Topic: Do you have a modelling budget?

I was reading a post where the author mentoned that he had a monthly budget and it got me thinking.

I am a pretty keen modeller, builder and flyer but know that my hobby is restricted by the amount of time and money i can spend.

wifey is pretty good to me and lets me spend a bit here and there although I have never added it all up to get a total annual budget.

considering insurance, club memberships (3 off) magazine subscriptions, glow fuel, kits, consumables, radio gear and engines plus the inevitable impulse purchases at shows I guess it must be something around £1000 per year.

Visiting the shows its not uncommon to see some mighty expensive models and equipment on the circuit and i wondered if anyone else run a budget or do they just buy what they want.

If so, just how much do you spend each year?


bash

Don't know about a year, but I gave up reading the magazines. I was spending about 30 quid a month on them. I began to realise they were full of adverts, reviews of models I can't afford or am just not interested in or, they were full of 'toy' RTF jobbers. 

I allocate myself a budget of 100€ a month (about £67). I am currently about 600€ in the red!

I find I need to budget to stick to or I end up buying even more things I simply don't need. It also means that something like a new engine really feels 'special'.

Dave S

Yes I too have a modelling budget. Purely to stop me over-spending, but then all our accounts are budget based. £120 per month.. But then I spend £20 a month on 20% fuel alone..

I also have a budget......about £100 per month. I am another also in the red but I find that prompts you to sell something you don't really need just to get back on track.

If I didn't do it I think I'd buy things on a whim and let them accumulate rather than thinking through what I want and shifting on stuff I don't.

Woow! I would say with club membership and insurance, fuel and bits and bobs I must spend in the region of £200 a year.  Thats all the money i have to spend.  I would love to be able to fill my home with engines and balsa but thats just not possible.

Probably a few grand a year all in all. 

my buget is easy - whatever I save from the money I allocate myself for the week for living expenses. I then don't feel quite so guilty about spending from the bank account. Currently works out at £100 - £120 a month. Usually spent on consumables and saving for the odd show - or 2.4 gig set. The trick is then to get the wife to drop over to the local model shop to pick up fuel etc and it comes out of her money But it's nice that she will go to pick up anything from props and fuel to fixings and complete kits.

cheers

Seán

Depends on my situation. 18 mths ago I was spend much more than I am now but it would probably still scare me if I totalled it all up. Problem is if I total it up then the other half will know how much jewellery to ask for on her B-Day. 

I tell the wife it cost half what it actually did.  Does this make me a bad person? 

I tell the wife it cost half what it actually did.  Does this make me a bad person? 

It makes you a seriously endangered person if she reads this!

I we strictly budget every expense in our household - I have to now that I am living off an early retirement pension.
However, the modelling is SUPPOSED to come out of the "personal spend" budget, but unfortunately I often go over this, and this then has to topped back up from the "savings" budget, which is currently looking VERY low.
In reality, I guess I spend around £1000-1500 PA on modelling. Luckily, Mrs FBD is learning to fly, so that helps to grease the wheels a bit.

My work kindly send me a budget every month through the post, it's labelled 'Net'.

 

Anything left over can go to pay for luxuries like bills and food.

I spend almost naff all on modelling. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

I maybe spend £15 a year tops on magazines, my dad likes to pay for my insurance and I use an old Futaba Skysport 6 I bought around 10 years ago.

I've spent maybe £150 in the last 18 months on balsa and servos but thats it. My fuel is about 3 years old (and it still burns so I'm not running out to replace it  )

Maybe another £20/year on glue etc? 

I'm scared, so I'm not even ganna go there..................

I've always made a point of NOT adding up what I spend on hobbies - it's simply too depressing    

If I fancied a motor bike (usually both second hand and old) if I had the money I bought it and the bits needed to get it running to my satisfaction.  We both (Avice and I) had an interest in keeping our dinghies reasonably competitive and I've no idea what our tandem cost  - we had a frame built and I just assembled the bike with good equipment.  I apply the same principle to my aeromodeling whilst encouraging the family treasurer (we have no separate money) to buy the stuff she needs for her hobbies (sewing, cycling, yoga, gardening etc).

We're neither of us extravagant and it works for us.

Geoff

i get 200 nickers a month as 'play' money, i can spend it all on planes if i like but then i'd have no beer money   

eeeek! no way am I adding this up!!

Z

way too scary. although i've got just about everything i need now and i'm resiting the urge to buy anything new.  At least in slope soaring you don't have to buy fuel etc. although the airframes take a lot of punishment........

eeeek! no way am I adding this up!!

Z

Some stones are better left unturned. I try to keep my purchases to a minimum. I find building most of my own planes at least keeps a naturally slow acquisition rate (if you focus on only one plane at a time).

I am at the moment considering my first second-hand purchase 

With all of my hobbies I've found that magazines fuel the desire for new purchases more than anything else.

I work out that for two of us, if we were to pay for going out on day trips twice a week..........and the money I would spend if I ever got to a proper shopping centre, we are probably quids in 

Have never even attempted to either add it or, or keep track of  spending on the hobby but it seems that the longer time goes on the more stuff you accumulate and when it gets to the stage where you have something close to the stock of a small model shop in the cupboard then that tends to slow down the buying. It's certainly stopped me going to swapmeets anyway.

