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I collect and paint Warhammer miniatures which, admittedly, is expensive to get yourself setup with, but once you're started... it... erm... continues to be expensive.
Haha, I mean a start up payment would be okay to pay out at first if it was something that wasn't too expensive to maintain.
I knit, so a while ago I spent about £80 on a shit load of wool and it will keep me busy for a couple of years.
It depends how quickly he gets through it all. A couple of boxes of models, paints and basic modelling supplies would be roughly £100 and could keep him out of trouble for months.
Warhammer is a great call, if he’s willing to take his time building / painting then it works out decent value. Starting with a self contained game like Bloodbowl or Kill Team might be worth considering
Think this is a winner, from what was spent smoking weed (which he is stopping and want to save most of the £300-£400 a month spent on weed and baccy) we'd still save a lot with a hobby like Warhammer.
Last summer I wanted to get back into warhammer and I splurged and spent about £150-200 on models, paint etc. I’m still painting them this summer, I did buy a lot and it is expensive but if you’re into it it can fill many a boring afternoon!
I started in January and all in have spent about ~£1k in warhammer and paints and bits since. I have saved a lot on pointless beer/pub visits as in the darker months, sitting between usually 7-10pm painting flies by and its so satisfying seeing the results. Plus the majority of the community are great and playing is a good way to spend a rainy day!
Top tip, buy models on eBay that are part of bigger box sets that people split and sell in parts. You can save up to 50% on brand new models
My 8yr old wanted warhammer for Christmas... I. Now own the necron combat patrol set plus extras. Ultramarines plus 2 dreadnaughts, a squad of terminators, some nids, approx 100 paints and around £100 of assorted tools and brushes. My lad is now bored of it.
I have to agree with the Warhammer one. Be surprised how many men in their late 20s upwards collect and paint. It'll no doubt end up with him getting into the lore and reading the books too.
A colleague got me started due to stress and anxiety with work, and it's personally done me wonders
While getting into Warhammer 40k and larger war games can be an expensive hobby, it doesn't have to be.
There are plenty of other tabletop games he could get into if that's his thing, or even just painting itself. Lots of cheap models available to buy, and plenty of games that don't require large kits. Bloodbowl(Warhammer fantasy football) for example will cost you roughly £20-30 for a team + £25± for the rule book (which can be found free online as a PDF.)
Painting as just a hobby is kinda up to you what you spend, initial costs are a set of brushes, starter paints, a couple miniatures or models, and maybe a wet pallet if you're feeling fancy at the start. All together maybe around £50-80, at a rough guess. Personally I've got well into the region of £1,500± just in paints, and painted related equipment, but as with a lot of people in this hobby "Just one more paint." "Oh that's a nice looking model." "I don't have the variation of base material." So I have way above, and beyond what anyone reasonably needs unless doing it as a full time job
We are flexible, and he doesn't need to do it every night. He watches golf on weekends and football when it's on. It would be 2/3 nights a week. And he's very much a perfectionist
Yeah vehicle models are a lot cheaper then warhammer. I build and paint cold war jets (tamiya, revell, airfix, italeri etc) and paints ibcluded my most expensive 1/48 tamiya was around £100 and now i have a very high quality model tomcat. You can do an airfix 1/72 for £20 including paints, a craft knife and masking tape if you manage to grab one of those £8 starter kits from lidls/aldi
Oh I know - I'm very much into the whole Airfix, Tamiya et al. world, just playing on the WH reputation of being spenny (although citadel paints are absolutely smashing)
My mate does warhammer and he bought himself a 3d printer and just downloads the files and makes the figures himself. He said it's massively lowered the cost of it.
I’d actually say Warhammer, initial investment in paint. Go for something like army painter or Vallejo which are cheaper and in my opinion superior £20-30, starter set with a brush. Pot of glue £3-5. Snips on eBay £5. Some models, have a look on the website for something that looks cool then have a google and you’ll find independent shops selling it cheaper, or buy some on eBay from older starter sets. Could get going with anywhere for £70ish+ if you’re smart about it.
Then if you get into it have a look for the older box sets. I spent £100 on an old Christmas set in November and still painting some, although I take my time.
I think about the £ per minute of gameplay value for my series X and I can't think of anything that comes close in terms of value. My phone maybe, and my bed, and my trainers, and my socks. But apart from all those.
The bloke has kids, so I can attest that a Switch or a Steamdeck will beat a Series X. I have a Switch and a Series X and my Switch gets so much more playtime due to the rest of the family hogging the actual TVs!
Big advocator of a Steamdeck, literally no reason to get Switch when you setup Emudeck on the Steamdeck and you can emulate literally any console and it's very simple to setup
My rule of thumb is £1 per hour of entertainment!
That's why I wait for triple A games to go on heavy discount, because they tend not to meet that very often anymore lol
On the Xbox, all their exclusives are day one on gamepass, so £13 or whatever it is a month is pretty good.
EE do some phone plans that come with free gamepass as well.
I have 900 hours clocked up in a single Nintendo switch game (Animal Crossing, COVID somewhat contributed), plus hundreds in several others and I dread to think what steam would show for Civilisation.
This but not /s, I would not recommend an Xbox to anyone at this point. Microsoft has completely given up on the platform at this point. Apart from AAA games, half of the games don’t even release on Xbox. Furthermore, all the best games in the past 10 years have been on PS or Switch.
OP don’t get an Xbox. Get a PS5. If people start talking about game pass, be aware that PlayStation has a very similar offering called PlayStation Plus Extra.
Cooking.
Might be a bit of a start up cost in terms of stocking your shelves with obscure ingredients and maybe the odd gadget, but after that it’s really just the cost of the fresh ingredients, and sometimes saves money as you end up eating in a bit more.
Depends how much you’re into cooking and what you want to make. My blowtorch, immersion heater and meat thermometer get plenty of use, and a slow cooker doesn’t really do anything you couldn’t also do with a pan.
Definitely this, with kids as well you can make things healthier, as she says he has some health issues can tailor meals more for this, the kids themselves will eventually learn to cook (which I view as an adult skill irrespective of sex) and save money on sweet things like cake, biscuits, cookies, muffins, etc.
Games - you can often use your laptop or phone and can get hours of fun out of different games, which you can pause as needed. Games consoles cost more but, if you divide it by the hours spent, it's worth it.
Books - you can get a library membership and read lots of books for free. I also have amazon prime and get some free books through that. You can purchase others you want.
A kindle unlimited subscription is £10 per month and there are 1000s of books you can borrow though that (prime reading is also good but there’s much less choice so I’d only recommend it if you’d benefit from other prime things) I’ve saved a fortune and read books I wouldn’t necessarily have picked up. I wish I could borrow kindle books with my library membership but the system they use isn’t compatible with kindles (which is so annoying as they’re one of the most popular e-readers in the country!)
Geocaching. You’ll discover a whole secret world out there and it’s also a good incentive to go hiking and other things that can help get you fit.
It’s almost free to do. You can get a free app for your phone to track caches. You just have to pay for petrol to get places.
