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Curious how much people are spending on their hobbies, and whether they keep to a budget.

When I was first working, I'd drop $100/month without blinking an eye, then as my collecting began to outstrip my playing, I dialed back to $1/day ($360/yr). Around 5 years ago, I decided to realign my haves vs. wants, and sold off / gave away much of what I wasn't playing. I ended up selling more than I bought, which was pretty cool, so I target "net zero" spend.

In 2021, I again ended up with a surplus, having sold various Eldars, Malifaux' Puppet Wars 1E set, and 1/35 Panzer II J & Jagdpanzer IV L/70 scale models. This allowed me to purchase Volks 1/100 IMS SSI Kulvulkan "Bang Doll" and Volks 1/100 IMS V. Siren "Neptune"

For 2022, I again target "net zero" spend, intending to cover any purchases with sales of existing stuff that I'm not playing.


How about you?

I’ve been tracking what I spend since I started blogging. Here are a few years worth. Note: This does not count all gifts. I’ve picked up some more stuff that way.

2017 Money spent on the hobby: $670


2018 Money spent on the hobby: $406.50


2019 Money spent on the hobby: $285


2020 Money spent on the hobby: $928.00



2021 Money spent on the hobby: $315.00


Now this is my money. I don’t count gift cards people gave me to buy a present for myself. Which between my birthday, Father’s day, Christmas and such adds up to a bit more.

2022 I’m expecting to be very bad for the wallet. One thing stopping me from expanding my Eldar is plastic models. That looks to be changing. If I walk out of the year spending less then $200 on them, I’ll be shocked. Probably going to be closer to $400+. I also plan on grabbing Cursed City when it re-releases, and probably a marine box or two. And some more Nids. Add some random paints and such.

I suspect it’s going to be more in the $750 range.

$2200 or so in 2021

I'll probably spend a similar amount in 2022

I have about 3 armies unpainted right now and a few titans however.

Too much in 2021 and probably the same again in 2022

In all seriousness, probably in the realm of £600 or so in 2021, and hopefully about a third of that for 2022 assuming there aren't any major Ork releases, or I decide to build a load more Kill Tanks or something.

Q: How much did I spend in 2021 concerning minis/wargaming (Not limited to just GW stuff), some RPG/board-gaming stuff, + general hobby stuff (paint etc, carry cases, etc)?
A: A LOT. If you were to see just the reciepts, 2021 was an eye-wateringly expensive year. But there were once again no vacations taken, no week long GenCon trips, very few movies, very little dining out, etc etc etc. I just had plenty of excess funds that I could divert thanks to two years of doing a whole lot of nothing.

Will I spend that much again on the gaming hobby here in 2022? No, I don't think so. Not even if '22 turns out to be another year of not-doing-much-anything.
Things could get more expensive though were:
A) GW to release additional plastic Death Corp of Krieg to bring the line into proper army status - though even then the bill wouldn't be close to '21s.
B) I finally take the plunge into 3d printing. THAT would be expensive because I can afford to properly invest in the results I want. I just haven't done it yet. It's just a question of when I do so - but I don't think 2022 is that time yet.

I never had an hobby budget. I spent the equivalent of a thousand dollars in 2021 but now I won't buy other miniatures for a few years, so in the next 3-5 years hobby expenses will be exceptionally low in comparison. Only paint, tools and maybe some MDF terrain. No more than 50ish a year for the next 3-5 years.

I don't really have a budget. My purchases now generally consist of two questions:

1. Will purchasing it now yield a greater discount than purchasing it later?
2. Will this become unavailable immediately on the pre-order date due to everyone's rush to buy it?

If the answer either question is 'Yes', I buy it. If it's 'No' to both, I wait.

 Stevefamine wrote:
I have about 3 armies unpainted right now and a few titans however.

I've got about 7 armies unbuilt. Get on my level!

I spent very little on hobby in 2021, somewhere round £130-150ish

More or less planning spending next to nothing this year besides supplies as the pile of shame is way out of hand and nothing on the horizon has grabbed my eye

Probably 300€ a month.

Gonna be a lot less with 300% inflation.

I try not to actually add up how much I spend on hobby gak per year. But that is spread across my various hobbies.

Miniatures
If I'm going with GW stuff, it's prob $600ish and another $100 on non GW(mostly paints & random cool kits).

Thats up from 2020 but that was due to Nurgle-19 & painting up my backlog. I only bought the Indomitus Box.

Around 1000€, mostly on painting supplies and terrain, but some of it went into expanding my miniatures collection as well. This was less than my average and much less than my peak in 2017. 2022 will probably end with a similar sum, as I already have a huge backlog, but a lot of printing to do, so a lot of filament to buy.

You guys set a budget? Kidding. With Eldar getting a massive overhaul and CSM right behind them, the first half of this year is going to be expensive. Fortunately, I'm cashing out of AoS and have some valuable old dbz cards to sell to soften the blow

About $150.

Didn't do much in the way of gaming (TT anyway) due to the plague.

Reinstalled some old computer games and killed pixels instead.

I don't really keep track of what I spend (I probably should), but I think I did okay last year.
I did go a bit crazy on Mailfaux stuff over Black Friday, but I balanced that out by getting refunds on most of my outstanding Kickstarters (and not pledging to any new ones!), I may have even made a profit.
This year doesn't look like it's going to be an expensive one either. Warhammer:- Underworlds has really slowed down it's release schedule, and none of the other ranges I follow have much on the horizon at the moment.