It must be two years since I last bought a kit, but still get those "essential" bits and pieces, servoes, receivers, motors, batteries etc etc etc even though slightly less suitable examples are sitting on the shelf already. I've even been retiring some older models, de-gearing them and passing them on so someone else can use them, which I've done recently with a couple of them.

Im convinced that the pleasure in this hobby is inversly proportional to the time you have been doing it whilst spending more boosts ones pleasure but only to the point of nearly matching the fun you used to get.

The more you spend, the quicker the equation goes out of kilter.  Ive seen it over and over when someone ramps up thier purchasing and starts buying everything only to give up months later

I doubt I get as much out of it now as I used to getting a keilkraft glider to fly or my home made radio actually fly a model.   I'm sure ARTF has something to do with this.  You have a lot less (long term) pride in an artf than a scratchbuild.  Thats why Ive built my own turbine (mk4 phoenix) rather than buy one.  The ego boost when that runs/flies will hopefully match that of my first powered flight with a cox!!

Im convinced that the pleasure in this hobby is inversly proportional to the time you have been doing it whilst spending more boosts ones pleasure but only to the point of nearly matching the fun you used to get.

The more you spend, the quicker the equation goes out of kilter.  Ive seen it over and over when someone ramps up thier purchasing and starts buying everything only to give up months later

I doubt I get as much out of it now as I used to getting a keilkraft glider to fly or my home made radio actually fly a model.   I'm sure ARTF has something to do with this.  You have a lot less (long term) pride in an artf than a scratchbuild.  Thats why Ive built my own turbine (mk4 phoenix) rather than buy one.  The ego boost when that runs/flies will hopefully match that of my first powered flight with a cox!!

That's an interesting philosophy Dave. I wonder if there's any stats on scratch-builders VS ARTF assemblers longevity in the hobby? Sometimes I think I prefer building to flying.

Quite agree with (other) Dave. I have found that unless I have put some effort into building the model, I have very little interest in flying it. When we lived in a flat for a year before buying our house, I had nowhere to build and so resorted to RTF models, but each was sold after a few flights, or even before being flown. They just weren't 'mine'. I still need to have saved and bought it as a treat, then spent hours sweating and bleeding over the build to feel it is really my model to fly. Then I am as proud today as I was 38 years ago when my first ever model had its first flight.

Dave S

Yeah I don't add it up, I just have a budget for 'stuff' after everything else is payed for.  To be honest though I'm not too bad, I don't buy things on impulse anymore (I have discovered that shopping mainly on the internet as opposed to shops helps me with this problem) except at shows and the only one of those I go to is Woodvale.

I added up what ispent in the first 2 years and it was serious money , nearly to 5 figures.

I stopped keeping the evidence after that.

My budget is common sense , yes I do have some before all the animals start barking at the cage door.
Do i realy want it and can I pay for it NOW  if yes i get it else it weaits and the urge probably subsides.

Regards Clive

Wow what a great thread!! It would have been great to have got a poll going at the start to get a feel as to what people spend

I can't get involved someone is watching !

never reckoned it up,    it would spoil the hobby for me,              now, must go,    i need to finish making my tennis racket,  i just cannot play well if i havnt made it me self 

A bit off topic but... 

One of the Instructer/Examiners at my old club has refused outright to teach any more ARTF -ers, his reason being that they ditch the hobby as soon as things go a bit wrong and he ends up wasting hours of his own time.

Does building your own model make you hang in there?

Any comments?

Oh yes, my budget...... zero at the moment.

Well it was about £100 per month supplemented with the occasional bit of buying and selling on ebay which made up for an average of £50 per month, so total of about £150.

As most of you know I've just sold a lot of stuff, and there's still more to come! I agree with the points made earlier about spend vs enjoyment though and I think I'll agree more as the year progresses - I've gone down to 2 models in total now

Interestingly in the big clear out I've just had, I found 9 receivers, 18 standard servos, 7 digital servos and a whole raft of stuff I never even knew I had And I thought I was pretty organised in the garage with all the stuff I've got

My budget has gone down to virtually zero for the time being but that will only be temporary until all the house renovations are done

best amend that list of model then,   

Just done it Alan

BTW I've not sold the Adrenaline and the cowl, bellypan etc I got off Wilson, thats my project for the winter

best amend that list of model then,   

And your avatar! Can I buy it off you? 

Sod

will be changed in due course probably for a forsale sign

Sod

will be changed in due course prbably for a forsale sign

Blimey that was quick!

never reckoned it up,    it would spoil the hobby for me,              now, must go,    i need to finish making my tennis racket,  i just cannot play well if i havnt made it me self 

That's very good Alan.  I string my own
None of this wooden Carp though. Has to be a graphite mouldie with lots of bling

A bit off topic but... 

One of the Instructer/Examiners at my old club has refused outright to teach any more ARTF -ers, his reason being that they ditch the hobby as soon as things go a bit wrong and he ends up wasting hours of his own time.

Oh dear.  He wouldn't like me much then.  I bought both my trainer and my current hack-of-choice (Wot 4) second hand and fully complete as I find even ARTFs a bit beyond me!! 

Still, I have passed my A and am still interested in the hobby, so I don't think I wasted my instructor's time.

We seem to have a few responses from club flyers but nothing yet from the Jet jocks or large scale aerobatic boys.

I know of a few jet boys that own quite a few jets and still run electric and IC models too.  Anyone brave enough to admit what they spend???

Maybe, just maybe, the wife may not read your post.

Bash