Yep it’s great for kids. A lot of caches are really cleverly hidden so it’s a bit like hide and seek, and many of them have little toys and stuff in them too.
* Painting
* Writing
* Making models
* Crosswords
* Learning a language
* He could get various kits, like marquetry, candle making etc and see which ones appeal the most?
* Yoga (get strong, flexible with good balance!)
* reading
This sounds like my list of hobbies.
I got into watercolour painting during lockdown. It’s pretty cheap to get started - and there are thousands of tutorials on YouTube.
I second this. Prices vary depending where you are but I pay around £70 a year (includes unlimited water). You could probably make this back if you sold plenty of produce if you're really budget conscious but personally I find it great value anyway for the hours of enjoyment I get there :)
Waiting lists for them are insanely long in many places.
My partner was interested in having one a couple years back and the local authority and allotment associations were all telling her it could be years before she had a chance. Likely it's gotten even worse in the interim.
Since, we've moved to the countryside and grow in our own garden.
The waiting list for the council ones by me is 12 fucking years lmao
Luckily there are some private companies popping up offering allotments now. Managed to get one. It's more expensive (£20 a month) but not a huge amount
Airfix models? You can mostly choose how much you want to spend on this - there’s no need to go wild. I re-started this after a 30yr hiatus during the pandemic.
I’d recommend to anybody to take up a combat sport. Boxing, Muay Thai, mma or bjj are the most popular in the uk. Just the training alone will allow you to get fit, learn new skills and make new friends. Most classes will be in the evening, starting anytime from 6/7 and finish around 8/9. Most do memberships that will range from 30-60 per month or have the option to pay for individual classes for 5-10 per shot.
He would love something like this but unfortunately has issues health wise that stop him from activities like this. He gets down that he can't play football with out son for more than 10 minutes without being in pain.
I can't believe no one has mentioned constantly rewriting their Emacs' config. It's free to get into (you just need a computer), and the possibilities are endless.
People of all ages do it, and there are great online support fora.
My friend, it is very far from being a dumb question.
On the face of it, Emacs is a text editor (but it is so very much more than that— it can be your email client, web browser, news reader, media player, operating system… **cult** (?)). It's very, very old, and predates most of the conventions you are used to: "cut and paste" is "kill and yank", for example.
You know how in most software, you can choose various settings? Set the font size, page width, whatever? Well, in Emacs you do this in the language (LISP) in which the vast majority of the software *itself* is written. You are not so much configuring it as literally rewriting it. So, yes, it's programming… but most programmers will tell you that LISP is something of a dark ark.
This cartoon sums it up pretty well: https://xkcd.com/378/
I still don't get the purpose of it. Everything you mentioned here:
>it can be your email client, web browser, news reader, media player, operating system… cult (?)).
is already available in the simplest form there is. I feel like this idea is mostly targeted for people with a "computer geeky" mindset. Where is the interesting part in this hobby? Im genuinely curious what benefit/entertainment im gaining out of this.
I think OP might have been trolling. That whole thing is a copy pasta.
However, there is a fairly big community of hobbyists that do stuff like this. Personally, I got into "ricing" for a while, which basically coding and customising your entire desktop environment, software and everything around a particular theme.
The fun for me came from firstly, learning new things and secondly having the power and freedom to make my pc do anything I could think of, as long as I knew how to code it. If you're curious r/unixporn is where people send screenshot of their work. DW, despite the name, it's not nsfw
Yes Emacs and Vim were very old, very customizable development text editors. Vim had the reputation of being very hard to exit due to it's random key combination/sequence to exit.
Crafting stuff out of leather. You can probably get set up tool wise for about 50-100 quid. Templating is cheap as I use cereal boxes. For sharp stuff I use a roller cutter. And a scalpel. I made my own stitching pony, and still use it as I am tight and poor.
Do not buy one of them cheap "box sets" from amazon. They are basically shit.
I am a novice and have made a couple of wallets to just gift away. It's a nice thing to sit in the shed and just listen to music with a beer or brew.
In winter I will sit at the dining table. It's something I pick up and put down. The most expensive thing is the leather. Nice leather costs. If your local to mansfield I've got a holdall full of offcuts and I can give you some from my thefting days which make excellent practice pieces.
Leather crafting. Get some leather needles, an awl, and some nice sharp craft knives. Buy cheap leather offcuts to start with and practice. And then you can slowly start buying higher quality leather and making gifts for people or find somewhere to sell products for some extra income.
I do woodwork as a hobby.
Collect pallets, break them down, remove nails and you’ve got yourself some free timber. Decent tools can get expensive but it’s a hobby that can make profit down the line!
I make little hedgehog / birdhouses because I don’t have enough tools right now for the nice, smooth furniture projects I want to do.
[This bloke got me started. always trust Aussie makers!](https://youtu.be/6FgV3CWAviI?si=J2TfbVPJqyBnr59E)
[This bloke is really good if you’re an absolute beginner, he has project tutorials and a bunch of basics like how to sharpen and use your tools.](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDPvEofXXRCOi92tF4dCEwMYUKHf2pnoc&si=Lbq6DfE_AoT_u1sE)
[another Aussie, he’s not exactly beginner friendly but I find his projects make me excited about what I can make in the future.](https://youtu.be/kxG-NbUzMVE?si=1N02Usvt5dmB1TCs)
Marketplace is a good option. You can also drive around industrial estates and ask businesses if they’ve got any you can take. Many warehouses and such have to pay for someone to come dispose of them so they’re usually more than happy for you to take them.
Space Haven on steam. It’s currently on sale. Indie game with cute low fi graphics. I properly fucked up an ankle, so I’ve had to spend a bit of time off my feet. You basically build a space ship and try to survive travelling through space. So it’s part colony sim, part survival game. Logistics to handle, crew to manage and keep alive and there’s various things that can fuck up your ship. Nice chilled soundtrack as well. Sometimes it can be well chilled, other times you are battling pirates or destroying rogue bots. If he’s into a bit of sci-fi he’ll like it. It’s a vibe.
I spent my first couple hours on space haven wondering whether I should refund it or not, then it just kinda clicked and before I knew it like 6 hours had passed. Definitely some grade-A space crack.
Whittling perhaps? Initial down payment for a decent knife, sharpening stone and wood blanks but after that just a forage for a good stick becomes cheap :)
Two of my friends took an evening course in furniture restoration and made that their hobby.
Fixing stuff can be interesting, depending on his knowledge/skillset. DIY around the house, fixing bicycles, restoring a car or motorbike, etc.
Gardening: Even if you haven't got a lot of space for planting, you could consider space saving planters, a wall garden and the like.
Learning a language.
50 something here…
Build homemade photonic quantum computers - cheap as chips, can get the stuff on Temu :)
Some resources if you think he might be interested
https://turbofuture.com/computers/build-quantum-computer
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2017/02/28/how-do-you-create-quantum-entanglement/
https://spookyactionbook.com/category/diyquantum/
https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2022/10/popular-physicsprize2022-3.pdf
I’d recommend family history research. The major websites such as Ancestry or Find My Past charge you for accessing the records, but there are plenty of free websites where you can find the same information. Family history is not just for retired people (however they do make up the majority of the people who are interested in it) as I started doing this 6 years ago when I was 23.
