A counter question to the guy who posted a similar question few hours ago, cause most of the answers weren’t helpful for someone like me, who doesn’t have much money😅.
I started learning the drums before I got My drums. You can learn the theory and practice beats on the objects around you. That’s the cool thing about drumming: everything in the universe is technically a drum!
Did you know my bum is a drum?
Check out your local library! They have books of course, which can open up all sorts of new hobbies, but modern libraries also can have computers, free classes, workshop and maker spaces, tool borrowing, and sometimes even video games and the like. My local one even has free tickets to museums and the zoo!
If you want something free/cheap as hell, take up drawing. You don’t need fancy art supplies, just a pencil and paper. Look up proper drawing classes and books and get awesome at sketches!
TTRPGs like GURPS or OpenD6 for free group activities. All you need are pencil/paper/notes app and 3 6-sided dice, and you can roll them with an app or on plenty of webapps (dddice.com is a good one for shared gaming). A lot more to learn than playing cards or board games, but much more fun than a typical game night, something the group can talk about all week between sessions.
I looove to do Geocaching. You combine hiking with Geocaching and it’s a game changer
As long as you have a computer you can code, write, or digitally create nearly anything you want.
Free
- Hiking
- Bird watching
- Volunteering
Low cost (some equipment required)
- Hunting
- Fishing
- Cycling
- Chess
gooning
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Origami, lots of videos and diagrams for free online, paper is cheap and if you want to go even cheaper you can specialise on scrap paper.
Maybe not completely free but ukuleles are really cheap, easy and fun.
Singing is completely free, I’m sure you can find tutorials online.
In many places you have free outdoor gyms that let you practice calisthenics, 0 equipment needed.
If you have a smartphone photography, filming or stop motion animation can be done for free with open source software.
Last but no least, if you find some thread you can make a balearic slingshot and practice outside (or inside with ping pong balls). There are competitions and everything. Making them is fun in itself.
This is how you make one and how you use it. You can look for other videos on how to make one. Different materials can be used. It takes a bit of practice but it’s a fun, manual work. I can make one in about 2h.
On this note, 3d printed ukes are available. Pair that with a library that may have a printer. $10 for strings and pegs and you’ve a cool uke.
Chess. You can try Lichess, a free (and open source) website/app to play chess. There’s countless of videos and tutorials on the internet about chess.
Chess.com also has a lot of good stuff in the free tier, like lessons and daily puzzles.
And then if you pay money, you can have the full lichess experience!
That website (hereafter referred to as the green pawn website) is very scummy and has ties to gambling. The green pawn website also uses their hoard of played games for their own private analysis, but doesn’t let anyone else do it. Lichess, on the other hand, allows anyone to use the dataset and this has allowed some very interesting things, such as “what is the rarest move” statistics, to be featured in blog posts or YouTube videos.
No hate if you use it, but don’t encourage new players to use the green pawn website. Lichess is leagues better.
Just FYI lichess has infinite puzzles, I love doing them.
I haven’t seen Cooking, Baking and even Gardening on the list.
These are hobbies that saved you serious amount of $$.
Making food from scratch is always cheaper and healthier.
If you don’t have much space you can have a tiny vertical garden (pallet) or just a few spiceso n your counter.
And technically growing weed to smoke is gardening and also saves money (tho I don’t know first hand, I don’t partake).Edit: forgot about: hand sewing and hand embroidery, crochet and knitting. You can fix up clothes so they last longer - and you can spruce up existing clothes also.
Gardening can be so expensive! I have a big fruit orchard and a vegetable/herb garden, I have a well and don’t pay for water, and I have my own compost system, and I chop and drop and prune my fruit trees to maintain keep them within reach. I get a free load of wood chips annually that I use for mulch, and it takes me 3 days of backbreaking work to install it all.
I still spend hundreds annually just on soil to top off the vegetable/herb gardens. Then there’s fertilizers, pest control, lady bugs to control aphids, mesh bags to cover my grapes and figs so birds don’t eat them all (they still get most of my berries). I don’t account for mowing and weed whacking as charging them barely makes a dent in my electric bill, but trimmer line and sharpening/replacing blades is another cost. Weed barrier, shade fabric, trellises, I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of other things.
