Cosplay. I’ve only gotten into it in the past couple of years, but it’s consuming more and more of my thoughts and monetary resources.
I spent several hundred last year putting together Melody (from Josie and the Pussycats) and Invisible Girl costumes, and I’ll probably spend a couple thousand on three or four costumes I’ll be wearing this year.
I’m a poorly-paid public servant, but recently spent $170 on a vinyl catsuit without thinking twice!
This is me too. I keep it pretty well under control but when I look at the stacks of games for both console and PC that I barely touch…it frightens me to think of how much money I’ve spent.
I race motorcycles for a hobby.
A set of race tires for the bike, which need to be replaced every other race weekend, or every race weekend if I’m doing endurance races, cost between $300-400.
My race entry fees range from $75-150 per race. You can easily do 3-4 races in a weekend.
Each racing organization I participate with have their own license fees, which average about $100/yr per organization. This year I will probably race with three of them.
Then there’s gear - A good set of racing leathers, $800-$1000. Helmet, $200-400. Boots, about $200. Gloves, $120. Back protector, $75, $100. Knee sliders have to be replace once they’ve been ground down, about $50 per pair. Granted, most of these items you just have to buy once. But a new helmet will be needed every other year, and if you crash, you’ll have to repair or replace some items.
Speaking of crashing, and you WILL crash at least a few times in motorcycle racing - the expenses climb sharply. The bike has to be fixed, which can range from a couple hundred to a thousand bucks, depending on what you’ve damaged. Sometimes YOU have to be fixed - Add on ambulance fees (if not covered) or a helicopter ride (almost never covered, and about $2,000).
Add on travel expenses, and misc other items, and a race weekend averages out to about $1,500. I do about 7-8 per year, and thats bare bones. The better you get, the more you race, and the more places you go to race, and the expenses climb exponentially.
Do I feel guilty about it? Sometimes. My house doesn’t have a lot of furniture because most of my free money goes toward racing, and quite a bit of my non-free money too!
But it’s fun as hell 
Books.
I have thousands. Granted, I reread them (well, some of them I reread - some of them suck large hairy donkey dong and therefore have taken up residence on the “Never To Be Touched Again” shelves), but I still have thousands of them.
Also, my husband and I are gamers. Computer *and * collectible card gamers. Like iamthewalrus(:3= we spend well over a grand a year on little rectangles of cardboard. Granted, the bulk of this expense comes in the form of tournament admission fees for two (two tournaments a week at the price of $34 x 52 weeks a year = $1,768 plus another $400 - $500 a year in special events). There’s also a couple hundred dollars worth of buying random single cards we want for one thing or another.
We justify this expense as couples bonding time 
This is because we both play, you see, therefore this is an activity we can do together and both enjoy, therefore cheaper than couples’ therapy that would be required if we spent all our time fighting because we never do anything together! Or something.
Lego bricks.
I never actually quit playing with them, and there’s always something new and shiny on the market. Lego’s 2007 sets will be excellent, and I’m already saving up to buy the more expensive sets when they get here.
Luckily, Lego bricks are recyclable. Once I get fed up with a model (or need the bricks for something else) it’s already photographed from every angle.
Also, it helps that I now have a good ‘basic’ collection. Almost everything I buy now are single, special parts on Bricklink, a kind of ebay where users can put their surplus bricks for sale.
Game worn hockey jerseys from my minor league team are my weakness. They start at $250 and go up from there - sometimes wayyyyyyyy up. The team is doing a NASCAR special jersey at the end of the month and I shudder to think of the prices those babies will bring. I’m not even planning on bidding. I said, when I got a jersey at the end of last season, that I had enough, since that brought my game-worn total to twelve. That count doesn’t include the Starfleet Academy jersey, or the Grateful Dead, or Mickey, or Pluto, or any of the replica jerseys…
However, this season I am a player sponsor for the first time, and I really, really, really want to get one of my player’s jerseys at the end-of-season auction. We shall see…
I got two - triathlons and my 1978 Landcruiser.
I don’t feel nearly as guilty about the tris because it keeps me in decent shape and I only do a few races a year. It can be pricey because, as several of the cyclists have already mentioned, there is ALWAYS a better bike out there. I currently have two (a triple-ring roadie for hill climbs and an actual tri-bike for races) and am always looking around for sales and specials. Plus there is tons of specialized gear and clothing.
Now, the Cruiser (a.k.a Big Pig) on the other hand…now that is a frivolous, guilt-ridden money pit. Mrs. Gaffer just tends to roll her eyes when I try and explain why exactly one suspension kit is so much better (and twice the price) than another. She has a lot of patience.
Foam fighting.
The sad thing is, it’s a remarkably inexpensive hobby after your initial investment. $2 every two weeks, $5 five times a year for campouts.
But I blow cash monthly on making new weapons with different materials, trying new techniques and refining others. I have close to 40 different weapons, ranging from swords to glaives, daggers, flails, and shields. Only 5 or 6 have ever actually made it onto the field, most haven’t even been checked in at an event. That doesn’t include the massive number of arrows for my bow, or bolts for the crossbow (which I’ve never used either).
**Aangelica ** - I wouldn’t count books as a frivolous hobby. If I did, then I’d have two things I spend too much money on. . .