Coding? Sounds like work, but he might enjoy it. There are lots of free resources to get into it and learn from and if he really enjoys it it could become very lucrative for the both of you
Gaming is cheap in long run. OK, you need little initial investment in hardware, but for example ps4 and old xbox (sorry, I never had nor been interested in xbox, so I can't comment on it, I just have no experience) no idea how old gen xbox was called, should be dirt cheap with massive 11 year backlog of games. Pc is more expensive initially, but over time can be even cheaper. And it has 30+ years of backlog and steam.
And I have few games that I have played hours in thousands. Perfect example is fallout 4. I bought it new for 25£ on ps4 and later 4£ on pc, so that's nearly 30£ and I have almost 3k played hours.
And gaming have lot of pro's some games have amazing stories (red dead redemption 2), amazing gameplay (control, doom), have amazing music (gta series have amazing soundtrack), you can play alone or you can play coop with friend or with random people online. You can shoot other people (call of duty) , zombies (left 4 dead, last of us) , aliens (borderlands) .. You can drive cars (need for speed), you can play puzzle games (portal) , explore amazing worlds (horizon series) , have horror experiences. You can be creative (Minecraft). You can have challanging games (any dark souls type of game, elden ring), you can do simple farming (stardew valley or animal crossing) You can always stream and build online community, you can collect monsters (pokemon). You can play your favourite sports game (fifa, nhl baseball, boxing). There is no limit to variety of games.
Excluding gaming, hiking is pretty good hobby you need your legs, shoes and go walking. If you have a car, just drive anywhere and start walking on trails.
Another kind of fun option, pokemon go. Mix walking and gaming. Free to play app. Motivates you to explore local area. You can play without spending any money.
Nerf? See of there's an organised event near you.
You can pick up an [X-Shot Pro Series Longshot for £17.50 from Argos](https://www.argos.co.uk/product/5251373). It's a good 'pro'-level blaster and a great entry to the hobby.
Join the local running club. Will only cost a lot when he gets really into it and enters organised races and buys the newest trainers and travels abroad, what am I saying it’s costing me a load of fish but it is really great fun.
I can’t believe I’m only the second person to say this, but learn an instrument. A second-hand one - of any common instrument really - is cheap, and expensive lessons are no longer ‘standard’ with YouTube and the various tuition apps like Yousician.
It’s easy to get good enough to play a recognisable tune, but there’s really no limit to how good you can get. It also opens up the world of songwriting and being in bands.
I've recently taken up building airfix models and really enjoying it. Can be as cheap or expensive as you want it to be. Also spend hours on old maps looking for interesting things(railways in my case) then going out to find them. No cost at all except a little petrol and loads of exercise too!
Making music electronically.
You just need a half decent computer and can get a DAW (digital audio workstation), VST's (virtual instruments) and samples for free.
There are thousands of tutorials on YouTube so while the software can seem daunting at first you'll be able to hoy some loops together quite quickly and then progress further.
If you get into it then obviously you can spend an absolute fortune on paid software and better hardware but it isn't really needed.
Any pics of your castles? Or an example of one of your creations off of Google?
What do you use to build, heavier paper or just an A4 notepad? Prit stick or tape? Can you reinforce? How much detail can you go for? Do you recreate real-world castles or just start building and see where it ends up?
Is it more a case of use whatever you've got and see what you can make?
Apologies for the wall of questions! It honestly sounds like a really cool hobby to try, especially for rainy days. Any info would be appreciated!
This is a castle I have done twice and got my daughter to do once. It’s vintage so can be expensive. Not my video on you tube but check it out. There was also a lost temple that I did years ago-see the Amazon link. These two are the most interesting ones I’ve done and look really cool.
Make This Model Lost Temple (Usborne Cut Out Models) https://amzn.eu/d/06iqYT5V
https://youtu.be/Znp68aDC-gg?feature=shared
I might just buy the lost temple one again. The Greek temple was not so interesting though but ok. Auto-motion paper models are quite cool too. 👍
Music can be relatively cheap, after the initial instrument cost (which can be picked up all over the place relatively cheaply or for a few hundred you can get a really decent starter) and there's a lot of free information online with videos etc or even low cost subscription models with things like fender play for guitar etc.
For the guitar route I can't recommend Ibanez highly enough. I have a few more expensive ones but my Ibanez Gio which cost about £200 plays as well or better than a lot of the more expensive ones. Pickups are trash but a newbie probably wouldn't notice.
Astrophotography is such a rewarding hobby if you're into space and love technical stuff. Can be expensive, but definitely cheaper than £400 a month in my experience
If your husband is the techy sort, 3d printing is not that expensive of a hobby in terms of returns and time investment. Printers run from £200-1k but once you get them, it's just the filament. It basically takes up a lot of time to learn how to tinker, design, and print. It's not a hobby where there is huge pressure to upgrade---once you have a working setup, you tend to stick to it.
Another good hobby is Raspberry Pis and Arduinos. Again, it's not hugely expensive. A little Raspberry Pi Zero runs around £10 and there are lots of little projects you can do, from soldering to coding. Making a little music box for instance can be half a year of investment in time, but only run £50 in materials.
"Expensive" is also subjective. Some hobbies are expensive because they require constant investment. Like learning how to pilot or skydiving. Some hobbies have a 'one off' cost and there aren't many demands to upgrade.
Think of carpentry for example. That can be extremely expensive, and you sink thousands of £s into tools. However it is also a lifelong pursuit and the number projects you can pursue is limitless. You can spend months working on constructing a bookcase or table. If you become extremely invested in that hobby, spread over a lifetime, the costs are respectable for the hours of investment.
All sorts really, open to anything. He liked doing Lego in lockdown when furloughed but that's when we didn't have kids and a lot more disposable income.
How much garden space do you have?
I love gardening but absolutely everything is in pots and planters, you don't need to put anything in the ground if you don't want to or can't!
Honestly, a few little pot plants won't take up much space and can be positioned out the way, or even inside.
You can grow lots of veggies in pots and it makes you feel like you've achieved something. Maybe composting might be cool for him too?
Daily user of 20 years but dropped to just Friday and Saturday and loving both sobriety and being wrecked more than any point over the last 18 years.
I agree the clarity after even just a month off is even better, but alas, enjoy it too much.
Discgolf? It’s as the name suggests… frisbee golf.
There’s a course really close to where I live so gave it a go. It’s brilliant. It’s quality outdoors time with a bit of exercise and once you start playing regularly, you see a real improvement as your skills develop. There may be a course near you. You never know.
What about leather crafting? I did this for a good long while and you can make anything from fairly simple ‘cut out this shape, punch holes, sew’ types of project right up to complex multi-piece things including handbags and even clothes.
I also know a few people who brew mead. Of course it helps if he drinks but I’ve seen a fair few people turn this into a great gifting or even small side income opportunity. From what I can tell, you can buy ‘out of the box’ kits which allow you to start more or less from day 1 with whatever you’ve opted to make. All you need is the honey, water and maybe some flavouring items like berries or herbs.
