Highest happiness return per dollar

[Nash B.]

Mountain biking is fun and can be cheap (initial investment can be as little as $500 for a decent used bike) to stupid expensive, but aside from tires ($100 a pair), you don't have a lot of recurring expenses. I got mine for around $500 3 years ago, converted to 1x11, and upgraded wheels, and have put hundreds of miles on it.

[slow99]

Beer

[GE]

Good grief, Jared is a birder. The end is nigh!

[dcs13]

Did the same thing. Raced dirt track at Devil's bowl for years. Just got to be a chore and the money we spent, damn. If you wanna make a small fortune in racing, START with a big one.
When I quit racing, I got more serious about restoring and building hot rods. Was nice to have a nice car when you were done, instead of a wrecked car or one needing a new motor.. A little more return on investment.
As for the money, I found Dave Ramsey a few years after I quit racing. TOTALLY changed my life. My friends give me shit because I don't even have a credit card..(much less a mortgage)..
I love mountain biking. Im about 40 minutes from Spyder Mountain. Its a downhill mountain bike place here in the Hill Country.
Try different shit, find something you enjoy, buy used to see if you like it.

[txstangnut]

drone racing?

[jw33]

Get a jet boat and join a club. You can drag race it, swim, take the family, camp, etc. You shouldn’t need too many parts for it once it’s built. The hulls are cheap. Building a HCI BBC is relatively cheap.

[Trip McNeely]

Archery
Sporting Clays
Mountain Biking

[quikag]

Cool thread!! Keep it coming. I got nothing. I track a few times a year, do what my wife and 19 month old son tells me to do, and sit on my azz.

[quikag]

That is funny. My Dad has had a jet boat for about 20 years now. 460BB. Sounds good and is fun spraying the water. It hasn’t run right in years. Boats cost money period, plus when gas gets expensive it sucks gas like crazy.

[1carcrazyguy]

B ust
O ut
A nother
T housand


Buying a boat is the 2nd happiest day of boat ownership. 1st would be the day you sell it and watch it disappear into the distance!

[Gasser64]

B ust
O ut
A nother
T housand


Buying a boat is the 2nd happiest day of boat ownership. 1st would be the day you sell it and watch it disappear into the distance!

I don't think it would bother me too much if I could keep it in air conditioned storage with no windows. The elements are the main thing. The fuel injected engines make life easier. Propellers are easy to change and you just buy 3 and keep them in rotation. Someone driving the boat will always run over something. Been awhile but I think its around $40 to have the propeller all welded up nice again once it gets a little chewed up.

As much as a boat actually gets used, if it could just sit in AC storage it would probably still be fairly close to new when it was 10 years old. At 20 it might need some minor/medium refurbishment.

[Ruffdaddy]

I don't think it would bother me too much if I could keep it in air conditioned storage with no windows. The elements are the main thing. The fuel injected engines make life easier. Propellers are easy to change and you just buy 3 and keep them in rotation. Someone driving the boat will always run over something. Been awhile but I think its around $40 to have the propeller all welded up nice again once it gets a little chewed up.

As much as a boat actually gets used, if it could just sit in AC storage it would probably still be fairly close to new when it was 10 years old. At 20 it might need some minor/medium refurbishment.

So $12,000+ a year in storage costs and you're still going to do your own propeller maintenance?

[GeorgeG.]

………………... I haven't taken any exotic trips specifically to see birds, but I surely will when I'm an old geezer. …...

Hate to break it to you big guy but you're officially an old geezer.

Sporting clays would be my vote. Join a club, or start one, and have fun.

[DON SVO]

I’ll go ahead and out-nerd Jluv’s bird watching.

I play competitive table shuffleboard and I am nationally ranked. A set of gram weight matched pucks with CNCd aluminum tops will set you back around $750. Pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things, they’ll outlive you. North Texas is home to 5-7 of the top 25 ranked players in the world, so finding good competition, tournaments, and money games is easy and your skill level will rise drastically. We use a universal rating system called the Bowers rating, people generally consider Texas players to be better than their rating. If you include the rest of the state we have 10+ of the best in the world here (including World #1, 2, and 3), and 6 of the top 10. Tournaments are set in brackets based upon your skill level/rating, so it’s super fun and pretty fair competition.

I play a lot of mini tourneys and money games at this point, I’m currently up $1,600 for the year over entry fees. It’s a lot of fun and HIGHLY competitive. If you wanted to play for $100/game, I could arrange that in an hour. We had a funny little dick-swinging contest between a couple top players here and one in Houston recently that resulted in an instant “I’m driving down there right now” and $12,500 changed hands in less than 12 hours.

[Baron Von Crowder]

We have been on the boat almost every weekend for most of this summer. It's a long way cheaper than racing, and relatively cheap if you are trying to cut some spending. We do a lot of hanging out and swimming with the kids, so we're not burning gas around the lake all day, but part of the day. We pack snacks and drinks in the cooler, go to the lake, spend 5 or 6 hours and go home. It helps that Alvarado is never "busy" and the ramp is free. This weekend we maybe spent 10-20 bucks including fuel to get to and from the water, snacks, drinks, etc.

Mountain biking is fun, and relatively inexpensive, plus a great workout. There are quite a few places to go for cheap/free. I have a couple coworkers that go frequently. I bought a specialized from one of them and went a couple of times with them. I have a medical issue that keeps me from doing it right now, so if you wanted to borrow it, it's your size and just sitting in the shop right now doing nothing.