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I echo the majority of the "it's my money..." comments

However I think a better broader answer that explains it is you could be spending money on a much worse hobby....would your parent/spouse prefer you were blowing money on crack?

samwellfrm wrote:It's how I escape from reality

this. though my average this past year was less than 10 bucks a month on the hobby, so its rare I have to justify it to anyone.

Hey so I have an interesting question who has had luck converting their spouse/significant other/family member to the world of minis? if so howd you get them into it?

I got my wife into RPGs but she has generally stayed away from the mini's. Too much of a time commitment for her

I'm in the 'my money' camp. I pay the mortgage, the bills are paid, we're not carrying credit card debt. I put my wife through college, and if I want to spend a few thousand on a new army when all the obligations have been met, why is she (or anyone else) going to object?

Well as its a shared hobby in our household, we both have no real objections to buying the odd GW/hobby related items now and again.

Have a loan that clears in 2012, which will allow me to do a Guard army again. By Guard I mean thirty plus tanks, so not willing to start spending that kind of money over a year until its gone.

I always struggled to explain it to my mother mind, she still objects in general in buying me Hobby stuff for my birthday or Christmas. Not really sure why.
This year was a first that she actually brought GW stuff (Harlequins) for Aurelia as her Christmas Prezzie.

So yeah, other than parents seeing it as a waste of time in my youth, no issues here at home.

Because it's one of the cheapest recreational options available?

I used to spend about $50/week on wargaming. Models, paint, mags, whatever. My wife thought that was an egregious amount of money.

My wife likes to eat out. The restaurants she likes to eat out at will typically run us about $60-$80 for the two of us. In addition to that she typically gets a quickserve restaurant meal 2-3 times a week at about $7 a pop, so her "hobby", which is only good for about 40 minutes a sitting, runs at least $50/week.

Playing Golf, the course fees alone would run you $50 a week or more, and you still have to buy all your equipment.

Active computer gaming will only run about $50/month, or for something like World of Warcraft $15/month after the initial $50 buy-in, but the initial cost of a computer will set you back $1,000-$3000.

Painting or photography could be done on a slim budget, but unless you're actively managing your expenditures you could have huge, huge outlay for artist paraphenalia or cameras.

Cars or motorcycles? Fuggedaboudit.

Book-based RPGing could theoretically cost you about $20 per year on pencils, paper, and dice if you can get all your books from someone else or rip off everything online, but that's the absolute bottom end of that hobby.

So aside from my personal preference for wargaming, unless you count sitting on a stump watching ducks fly past, active wargaming is one of the cheapest hobby events there is.

I work hard for my money...I also have a very stressful job. Wargaming especially painting is my way to relax, it takes concentration.
It is the most harmless thing I could spend money on, I spend a lot, but always with limits-

@sourclams - also don't forget some PnP RPG's almost have monthly book releases for certain systems easily costing £20-35 a time if you want to keep up with the collection.

Multiply that by multiple systems and PnP can be quite costly as well.

Agree, which is why I said $20/year is the absolute bottom for that hobby, requiring a lot of sponging off of friends or online piracy. You can still dump a several hundred per year on books alone, and far more if you have any sort of miniatures setup.

For RPGs you need to set a limit otherwise you go into WoD/3.5 splatbook syndrome.

It's actually harder if theres a smaller amount of books (deathwatch for example!) as opposed to nWoD wehre there';s a bajillion.

Anyway I'm an adult, I dont go to the pub, my wife loves me and its good value for money Done properly from assembly to painting £30 of stuff will keep you going for a while.. Then there's the playing...

Jayden63 wrote:All hobbies are expensive...

Well said!

Jayden63 wrote:Unless your into coin collecting or automobile restoration the chances are your hobbies will never make you money. But they all are necessary for a sane mind.

Actually firearms collection is a really great hobby, everything I have ever spent there has only appreciated (well, outside of amo costs). So that's not really fair to say...sometimes you can definitely make money, and have fun too.

To the OPs point. Justify it? There's some important perspectives to that, it has really changed as I have aged, and also as my income level has increased, I'll try to give some contexts and examples, justfy:

...when I was a teenager:
I had to justify it to myself, I could have gotten an awful lot of other toys and video games for the money spent on Warhammer, but I liked the visual element and the painting so much more than the simple 8 bit games of the time!

...when I was a teenager:
I had to justify it to my parents, they bought a lot of my original stuff, but they never seemed to mind, especially I think, because of the quiet time I spent painting in the house, also the circle of friends I was making in the 80s/90s were all older than me and out of high school and my parents liked that! (I still see this pattern today, except I am the old man now). I eventually learned some history and got some jobs because of older contacts I made wargaming, and that was how I justified it then.

...when I was in college:
I had to justify it to myself, MONEY was at a super premium, and I had to work really hard to get enough to keep armies, what I did then was commission painting, and I sold most of my units and models eventually, becoming an ebay power seller, I was always working on something and I pretty much painted for everyone, store owners, myself, other gamers, things were transitory in those days and thats essentially how I justified the expense, that it was sort of a second job at the time, in addition to a hobby, because it was.

...in my 20s:
These were the Golden Years of Rogue Trader Tournament packages and the MASSIVE outrider program GW use to run, there were multiple Grand Tournaments all over the country in those days and I traveled all over to go to many of them in Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta, LA and other places, it was a Grand time, and every army I built was always a signature piece for some upcoming event somewhere! It was a constant training, sort of like what I imagine it might be like to train for the Olympics, I was training to be a world class Warhammer player, and that's how I justified it. Not the same place anymore....