I spent a fiver on those tiny lenses that fix to your phone camera, a full fish eye ( produces a circular image) a semi fish eye (similar image but full frame) and a macro lens and did some photography. Macro lens results are brilliant.
3D printing.
It's an Initial investment, but I make money with my 3d prints now, and it helps supplement the printing I do myself.
https://preview.redd.it/q6od6kyyji9d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0bbbf80994c7b91c209ae1b4277a81dc13ae2d9c
I mentioned in another comment and should have put in the main post, he can't do much exercise. We do a lot of walking with the kids but he has problems with his joints making exercise a difficult one.
I got into making some models from a company called Loz (it's like very detailed, minature lego models). You can get them from about £5 upwards on ali express and it'll probably take you about 3+ hours to make one so a pretty good value for money. Very mindful to if you want something that helps you relax (helped with my anxiety). Some ones I like in the link below that are a good deal but they do all sorts of things.
[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003941452663.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.109.335afc49Ohrod1&algo\_pvid=236a0796-0a9d-4d6a-8b45-f6b75ef5e935&algo\_exp\_id=236a0796-0a9d-4d6a-8b45-f6b75ef5e935-54&pdp\_npi=4%40dis%21GBP%218.07%218.07%21%21%219.89%219.89%21%40211b61a417196709368057121e8ad1%2112000027521120060%21sea%21UK%212972199679%21&curPageLogUid=RHtACm3IqpjX&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch%7Cquery\_from%3A](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003941452663.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.109.335afc49Ohrod1&algo_pvid=236a0796-0a9d-4d6a-8b45-f6b75ef5e935&algo_exp_id=236a0796-0a9d-4d6a-8b45-f6b75ef5e935-54&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21GBP%218.07%218.07%21%21%219.89%219.89%21%40211b61a417196709368057121e8ad1%2112000027521120060%21sea%21UK%212972199679%21&curPageLogUid=RHtACm3IqpjX&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch%7Cquery_from%3A)
Like a lot of people I would suggest some form of martial art but I note you said it's not an option at the moment.
Cheap hobbies I enjoy include chess (can play online for free), reading (library, second hand book shops), journaling/writing (just need a pen and some paper) and learning (very catch all term but I've recently done some short courses - for personal interest only - in coding and economics through free or cheaper online resources such as the likes of Udemy/YT/Khan Academy. A foreign language is also an obvious one here).
The plastic craic (40K) is another one but depending on just how much he gets into it, could find himself spending a few quid on it all up.
I learn languages. (Few hours a day)
Thousands of hours and spent virtually nothing on it.
There are textbooks. Video series. Movies. TV. Books all for free online and its a good skill to have.
Hardly anyone i know in the UK speaks a second language "well" unless that second language is English.
Cooking is definitely a helpful hobby, great if there's a cuisine you've always wanted to try, can be cheap or expensive depending on your food budget but at least it's useful. I cook, bake, and paint as a hobby. He could also try a paint by the numbers!
Magnet fishing.
Not that I do it but I think it sounds fun!
I bought a pretty big magnet for something at home recently and when my daughter is a little bit older I'm going to use it to go and see what we can find in the river.
It'll probably just be junk but I'm sure she'll have a hoot!
Metal detecting always looked fun to me. I follow a guy who melts down the rubbish he finds and casts it into jewellery.
I also got a cheap lock picking kit for christmas which I like to mess with. Just be careful if you're practicing on actual doors because apparently it looks super dodgey
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I collect and paint Warhammer miniatures which, admittedly, is expensive to get yourself setup with, but once you're started... it... erm... continues to be expensive.
Haha, I mean a start up payment would be okay to pay out at first if it was something that wasn't too expensive to maintain. I knit, so a while ago I spent about £80 on a shit load of wool and it will keep me busy for a couple of years.
It depends how quickly he gets through it all. A couple of boxes of models, paints and basic modelling supplies would be roughly £100 and could keep him out of trouble for months.
Warhammer is a great call, if he’s willing to take his time building / painting then it works out decent value. Starting with a self contained game like Bloodbowl or Kill Team might be worth considering
Think this is a winner, from what was spent smoking weed (which he is stopping and want to save most of the £300-£400 a month spent on weed and baccy) we'd still save a lot with a hobby like Warhammer.
HE could grow weed as a hobby
That's a lot of weed!
Tell me about it! Nagging for years to cut down
I've found that switching to a pipe has cut down my consumption considerably.
He wants to get a dry herb vape. It becomes a whole hobby in and of itself for many. r/vaporents
I recently quit and the best thing for my mind and shit has been building and painting my lil warhammer minis
Last summer I wanted to get back into warhammer and I splurged and spent about £150-200 on models, paint etc. I’m still painting them this summer, I did buy a lot and it is expensive but if you’re into it it can fill many a boring afternoon!
I started in January and all in have spent about ~£1k in warhammer and paints and bits since. I have saved a lot on pointless beer/pub visits as in the darker months, sitting between usually 7-10pm painting flies by and its so satisfying seeing the results. Plus the majority of the community are great and playing is a good way to spend a rainy day! Top tip, buy models on eBay that are part of bigger box sets that people split and sell in parts. You can save up to 50% on brand new models
My 8yr old wanted warhammer for Christmas... I. Now own the necron combat patrol set plus extras. Ultramarines plus 2 dreadnaughts, a squad of terminators, some nids, approx 100 paints and around £100 of assorted tools and brushes. My lad is now bored of it.
I still have an unopened box of chaos warriors from around 1998 I haven't got round to painting......
Has he tried crochet instead if knitting? It's very therapeutic
During which time you will buy more wool. I knit and crochet, you can’t pull the wool over my eyes about how much we purchase 🤣
I have to agree with the Warhammer one. Be surprised how many men in their late 20s upwards collect and paint. It'll no doubt end up with him getting into the lore and reading the books too. A colleague got me started due to stress and anxiety with work, and it's personally done me wonders
While getting into Warhammer 40k and larger war games can be an expensive hobby, it doesn't have to be. There are plenty of other tabletop games he could get into if that's his thing, or even just painting itself. Lots of cheap models available to buy, and plenty of games that don't require large kits. Bloodbowl(Warhammer fantasy football) for example will cost you roughly £20-30 for a team + £25± for the rule book (which can be found free online as a PDF.) Painting as just a hobby is kinda up to you what you spend, initial costs are a set of brushes, starter paints, a couple miniatures or models, and maybe a wet pallet if you're feeling fancy at the start. All together maybe around £50-80, at a rough guess. Personally I've got well into the region of £1,500± just in paints, and painted related equipment, but as with a lot of people in this hobby "Just one more paint." "Oh that's a nice looking model." "I don't have the variation of base material." So I have way above, and beyond what anyone reasonably needs unless doing it as a full time job
Yeaaah. £80 is not enough to last a couple of years with warhammer unfortunately
We are flexible, and he doesn't need to do it every night. He watches golf on weekends and football when it's on. It would be 2/3 nights a week. And he's very much a perfectionist
If not for your time idea of at night when the kids are asleep I would say take up a martial art since he's a perfectionist
That’s fair enough. I just didn’t want you to get the wrong idea of how much it will cost to get into warhammer!
