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Hobbies and Household Budgets

Hobbies include money spent on leisure activities other than sports, cinema, and holidays. As per 2012 data, the average household spent £2.30 every week on games, toys and hobbies.

Hobbies in detail

Some popular hobbies in the UK are art and craft, painting, candle making, quilting, baking, reading, photography, music, singing, dancing, stamp and coin collection, fishing, and visiting museums or art galleries.

Most expensive hobbies

In 2012, pricerunner.co.uk had done a survey on the most expensive and least expensive hobbies. According to the survey, the most expensive hobby is photography as it can cost up to £4,596 each year to cover the cost of advanced cameras and lenses. The other most expensive hobbies included scuba diving at £3,926 per year, rock climbing at £3,714 each year, and skiing at £3,660. Some other big-ticket hobbies included piano, cello, djing/mixing, martial arts, clarinet and horseriding with annual expenses in the range of £2,400 to £3,500.

Example 1:

Let's look at some costs related to photography as a hobby. Among the most expensive cameras on Amazon.co.uk, Pentax 645D SLR camera costs £6,867, Canon EOS 5D costs £2,671.99, and Sony Alpha DSLR costs £2,350. In terms of photography training, London School of Photography charges £295 for a level 1 photography workshop and £745 for a food and product photography course, among its wide range of courses.

Least expensive hobbies

As per the survey, the least expensive hobby was knitting at £177 each year. Knitting was followed by rollerblading at £219 and stamp collecting at £271 per year. Surfing, ballet and tap also featured among the least expensive hobbies with annual expenses of £448, £602, and £728 respectively.

Example 2:

Let's look at the prices of some hobby items on Hobbycraft.co.uk, a leading online retailer of hobby-related arts and craft and baking products.

Among knitting products, Hobbycraft offers a wide range of products such as sewing machines, knit and stitch kits, quilting products and cushion and toy making products. Prices of knit and stitch kits are in the range of £1 to £15.

The art store section on the website has several products for watercolour painting, acrylic painting, screen printing, drawing, etc. For screen printing, a brand named Daler Rowney provides printing colours in multiple options like black, blue, brilliant green, brilliant red, brilliant yellow, crimson, and lemon yellow at £5.25 each.

Hobbies as part of the household budget

As you can see, hobby expenses can vary for each household by a wide range. Wherever possible, you should look around for deals to save on hobby-related expenses.

Our household budget calculator can help you understand the contribution of hobbies to your household expenses.

iCalculator tip:

You should try to network with fellow enthusiasts both online and in person as they can sometimes give you valuable advice on how to get the maximum savings.