The cost of the hobby

So, uh... I just used the mint.com function to find out what I spent my money on over the past 12 months. I know that it shouldn't be a surprise, but holy E36 M3, did I ever spend a lot on cars.
$2500 fuel (not too bad, Canadian gas prices, and way down from prior years due to reduced commute) $4100 insurance (ouch - on 3 cars) $4000 in misc. parts and maintenance. At least some of this must be parts I bought for friends. Right? A bunch buying a 964 (not a loss - the car is still worth slightly more than I have into it) A small bunch buying a Miata (which I consider a wash since I traded it even for my VW)

Do you ever add up what you spent? My math just about says: buy new Fiesta ST (or similar), sell 964 and Miata, and enjoy the cost savings (!!). Insurance would drop in half, fuel would drop slightly, misc parts and maintenance would be near zero for a few years, and the warranty would control my urges to modify.

Of course, then I'd be driving 'boring' cars and have more spare time than I know what to do with.

Are you nuts???

Never, ever add up what you spend on cars, nothing good comes out of it. :D

That's the difference between viewing cars as a hobby and viewing cars as a transportation appliance.

Since car ownership costs are so high, the math suggests either buying the least expensive & most efficient vehicle possible, or buying a classic that's rate of appreciation is enough to offset its running costs. This is an obvious trade-off, because the most cheap and efficient cars are rarely the cars that move your soul, and daily-driving a vintage car means living with old standards of safety and technology and risking damaging your investment.

One of the reason why early Miatas are so popular is that the fun/$ ratio is so compelling

Slippery wrote: Are you nuts??? Never, ever add up what you spend on cars, nothing good comes out of it. :D

THIS

I know I've easily blown more than what a new sportbike would cost in the US on the swap & overhaul on my AE92.

I have the cheap Miata.... and Love it. If it had a back seat to take the kids for joy-rides, the 964 might even have a for sale sign.

I'm a cheap-skate at heart, whether or not I can afford it is less of an issue at this time. I choked when I saw the figures: I'm not sure I love the 964 enough to have $15-20k into it... especially when I am about as happy driving the Miata.

The problem becomes (for me): both vehicles can be improved tremendously using ($$$$$$ for Porsche, $$$ for Miata) aftermarket parts. And I love to tinker. But... MAN this stuff adds up fast.

We're in the middle of a big move right now, which forced us (me) to make some hard choices about which cars to keep. So, let's say you have a yard full of cars scatered about, most bought within the last 10 years or so. And you sell about a dozen of them- not at firesale prices, per se, but on the bargain side of market-correct, because you want to move them quick.

Then you look at your bank account. Holy crap, suddenly there's 5- figure money there. And, oddly, I'm not at all tempted to spend it. It feels good having that cash stash. The cars were a sort-of savings account. And hey, I still have over a dozen project cars to keep my busy for a long, long time...

Your insurance is crazy. I have collector insurance on the classics, it costs us about 400 per year. The insurance on our daily drivers is about 900 a year for her SUV and my pickumup truck. Granted, that's just liability, and I've been contemplating upping our coverage to comprehensive, but the quote I got was an extra 300 for that. So our yearly insurance bill for 2 daily drivers and the half-dozen classic wrecks I bother to keep registered is about 1600 per year, even with comprehensive.

Nathan - The 964 is fully depreciated though, and will keep its value assuming you don't mod it too far or wreck it. Think of all those people who buy new luxury cars and then lose ten grand in depreciation in the first year of ownership alone.

I pay $1500 a year for insurance on the following:

• 2012 Ford Explorer
• 1990 VW Golf Cabriolet
• 2002 Subaru WRX

Only the Exploder has full coverage, I am up north and 46, but man you seem like you are getting hosed at $4100 for insurance.

nderwater wrote: Nathan - The 964 is fully depreciated though, and will keep its value assuming you don't mod it too far or wreck it. Think of all those people who buy new luxury cars and then lose ten grand in depreciation in the first year of ownership alone.

I know that you're right, absolutely. But it still stings a bit.

Note that insurance in Ontario (especially as you get close to the GTA) is a total scam. I have lower rates than most people I know in the area (thanks to a Professional Engineering discount) and I should point out that for about 5 months I had 4 cars insured.

Van and Miata are $150/month (Van has collision, Miata has basic liability) Porsche is $150/month, and most companies weren't interested - including my own. I may move that to classic car insurance now that I have the Miata as a fun DD, but it seriously limits my usage of the car.

I could add it up, but I won't. Mine is actually minimal--cost of registration for the tire trailer (which I may or may not have tires for), and cost of entry. Maybe $100 a year for things that break from the hobby itself, but my car is also a DD.

But take any hobby. A girl I went to school with spends $100 a week on books. Used. She reads everything. I suspect that it is lower now with eBooks. Another girl--girlfriends ex-roommate--would be eating ramen because she just had to have subscriptions to WOW, COD, and 1-3 other video games. If I didn't prioritize my hobbies, I could blow a fortune in a hobby shop on trains, another fortune on stereo stuff, and another fortune yet on golf.

