Get Your Kicks For Less

Tip Of The Day:  Cheap hobbies – how to fill your spare time for less.  That is, if you actually HAVE spare time.  For some people, the mere act of sleeping is all the hobby they have room for in their busy lives.

Tip For Tomorrow:  You want a Deal?  I’ll give you a Deal – and it’ll even come at you via text message.  How’s about that?

A new online Deal has hit the Twin Cities and it is making going out a whole lot cheaper.  Read it here, and then watch it on Fox 9 News at 5 PM.

Further Elucidation Of My Cheap Deal:  Raise your hand if you have a hobby.  Okay… raise your hand if you don’t.  Uh-huh… for the rest of you, raise your hand if you think what you do qualifies as a hobby, but you’re not really sure.  Yeah, I know how you feel.  What IS a hobby, anyway?

According to the Finder Of All Knowledge, Useful Or Otherwise (Google), a hobby is:  “An activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.”  In other words, it’s anything you do for fun.  For the sake of discussion, we’ll add this – anything you do for fun that’s not illegal or immoral in the 50 states.

Some people (like Oprah) would posit that to have the best life possible, you should turn your hobby into a career.  That’s fine if you hobby is something like computer programming or running a company or waiting on people.  But what if you’re like me, and one of your favorite pastimes is reading?  So far, NO ONE has offered to pay me for completing A through T of Sue Grafton’s mysteries.

One thing I think we all can do, though, is lessen the financial burden of our hobbies.  Make them cheaper, or offset the cost in some way.  You don’t want to be forced to dump your hobby due to straightened circumstances, but you don’t want a costly pastime to send you to the poor house, either.

In the spirit of frugality, here are a few ways a few of my peeps are keeping their “pleasurable activity or interest” in their lives, for less:

1.  Collecting and reading the complete works of X.  My Ma is a diehard fan of Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer, and has read everything these two prolific authors have written.  Now she’s trying to hunt down all their books and buy them.  Then, she plan on re-reading them one by one.

This is atypical Ma behavior – once she’s seen or read something, she’s not prone to repeating the experience.  However, she says old age (whatever, she’s only 63) is robbing her of her memories, and she’s forgotten what she read in her younger years.  On the plus side, she get’s to read her fave authors’ greatest works as if for the first time.

How is she keeping it cheap (and real)?  She buys all her books at either Half Priced Books or library sales.  Of the 30-odd books she’s collected so far, not a single one has been bought new.  That’s quite an accomplishment, and also?  Part of the fun.

If you’d like to read the complete works of someone, without buying them, get thee to thy nearest library(eth).  Using their handy-dandy computer system, you can reserve copies of every book written by your author of choice, or request an inter-library loan if your county doesn’t have the book you want.  Lest ye forgot, this would be FREE.

2.  Crafting – knitting, pottery, beading, scrap-booking, general making-of-stuff.  My buddy Marie is the Grand Poobah of crafters.  Seriously, she could craft for the Olympics (which would be SO COOL, if a bit dull to watch).  And like all true crafters, she’s particular about her materials, especially yarn.  Marie wants it to have a good “hand” (?) and be made of 100% natural fibers, if possible.  The problem is, fine materials have a not-so fine price.  How does she offset the cost of high-end crafting supplies?  By selling her wares and patterns(so you can craft along with her!) on Etsy.

If you are a true master of your hobby (insert Seinfeld joke here), consider setting up shop on Etsy.  It’s relatively inexpensive, and MUCH more time-efficient than attending ye olde craft fair.  Caveat – if you are one of those types who uses a soap-making or beading kit at Walmart, or hot-glues something onto something else, and considers that a finely crafted hand-made item?  Please, do NOT turn to Etsy.  That site is already filled up with these sorts of “crafts,” no offence.

3.  Sewing.  If you’ve been here at the Cheap But Not Easy Empire for more than five minutes, you know my BFF Larue is an actual, professional seamstress, creating quality goods for Highland/Irish dancers and professional Santas in the TC.  However, her HOBBY is making elaborate costumes – for Halloween, costume parties, and Ren Fests.  (Just you WAIT until I post pictures of the Wives of Henry VIII costumes she’s making.  Wow.)

Creating costumes ain’t cheap (or easy, for that matter), but Larue has a variety of ways to pay for the insane amount of fabrics, trims, jewels, and other doo-dads in her “stash.”  First, the aforementioned professional sewing gigs.  She also barters her sewing for discounted plumbing and other household chores.

But Larue’s greatest money-making scheme is selling stuff on eBay.  That girl can walk into any thrift store anywhere, and find the cheapest item for sale that will garner the most money on the Net.  And all those sewing doo-dads she has?  Once she’s done with them, she sells those on eBay, too, often to the tune of hundreds (!) of dollars.

4.  Blogging.  Okay – truth time, I don’t get paid for writing this blog.  YET.  But Cheap But Not Easy.net did get me my (paying) gig on Fox 9, which is leading to (paying) gigs elsewhere.  So technically, I’m making money through blogging, darn it.

A more traditional way to make money off your online journal is through advertising.  Granted, you have to build up a substantial audience before anyone will pay to be on your site, but it is doable.  My buddy Bionic Beauty charges for ads on her site, and those ads help pay for her pastime.

Two tips to “monetizing” your blog:

A.  It needs a good hook, or schtick.  BB writes about all things beauty – reviews, how-to’s, new product announcements, frugal tips – without digressing into topics like what she had for breakfast that day.  Personal story/humor blogs have a tougher time breaking through and gaining enough of an audience to make them viable for advertising.

B.  You need to post every day, or MORE.  If you can’t commit to blogging all the time, rain or shine, you won’t make money on your blog.  Fresh content sells, it’s that simple.  Which means I need to get my cheap butt in gear and start posting on the weekends…

Question For The Masses:  What is your hobby?  And how do you pay for it?