How much do you need to invest to really enjoy your hobby? Some hobbies cost more than others, and some hobbies have higher costs to entry than others. But to really get the most out of your hobby, how much do you have to spend? Today I am proud to present my Thousand Dollar Theory, which will help you budget for your hobby and save you from sinking your life’s savings into a pastime.

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Welcome to What Makes You Happy, the show that explores our hobbies and pastimes and how they delight us. This is episode number #27 and today we’re discussing my Thousand Dollar Theory.

Before we begin, I want to say, I really appreciate your viewership, and I want to know how I can make it better for you. If you have a suggestion, comment, or a complaint, please drop us a line using the Feedback form below. Likewise, if you enjoy this podcast, it’s likely your friends will too. Please share the experience! Word of mouth is our best growth plan, so please share as widely and as freely as you feel comfortable. Thanks so much.

I think it’s fairly obvious by now that I have what my family calls “The Gift Of Gab.” I talk a lot. And most of all, I talk about my hobbies. A question I often get when I blather on to my poor friends is, “How much does all of this cost?” For years they’ve heard me talk about various pieces of camera equipment, recording equipment for this podcast, my ham radio equipment, my gaming PC, art supplies, books I’ve bought, DIY projects around the house. The quantity of it all can seem very daunting from a monetary perspective. In fact, you may feel this effect anytime you start talking to someone about their hobby of choice. Now, I’ve never owned a horse, but I can imagine talking to someone about all that’s involved with owning horses, the price tags would start to add up dizzyingly in my mind. So the question remains: how much does it all cost?

Obviously, it’s not an easy answer, because it’s not an easy question. There are just so many variables at play here. There are so many hobbies that we’ve lumped together in this question. Likewise, within each hobby, we must recognize that there are a ton of price points. A beginner in a hobby will likely have spent far less than a lifelong practitioner. Because of the difficulty of these variables I propose we narrow the criteria. I still want the number to apply to most, if not all hobbies, but the price point should be say, 4 out of 10. That is, the point at which you’re seriously into the hobby, well enough to have fairly nice gear. You’re not a beginner. You haven’t spent the absolute lowest price possible and gotten what most of the hobbyists consider junk. Likewise you haven’t splurged for the top end equipment only the most affluent and experienced hobbyists can acquire. You’re buying middle of the pack, mid-tier. Reasonable quality, respectably durable. Is there such a number? I have a theory. In most hobbies, there is a consistent number that shows up time and time again for just such a price point – one thousand dollars.

Over the years I’ve tried a lot of hobbies. I’ve kind of become known for it. People constantly ask me for details such as where I find the time, how much it all costs, and where I learn about this stuff. The detail I want to focus on here is that I have experience in this matter. I’ve tried lots and lots of different hobbies, at different starting costs, and this number, $1000 seems to keep coming back to me again and again. I’d be interested at some point in discussing this with an economist, because I bet they’d have some insight on why the number keeps recurring in various fields of study, but for today, I want to examine this number more thoroughly and see if my theory holds water at all.

Let us all agree first of all that it does not cost $1,000 to simply start a hobby. We’ve established that’s not where we want to set our standard. Some hobbies are free at first. On the other end of the spectrum, some hobbies may literally cost millions of dollars, or perhaps even a theoretically infinite amount. Really most of us just want to squeeze the most amount of enjoyment over the most number of hours or years possible out of our money. This is the core of the $1,000 theory. I am suggesting that if you really want to enjoy your hobby, you can get perhaps 80 percent of your enjoyment with a mere thousand dollar investment. Now of course a thousand dollars is by no means a small amount to spend on a pastime. But in the grand scheme of your life, if you have a reasonably well-paying job, if you don’t have too many varied interests, spending a thousand dollars on one singular pursuit that will interest you indefinitely is actually not a terrible investment. Again, I’ll reiterate that there are both cheaper and more expensive hobbies. And for any given hobby, it may be possible to spend far more or less. So let me repeat the core concept one more time: for 80 percent of hobbies, you can get 80 percent of your enjoyment with a 1,000 dollar investment.