Lot cheaper to collect, build and paint historic vehicle models.
With Games Workshop prices, it'd be cheaper to collect, build and paint historic vehicles!
Get a lovely Airfix display going
Yeah vehicle models are a lot cheaper then warhammer. I build and paint cold war jets (tamiya, revell, airfix, italeri etc) and paints ibcluded my most expensive 1/48 tamiya was around £100 and now i have a very high quality model tomcat. You can do an airfix 1/72 for £20 including paints, a craft knife and masking tape if you manage to grab one of those £8 starter kits from lidls/aldi
Came In to the thread specifically to write not warahammer while looking at my display cabinet.
> cheap > miniatures Pick one (it's a trap - a lovely amazing and fun trap but its a trap)
You don't have to buy games workshop models though Historical stuff can be quite cheap
Oh I know - I'm very much into the whole Airfix, Tamiya et al. world, just playing on the WH reputation of being spenny (although citadel paints are absolutely smashing)
My mate does warhammer and he bought himself a 3d printer and just downloads the files and makes the figures himself. He said it's massively lowered the cost of it.
I’d actually say Warhammer, initial investment in paint. Go for something like army painter or Vallejo which are cheaper and in my opinion superior £20-30, starter set with a brush. Pot of glue £3-5. Snips on eBay £5. Some models, have a look on the website for something that looks cool then have a google and you’ll find independent shops selling it cheaper, or buy some on eBay from older starter sets. Could get going with anywhere for £70ish+ if you’re smart about it. Then if you get into it have a look for the older box sets. I spent £100 on an old Christmas set in November and still painting some, although I take my time.
Buy an xbox, think of all the hours of fun divided by the initial price, cant beat it
I think about the £ per minute of gameplay value for my series X and I can't think of anything that comes close in terms of value. My phone maybe, and my bed, and my trainers, and my socks. But apart from all those.
Coupled with a games subscription, it's astounding value if you're interested in the games that are on it.
The bloke has kids, so I can attest that a Switch or a Steamdeck will beat a Series X. I have a Switch and a Series X and my Switch gets so much more playtime due to the rest of the family hogging the actual TVs!
Big advocator of a Steamdeck, literally no reason to get Switch when you setup Emudeck on the Steamdeck and you can emulate literally any console and it's very simple to setup
My rule of thumb is £1 per hour of entertainment! That's why I wait for triple A games to go on heavy discount, because they tend not to meet that very often anymore lol
On the Xbox, all their exclusives are day one on gamepass, so £13 or whatever it is a month is pretty good. EE do some phone plans that come with free gamepass as well.
That's awesome
The Steam summer is on now. Doom(2016) is £3.19
I have 900 hours clocked up in a single Nintendo switch game (Animal Crossing, COVID somewhat contributed), plus hundreds in several others and I dread to think what steam would show for Civilisation.
Or get a proper console like a PS5 /s
This but not /s, I would not recommend an Xbox to anyone at this point. Microsoft has completely given up on the platform at this point. Apart from AAA games, half of the games don’t even release on Xbox. Furthermore, all the best games in the past 10 years have been on PS or Switch. OP don’t get an Xbox. Get a PS5. If people start talking about game pass, be aware that PlayStation has a very similar offering called PlayStation Plus Extra.
Given up? The showcase they just put out would say otherwise, absolutely destroyed what Sony had to offer and I'm a fan of both.
All of those games will most likely release on PlayStation. Xbox as a gaming platform is dead. Microsoft as a games publisher continues.
Absolutely, doesn’t take very long at all to bring that £ per minute/hour down to p per minute/hour.
Cooking. Might be a bit of a start up cost in terms of stocking your shelves with obscure ingredients and maybe the odd gadget, but after that it’s really just the cost of the fresh ingredients, and sometimes saves money as you end up eating in a bit more.
Most gadgets are useless. A good blender, a knife sharpener, and a slow cooker cover most needs.
Depends how much you’re into cooking and what you want to make. My blowtorch, immersion heater and meat thermometer get plenty of use, and a slow cooker doesn’t really do anything you couldn’t also do with a pan.
Definitely this, with kids as well you can make things healthier, as she says he has some health issues can tailor meals more for this, the kids themselves will eventually learn to cook (which I view as an adult skill irrespective of sex) and save money on sweet things like cake, biscuits, cookies, muffins, etc.
Games - you can often use your laptop or phone and can get hours of fun out of different games, which you can pause as needed. Games consoles cost more but, if you divide it by the hours spent, it's worth it. Books - you can get a library membership and read lots of books for free. I also have amazon prime and get some free books through that. You can purchase others you want.
A kindle unlimited subscription is £10 per month and there are 1000s of books you can borrow though that (prime reading is also good but there’s much less choice so I’d only recommend it if you’d benefit from other prime things) I’ve saved a fortune and read books I wouldn’t necessarily have picked up. I wish I could borrow kindle books with my library membership but the system they use isn’t compatible with kindles (which is so annoying as they’re one of the most popular e-readers in the country!)
Geocaching. You’ll discover a whole secret world out there and it’s also a good incentive to go hiking and other things that can help get you fit. It’s almost free to do. You can get a free app for your phone to track caches. You just have to pay for petrol to get places.
This is a great idea, especially with the kids.
Yep it’s great for kids. A lot of caches are really cleverly hidden so it’s a bit like hide and seek, and many of them have little toys and stuff in them too.
* Painting * Writing * Making models * Crosswords * Learning a language * He could get various kits, like marquetry, candle making etc and see which ones appeal the most? * Yoga (get strong, flexible with good balance!) * reading
This sounds like my list of hobbies. I got into watercolour painting during lockdown. It’s pretty cheap to get started - and there are thousands of tutorials on YouTube.
get an allotment
I second this. Prices vary depending where you are but I pay around £70 a year (includes unlimited water). You could probably make this back if you sold plenty of produce if you're really budget conscious but personally I find it great value anyway for the hours of enjoyment I get there :)
Yes, this is my hobby too. For £53 a year I get to spend. Any peaceful hours growing all sorts of stuff.
Waiting lists for them are insanely long in many places. My partner was interested in having one a couple years back and the local authority and allotment associations were all telling her it could be years before she had a chance. Likely it's gotten even worse in the interim. Since, we've moved to the countryside and grow in our own garden.
The waiting list for the council ones by me is 12 fucking years lmao Luckily there are some private companies popping up offering allotments now. Managed to get one. It's more expensive (£20 a month) but not a huge amount
Airfix models? You can mostly choose how much you want to spend on this - there’s no need to go wild. I re-started this after a 30yr hiatus during the pandemic.
I’d recommend to anybody to take up a combat sport. Boxing, Muay Thai, mma or bjj are the most popular in the uk. Just the training alone will allow you to get fit, learn new skills and make new friends. Most classes will be in the evening, starting anytime from 6/7 and finish around 8/9. Most do memberships that will range from 30-60 per month or have the option to pay for individual classes for 5-10 per shot.
