How is the hobby affecting you financially? [Poll]

My sister tells me that I, like her, am a little rat, because we tend to save every penny that fall into our hands xD
We've always been very cautious when choosing to spend money mostly because we come from a home where the income was enough to feed and dress us but not for anything else. And, while we tend to spend our money on others to show love, it is a very rare occasion when we purchase something expensive for ourselves, so that's how I go about spending in this hobby.
Nowadays, I can only save painfully slowly when I feel like I'd like to purchase something due to how hard life is, but I would never choose a layaway for that same reason.

 

Honestly I'm in a weird position of both being very privileged with the resources I have vs what expenses I'm responsible for, and also knowingly being careless about my spending.

Without meaning to be too boohoo about it, I'm in a palliative care track for an illness and am extremely unlikely to be alive in 10 years time. That combined with a situation that took my finances from next to nothing for fun stuff, scrambling to manage medical expenses to "not bad" = pretty indiscriminate buying habits. If something seems like it'll give me a moment of dopamine or physical/mental help in some way, I'm just carelessly buying it. If I outlive my father, there is no one to inherit my resources, so I almost feel like... don't know, if I'm not in a consistent financial deficit, hardly matters. Carpe diem or whatever.

Which is not terribly responsible but that's where I'm at with it now. I've been interested in BJDs for 20 years and could never afford/justify one that whole time, so might as well go for it while I can.

 

I'm quite lucky with that - my fiancee has a high paying job and good responsibility, while myself I'm not rich, but my job is stable and if everything goes well, I'll be making good money too. We don't have problems that would financially drain us, so yeah, I can allow myself to borrow money from my savings without afftecting them much. If I asked, I'd probably be gifted a doll, but I wouldn't feel good with making my partner spend such amount.
Of course, probably it would be wiser to save up specifically for a thing and then buy it, but I'm not really a patient person and I have a reasonable barrier of how much I'll spend at once, so I just take what I need from saving account and then repay it to myself.

 

I sacrifice other leisures and hobbies but it's a comfortable situation. I save up and only buy one doll at a time, sticking to full payments or short layaways (2-3 installments).

 

I used to be quite impulsive and buy heads on a whim as soon as I had money to do so or do longer layaways for full dolls. It was a bad habit and most if not all of those heads/dolls are sold now.
I set up more goals for myself and my collection and started being more mindful of what I actually want. Also started counting how much each doll would cost to "complete". That was a real lightbulb moment. Now Im alot more comfortable working slowly with my collection and only buy things I like when I have saved up enough so it wont affect my other hobbies or day to day life

 

I bought my first doll when I was a student at university many, many years ago (how time flies ). At that time money was very tight and while I was living on toast, cheese and cola (almost like ramen and water ) I could only spent very little on dolls and had to carefully select what I wanted to buy. But with saving and the help of my family (christmas and birthday money, yeah!) I was still able to collect more than five dolls during those years. I know I was very lucky to have so much dolls as a student -maybe an exception - and I am still very thankful for the support of my family.

Now I am in the fortunate situation of having a well paid job and when I see some nice things for dolls that I really like, I am able to buy them without thinking too much about the money. I also became very picky about dolls over the years, so overall I don‘t spend too much on this hobby.

Somehow layaway for a hobby makes me uncomfortable, so this is not an option for me. So even if I don’t have spare money right away, I would rely more on saving in advance.

 

I buy on paypal credit, but only if I currently have the amount to pay it off, just in case. This allows me to pay it off at my own pace, which could be a small amount here or there, or a larger payment, or immediately. I'm also lucky that most of the dolls I buy are lower in price, so it's a lot easier to pay off.

I also have found that I'm not overly interested in most sculpts these days. I'm really picky about the size of the doll, the head size, the body measurements, etc, etc, which means currently most of the purchases I make in this hobby are on accessories for the dolls I already have.

Luts sideswiped me this year, though, I'm ngl, so I'd really like to get my spending under tighter reigns. It's not hurting me atm, but financial situations can always change, so I wanna get to a point where I stick to my guns.