Thanks for sharing my man.

Fixing cars myself also requires I buy parts. I save money here too, at my side-hustle gig, working at an auto parts store. I get a substantial employee discount. Many people don’t realize repair shops buy parts from a store like the one I work at, then the shop marks up the price even more and pockets the difference. Do-it-yourselfers save not only by not having to pay for labor, but also by avoiding the extra parts mark-up.

Monthly costs – If you count “hobbies” and “auto maintenance/repair” as separate expenses like most people would, then cost of hobbies is zero.

If I were rich – My hobby would start costing me money. I would buy a project car (perhaps a couple, or a dozen project cars, how rich are we talkin’ here? :) ) and spend lots of money fixing it up, probably more money than what the car is worth. Not to mention I already have 2 cars and don’t need any more.

If I were poor – I would pretty much HAVE to pursue my hobby; I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay someone else to fix my cars even if I wanted to (which I don’t!)

No not yet, it would only depress me and make me want to spend more money than I should. I troll CL’s for certain tools but normally buy new tools. I’m pretty inexperienced when it comes to building from scratch. Alot of times we’ll find furniture such as chairs for the dining room that need to be broken down and reglued/reupholsered/stained, or a piece of furniture such as a dresser to convert into a vanity. My basement and one of my guest BR look like I’m running a shop out of my house. We simply haven’t gotten to it yet. I lack the tools to build most things from scratch, but I plan on slowly accumulating all the tools needed to make my own pieces. Who knows maybe I could use my skills for a side hustle, once I’m done with my MBA I’ll have more time off than I know what to do with.

My current favorite hobby is woodworking/remodeling. As much for necessity as it is for pleasure in doing the work. I’ve always had a penchant for doing things myself whether it be home improvement or fixing my car. Needless to say I’ve acquired alot of tools this past year probably 3K worth or $250 a month. On the plus side I still saved thousands doing the work myself. I also enjoy working out which is free (P90X at home), and running adventure races like the Tough Mudder. But these races can be over $100 a pop so I normally don’t do more than 2 a year. My wife’s favorite hobby is cooking which probably adds another $150 to our monthly grocery bill, but we eat a minimal amount of processed foods so I certainly wouldn’t change her spending.

Compared to other bills: I would say our hobbies combined equal our monthly electricity/gas/oil (winters are expensive in the NE).

If I were rich I could easily spend $25k on woodworking tools. Since I’m not I’ll have to settle for good enough.

If I were poor: I could still stay in shape, probably wouldn’t spend money on races. I wouldn’t have bought a house that required me to buy tools to restore, and hopefully the less quality food we would have to buy would still be enjoyable.

Haha, yeah it would.

That is fantastic! My only fear would be that it would take up too much apartment space (even though the boxes would make for some pretty amazing forts)

I’m not sure if money you spend on hobbies could ever count as wasteful since, they are your past-times, and you are the sum of your parts – so what better to spend money on than a hobby, a passion or something like that… much better than to throw dollars (I’m British, pretentious!) into the pockets of banks and corporations. Whatever that means!