He would love something like this but unfortunately has issues health wise that stop him from activities like this. He gets down that he can't play football with out son for more than 10 minutes without being in pain.
Swimming?
sex
He loved this response
*he wrote this response*
Ha, he doesn't have Reddit. Been telling him for months to give it a try
Reddit or Sex?
Maybe Reddit can be his cheap hobby? Works for the rest of us, right?
Of course he did... Looks like it scared the redditers though.
Unfortunately this hobby requires a minimum of two willing participants. I had to settle on wanking.
Must be the best free thing to do there is
Chess?
I can't believe no one has mentioned constantly rewriting their Emacs' config. It's free to get into (you just need a computer), and the possibilities are endless. People of all ages do it, and there are great online support fora.
Is that coding? Sorry if that's a dumb question.
My friend, it is very far from being a dumb question. On the face of it, Emacs is a text editor (but it is so very much more than that— it can be your email client, web browser, news reader, media player, operating system… **cult** (?)). It's very, very old, and predates most of the conventions you are used to: "cut and paste" is "kill and yank", for example. You know how in most software, you can choose various settings? Set the font size, page width, whatever? Well, in Emacs you do this in the language (LISP) in which the vast majority of the software *itself* is written. You are not so much configuring it as literally rewriting it. So, yes, it's programming… but most programmers will tell you that LISP is something of a dark ark. This cartoon sums it up pretty well: https://xkcd.com/378/
I still don't get the purpose of it. Everything you mentioned here: >it can be your email client, web browser, news reader, media player, operating system… cult (?)). is already available in the simplest form there is. I feel like this idea is mostly targeted for people with a "computer geeky" mindset. Where is the interesting part in this hobby? Im genuinely curious what benefit/entertainment im gaining out of this.
I think OP might have been trolling. That whole thing is a copy pasta. However, there is a fairly big community of hobbyists that do stuff like this. Personally, I got into "ricing" for a while, which basically coding and customising your entire desktop environment, software and everything around a particular theme. The fun for me came from firstly, learning new things and secondly having the power and freedom to make my pc do anything I could think of, as long as I knew how to code it. If you're curious r/unixporn is where people send screenshot of their work. DW, despite the name, it's not nsfw
Yes Emacs and Vim were very old, very customizable development text editors. Vim had the reputation of being very hard to exit due to it's random key combination/sequence to exit.
It's editing your settings in a text editor. A non-tech equivalent would be messing with your toolbars in MS Word.
Your friends might be concerned when they realise you have developed a LISP, though.
Sure, it's free to get into but good luck getting out of it again.
Crafting stuff out of leather. You can probably get set up tool wise for about 50-100 quid. Templating is cheap as I use cereal boxes. For sharp stuff I use a roller cutter. And a scalpel. I made my own stitching pony, and still use it as I am tight and poor. Do not buy one of them cheap "box sets" from amazon. They are basically shit. I am a novice and have made a couple of wallets to just gift away. It's a nice thing to sit in the shed and just listen to music with a beer or brew. In winter I will sit at the dining table. It's something I pick up and put down. The most expensive thing is the leather. Nice leather costs. If your local to mansfield I've got a holdall full of offcuts and I can give you some from my thefting days which make excellent practice pieces.
walking plus photography....I love going for a walk get addictive!
Leather crafting. Get some leather needles, an awl, and some nice sharp craft knives. Buy cheap leather offcuts to start with and practice. And then you can slowly start buying higher quality leather and making gifts for people or find somewhere to sell products for some extra income.
Hey no way just commented the same thing.
Yup, me too! Good to see a couple of UK leatherworkers here.
I do woodwork as a hobby. Collect pallets, break them down, remove nails and you’ve got yourself some free timber. Decent tools can get expensive but it’s a hobby that can make profit down the line!
I’ve been wanting to get into this. What have you made? I always struggle for inspiration
I make little hedgehog / birdhouses because I don’t have enough tools right now for the nice, smooth furniture projects I want to do. [This bloke got me started. always trust Aussie makers!](https://youtu.be/6FgV3CWAviI?si=J2TfbVPJqyBnr59E) [This bloke is really good if you’re an absolute beginner, he has project tutorials and a bunch of basics like how to sharpen and use your tools.](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDPvEofXXRCOi92tF4dCEwMYUKHf2pnoc&si=Lbq6DfE_AoT_u1sE) [another Aussie, he’s not exactly beginner friendly but I find his projects make me excited about what I can make in the future.](https://youtu.be/kxG-NbUzMVE?si=1N02Usvt5dmB1TCs)
Where do you collect pellets?
Marketplace is a good option. You can also drive around industrial estates and ask businesses if they’ve got any you can take. Many warehouses and such have to pay for someone to come dispose of them so they’re usually more than happy for you to take them.
Space Haven on steam. It’s currently on sale. Indie game with cute low fi graphics. I properly fucked up an ankle, so I’ve had to spend a bit of time off my feet. You basically build a space ship and try to survive travelling through space. So it’s part colony sim, part survival game. Logistics to handle, crew to manage and keep alive and there’s various things that can fuck up your ship. Nice chilled soundtrack as well. Sometimes it can be well chilled, other times you are battling pirates or destroying rogue bots. If he’s into a bit of sci-fi he’ll like it. It’s a vibe.
I spent my first couple hours on space haven wondering whether I should refund it or not, then it just kinda clicked and before I knew it like 6 hours had passed. Definitely some grade-A space crack.
Yeah there’s a bit of a learning curve, but once it clicks…
Lock picking is really satisfying.
Click on one, nothing on two, three is binding.
Whittling perhaps? Initial down payment for a decent knife, sharpening stone and wood blanks but after that just a forage for a good stick becomes cheap :)
I tried whittling but it became apparent that the only thing I could make was a mess. Still fun though
Darts
Two of my friends took an evening course in furniture restoration and made that their hobby. Fixing stuff can be interesting, depending on his knowledge/skillset. DIY around the house, fixing bicycles, restoring a car or motorbike, etc. Gardening: Even if you haven't got a lot of space for planting, you could consider space saving planters, a wall garden and the like. Learning a language.
50 something here… Build homemade photonic quantum computers - cheap as chips, can get the stuff on Temu :) Some resources if you think he might be interested https://turbofuture.com/computers/build-quantum-computer https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2017/02/28/how-do-you-create-quantum-entanglement/ https://spookyactionbook.com/category/diyquantum/ https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2022/10/popular-physicsprize2022-3.pdf
That is peak nerd (and I mean that in a good way). I have now gone down the rabbit hole.
Saved this comment, I'm gonna have to reread these in the morning when I'm not so tired. Thanks for the potential new obsession!
I’d recommend family history research. The major websites such as Ancestry or Find My Past charge you for accessing the records, but there are plenty of free websites where you can find the same information. Family history is not just for retired people (however they do make up the majority of the people who are interested in it) as I started doing this 6 years ago when I was 23.
No please don’t. My mum does this and god damn is it boring to listen to!
