It's an addictive hobby.

We ordered a hybrid heat pump in March '22 and it was finally installed last week. It's 6 degrees C out here out and this thing is chugging along steadily. It's quiet too. Also adding more insulation as we speak (guys stomping over my WFH office roof now), so as these things happened to get installed in the same months, it's been an expensive month, with about €20k invested, before subsidies.

But already thinking about what to do next. Expand the current set of 12 solar panels (has to happen eventually. Our home is about 200 square meter with mostly flat roof, so ideal for adding lots of solar myself), get a heat pump boiler for hot water for showers etc, better windows in some places, etc. Also got a dynamic energy tariff, busy setting up Home Assistant. I have a huge spreadsheet with potential measures, their potentials savings and estimated cost, iPython notebooks with temperature and energy usage graphs, comparison of a dozen heat pumps.

Yep, addictive.

Who spends $10k - $20k annually on hobbies?!

I think the HN demographic of heavy six figure annual earnings has, uhm, lost sight of being an outlier and what’s ‘normal’ for the _vast_ majority of the population.

People who switch to a new car every couple of years by extending a loan? Rings a bell?

People with a large carbon footprint.

Let's say you're a baseball fan. The average cost of a season ticket is $4,473.

Say you get the average $5.13 hotdog and $6.87 beer and pay the average $35 for parking.

For 81 home games that's another $3,807.

If you want to share the experience with, say one family member that's $13,652

>Let's say you're a baseball fan. The average cost of a season ticket is $4,473.

The average baseball fan is not buying a season ticket, partially because the cost is prohibitive to the average person. In fact, by definition, an extremely small proportion of baseball fans buy season tickets.

> Let's say you're a baseball fan. The average cost of a season ticket is $4,473.

The average baseball fan is not buying season tickets. The average baseball fan cannot afford season tickets.

The average income in the US is $31,000. There is no way the average person is spending a third of their budget on "hobbies," especially when they're likely spending close to half of that on housing.

I did not say "every person"

or even "the average person"

You are inventing your own goalposts here.

The fact is that there are an estimated 3.5 million MLB season ticket holders. These are people who are spending 10k on their hobbies. So it is reasonable for me to say "people spend 10k on hobbies"

English is being used worldwide in the year 2023, so may be it is me but by Considering People in your post means much more closely to median or average people.

There are people who spend 10K on hobbies seems much more reasonable.

But that is just my opinion.

I’m curious where your $31,000 annual income figure comes from. I’d had in my mind closer to $70,000 - which a quick confirmatory glance at the census seems to confirm for me [0] - but I should update my assumptions if they’re off by that far or I’m thinking about it wrong.

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27...).

what you've linked is the median household income, not individual income, i.e., calculated as the combined gross income of all members of a household, so it stands to reason that the individual median/average income is closer to the $31000 posted by the earlier comment than the $70000 you mentioned...

Combine average household eating out 3500, a average couple of 2 ordering delivery of 3687, average male and female pair coffee consumption of 4261 and mere lifestyle convenience exceeds 10k.

(Yes I consider unhealthy consumption to be a hobby)

And also consider that Starbucks and doordash don't pay for themselves over 20-30 years like solar panels do and you don't get a 26% refund for them at the end of the year.

Where did these numbers come from? $4261 for coffee? $6/person/day? That’s not a super common amount of Starbucks to get… that would even be counting weekends. I would guess even people who do Starbucks a lot would only get it maybe 2 times a week, which would be $624 for a year for 2 people.

I know people who get a daily Starbucks order, but I only know them from work. There’s a set of people who enjoy the ritual of getting out of the office to go for a coffee run and socializing on the way there and back.

That's for a male and female pair.

Google average American annual coffee expense. it is like 1800 for males and 2300 for females.

Warhammer fans, Apple ecosystem devotees and hobbyist musicians.

For comparison, my energy bill also fluctuates between €30-50 a month (usually closer to 30), with an average of €40/mo for heating with inflated wartime prices.

No car (bike only or occasional electric car share), small apartment, city with good transportation, good insulation.

And that's even more impressive (price wise) due to the comparative lack of subsidies European countries have for energy prices.

Pretty similar situation for me in Copenhagen. I would expect ~70% of my usage is for cooking, which i do a lot of.

What's your carbon footprint including manufacturing of all your green tech?