I found MMM.com about 6 months ago and my wife and I really changed our lives around because of what we learned here. Part of that change was putting a real budget into place. I've always spent too much on my ever-changing hobbies. This caused lots of arguements and tension between my wife and I, so we set a $100/month hobby budget. I can spend it on whatever I want and she can't get upset unless I go over that amount. We both found that reasonable and it worked well for us.
Since finding MMM I haven't actually used any of it, so it has been accumulating quickly. Until about 5 weeks ago I had ~$2000 in the account, and decided that since I dont have any hobbies I should be ok with spending a little money on what I want. A friend of mine is in the aquarium industry which has always interested me, so I decided I would setup a large freshwater fishtank.
I found a 220 gallon aquarium on craigslist, along with all the rest of the pieces needed to set it up. Being an engineer I decided to build the filtration system myself. I learned a lot building it myself, but I also spent a lot. Total for the system has been about $1,030. A setup this size would be much more expensive if I had bought it all new, but I got it mostly off of craigslist.
Anyways, I have about 4 hours of work on the plumbing to get it running.. then there are many more expenses like stocking it with fish, sand, rocks, water, electricity to heat and pump the water, etc.. It's not a cheap thing to run..
Terrible timing, I know.. but I'm starting to lose interest and change my view about having it.. I've had similar aquariums in the past and never really thought about how wasteful it was.
I have an issue where I'll go all-out on a hobby and being super excited, then quickly getting burnt out.
So on to my question...
Do I just cut my losses and sell everything now? I'd end up losing a few hundred dollars since I did buy a couple of the items new and they now have "very little" use on them. Its been fun to actually design/build the filtration system, but it bugs me thinking about the water/electricity bill going up, plus the initial investment of the fish, etc.