The idea occurred to me over the course of a few weeks, and I immediately saw some advantages of thinking about hobbies in this way. First, having the benchmark of a thousand dollars gives you a ballpark amount for how much you might realistically invest in a prospective new hobby if you were to get somewhat serious. Here’s an example: I’ve spoken about ham radio in the past. Now if you were to get really seriously invested, this is a deep field of study that could cost you millions of dollars in radios, tuners, amplifiers and power supplies, cables, towers, rotators. But the cost to entry is minimal. $25 for a cheap Chinese handheld, and $15 for the exam. Most people won’t get all they want to out of the hobby for $40 though. Most people will be happiest if they buy a good second hand radio, a wire antenna, a power supply and an antenna tuner. The total for this, along with some incidentals, should come out to about 800 to 1,000 dollars. I’ll give another example of a hobby I’ve been thinking about getting into. Mountain biking. Now theoretically the only cost is the bike itself. From my research, I can find a decent hardtail for about $600 to $800. A sturdier helmet designed for mountain biking should cost about $50. But MTB riders know that where the hobby really gets expensive is the travel – plane tickets to resorts, lift tickets to the tops of MTB trails, and repairs. So to keep costs down, I’ll buy used, and do my own repairs whenever possible. And until I’m really deep in the hobby, I’ll stick to local trails.

Let’s give one last example before moving on – this time analyzing a hobby I don’t do at all. Oil painting. First I’m going to assume that this hobby falls middle of the road, meaning to get 80 percent of my enjoyment out of the hobby, I can expect an investment of a thousand dollars (have I hammered that number enough by now? Yeah I think I have okay). I don’t know much about oil painting, but from what I do, mostly from watching Bob Ross, here’s what you need. An easel, a good set of brushes in various sizes, high quality paints, a palette, palette knife, a box to hold all these supplies, some paint thinner (just beat the Devil out of it, as Bob says). You will probably need some other paraphernalia like jars to hold your paint thinner. Additionally, you may want to pay for some classes, and don’t forget you’ll need to buy more paint and canvases as you complete your artwork.

Another advantage to thinking about hobbies through the lens of this theory is that it gives you better clarity on sussing out the outlier hobbies. Is this hobby particularly cheap or particularly expensive? Previously this question was difficult to answer because the answer was always: compared to what? Do you draw? Maybe you want to get into it but you don’t know how much to budget for it? Well ask an artist – they’ll probably tell you that to get started, you don’t need to spend much. A ballpoint pen and scrap of paper work fine to get started, but to really get serious? I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this, drawing is an outlier hobby because it’s so darn cheap. You’d have to really work hard to spend a thousand dollars on it.

At the other end of the spectrum, exotic marine aquariums can be tremendously expensive. If you wanted to get started for a thousand dollars, you’d have a hard time meeting that budget. Between the tank, the fish, the plants, the filters, lights, stand for it to sit on, food, thermometers and heaters, you’ll eat up most, if not all of your budget right there. And then if you find you don’t have time to take care of the tank properly yourself, you’ll end up paying for a cleaning service. A saltwater aquarium can very easily exceed a thousand dollars.

The third advantage I realized was inherent to this mode of thinking was the ability to budget for the hobby. With the baseline of a grand, you can now think to yourself, “how much am I willing to spend on this hobby before deciding it’s not worth it?” Or put another way, “I’ve spent such and such amount. If I spend another such and such amount, will I really get that much more out of my hobby?” Let’s go back to the oil painting example for a moment. Let’s say you’ve spent about $600 buying some basic supplies, and having gone into it knowing about my thousand dollar theory, you feel like you’ve done quite well with your purchases. You still have $400 left in your budget! You now are posed with the choice: do I spend that extra money making my experience better, or am I already getting what I want out of this hobby? Since you have those $400 burning a hole in your pocket, perhaps some new possibility has opened itself up to you that you didn’t think you could afford. A trip to a remote location perhaps? A specialized set of brushes perhaps? Lessons with a portrait artist?

