I think that, knowing your running costs, and all materials costs involved with what you do, business or hobby can have its advantages but also its disappointments.
In a business, how need to have those figures to make the business viable while in a hobby, more often than not, is costing you to maintain that hobby. You know that is happening when you use all available money into it, and you keep short on everything...!
Investing back into a business or hobby, that's a different thing, you are building stock and conditions to get the business to grow, while in the hobby situation that means normally that, you get to a point where you have to sell as the storage space is getting smaller, and you have gathered far too much stuff that is creating more a problem than anything else so, you sell it to allow you to keep making stuff and have where to put it.
If you have a hobby where you use a lot of stuff and you don't really want to think about how much it is costing you or how much of the amount/ percentage of bills paid, was hobby related, otherwise the pleasures and positive/relaxing, enjoyable moments spent with "it", goes from a satisfaction into a headache/worry/disappointment, in no time at all...!
However, there is times where, bills start to get pretty hight and you need to work out if, the charges are correct or is a mistake/fault somewhere and that's when you discover "things" that can scare you a little and make you re-think what you are doing and the reasons why. It may be unpleasant but is necessary.
For example, I knew that, for every new tool or piece of equipment I add to the work-shop, there will be also a extra power consumption effect. Sometimes we don't realise how much power a certain tool or piece of shop equipment can cost just to run it. We thing about the advantages of having it and the price you had to pay to get it but, that's pretty much all at that point until, your power bills start to get quite painful.
I remember well when my power bill per quarter (3 months) was costing about AU$300.00, about AU$100.00 per month, in a few short years my power bill went from $300 to $1,000 for the same period of time
. It has been worked out that, 70% of my power consumption is coming from the work-shop area so, how much is that affecting the hobby...???
Considerably I must say, as I try to be as power efficient as I can be by replacing power saving bulb's and other minor stuff that is advertise or recommended as power savers but in fact, most are just a way to make you spend more money and feel good about it, when most don't work nor it was ever meant to...!
Still, does make no difference, things take time to make and require equipment to be used, making things a little easier for you, is costing quite a lot so, the extra items you may create/make/process as a result, require to have a quick turn around/sold to allow the bills to be paid, in the process, the amount of hours put into the hobby, increases considerably and you seem to have a lot less time for anything else.
However, I'm always interested in knowing costs of everything and deal with those issues the best I can, my hobby pays for itself while I'm willing to put as many hours into it as I do, I have had other hobbies in my life that were a lot more expensive than this one and that, regardless of the amount of hours put into it, one would NEVER get it cost covered so, the very most important question you can ask to yourself is, is what I do, a hobby or a business...??? and behave, accordingly...!:wink::biggrin:
Make no mistake, I love what I do, and I do what I love...!
I hope this make sense to you and you see where it fits in within your question...!:wink:
Cheers
George