Fabric and patterns, and it’s getting worse. I recently got into a particularly expensive sort of clothes-sewing; luckily it’s not possible to sew very many. I still want to spend bunches on money of technique books, patterns I may never use, and so on, regardless of how much I can actually do. But my main addiction is quilting.
One problem is that, like most quilters, when I see a fabric I like, I buy some (and of course I’m always looking for fabric and visiting quilt shops wherever I go). I figure I can use it in a future project, or I just plain have to own it. Then, when I actually start planning a new quilt, I go out and buy lots of fabric for it because nothing I have is right, or I have some good stuff but not enough. For example, right now I am making a nice batik baby quilt. I went through my pile of batiks, found some that were good, and then went out and bought a bunch more batiks that would work. Since I’m only using a fairly small piece from each fabric cut, my batik stash is now larger than ever, even though I planned it as a stash-burner. But hey, I’ll use it up someday!
Luckily, my husband mostly approves of my sewing because (besides that he just likes it) he figures I’m killing two birds with one stone: I am happy when I’m quilting, and since I give most of them away, we never have to go out and buy gifts for babies or weddings, so we’re, um, saving money, haha. He also seems to think that I have some measure of self-control and don’t buy every single thing I want. This is only partly true–I have many more patterns than I will ever be able to use (even though I want to do them all) and I buy more than I should. However, I am currently exercising great self-control by not spending about $50 on some things I want very much (I plan to get them, just not right now–the expensive clothing-sewing does have the advantage that things mostly stay in print forever, instead of disappearing like they do in quilting).
It is the way I do it. The majority of my book spending goes forth into escapist fiction purchases. Nothing mind-improving, classic, or non-fiction here, by gum!
I’d be good and use the library more, but frankly, our local library stinks. The selection is… problematic in the areas I read, and the librarians are the sort who lecture you on your choices. Not “oh my, if you like this book I have one I can recommend” lectures - oh, my stars, no! “What’s a nice young girl like you doing reading trash like that” lectures. (I’m 31! I can pick out my own damn books if I want to!)
Books, but I’m not sure whether to count those because I’ve spent almost all of my discretionary money on books since I was 7. Single malt scotch, but I’ve backed down to a bottle every other month (no, I don’t finish a bottle every other month). My big expense is travelling, which (a) based on family medical istory will become unfeasible at some point; and (b) doesn’t add to clutter.
Knitting. I’m absolutely sure that I average at least $50 a week on yarn, books, and notions. Last Fall I had tendonitis for a while–which slowed me down–but only temporarily. I console myself by thinking that my stash isn’t nearly as large as some knitters’ stashes.
I’m trying to sell hand-dyed sock yarn on Etsy to defray some of the expense. So far, no one has bought any sniff.
Oh my! $700/yr??? My range (very no frills) in Southern NH is about $100 based on the number of hours of work I did for the club last year (not as many as I’d have liked).
It’s got 2 pistol ranges, a 100yd range, and a wobble trap/sporting clays area. All are outside.
More than enough for me, and very rarely used.
Books, of the non-improving type, escapist fiction, of the kind the library doesn’t carry. I figure I’m helping create a consistent market for a couple of small publishers, because I’ll buy the new, revised, second/third editions, etc. too. Oh, I forgot, I collect yuri manga, too. Of course, there’s not that much of it, yet.
Also, knitting stuff. I have a collection of knitting bags, mostly of the custom variety, way more needles than I’ll ever use, and of course, lots of expensive yarn. I think I completed 3 scarves and 3 bags last year. At my knitting speed, I have enough yarn to last me the rest of my life.
I soothe myself with that too. I’m nowhere near as bad as the Yarn Harlot who not only knits, but spins too. I have yet to give into the lure of a drop spindle and some roving to attempt it though, and I have so far managed to convince myself I have no place to put that lovely spinning wheel at the local store, and I am curious about where I can get one like my Nana has…
What’s the link to your Etsy?
Quilting. I know I get a beautiful quilt out of it at the end, but still…I feel guilty every time I buy another yard of material for my stash. My husband doesn’t understand why I can’t just buy material as I need it, but I love having a huge stash of material to start a new quilt if the mood strikes me.
And I also feel guilty because I buy baby carriers. My kid doesn’t like his stroller that much, so I wear him a lot in a sling or a carrier. I recently found a carrier that I adore, but at $100 a pop, they aren’t really an impulse buy for me. I have one, and I am dying to get several more because I love the patterns. The design is exactly the same, but the materials are different. I really wish I knew how to make them.
E.
You know, it’s nice to know that knitters get a stash going, too, that mostly sits untouched until you’re ready for it.
Maybe my quilting stash isn’t so bad. 
Flutterby–see your private messages. (is that feature really turned on, or only pretending to be turned on?)
It works. 
I’ll go check it out later. I love surfing around Etsy, such lovely stuff to be found on there! (So many pretty yarns… so little time…)
I easily spent over $1,000 on books last year. That’s about 10% of my total income. I have consistently, given the choice, chosen books over three square meals a day. I will buy five books at once and at any given time be reading up to 8 different ones. Some never get read.
I’m also a gamer, though I don’t think we go as crazy as some do on video game spending. Generally if I have a chunk of change to spend, it’s going toward books. Short books, fat books, intelligent books, stupid books, comic books, history books, books, books, books! We have a one bedroom apartment and 5 full bookcases. Sometimes I want to pile them in the middle of my living room and roll around in them…
…uh…
Yes, I do tend to spend money on books.