How expensive are your interests, how do you support them?

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I don't really have "special interests" in the sense of things I'm quite intensely into (wish I did though ), but the things I do like are computery things and chess. With the former, I guess I'm lucky in that I have a job where I get to do that (programming mainly) and for chess, it doesn't cost me too much other than roughly £15-25 to enter a tournament, which I don't do too often (and it'd be more expensive if I went to one far from where I live, obviously). I've probably spent more than £50 on books as well.

At the moment my interest is costing me about £5 a month - that is for magazines or the odd book. I get a lot of books from the library because my interest now is very common and mainstream. If I had more money, I would certainly buy more books, and that will probably be necessary as my interest narrows into something more focussed.

The special interest I had before this one was a lot more specialised and I had to buy books because the library had a limited selection. That interest probably cost at least £20 a month. My knitting which is half interest and half stimming usually costs around £10 a month, but I can't afford that at the moment.

Drinking tea is my recent interest and it has cost me probably around $120 so far... on loose tea leaves and gear alone.
I spend far more on takeouts
There are expensive teas out there but I don't want to spend too much money on it for right now.
Going to gigs cost me around $150 so far
Everything's good as long as I don't pick up photography... haha
However I would love to own a Mark III or a Leica

Well, for one of my interests, ice skating, my gym membership is $27 a month, and gives you free public ice time. My last pair of skates was $60, about every month I need a sharpen that costs like $8. My next pair of skates is $160, and blade will be like $50. I bought my last pair of skates with my own money from my brief period where I was working, now not working, and my mom's paying for it for the most part, but now the entire family has the gym membership for $60 for 4 people, so yeah. As far as what it COULD cost or should cost rather, a lot. Once I start going to freestyle sessions, those are $9-15 each, and then once I get real coaching, it's $50-80 an hour, so to make it cheap I just learn by myself in public sessions (usually that don't have a lot of people, on weekdays) and also ask a few more experienced people how to do things. So part of my problem now, to seriously pursue it, I do need a job, but I don't know if I'd have to work more than I could skate, and if I'd "break even" working, or if work would stress me out too much.

I guess now, though, skating would be what I wanna "do with my life." My old plan was cars, cars is a much more expensive hobby, though. I like having a really fast nice car, but I like skating more, so now my thought process about cars is more "if it runs" and I don't care whether it's a 500hp monster or anything like I used to. Cars, I got my first Civic for $250, no title, still have it, my next car, a 84 Supra, for 1500, it broke, then I got another in worse condition but working for $900, and I drove that thing like 13K or so until I sold it to a "friend" for $375, he was supposed to trade me a Geo Prizm with a busted motor with the money, but he blew the motor on my Supra, and then he lied about his mom approving the trade of the Prizm, and I never got it. So I lost my "daily driver" and had no car, and would have to use my mom's car. That really messed with finding work, too, not having my own car anymore, and it's a real blow to be scammed out of your car, more or less. Another friend after this happened, had an 85 Buick LeSabre wagon in his yard with a blown tranny, so he sold that to me for $80, and I got a tranny for like $125, but I gotta put it in. So yeah, cars.... Skating, I'd say is cheaper and less frustrating than cars.

The only problem with cars is, though it's a special interest I'd like to retreat from, I don't wanna just junk my cars that are broken, I'd like to fix them, but they're currently just sitting in my garage/driveway doing nothing. I know how to fix them, too, but...it's f*****g hard, and things always get in the way, stripped bolts, etc, even when you're doing things right. So I'd like to just get my cars working, and while not fixing them up to be my "dream cars" or whatever, I'd like them working, just because junking them would be defeat, and I'd lose money. The other problem too is, I don't have too many friends that know much about cars or could help me.

I think if you added up the money I spend on things, the top of the list would be "living expenses" followed immediately by "interests".

I can't count how much I have spent over the year on my interests, both my major two which are always the same, as well as all my "minor" ones, which tend to change or come and go in stages, or just generally are not as intense as my main ones. Either way it would easily be in the thousands... I don't really want to think about it!

It does give me extra incentive to always have a job though. Without my job, can't have money to spend on interests.