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weeveeship's avatar

How much do you spend on hobbies per month?

Asked by weeveeship (4665points) August 19th, 2014

Doing some budgeting and am interested to know how much you all usually spend on hobbies per month.

I define “hobbies” rather broadly to include any (1) routine, (2) non-work-related activity (3) that you do primarily for fun and enjoyment. So, playing video games and going to movie theaters regularly would count as “hobbies.”

What would not be considered as hobbies under this definition:
* Activities that are done seldomly (e.g. going to weddings, going on a once-in-a-lifetime trip)
* Activities that are work-related (e.g. continuing education courses, reading books to understand more about your profession)

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15 Answers

Tiamo's avatar

that really a good question!
I like drawing very much, in the past I think I could learn drawing by myself or take courses. In fact when I graduated from college. I didn’t do any thing related to my hobby! But I love reading novels in my spare time, almost every day. I think I should start to do something related to my hobby! And I need exercise!

johnpowell's avatar

I actually have a pretty strict budget for hobbies. 100 bucks a month. I buy gadgets and try to get them to run FreeBSD or a variant of Linux if desperate.

cookieman's avatar

I spend about fifty dollars a month on comic books.

travisgrrr's avatar

In my point of view it depends on hobbies and if they are worthy of spending money. I mean, if your hobby is drinking at a bar is one case, but for example if your hobby is learning languages, some educational courses (cooking, design, art, anything that improves you somehow), sports, traveling and so on – it is a completely different story. I am now about to take classes of Italian language so I will spend I don’t know how much on them:)

shadowboxer's avatar

I am currently working on a Music Encyclopedia for when I retire. I spent roughly $300 on books, $35 on an MP3 converter, $120 on a double cassette player and around $50 dollars on blank cassettes. My monthly costs for Spotify and Live36 runs me about $20 dollars a month.

So to add things up I invested approximately $505 and I have a monthly maintenance fee of around $30 give or take for blank cassettes and subscription fees.

muppetish's avatar

I don’t have a designated budget for hobbies at the moment. I have plenty of games that still need to be played, books that need to be read, and materials that need to be scrapped. Once I have made a dent in my backlog, I’ll indulge in some new materials.

I think my only allowance to this regulation is cooking. I will permit myself to spend some money on ingredients to experiment in the kitchen a little each month.

Kismet's avatar

I don’t really “budget” my hobbies (though I should. . .) and I have a lot of them.

Video Games is my most expensive hobby, and working in a video game store does not help! I can spend at LEAST $60 (the typical game price). I think I’ve spend close to $700 in a month. When I put it into text it looks so bad. cue sobbing

This is not including going out with friends, books, comics, music, and whatever else I do in my free time.

This thread makes me realize where all my money has gone. Ahaha.

longgone's avatar

My piano lessons are about $50 a month. Is owning a dog considered a hobby? Without vet visits, my dog costs me about $90. Other than that – books, of course, but I often manage to limit myself to the library.

keobooks's avatar

I can go several months without spending anything at all and then I’ll drop chunks of money here and there.

Last week—I spent about 100$ on a gaming convention (seriously less than most gamers. I only paid for parking and food. I didn’t even pay for my 150$If badge because I was “hired” as a presenter) For the most part, I don’t buy games unless they are deeply on sale or I find them used at Goodwill or sometimes good Eurogames end up at Target, and bomb because the demographic isn’t into that kind of thing. Then the games go on clearance.

Six months ago I put down 700$ for a very fast gaming machine. While the sims 1 – 3 was current, I’d spend 30–50 dollars every 3 or 4 months or so buying expansion packs for the games. I buy games when they go on sale at Origin or Steam. Back when I played WoW, I paid a monthly fee—can’t remember what it was. And once a year I’d buy a membership to shockwave.com so I could play all the casual games I wanted.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who spends in sporadic bits and chunks for my hobby.

Tropical_Willie's avatar

I tend to have hobbies with big buy-in and low cost after. I metal detect and play the ukulele. They both cost a lot to start, have low monthly reoccurring cost. I just replaced my rechargeable batteries on my detector and had a tune-up. That was the fist time in twelve years I spent money on the detector. I have bought a couple of under fifty dollar accessories.

zenzen's avatar

About 4–5 hundred.

jerv's avatar

As much as I can, though in recent years that’s gone from ~$50/week down to ~$10/month. Computers and tabletop RPGs are expensive hobbies.

maybellekim's avatar

I spend 400 dollars per month.

downtide's avatar

I spend about £30 a month on Second Life, and about £60 a month on beer when I go out with friends. Pretty much everything else has a low ongoing cost. I occasionally splurge on art supplies but I have enough of that to keep me going for a while. I also bought a new computer a few months ago, that was £700 but it will be a long time before I need to do that again. I used to spend a lot, around £50 a month, on books, but since I got my Kindle that’s gone down to barely £5 a month.

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