...in my 30s:
Having traveled all over the country to compete the annual events and taken vacations around the country kind of became a feature of my paid time off and inner circle of friends, it is always so much fun to work toward a goal and then go share it with people I know at national level events. Having won a few things, (and lost many more) every trip is now a combination of nostalgic event and thrill to see the people, art and spectacle of the ever changing Warhammer world, and because I really enjoy the trips, it's easy to justify, even still!

...vs other hobbies expense wise:
This was harder when I was younger, but seeing constant price increases has been kind of shocking sometimes. I still wonder how young players can get into this when I see 5 terminators retail at $50, or a single tank model at 60+. But then I consider what a nice XBOX360 set up costs, and I supposes that's around the same price point as a nice Warhammer army, so there you have it. These days I don't think of Warhammer as such an expensive hobby, I have friends with much more expensive hobbies (as well as some of my own). Collecting firearms, collecting cars, Harley Davidson bikers, Sailing, Scuba Diving and Travel to name a few are really all more expensive than Warhammer. If you're young and have trouble with the prices, hang in there, time changes that!

...to the opposite sex:
At the risk of sounding sexist (not my intent at all) I sometimes pity women in a general sense, because of reasons unknown to me, I don't ever see women develop the comradeship in hobbies that men do so easily. Especially wargamers but also in most male dominated hobbies. When I have traveled all over the country and spoken on these boards and most notably go to competitions there's an obvious bond in the community and in love of the hobby and competition that is just awesome! Because of the common interests, effort, artistic contribution, and struggle of the whole spectacle I think most gamers naturally fall into a sort of friendship automatically, even when they just met for the first time. It's a Gung Ho mentality, it's macho, its fun to prepare and work hard, plan, play hard and win, and fail too, but fight knowing you gave it your all! This is a thing to be savored, and trying to explain this or justify it to the opposite sex, is like trying to explain the joy of flight to a plant, they just can't know it. There are many things about women I (and many better men too I suspect) will never understand. I just accept this, in the same way I hope they would accept the hobby and our involvement with similar confusion, respect and awe.

Brunius wrote:I point to my friend that spends at least 4x what I spend on wargaming.
Usually does the trick.

I think we all have that friend

Could be buying pieces of card instead

Well, I'm a CNA at a hospital, so that means a big part of my job is cleaning up urine, blood, vomit, and feces. Not to mention at least one or two people dying on my shift every month. So, on every check I get 65 dollars, and she doesn't say a word about how I spend it.

FredTheEvilKitteh wrote:

Brunius wrote:I point to my friend that spends at least 4x what I spend on wargaming.
Usually does the trick.

I think we all have that friend

Wouldn't that end with somebody spending more money than exists in all of humanity every month?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Corey85 wrote:Well, I'm a CNA at a hospital, so that means a big part of my job is cleaning up urine, blood, vomit, and feces. Not to mention at least one or two people dying on my shift every month. So, on every check I get 65 dollars, and she doesn't say a word about how I spend it.

Fair enough. I wouldn't argue.

"This is money I could have been spending on my other family."

Hehehe, jk.

I spend less than 0.25% of my income on wargaming.

I write them off as 'business expenses'.

Connor McKane wrote:I always point to the Ebay auctions that are hundreds of dollars, and let my finacee know that this hobby is an investment....quote]




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Connor McKane wrote:I always point to the Ebay auctions that are hundreds of dollars, and let my finacee know that this hobby is an investment. Also, one game of Warhammer lasts about 2 to 3 hours.

A movie for 2 w/ refreshments is alway 30 bucks +

So If I play 5 games, that is 150 bucks worth of movies.... I have spent far more money on eating out and going to movies than I will EVER spend on Wargamming.

thats what i say - once im dead n gone then my armies will pay off the kids mortgages when the missus puts them on ebay ... so its ok to 'invest' now....... hahahahahahha

Well i view it as helping the struggling economy by increasing the cash flow

I dont and I cant. I tell my wife I bought them for a steal/discount online and then my conscience eats at me for the better part of 15 days. After that, I continue to have resonating bad feelings about the money I spent on a bunch of molded plastic sprues. then I start painting and all of that goes away -- until the next purchase

My wife and I both have an allowance of money that we can spend on things we want. This is our play money and we don't need to justify to each other how we spend it. If I want something that costs more than my allowance I save it up until I have enough. Pretty simple. Now if you aren't married I don't see the big deal it's your money so have fun with it.

My fiance and I both have the same concept when it comes to spending. If the bills are paid and we have a good enough reserve pool of cash, then spend on!

Both me and my other half are into the hobby, so it seems a bit more expensive as we are paying out for two interests, but at the end of the day its worth it and as long as theres enough money left for the bills etc, then why not
Having said that, we are going to warhammer world next week and I dread to think how much we could spend!

"It's fun to paint them and show them off"
"It's fun to compete with my friends to have the biggest army"
"Gives me something to do"

Yeah, it's tough. I hate flirting with girls on skype, and they see this dark, dank corner of the room with towering boxes and sharp objects sticking out from nowhere, not to mention, my cabinets, which are full of dangerous looking tanks with maimed corpses all over them


Oy, the life of a gamer is dangerously secluded and alone

I tell my parents that il start meth when they try to get me to stop spending money on 40K (but hell no id never even look at the stuff)

one my friend uses: points to his moms tupperware collection...(they are redneck...very redneck)