Inflation

Lovely Person

Hi everyone, how do you deal with the rising costs of your hobbies due to inflation? Everything I buy has become more expensive lately. Do you buy less or more of your hobby items? Do you look for cheaper or second-hand options? Do you sell some of your collection to buy new ones? Do you consider your hobby items as an investment or a consumption good? Do you have any tips or strategies to cope with inflation in your hobbies?

The book Inflation: Causes and effects by Robert E Hall covers many of the causes and effects of inflation and is a good introduction to the topic for those unfamiliar.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this topic. Thanks for reading and sharing!

Janny Note: Lovely Person likes to push boundaries and originally posted a copy-paste from a PDF version of Inflation: causes and effects by Robert E Hall, no formatting or anything so was just destined for the bin. I took the opportunity to get a prompt on the topic from an AI since I thought it could be an interesting thread.

waifu

Hello, I tend to put more time than money in my hobbies as I try to squish every part of the fun out of them, of course it depends on the hobby, say, writing isn't expensive at all you just need some time and paper.
I'll just explain what I do.
In terms of art I draw on the tablet with a very soft sensitivity (as to let the tip last), and try to draw with pen and paper the most I can.
Last time I did something tech related I bought two laptops for very cheap (less than 50 dollars) one of them was a latitude X1, it barely runs Linux but I was able to use it as a writing machine and it helps me a lot to focus on just writing (it freezes when i try to browse the web)
For me I think I try my best to buy when I can and do something related to my hobbie in any way I can with the least amount of money possible, I guess I'm just used to it, inflation is just another factor. Buying whenever it's convenient and cheap, and finding new ways of enjoying your things.
Cheers

Taka

Music has always been an expensive hobby. Inflation has, of course, made things worse.

I'm not like, a president, or anything, so I honestly don't know how I would fix something like this.

Drifter

Honestly, I haven't bothered to adjust my spending so I went from socking a few hundred dollars into savings every month to basically nothing. I haven't been getting into debt, but I do need to cut down on the plastic crack and just use the stuff I already have. It doesn't help that I got my hands on a kit of termagants for free a while back, looked for someone to sell them to, before I quickly gave up and decided I'm a nids player too now. I already have a thousand points and it's only going to grow as the new edition drops.

Fantasy

I've stopped buying almost everything extra.
Mostly just get food and pay bills while saving.

CatboySummer

My solution to hobbies growing in cost is to have inexpensive hobbies. Most of my gaming is older stuff that you don't necessarily need to pay for. Most new stuff is not worth buying in the first place, I think the last new game I got was FF Origins Stranger of Paradise and that was worth the price of admission. Most other stuff however is from past years and has no need to be played new on release. I didn't even buy new Zelda, for many reasons including price.

I think the simple matter of life is that you just need to not buy what you don't need and not let people overcharge you. Live modestly and you are free.

Fantasy

CatboySummer

Most new stuff is not worth buying in the first place

I wouldn't say most. There's good stuff today. But people often forget that there's decades of good games you can get for free or extremely cheap. I know people like to buy the newest bright and shiny but you miss out on so much that way. Easy example would be Dragon Quest. People bought XI without playing any of the other games in the series. You can easily emulate most of them and they're all incredibly good. Why pay the $60 instead of enjoying those old ones first? The gameplay is mostly the same, you're just getting better graphics.

Lumeinshin

For me its the increased cost of the essentials by inflation that impacts what I buy, rather than the cost of the hobby items themselves. I can be quite bad and find a way to justify an expensive purchase as long as its 'relatively' cheap. There are still some real bargains to be had, especially since we're mostly all in a similar boat, so others will be trying to get rid of things, not always at the most profitable price for them just for some quick cash. I think as well I have generally spent less on my hobbies (aside from servers/ads for this forum ofc), but I think theres a bunch of factors playing into that, inflation being one but I wouldnt say its the sole cause.
If I had more disposable money tho i'm sure i'd find things to buy. Second hand is definitely the way to go. Personally I am trying to avoid things that wont last/cant be repaired. I have read online that is a growing trend, i'll edit the post if I find an article or the like about it.

Dungulus

My approach to inflation was to say fuck it and spend all my money. What's the point of holding on to it if it's going to become worth less and less? I've been converting it into things that will be valuable to me in the future. Specifically, I've been buying a lot of hand tools and furnishing my work shop so I have the ability to do and make more things myself. I own my land and am also working on a homestead situation to retire into

Lumeinshin

How's everyone been doing financially?

I've had to have the hard conversation with my family about the price of pringles and the shrinking sizes of all the christmas chocolates in the store.. Very tragic indeed.
Jokes aside, I have seen some of the better "deals" on snacks and stuff i've seen for a while. I'm unsure whether they are really good deals but they felt more like it than say last year.
Pringles on sale for £1.25 in multiple shops. It's almost a reasonable price again.

Dungulus I've noticed a similar sentiment coming from lots of people I know over the past year. I've got a nice leather jacket I got for dirt cheap, but I accidentally tore it so we're going to try and repair it instead of throwing it away 🙂

marc

Lumeinshin Pretty shit. The price of an oreo is now equivalent to 1% of my salary so I can imagine getting paid 100 oreos per month. Just to get a replacement screen for my phone cost me half of that. Many of my friends have told me it's not worth it anymore to work locally at least but they have degrees and I don't.

Drifter

Inflation hasn't hit too hard here, but I went to Japan and replaced windows and siding on my house this year, and those 2 combined(mostly the latter) obliterated my savings. I'm slowly saving back up, but I've cut back on my hobbies to do so. Helps that I had a decent amount of stuff I had to catch up on. It is tempting to buy some discount boxes for Christmas though. I'm also asking myself if I want to pay $700 for the final semester of intermediate Japanese in January. Who knows if that'll go up even higher.
If I get a decent Christmas bonus in a few weeks, it's all going into my investment account. Doesn't seem worth it to shove it into a savings account, since inflation likely won't slow down anytime soon.
I am considering starting a business 3d printing tabletop terrain, but I'm not totally clear on how much effort it'll take getting STLs that I can legally print and sell. I'll probably dip my toe in the water selling weebstuff on ebay this month, as I got a few anime figures in blind boxes at an anime con last month, and I have no real interest in keeping any of them.
All in all, life here in Middle of Nowhere, The Midwest hasn't declined much due to inflation, but my 3.5% mortgage rate has probably been lifting weights there. My grocery prices have certainly gone up a tad, and my wages have similarly gone up. I think I still have plenty of breathing room.

gingermilk

It is very noticeable in my area but thankfully my family and I are quite financially stable to not to be negatively influenced too much. Because of the bird flu, the prices for eggs have been fluctuating a lot in the states as well and even with the ridiculously high price and a limit on number of cartons one customer is allowed to buy, the stores around me are constantly out of stock.

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