hobbies. My rule of not buying new games until I clear a portion of my backlog is working on not going on impulse buying that my friends tend to do. A couple of my friends are pretty frivolous and complain when they don’t have savings. A lot of younger folks still think that the environment that allowed boomers to spend money and enjoy their youths, buy a house, get married and then raise a family with couple of kids still applies. Now, we have to sacrifice one over the other and this is what I have been telling people in my generation.
I pay for games on steam because if it’s bad, I can get a refund.
How does one pirate porcelain, a wheel, and oxblood glaze?
5 finger discount
Not very easy to slip either one of these into your pocket:
This is less of a ADHD episode and more of a business venture that requires a small business loan. I say buy it and expense it on your taxes as equipment.
As an amateur radio operator, I can confirm this as factual. Over.
Nothing empties a wallet faster than ‘I’m just trying it out.
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Pssh, only if you aren’t turning all your hobbies into side-hustles.
What are you afraid of, besides completely burning out and probably still losing money anyway?
I got into self hosting a while back
EOL enterprise equipment can be very thrifty. But if you ever need something specialty that isn’t available in the second hand market, good luck.
And watch that electricity bill, adding a bunch of hardware to play around with and your utility company suddenly thinks there must be an additional person living there…
I used to run a grow room in my basement, with about 4kw of equipment, so running my systems all hooked up through a 2kw PSU is actually a step back in cost. lol
hold on I need to self host amethyst beads and brass wire
Software development is cheap, if you already own a PC, which is the most expensive part if you go with open source tools.
It’s free until you start wasting money on hosting and domains, for websites that no one will ever visit.
I don’t want to know how much I would be paying, if I didn’t have a home server with fiber internet.
And here’s me thinking software development is a career 😭 good for you though. How did you get into it as a hobby?
Learned it in college, first hated it because Java + webapps + PHP, then I discovered system programming through game development.
Until you get into embedded programming and electronics…
Warhammer 40k has entered the chat.
That’s how expensive skydiving hobby is. Unless you’re an instructor. Then you get paid to skydive.
Same with motorcycling, unless you get paid $13/hr to be an MSF instructor.
Motorcycling is cheaper than driving tho? I mean if you’re driving like a $40,000 bike and then still paying for a car, sure.
If you can get away with being car-free and using the bike for the longer trips around town, it’s cheaper than a car. However, since I have a 20+ mile commute to my job currently in an area where it rains a lot and can get cold, that’s a no-go.
I live in Canada, do you know how much the standard video game costs here now? Like $90.
Guy never heard of foreign currencies.
Guy doesn’t understand that foreign currencies aren’t foreign to those living in those other countries.
Why can’t Canadianites just use rubles like we’ve adopted the US of R.
What’s the exchange of Rubles to Trump Bux?
Not as good as rubles to robux, but only because robux are a more stable currency with demonstrable value.
If you are looking for an endless money pit, take up the guitar.
I have had a guitar for a few years and I haven’t spent a dime since buying it. Haven’t even broken any strings yet, which I already have 3 packs of replacements for because I thought they broke more often so I bought 4 packs when I got the guitar.
You definitely don’t play enough, or your strings a gnarly and should be replaced anyway by now dude lol
Edit: I change my strings every few months
That explains it. You haven’t played enough to get GAS, Guitar/ Gear Acquisition Syndrome, yet. One day, it will get in your head that the reason you aren’t improving is because you need a better guitar, and life as you know it, will be over.
I didn’t have GAS when I was playing guitar, but when I switched to synthesizers, oh boy
I get that. It happens to drummers, too.
I never played the drums, can you give me examples for a classic Drummer GAS situation? Probably all different kind of crashes and rides?
It’s the difference between a simple set-up like Ringo’s, or an elaborate set-up like Peart’s. If I were a drummer, I’d be like Peart. I’d have to have all sorts of different cymbals, toms, bongos, shakers, scrapers, gongs, bells, congas, whistles, miscellaneous percussion gizmos, etc.
And then there are all sorts of sticks, mallets, and beaters to clobber them with.
Is there any real reason to replace them if they aren’t broken? I know they can get stretched out, but I thought that would affect the sound. They still sound okay as long as I tune it.
But I also only really practice twice a week and I’m not good at it.
They lose some of their sound, literally. This is very audible with the mandolin, it gets quite muted as the strings age. What a difference when you change them.
Not to mention they also just get gross, and can fuck up your fretboard too. Every string change sesh is also an opportunity for me to clean and condition the fretboard.
You keep your strings in better shape with string conditioner/cleaner if you’re using steel / nickelwound /nickel though
I think even that’s getting cheaper over the last couple years. Mid range guitars are getting premium features & qc out of Philippines and Indonesia is pretty solid, modelers are making a big collection of amps and pedals unnecessary for chasing tones. As long as you’re not a collector gathering signature serieses or looking at all the new releases giving yourself fomo it’s not too bad.
Oh, yeah, that’s what gave me the bug. I bought a Monoprice strat copy for $99, including a padded gig bag and shipping, and I couldn’t believe how nice it was. I still have it, still play it often.
I got a Harley Benton Les Paul copy for $158 (with $85 shipping from Germany, ouch), and loved it. Then I visited Nashville, and went to the Gibson Garage, where they had the exact same guitar, with all Gibson branding, of course. Both guitars are a copy of a popular style/color from the early 70s, neither is an original model. Yet, while my copy was $158, the Gibson version was $6700! You could argue that the Gibson hardware makes a huge difference, but even if I replaced all the hardware with Gibson branded stuff, it would still be only about $1000. You could try to argue that the QC is better on the Gibson, but $6700 better? I don’t think so, especially since my HB is perfect. I’ve had it a couple of years now, and I’ve never found any flaw in it at all. You could never rationalize that the Gibson copy is thousands of dollars better than my HB copy.
I’m a big cheapskate. I love to find old beat up guitars, fix them, clean them, restring them, set them up, play them for a while, then sell them. Or keep them if I like it enough.
It’s fun, but the money pit is bottomless.
Gibsons’ been lacking so much lately anyway; they charge so much for a guitar that can barely stay in tune (at least for the one’s in the last decade). Brands like Harley Benton have been squashing them for dirt cheap for the last few years.
Yeah, they’ve been coasting on their legacy for a long time.
Looks at ever growing pile of retro handhelds, tabletop miniatures and BDSM gear
Surely, it cannot.
Got a 3d printer mainly for map elements, but the YouTube channel “tomb of 3d printed horrors” helped me get damn near resin quality from my pla guy. And I’m lucky I stopped with the r36s. Thing plays up to Dreamcast & some psp without a hiccup. Anything more advanced I got my steam deck for.
I really like the form factor of handhelds. For some reason game companies have stopped making them alltogether, and deck pcs are too bulky for me to carry around.
Well if I stop buying fishing gear, at some point it’ll be financially worth it. I mean I’ve already “paid off” the license for this year. Yup… Ignore the brand new rod and reel I got for black Friday, it was on discount. Or the fact that I got a gold membership discount at the local tackle store because I spent enough money in a year.
But think of all the money you saved eating the fish you caught, and other lies we tell ourselves, available 2026
I mean, we did legitimately save a lot of money this summer. Catch of the day in an overpriced seaside vacation area is not cheap at all.
The rest of the year though…
