Edit: so it turns out that every hobby can be expensive if you do it long enough.
Also I love how you talk about your hobby as some addicts.
Self-hosting apps / homelab
Getting used enterprise gear is not prohibitively expensive, but the electric bills balloon very quickly.
Electronics / microcontrollers.
Took just a few months to go from, “I can make a wifi connected weather station for like $20 in components!?” to “oscilloscopes cost how much?”
Mechanical keyboards. The next one is my endgame, I swear. Just one more groupbuy for those keycaps. It never truly ends.
3D printing. Purchased a cheap 3D printer to save money printing things instead of buying things. 5 printer print farm later, no idea why I’m doing this to myself.
Knitting. Super cheap to start, you can pick up a set of needles and some acrylic yarn for under $20. But when you start getting into nice yarns and bigger pieces, you are spending hundreds of dollars on yarn alone for a blanket or a sweater. And you want nice needles in all sizes as well as all types (double pointed, regular and circular)… more hundreds of dollars.
Moral of the story is if a friend knits you something with nice yarn, please appreciate it. Lots of effort and thought went into it.
Just started crocheting, and I’m just holding myself back from buying all the yarn, it’s gonna get bad
My mom knits and she spends way more time unraveling thrift store finds to salvage the yarn than she does actually knitting stuff.
Tinkering with electronics. Like, breadboards, integrated circuits, transistors, microcontrollers.
I’ve got a tacklebox full to bursting with components and parts worth probably close to a grand.
Farming - family has been doing it for ~5 generations. I’d say we have put in about $10 M dollars over time (adjusted for inflation).
What’s that dear? It’s a way of life/occupation . . . are you sure? Seems like it must be a hobby given the return we’ve made on it over the years. Well, if you’re sure.
My wife said that farming is technically an occupation and not a hobby. I still have my doubts given how much we have thrown away on it over the years, but I don’t like to disagree with her (she’s usually right).
In Clarksons Farm Jeremy made about 200£ before subsidies. So I can imagine how slim are these margins and how much you depend on subsidies.
