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.
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.
-$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.
Glad your feeling better Stew, as for expenditure, I don't track my spend, not sure I even want to know as it's probably a lot more than what I think
ReplyDeleteThanks Neil. That’s exactly why I’m trying it out.
DeleteI can always stop if it gets depressing. 😀
Stew, good to see that you are still above ground! Hope you make a full recovery soon. While I keep receipts for most hobby expenditures (since most are online sales), I have never mustered the courage to make the final accounting. Like Neil, I might be in for a shock. As for "data", I say day-tah. I will be watching your sidebar spend. Should be fun!
ReplyDeleteThanks JF. I find it odd that you, the master of stats and charts and ‘one can’t measure what one doesn’t count,’. , have never done a full audit. 😀
DeleteOuch. However, good on you for tracking this! The only way to know how you are doing is to compare to other data.
ReplyDeleteI have a tab on my tracking spreadsheet bit of a running total as well, but by long agreement certain purchases do not count (paint, magazines, tools and supplies intended mostly for non-hobby use) and other are "gifts" for the kid or myself. So the real total is a bit higher.
Thanks David. My total is not 100 percent accurate but also includes some slippage and gifts. Though. I’d hate think if it could be much higher. 😀
DeleteInteresting (well not really - accountancy rarely is - but "interesting" in that sense of " so you went and did that, did you? Interesting.... " ☺
ReplyDeleteI make it a point never to track my spending. Never. Don't want to know. I have enough to worry about without adding the stress of thinking about spending and feeling guilty....
I probably should, but if the bills are paid and I have a rough budget of disposable income......
I've spent enough of my life scrimping and saving and doing without; I work hard and have enough money to buy the things I really wanted when I was poor.
I see it as more an investment for when I'm retired when I won't need to buy as much....☺
Neil
“I see it as more an investment for when I'm retired when I won't need to buy as much...”
DeletePretty funny, Neil! Very optimistic outlook.
Thanks Neil. By all means as you wish.
DeleteI’m not sure what the point of it was other than the notion got in my head and I did it. 😀
A good series of purchases Stew. Very focused with the miniatures, only Quar and Wooden Wars.
ReplyDeleteAs a retired accountant, if you assume you will use all the items for the next ten years, it is only $241 per year so very responsible spending. 😂
Thanks Ben. We will have to see. 😀
DeleteOof, this is why I'm scared to do any accounting. Not that I can't afford it, just so that I have some plausible deniability when it comes to Mrs. Space Dino.
ReplyDeleteThanks SD. My wife doesn’t read the blog so I get to keep some secrecy yet.
DeleteBesides, I wonder what her hobby could be. 😀
I remember that I looked back at my purchases over a three month period once and was terrified and never looked again! What was of interest though was how much of that cost was on ancillary products - paints, brushes, glue, basing requirements, etc. It was somewhere between quarter and a third of the total and I spent a LOT on figures that year. Good to see you are over what ailed you, I can't imagine pneumonia would be much fun.
ReplyDeletelol. Thanks Mark.
DeleteAmazing how everything kinda adds up real fast don’t it. 😀
I deliberately don't keep track as I'm sure it would get me down. That said, if it gives you pleasure, why not? Glad to see you are feeling better.
ReplyDeleteThanks Lawrence. Well if you do start to feel down you can always know you can’t be as bad as that Stew guy. 😀
DeleteWow! More money spent on paints and terrain than miniatures.
ReplyDeleteThanks Peter. I know right?
Delete😀
Sorry to hear you went down with pneumonia Stew, as that can't have been fun, but glad to hear you're back on the mend:). I did a total last year and was rather shocked at how much I actually spent compared to what I thought I did in an average year. It was more than double my guestimate! I did find this rather salutory and it has certainly focussed my mind on spending this year, given I have a pile of unread books and a small mountain of lead as it is. The upside of this is that my mind has been much more focussed on gaming and painting rather than 'hobbyretail therapy', but the year is still young...
ReplyDeleteThanks Steve. Yeah! That’s partly why I took on the accounting in that to bring some awareness to myself and some focus on future spending. To kinda focus more on the things that bring me joy. 😀
DeleteGlad to hear you’re on the mend - thank God it wasn’t “manflu” which as anyone with a Y chromosome knows is a definite near death experience.
ReplyDeleteInteresting (in an academic way) detail on your spends - no idea what mine would be, thank God, but I reckon at least €300 on Empress Miniatures alone so far this year if that makes you feel any better. Fortunately I’m never asked to justify it, cos a) the Current Mrs Broom spends enough on her own craft hobby and b) the pot plant (not actual pot) earmarked for my children’s inheritance has already been put on one side so we’re all good.