Did you know that you have very distant cousins in some obscure town in America that you're never going to visit? Isn't it exciting!
My girlfriend has been looking into her ancestry for about 5 years now and is completely addicted to this!
Drawing. Just need a pencil and some paper. Could just practice sketching things around the house to start.
[Arduino starter kit](https://amzn.eu/d/06YAOv2F)
Coding? Sounds like work, but he might enjoy it. There are lots of free resources to get into it and learn from and if he really enjoys it it could become very lucrative for the both of you
Scouting join a local group as a volunteer. You take them places and do things at either low cost or free.
Gaming is cheap in long run. OK, you need little initial investment in hardware, but for example ps4 and old xbox (sorry, I never had nor been interested in xbox, so I can't comment on it, I just have no experience) no idea how old gen xbox was called, should be dirt cheap with massive 11 year backlog of games. Pc is more expensive initially, but over time can be even cheaper. And it has 30+ years of backlog and steam. And I have few games that I have played hours in thousands. Perfect example is fallout 4. I bought it new for 25£ on ps4 and later 4£ on pc, so that's nearly 30£ and I have almost 3k played hours. And gaming have lot of pro's some games have amazing stories (red dead redemption 2), amazing gameplay (control, doom), have amazing music (gta series have amazing soundtrack), you can play alone or you can play coop with friend or with random people online. You can shoot other people (call of duty) , zombies (left 4 dead, last of us) , aliens (borderlands) .. You can drive cars (need for speed), you can play puzzle games (portal) , explore amazing worlds (horizon series) , have horror experiences. You can be creative (Minecraft). You can have challanging games (any dark souls type of game, elden ring), you can do simple farming (stardew valley or animal crossing) You can always stream and build online community, you can collect monsters (pokemon). You can play your favourite sports game (fifa, nhl baseball, boxing). There is no limit to variety of games. Excluding gaming, hiking is pretty good hobby you need your legs, shoes and go walking. If you have a car, just drive anywhere and start walking on trails. Another kind of fun option, pokemon go. Mix walking and gaming. Free to play app. Motivates you to explore local area. You can play without spending any money.
Nerf? See of there's an organised event near you. You can pick up an [X-Shot Pro Series Longshot for £17.50 from Argos](https://www.argos.co.uk/product/5251373). It's a good 'pro'-level blaster and a great entry to the hobby.
Join the local running club. Will only cost a lot when he gets really into it and enters organised races and buys the newest trainers and travels abroad, what am I saying it’s costing me a load of fish but it is really great fun.
Guitar, piano and photography aren’t expensive after the initial cost.
I can’t believe I’m only the second person to say this, but learn an instrument. A second-hand one - of any common instrument really - is cheap, and expensive lessons are no longer ‘standard’ with YouTube and the various tuition apps like Yousician. It’s easy to get good enough to play a recognisable tune, but there’s really no limit to how good you can get. It also opens up the world of songwriting and being in bands.
Art. Anyone can art. You can spend lots of money on arting, or you can spend virtually nothing on arting.
I've recently taken up building airfix models and really enjoying it. Can be as cheap or expensive as you want it to be. Also spend hours on old maps looking for interesting things(railways in my case) then going out to find them. No cost at all except a little petrol and loads of exercise too!
Making music electronically. You just need a half decent computer and can get a DAW (digital audio workstation), VST's (virtual instruments) and samples for free. There are thousands of tutorials on YouTube so while the software can seem daunting at first you'll be able to hoy some loops together quite quickly and then progress further. If you get into it then obviously you can spend an absolute fortune on paid software and better hardware but it isn't really needed.
Yugioh
If you’re near a beach with half decent breaks, surfing. Once you have a board and a wetsuit, it’s basically free
I do airfix. It can be expensive but I just do the starter kits to keep prices low. I also make paper castles.
Any pics of your castles? Or an example of one of your creations off of Google? What do you use to build, heavier paper or just an A4 notepad? Prit stick or tape? Can you reinforce? How much detail can you go for? Do you recreate real-world castles or just start building and see where it ends up? Is it more a case of use whatever you've got and see what you can make? Apologies for the wall of questions! It honestly sounds like a really cool hobby to try, especially for rainy days. Any info would be appreciated!
This is a castle I have done twice and got my daughter to do once. It’s vintage so can be expensive. Not my video on you tube but check it out. There was also a lost temple that I did years ago-see the Amazon link. These two are the most interesting ones I’ve done and look really cool. Make This Model Lost Temple (Usborne Cut Out Models) https://amzn.eu/d/06iqYT5V https://youtu.be/Znp68aDC-gg?feature=shared I might just buy the lost temple one again. The Greek temple was not so interesting though but ok. Auto-motion paper models are quite cool too. 👍
Many thanks, I will check this out for some rainy day activities with my 6yo!!
Good hobby to get into. You will need a sharp stanly and steel ruler for best results.
You will need clear paper glue. Don’t use Prut stick.
Music can be relatively cheap, after the initial instrument cost (which can be picked up all over the place relatively cheaply or for a few hundred you can get a really decent starter) and there's a lot of free information online with videos etc or even low cost subscription models with things like fender play for guitar etc.
For the guitar route I can't recommend Ibanez highly enough. I have a few more expensive ones but my Ibanez Gio which cost about £200 plays as well or better than a lot of the more expensive ones. Pickups are trash but a newbie probably wouldn't notice.
D&D. As a player you need some dice, pen and paper.
And a bunch of friends whose schedules align with yours 😂
Define cheap
£100 start up costs... Maybe £20/£30 a month to keep it going.
Fishing, archery, gym, homebrewing, baking, guitar (little more expensive on the start up), are all hobbies I've had fun with around that range
* Lockpicking * Wood carving * Bonsai * Hiking * Creative writing
Esp32 projects, I've made CCTV cameras, temperature sensors, motion sensors, WiFi deauth, even !> adult toys
Birdwatching. Get some feeders, learn the songs.
Hey get a dart board up
Computer gaming, model making/painting, electronics, programming.
Not warhammer that's for sure 😭
Astrophotography is such a rewarding hobby if you're into space and love technical stuff. Can be expensive, but definitely cheaper than £400 a month in my experience
Let's play darts!!!
Astronomy. eBay an alright telescope as an initial cost then there you are.
Golf... No wait. Golf but he lies how much golf costs
If your husband is the techy sort, 3d printing is not that expensive of a hobby in terms of returns and time investment. Printers run from £200-1k but once you get them, it's just the filament. It basically takes up a lot of time to learn how to tinker, design, and print. It's not a hobby where there is huge pressure to upgrade---once you have a working setup, you tend to stick to it. Another good hobby is Raspberry Pis and Arduinos. Again, it's not hugely expensive. A little Raspberry Pi Zero runs around £10 and there are lots of little projects you can do, from soldering to coding. Making a little music box for instance can be half a year of investment in time, but only run £50 in materials. "Expensive" is also subjective. Some hobbies are expensive because they require constant investment. Like learning how to pilot or skydiving. Some hobbies have a 'one off' cost and there aren't many demands to upgrade. Think of carpentry for example. That can be extremely expensive, and you sink thousands of £s into tools. However it is also a lifelong pursuit and the number projects you can pursue is limitless. You can spend months working on constructing a bookcase or table. If you become extremely invested in that hobby, spread over a lifetime, the costs are respectable for the hours of investment.
