A Year of Hobby Expense Report

Where was I?
no sooner did I announce to the WORLD that I was back to blogging when I was stuck down by boredom and sickness and totally lost momentum.  

Mostly sickness, mostly pneumonia.  

No matter.  I'm back above ground now, like new sprouts pushing up in a new year. And our parasocial relationship can stand the break.

But still just as just as bored.  

Now let's talk money.

Hobby Expense Report

Alternative title: Holy Sh-  How Much???!! 

Back in January of last year I had the idea that it'd be interesting (and not at all scary) to track how much money I spent on hobby stuff throughout the year.  Kinda like a New Years Resolution.  But unlike those other resolutions like diet and exercise and being nice to my children, I actually did it.  

The rules were simple: doesn't matter what was purchased, but if it was purchased for the purpose of hobby-ness then it made the list.  If the item has other uses that's all well and good, but if I got it in the first place because it was a hobby need, then hobby purchase it was.  NEED say I.  Like breathing and water.

Here is the of purchases with the initial organization just the sequence in time as I purchased things throughout the year.  

-$20 bouncy balls
-$16 storage tubs
-$70 more paint pens
-$68 more Quar Miniatures
-$360 more Wooden Wars
-$30 Hot Lead and Cold Steel ACW rules
-$45 Bolt Action 2nd Edition rules
-$30 Drop cloth
-$30 House paint 
-$60 Quar tractors
-$95 plastic Quar Miniatures 
-$50 Army painter dark-dip
-$47 More Quar Miniatures
-$134 Proxxon Hot Wire foam cutter.
-$17 paint brushes
-$17 balsa wood stripper
-$10 Balsa wood sheets
-$78 XPS foam
-$78 lumber
-$58 Shifting Lands Guider Pro (MDF fence for the Proxxon)
-$20 Spackle and Liquid Nails
-$20 Craft sticks
-$38 Magnetic miniature bases
-$7 Coffee stir sticks
-$25 Hydrocal plaster
-$50 Bolt Action V3 rules 
-$28 storage tub / metal sheet
-$50 more Quar Miniature
-$300 Pacificon convention
-$15 spray glue
-$20 coffee grounds
-$300 Army Painter paint set
-$72 More Quar Miniatures
-$25 Vetcon
-$40 resin fences 
-$60 Midgard heroic battle Rules
-$105 terrain making scenics from Scenic express (flock and stuff) 

And not to bury the lead, the grand total is $2,410.  

Which I am not sure how I feel about.  It's definitely more than I thought it would be at the beginning of the year (about 150% more than initial estimate) but less than a Disneyland vacation for the family. I'm sure I missed a few things here and there. I don't see spray primer on that list and I'm pretty sure I bought a can of Krylon matte Black spray primer sometime.  Or did I? 

Kinda shows that if I just stopped buying stuff for a year and just painted what I had, I could have saved a not insignificant amount of money. 

Now that I have data, I can do my best impression of Johnathan Freitag and do some maths and analytics.  or it is data?  I never know if it's data like Dah-tah or if it's data like Day-tah.  

here are some broad categories:

Money spent on....

Miniatures:

Quar: $392

Wooden Wars; $360

Rulebooks:  $185 (4 total)

Paints: $350 

Attending Conventions:  $325

Proxxon Cutter and accessories: $192

Terrain Supplies (including the trench boards):  $418.

I could go into more details I guess, but it's doesn't seem all that interesting to actually do so.  

And I have no idea if this represents a typical year of my hobby spending or maybe I was a spendthrift or maybe, even, I was incredibly restrained.  

So I'll do it again this year.  

Like last year I'll keep a little tally going on the right side of the blog.  

And then maybe next year there'll be more to talk about.  This post is just convenient online storage.  

Thanks for reading.

Double thanks for writing a comment.

Till next time.