After a quick look at my 2021 bank records:
£650+, mostly on Necromunda stuff...
Of that only two pots of paint was directly from a Games Workshop site/store (FLGS was shut)
For all the good that does...
Plans for 2022?
Probably more, I want to expand on the armies I have
I generally have a hard budget of no more that £100 a month

I don't really have a set budget. I try to do the bulk of my hobby purchasing out of my hobby account, so usually full armies are bought out of cash I got from selling other warhammer, but I'd guess I spent about a grand over and above that last year. But, hobby spending is weird, right? Until 2020, I went to Adepticon every year, but I won't be able to go until 2023 at the earliest. That money goes into other budgets. Likewise, I usually did an annual trip back to Ohio to visit friends and do some continuing education credits. Well, those are all done virtually now due to COVID, which saves me money on classes, travel, and partying with buddies. I don't think I'm alone in watching hobby spending, especially online, skyrocket around April of 2020 and stay high.

I keep pretty close track for business reasons. However, in 2021 I kept the budget to about $500. That included supplies, RPG books, minis, board games, etc.

In return for that money, I got enough minis for 4 armies for historicals, and two sides for aeronef, airplane, and mecha games. I also got several RPGs to try.

This year, I will target about the same level of purchases again spread across my tabletop hobby, which is my primary hobby.

Budget? What is that?

I've easily spent $2,400 on my hobbies last year, probably more. GW was lucky if they got $100, though and that was mostly paint or 8E e-bay minis. Most of last year was RPGs, Bolt Action or Mechwarrior/Battletech for me.

I want to cut down and I'm running out of space to store things - but I just bought the likes of the Twilight 2000 RPG, and I got my 3D resin printer fired up again to print off more tanks...

So I looked at my paypal and I spent just over $1000 for last year. However it was all financed by selling off other models.

My budget for 2022 is based on what I can sell of my old stuff.

Cheers,

CB

More than I thought but not by much - I would have maybe estimated £600

Blood Bowl £64
Charadon Terrain Box x1.5 £108
Imperium/Conquest magazine £84
Adeptus Mechanicus Battlebox £100
SC Adeptus Mechanicus £48
Air Brush+ Compressor £100
Airbrush stuff £78
Paint (estimate) £65
Other general hobby stuff (estimate) £50
Total £696


I think about £150 of that was presents though

Need to get a BB7s pitch, but other than some of the Imperium magazines and the odd pot of paint there is nothing else I'm after at the moment and have more than enough stuff to work on for the year. Unless there is a limited run box set or another nice big terrain box it should hopefully be a much cheaper year.

2021 was a spendy year for me. Wild guess is around 5000$

About 2-3k on a huge pile of terrain for a city fight board.

1k on a huge pro-painted Tau army. I have no use for it, but it was an amazing deal, and at some point in the future, I can play a Tau invasion campaign.

About 1k on "too good to ignore" middlehammer army purchases (dwarves, SOB, vostroyans)

And then various small purchases here and there, maybe 30$ on average, but adds up with a few of them per month.

Trick is never to count it or stop to think about how much you have got...

I would estimate £300-500

A few oldhammer sets and minis which are getting expensive quite now, some new board games, not a massive amount of new miniatures.

Single most expensive item was probably the ASOIAF (Game of Thrones) starter set, but fortunately that was a birthday gift.

My entertainment budget I set for myself is $200.00 a month, but since I mostly just play video games and I've got a big backlog of those, and I can't really go out and do anything, that pretty much all goes into 40k.

This years budget is 150$/month for the two of us. There is not much coming up either of us want so not going to be a problem.

The single biggest purchase this year might be the 125$/year the flgs charges for their new lockers.

Interesting thread. Worth thinking about.

Budget for 2022:

One FW Primarch a month to get my full set (im doing this as an Investment more than an actual project probably but you never know)
Might pick up the off additional bit if I make some extra money from selling things I have on ebay. but not spending more than £100 a month.

I'm probably going to sell my MTG collection I started this year coz I'm put off the game tbh.
(too many formats). Whatever I will get for it im probably going to split between crypto and something fancy (like a cobra)
Other than that apart from edlrich omens which im going splits on and new Eldar Dex The only thing im going to spend money on is hobby consumables paints/brushes/tools/materials etc.

So £100 a month tops (which is mostly investment) baring GW releasing bunch of plastic swooping hawks and phoenix lords

I have a mountain of shame I'm unwilling to add to until I do some major work on my armies / projects

What did I buy in 21? Split bought that last KT18 expansion box, bought KT21 + 1 extra steel gauge, Caestus Assault Ram from ebay, Battlezone Vertigus @ -25% retail, and the last Sector Inperialis board left in my LGS (bought in installments). Oh yeah, add one Wall Of Martyrs OOP big bunker to the list

I'm expecting to spend a bit less this year. Plans on the table so far include KT Nachmund (split buying with a friend), Horus Heresy BEAKIES EDITION and that new Jump Pack HQ mini on Black Library day. Maybe some more FW resin crack and a few plastic kits here and there.. I've spent 42.50€ so far this year (1 box of KT Vet Guardsmen).

The recent price hikes and my existing piles of shame are making me more cautious of impulse buys. I also pretty much stopped investing in 40K aside from completing my "Dream army", I will only be investing in KT21 and Epic from now on (once Epic relaunch drops later this year or during '23)..

Probably spend around $1000 per year.

I have a bad habit of going "oh, new game" and then going deep down the rabbit hole.

I've not yet renewed my DCM membership, but remember there was a very similar thread to this in that members section some years ago with people posting how much they spent - pretty incredible, you had some spending many, many thousands in a year - every new GW release in a month (usually multiples of each) as well as other stuff on top of that.

I am jealous of both having the money and the time!

I don't have a specific budget as it can vary widely month to month. One month could see a box I want released but the next one I don't buy anything. I don't tend to count consumables as these just end up tending to come out of general life money, unless I'm buying a big bulk for a specific project. However with the rise in the cost of living and with GWs prices going up I am likely to start to budget it a lot tighter and be more selective, impulse purchases are going to be cut.