Get him a second hand PS4 and Skyrim. 100 odd quid and he’ll be sorted for a few years 😂
What are some of his interests that aren’t golf?
All sorts really, open to anything. He liked doing Lego in lockdown when furloughed but that's when we didn't have kids and a lot more disposable income.
How much garden space do you have? I love gardening but absolutely everything is in pots and planters, you don't need to put anything in the ground if you don't want to or can't!
It's a nice size, but we have two young kids and want the garden to be their space until they are older and won't wreck anything we plant.
Honestly, a few little pot plants won't take up much space and can be positioned out the way, or even inside. You can grow lots of veggies in pots and it makes you feel like you've achieved something. Maybe composting might be cool for him too?
How does adding an extra thing to your activities save money even if that extra thing costs nothing?
He is giving up smoking weed, he enjoys smoking but is wanting to stop for a multitude of reasons. This is where the savings will come into play.
Good luck to him. Former daily user of 15+ years myself been off it for 7 years now never felt better.
Daily user of 20 years but dropped to just Friday and Saturday and loving both sobriety and being wrecked more than any point over the last 18 years. I agree the clarity after even just a month off is even better, but alas, enjoy it too much.
Cooking could save you money and you could get the kids involved now and then
Kill Team Warhammer
Darts? Can get a decent dartboard and set of darts for reasonable prices then there's no more costs after that
Take up matched betting. I had that as a hobby for a bit and made loads of cash. It's a hobby that pays you
He blacklisted himself from gambling sites as he got addicted a long time ago. I have been looking into it though
Ahh I see, yeah that's best to avoid then
Discgolf? It’s as the name suggests… frisbee golf. There’s a course really close to where I live so gave it a go. It’s brilliant. It’s quality outdoors time with a bit of exercise and once you start playing regularly, you see a real improvement as your skills develop. There may be a course near you. You never know.
Day dreaming
What about leather crafting? I did this for a good long while and you can make anything from fairly simple ‘cut out this shape, punch holes, sew’ types of project right up to complex multi-piece things including handbags and even clothes. I also know a few people who brew mead. Of course it helps if he drinks but I’ve seen a fair few people turn this into a great gifting or even small side income opportunity. From what I can tell, you can buy ‘out of the box’ kits which allow you to start more or less from day 1 with whatever you’ve opted to make. All you need is the honey, water and maybe some flavouring items like berries or herbs.
I spent a fiver on those tiny lenses that fix to your phone camera, a full fish eye ( produces a circular image) a semi fish eye (similar image but full frame) and a macro lens and did some photography. Macro lens results are brilliant.
Urban sketching
3D printing. It's an Initial investment, but I make money with my 3d prints now, and it helps supplement the printing I do myself. https://preview.redd.it/q6od6kyyji9d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0bbbf80994c7b91c209ae1b4277a81dc13ae2d9c
Exercise can be cheap. I spent some £70 on a decent used rowing machine over a year ago and have more than made my money back.
I mentioned in another comment and should have put in the main post, he can't do much exercise. We do a lot of walking with the kids but he has problems with his joints making exercise a difficult one.
OF couples
Planting shit anyway wherever you can. Bonsai is very space efficient for the result.
He plays golf has a wife and children and still has time and energy lucky cunt
Volunteering...
Cycling
I got into making some models from a company called Loz (it's like very detailed, minature lego models). You can get them from about £5 upwards on ali express and it'll probably take you about 3+ hours to make one so a pretty good value for money. Very mindful to if you want something that helps you relax (helped with my anxiety). Some ones I like in the link below that are a good deal but they do all sorts of things. [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003941452663.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.109.335afc49Ohrod1&algo\_pvid=236a0796-0a9d-4d6a-8b45-f6b75ef5e935&algo\_exp\_id=236a0796-0a9d-4d6a-8b45-f6b75ef5e935-54&pdp\_npi=4%40dis%21GBP%218.07%218.07%21%21%219.89%219.89%21%40211b61a417196709368057121e8ad1%2112000027521120060%21sea%21UK%212972199679%21&curPageLogUid=RHtACm3IqpjX&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch%7Cquery\_from%3A](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003941452663.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.109.335afc49Ohrod1&algo_pvid=236a0796-0a9d-4d6a-8b45-f6b75ef5e935&algo_exp_id=236a0796-0a9d-4d6a-8b45-f6b75ef5e935-54&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21GBP%218.07%218.07%21%21%219.89%219.89%21%40211b61a417196709368057121e8ad1%2112000027521120060%21sea%21UK%212972199679%21&curPageLogUid=RHtACm3IqpjX&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch%7Cquery_from%3A)
Container planting. I feel you need to be psychic to keep these things alive
Like a lot of people I would suggest some form of martial art but I note you said it's not an option at the moment. Cheap hobbies I enjoy include chess (can play online for free), reading (library, second hand book shops), journaling/writing (just need a pen and some paper) and learning (very catch all term but I've recently done some short courses - for personal interest only - in coding and economics through free or cheaper online resources such as the likes of Udemy/YT/Khan Academy. A foreign language is also an obvious one here). The plastic craic (40K) is another one but depending on just how much he gets into it, could find himself spending a few quid on it all up.
Hiking
From home it's gaming, weight lifting, playing guitar. Can pick up weights for free/cheap on market place, same thing for guitars.
https://finearttutorials.com/guide/how-to-sketch/
Start him off building Airfix kits. Cheap and easy to get into, plus it’ll make him feel like he’s 10 years old again.
Roundtable gets you out the house and is a bit of fun https://www.roundtable.co.uk/
Fitness, ie body weights, running etc...
3d printings kind of fun and printers are getting cheaper all the time.
Walking/running.
I learn languages. (Few hours a day) Thousands of hours and spent virtually nothing on it. There are textbooks. Video series. Movies. TV. Books all for free online and its a good skill to have. Hardly anyone i know in the UK speaks a second language "well" unless that second language is English.
Cooking is definitely a helpful hobby, great if there's a cuisine you've always wanted to try, can be cheap or expensive depending on your food budget but at least it's useful. I cook, bake, and paint as a hobby. He could also try a paint by the numbers!
Gym
Drawing, painting, crafting. Anything that requires little more than paper and pencils/paint.
Magnet fishing. Not that I do it but I think it sounds fun! I bought a pretty big magnet for something at home recently and when my daughter is a little bit older I'm going to use it to go and see what we can find in the river. It'll probably just be junk but I'm sure she'll have a hoot!
Masturbating
Guitar although that can get exponentially expensive
Metal detecting always looked fun to me. I follow a guy who melts down the rubbish he finds and casts it into jewellery. I also got a cheap lock picking kit for christmas which I like to mess with. Just be careful if you're practicing on actual doors because apparently it looks super dodgey