It’s pronounced “day ta” by the way - and I sight Captain Picard as my proof. lol. “Darr ta” - what are you , some kind of 1970’s computer geek, lol.
Thanks Mark.
DeleteIt’ll be an interesting thing to see how this year turns out. Last year there were definitely some large one off purchases. 😀
Glad you are feeling better Stew - you must have been pretty miserable to resort to posting about how much money you spent last year! It's quite a significant sum, to my way of thinking - particularly converted into NZ $ - where it becomes $4260! I don't think I have ever spent more than $1500 in one year - but I am a bit tight fisted, according to my wife, kids, workmates, random people I meet in the street etc!
ReplyDeleteThanks Kieth.
DeleteI did feel some pressure to post something before the week went by.
Can you tell I was struggling to make the post more interesting and just got tired of trying and failing? 😀
Great to hear that the lurge didn't get you, and it was only a blip on posting not an end.
ReplyDeleteAs for the spend, in the grand scheme of things isn't that bad, especially when you compare it to it wouldn't buy you two 40K scale titans ! LOL Obviously that is the most expensive area of this glorious hobby, and a lot of the bits you bought will have multiple uses, multiple times.
Thanks Dave. For SURE there are more expensive items within this hobby. 😀
DeletePnuemonia? Yeesh... that makes my nasty twocoldsinarow recent experience sound like peanuts.
ReplyDeleteGlad you are feeling better though mate.
Keeping track of spending sounds miserable and too revealing of my bad habits. :) I plan to buy precious little this year in a REAL effort to paint what I already have. We will see how I get on with this
Thanks Dai. It’s actually pretty amazing how much of my purchases last year were unplanned. 😀
DeleteA courageous thing to keep track of (and fess up to) the dollars spent on the hobby. In the end, as expensive as it may seem, my guess us that mainstream pursuits, like golf, are one heck of a lot more costly.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ed. I’m sure if compared to other hobbies/ interests there are some that this total would be a nothing. They’d be like “look it me, I ONLY spent 2k!!” And everyone is all “amazing!” 😀
DeleteFirst off, I'm sorry to hear that you were getting over pneumonia. I can't imagine that was easy or fun! The results from your budgeting are quite shocking. I would not have predicted you spent that much though I do think the convention definitely impacted the bottom line (and that isn't surprising because they are pricey fun). I now fear to check what I spend on the hobby in a given year... Just to be safe, I think maybe this post should be locked so that no wives can access it now that I think about it :)
ReplyDeletethanks Jeff. I am not worried. I'm sure no wives of spouses are reading my lame blog posts. including my own. 😁
DeleteInteresting post, I just assign any paints/ model making materials to work, so it's just figures and maybe reference books , you got stung on bolt action 2! That's a lot of Quar, mind you I've just bought 250 28mm Napoleonic Bavarians, which I hope to get to next year, I spend mist if my time running a budget for a living, can't be bothered to do that for my hobby!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain caveadsum1471
Oh and I'm glad you've recovered from pneumonia, sounds crap and I should have said it before!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain caveadsum1471
thanks Iain. I did get stung a little bit by BA 3. though in their defense it has been close to 8 years I think since BA 2....😁😁
DeleteLike everyone, I am pleased to hear that you are over the pneumonia. Hopefully energy level back to full ergs?!
ReplyDeleteUnlike everyone, I recommend that you keep running an account of what you spend. I have kept a full and complete account since 2016. Like you, I did it out of interest and expecting the total to be lower than it was. I have continued as I love numbers and adding things up. Keeps me honest with myself too. It's great to watch the total go up and up and to see all those self-imposed targets go up in flames! I include everything, as I purchase it, even DVDs that are only marginally history-hobby related (like the complete 'Godfather' that I grabbed the other day, for a song—paintertainment, you see). Your spend is impressive, up there with some of my best, but you have a way to go to equal my all-time greatest, never-to-be-repeated years of 2019 & 2020. The good news is that all of that madness is paying off now with almost everything that I 'need' (apart from a few strategic purchases, haha).
I say dah-ta, so was astounded and miffed when I discovered that I was wrong. The pronunciation guide in my Oxford English Dictionary (it is their language, after all) reads 'deɪtə. That looks a lot like day-ta to me. So I clicked on the little audio button and the assistant, whom I call Elizabeth, said 'day-ta' in her best Oxford accent. If you don't learn something every day you are not living. Doubly so when you learn that you are wrong.
More importantly though, *they* are day-ta. It is day-tum.
thanks James. I have a feeling that for me, last year was a big spend year. But we'll have to see if the data (said in our best Oxford accent) will bear that assumption out. 😁
Delete"Paintertainment" is a brilliant word, and I'm stealing it. it's mine now. 😆😆