If you have a couple small raised beds you use for herbs and maybe a small tomato plant, it can be relatively cheap, but the average person will not save on grocery bills by gardening.
The exception is herbs! Don’t buy that $7 bunch of mint from the grocery store, just cut a small stem and throw in the bottom of your shopping cart and pretend you don’t notice it, when you get home throw it in a water cup and give it a few days to root, move it to soil and now you have free mint for life. Same with most herbs. Save your green onion bottoms and do the same with those, don’t but a bunch every time you need a few leaves.
But that’s not much of a hobby on its own, as soon as you start gardening for a hobby, it starts getting expensive.
I did the mint idea once… The spider mites came with it killed my basil. You can call it karma. :D
move it to soil
soil in a pot. don’t plant mint in the ground unless you enjoy pranks on yourself.
Ha! It’s true, it’s a hardy spreader that refuses to die, use a pot unless you know what you’re doing.
But it’s also very easy to cut back or pull out in huge sections if you let it overgrow. Or just weed wack it every now and then.
I don’t care for lawns, so I let it grow as ground cover in a bunch of spots, it looks and smells great!
I even plant it under some trees I have in raised beds (dry loving trees in really wet soil), it uses the excess water, and it acts like a living mulch.
But yes, you should be careful where it’s planted, it’s pretty invasive and can overwhelm some of your other plants if you let it go wild.
yeah even with the increase cost in groceries if you buy the elements for cooking and baking the material stretches way further than ready made food. and you can learn as you go.
healthier
I love baking biscuits but is a good gateway to moving to baking bread… and space cake.
All great suggestions! They definitely will have a huge learning curve in practicing their new skills but the time to skill ratio pays off eventually, and you are investing in yourself which is a priceless
If you have a computer, music production (using free DAWs like Zrythm and free VSTs like Vital, sample packs, etc.), writing, coding.
If you don’t mind sailing the high seas or if you have access to a public library, discovering new video games, movies, music, and books can all be life changing. Many people will be more than willing to give you recommendations, or you can look up some “best-of” lists, either in specific genres/categories, or more generalized.
If you want to do things away from a screen, take a physical map, get a compass, and draw a circle from your residence of a radius that is how far you think you can walk round trip, then pick a random point and walk to it. Taking friends with you on the adventure is a great way to make things more fun if your schedules align.
This question has shown up a few times already, here’s my answer with a lot of free or near-free hobbies to try =)
Hiking, i just have to be there, the rest is free.
Hiking with some geocaching is great
Hiking definitely is a simple hobby with a lot of exploring and experiencing fresh air. They only qualm I have is with accessibility, in the sense that you are required to own a car to drive out to parks and trails. Cars are a huge money pit and break down constantly, I wish I could get a bus from downtown to a state park and it would take less than 45 minutes.
Yeah that’s the caveat, you just have to be there but the “being there” part is most likely an expensive one. And the best trail with great view is usually very much in the middle of nowhere, so very unlikely there will be a public transport going there. Still, there’s no reason for no public transport going to the green space within the city.
Though, proper hiking shoes do make a big difference and are expensive.
But you can definitely start walking in nature for free. Just be warned that you will enjoy it and want to do more challenging trails, which will require at the very least proper shoes.
Geocaching
Being in a city, there could be lots of caches near you.
the geocaching website requires a subscription now…
I recommend you check out the open source c:geo app. It’s by far the best geocaching app and unlocks more of the caches the official app doesn’t, it also indexes opencaching caches as well
You only have to pay for Premium.
is it not free?? That’s so lame if not.
Check out OpenCaching. It’s still budding, despite existing for a long time, but it’s a direct response to the commercial leanings of geocaching.com.
There’s instances of it for many different countries.
Sure about that? Seems still to be working for me as always (all caches accessible accept the “Premium” ones)
i mean those are still accessible as long as you find them, you just don’t get directions
That’s basically correct if they didn’t change their api/link behaviour.
During my more active GC time, I even made them into my personal D5s for a while, trying to find them by deduction and (the also accessible) previous finder comments alone.