I know a thousand dollars isn’t within the realm of reasonableness for everyone, and so the thousand dollar theory might seem pointless. Perhaps it is, but then again, if you’re on a budget, I think that’s where the thousand dollar theory shows it’s power the best. Now you can ask someone who is heavily involved in the hobby, or even a professional where that hobby lies in relation to the thousand dollar mark. It should be a simple matter for them to answer. To get most enjoyment out of the hobby, you’ll either need to spend more or less than a thousand dollars. If it’s slightly higher than a thousand, you may want to find another hobby or be even more careful with your purchases, finding only the best deals on gear.

Before I conclude here, let’s demonstrate the theory in practice. Here’s a hobby at random, try to think how the thousand dollar theory might apply to it. Running….

Now there’s a cheap hobby. To get started, you literally just need shoes. But to get the most out of it, how much might it cost you? More or less than a grand? I would say far less. Like way far less. Even when you consider the cost of a new pair of shoes every year, let’s be generous and say $150, and the cost for maybe three races a year, you’re still coming in way under a grand. Only when you start to include the cost of travel to other cities for races do we start getting close to a grand in a year.

How about car repair? How about archery? What about something like flying – as in planes? Actually, let’s talk about flying planes for a moment, because I’m sort of curious to see how expensive this will get. I can tell you right off the bat, it’s going to far exceed the thousand dollar theory.

I have a couple friends with pilots licenses, and according to them, every time you use an airport, you need to pay some sort of runway fee. I don’t know all the ins and outs of how it works, but that’s generally that seems to be the idea. Then there’s the cost of the fuel. The cost of the plane itself. The cost of maintenance and repairs. The cost of the hangar space. And we haven’t even touched the cost of the license and the lessons needed to get those. You need a lot, I mean a LOT of practice to get a pilot’s license. Supposedly, between all the different costs involved, to simply get your license so you can fly by yourself, you’ll be investing upwards of ten grand. For the average hobbyist without an unlimited income stream, this is simply unrealistic as a goal.

I guess where I’m going with all of this is simply that I don’t believe a hobby doesn’t have to cost a fortune, and it doesn’t even have to cost a thousand dollars. But by just having the thousand dollar theory to rely, you can make wiser choices, pursue your chosen hobby with greater clarity, and protect yourself from financial ruin. It’s no good having a hobby if it only causes you more stress! I encourage you to think about the numbers attached to your hobby. How much are you really spending? I’m curious to hear what you think about this idea of mine, do send them to me using the feedback form in the show notes below!

Happiness Statistic or Fact

• The average American spent $2,504 on entertainment (which doesn’t necessarily mean entertainment) in 2010 according to the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics. The biggest spenders were people between 35 and 54, averaging $3,050.
• https://budgeting.thenest.com/much-money-average-american-spend-entertainment-year-26018.html
• This statistic raises a couple questions for me: first, do I think that people should be spending less? Not necessarily. Remember, my theory only applies to any given hobby. People spend their time on more than one interest. If they spent a grand on whatever hobby, but they took the family to the movies one weekend, did they blow their budget? Not really. I guess the right answer is going to depend more on income, right? My intuition wants to say that after you pay all your necessary expenses, save for the future, spend the rest on activities you like. That might be investing in your hobby, but more likely it’ll mean taking the family to the zoo, a concert, movie, or what have you.

Time for a Joke

• Time for a good joke to brighten your day. Remember if you share it, the joy doesn’t stop with you.
• What does Charles Dickens keep in his spice rack? The best of Thymes the worst of thymes.

Question For The Audience

Well folks, what do you think? Is the thousand dollar theory worth thinking about? Does it hold water? If you have any insight, or you think I missed something, or maybe I’m just flat wrong, let me know using the feedback form using the link in the Show Notes. I’ll be sure to read the responses promptly.

Closing Thoughts: That’s all for today. This has been What Makes You Happy, the show that explores our hobbies and pastimes and how they delight us. To all of you at home, thanks so much for tuning in, and remember to share the podcast with all the people you care about. Until next time, remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.

Hosted By: Dovid E.Z. Stern [Ph. (216) 526-6641, Em. dovid@clevelandcreativeoutlet.com, URL www.clevelandcreativeoutlet.com]