just setting up my new hobby since last january has run me 15000 dollars and the bad part is i spent some of it on junk equipment so i am slowly upgrading everything to the highest quality i learned that more money spent today will save you more tommorow ie: a skimmer for 100 dollars will soon be replaced by a 1300 dollar model so now it has cost you 1400 for a skimmer the sad part is i only have 5 pairs of pants and do my shopping in the frozen section of walmart so i can fund my hobby but who dosent like to have a living breathing ocean in their house:mrgreen:

Keri, you've got to look at the baby as a future investment. Babies become kids, and kids become great little tank maintenance workers who can do the water changes, algae scraping, etc. And kids become teens who can test and dose and watch your tank while your vacationing in Hawaii.

dont forget kids make great snowblowers and dishwashers too!:lol:

edited for drunken rambling reasons.

Ok, but now I'm curious!

Oh yes, he believes me. He knows that I know that all those parcels that come in the mail/Fedex are toys for his Harley. In fact, every time one comes in now, I say "ooooh, I see a trip to the LFS this weekend" - LOL

Sounds like competitive spending to me ;)

I look at it this way the guys from work go to the bar at least twice a week after work and I can tell you from experience they spend more then I do on my tank. And I just dropped 400+ on Zeo additives just to stock up.

Not really competitive - just plain fun :) When the kids were little our money went on shoes, clothes, snow pants, mittens, more shoes, more mittens, etc. Now that they are old enough to buy their own clothes (and they no longer outgrow them - LOL), we are spending it on ourselves :) Neither of us have been to a bar in many, many years (I don't drink at all, actually), so this is how we amuse ourselves. Once the grandchildren start coming along, we may spend our money on them ;)

I never thought much about spending on the aquarium until this year. We have had to cut back a bit on spending on not only the hobby but just in general. I took a $20,000 pay cut this year :neutral: because of the Canadian dollar reaching par with the US dollar (I get paid in USD and based on US economy).

We were just talking the other night though and think its been good...for one year :mrgreen: Even with a decent amount of my salary missing, we live very comfortably and buy all kind of luxury items which made us realize how much money we wasted the past few years...expensive dinners, nights out, trips, ridiculously expensive furniture, ect. Oh and the aquarium :)

We finally USE our kitchen!

I am trying to buy used stuff now and am not really adding anymore livestock to the tank.

The economy both helped and hindered us this year. The other half buys properties and will either flip them or rent them out. He's been doing this for the last 5 years, so it wasn't a "oh, the markets up let's do this". But when the market did go high, it was great. Houses that we bought for 350,000.00 we were now selling for nearly double sometimes more. We sold our house on the lake in Auburn Bay for 1.2 mil. We've owned the property that we currently call home for 4 years and will keep it as our main house..but we do normally travel in the winter to our house in Surprise, Arizona and usually head down to Mexico for a month or so. Its nice.

Having said that. We don't spend our money like it's going out of style. Keep in mind that even though we currently have 5 houses under our name here in Alberta, 2 of them are being renovated, one is ours and 2 of them have been rented by the same people for the last three years. So it's a steady cashflow, but we also are paying for the renos, paying our utilities etc. Same with the house in Arizona. When we are not there it is rented out ... although the realestate market in the US isn't the greatest, the rental market is. We bought the house (1800 sqft bungalow with pool in back yard) for 185,000 USD when the dollar was par and now rent it out for 950USD a month including utilities based on a 6 month contract.

Wow...Ramble

Bottom line...we live well, we spend wisely and we always are saving for a rainy day. Right now not many people are getting tattooed, so that extra cash isn't coming in, but we're alright