Yep. I know exactly how much I've spent, for better or worse as I track all spending in a spreadsheet. For example, everything included (purchase, insurance, fuel, maintenance), I've spent over $62,000 on my '03 TDI wagon over the past 10 years or so.

I once knew a guy who was really into Civil War re-enactments, and we were talking about hobbies.

He said be wished he was interested in cars, because at least a car can be practical. He estimated he had spent nearly 20 grand over the course of his re-enactment hobby.

I try not to think about it.
I can't afford to think about it (yuck yuck yuck)

Thankfully, my other hobbies have fairly fixed costs, and I put away a surprisingly responsible percentage of my paycheck...
or at least that's what I tell myself.

No SWMBO and zero debt (working through college sucked, totally worth it) make it a lot easier though.

I'm getting ready to drop ~$2500 for coilovers for the Miata (what I paid for the entire car), and anywhere from $1300-2000 on the next brake setup.

At that point I'll likely have $9-10k in the car between purchase price, safety, maintenance, upgrades, etc since I purchased it in Oct 2011.

And it still has the 1.6 in it. And this is just the track car.

Slippery wrote: Are you nuts??? Never, ever add up what you spend on cars, nothing good comes out of it. :D

This. adding it up will just give you sticker shock. Just make sure it is less than the more important things in life

If you want to make ANY rules about the hobby, it should be that you always - EVERY MONTH - save more for retirement than you spend on cars. If you can't do that, ease up on the car hobby, slow your build, etc. That gives you time to save up the money for the bigger ticket purchase (...and the corresponding big investment)

I've been building the datsun, so the geo has been sitting busted and I have not been autocrossing in a LONG time.....I don't want to put the money into two toy cars at the same time.

Racer1ab wrote: I once knew a guy who was really into Civil War re-enactments, and we were talking about hobbies. He said be wished he was interested in cars, because at least a car can be practical. He estimated he had spent nearly 20 grand over the course of his re-enactment hobby.

My father did/does that as well as other historical areas. No... not cheap. Fortunately, he managed to get paid to do it - at least for a little while - so it wasn't too bad. And just about everything he bought was a tax deduction.

Things get messy when you have multiple expensive hobbies... cars... bicycles... guitars... my car-hobby spending has been relatively light for the past year or so... but bike purchases have been nuts along with tool purchases I made when working on the ex-g/f's house... and now I see me moving back to cars and guitars more... I can't afford to do everything at the same time (nor do I have time to), so it's always a give and take.

It's worse when you are racing.

A friend was talking about her $40k in student loan debt... in my head I was going "I could have paid that off in a year if I didn't race"

Well, depends on how you play the game.

I love having a roadster as a DD. My S2000 is not the most economical or practical car out there. I figure I did well in terms of age and depreciation. If got an appliance, it would either be older and more worn, or depreciate faster. Whatever, I'll consider that a wash.

Operating costs would definitely be lower in an appliance. But every time I get in it, I smile. I have fun driving it, even if I'm just going a couple miles into town. When my work schedule sucks, and I live in a boring, isolated area, what I am doing is paying for entertainment. The premium to operate it is pretty cheap entertainment. It also turns time that would be wasted on the drudgerous means of merely transporting myself between places, to a worthwhile activity in its own right.

Try adding in the time-value of the money you spend, and the numbers start getting really scary.

In reply to Beer Baron:

I've been trying to look at that way... but 50 mpg is addictive... and I have a couple of classics to scratch the "make the commute fun" itch once in awhile... Still... carguy123 and his damn BRZ thread... and me really needing to get the TDi off the road for awhile has me pondering...

Racing burns time and money like nothing I've ever done. Beyond the financial ruin and crushing workload, you can do everything right and still come home with a balled up car on the trailer, or end up dead or injured.

Then one day the planets align and you win one. They hand you a little checkered flag that'd cost a solid $2.99 at Party City, and you're a hero until Monday morning.

And it's the greatest thing on earth.

I only roughly add up the money on the bad days.

My Mom asked me one time "Do you know what you could do with all the money you wasted on cars over the years?" I said " Momma, if I had all the money back I've spent on cars I would just spend it on different cars."

It's not my place to ask why, it's just the way I'm built. I don't know what I would do if I wasn't constantly dreaming of different builds. All day everyday, it's a sickness really. Now if I only had the money and tools to build half of what runs through my head on a daily basis I would be truly dangerous.

I just keep thinking of all the money I could be blowing on cars if I never got married or had a kid. . . jk . . .kinda

In reply to ProDarwin:

That's what gets me, I spend next to nothing on my cars, but the if the time I spent working on them was in the cab (which is feasible because I make my own hours) instead... ouch!

Anyone here a pilot? With a plane? Makes a coke habit look cheap.

Appleseed wrote: Anyone here a pilot? With a plane? Makes a coke habit look cheap.

My running joke whenever my dad tries to get me back into flying is that I need a cheap hobby... like racing Porsches.

Only it isn't really a joke.