Sometimes it can be tough to save money – with increases in cost of living, everything seems to be getting more expensive. However, there are many skills and hobbies that can be a great way to improve your self-sufficiency! These are all skills and hobbies I’ve picked up in the last few years, and each has the potential to be both frugal and satisfying in its own right. Even if money isn’t a problem, you might still find something enjoyable about doing these things yourself.
Cooking & Baking
Home cooking was something I used to hate. I wasn’t very good at it, so I subsisted on a diet of pasta and fried rice, the two dishes I was vaguely adept at. Taking the time to learn a few good recipes can go a long way for both your wallet and your well-being. Youtube is full of great cooking channels that walk you through how to cook excellent meals, channels like Binging with Babish, Adam Ragusea, Ethan Chlebowski, and Pro Home Cooks. Most of them also have videos delving into principles and theory, too – some good cooking principles will help you whip up delicious meals from all sorts of things. Once you’ve got a few recipes you love, the siren’s song of SkipTheDishes and UberEats won’t be quite so tempting – I’ve probably halved the amount of money I spend on ordering in since becoming a better cook.
Baking is another domain I was nervous to get into – it has a reputation for being precise and challenging, a reputation I’ve realized is pretty much unearned. Certainly if you want to make fluffy, bakery-tier brioche or wedding cakes you will need to hone your craft, but if you want to make a delicious flatbread that’ll go great with curries, tacos, or stews? Easy peasy. A simple homemade flatbread costs a fraction of what you’d pay for a naan or pita at the grocery store – last time I did the math, it cost a quarter – and what’s more, it tastes way better. If you’ve got a dutch oven (they’re awesome, trust me) you can make a really good boule pretty easy, too. I haven’t bothered to buy bread at the store for months, except for a few frozen garlic breads for those lazy days! All you need to get into baking is a bag of flour, yeast, salt, and water – and even the yeast isn’t strictly necessary, for lots of flatbreads!
Home-brewing
Alcohol can be an expensive vice. Home-brew is a surprisingly accessible hobby, and to start making things like meads and ciders you don’t need much gear, either. All you need are some glass jars with an airlock (the airlock is important!), apple juice (or honey), some yeast, and patience while the yeasts work their magic. Like before, Youtube is a great resource for how-tos – I followed City Steading Brews’ beginner mead tutorial and it worked out great.
Needlework
Knowing how to stitch things back together is surprisingly versatile. Some of us spend a lot of money on clothes, which can get chewed up by things like zippers in our washing machines – being able to patch up an expensive sweater with a few cents worth of thread is a great way to save yourself a trip to the store, especially if you like the sweater!
I picked up leatherworking as a hobby a few years ago, and a vast amount of the work in many projects (besides some careful planning and even more careful cutting), is stitching pieces of leather together. Leatherwork also turns out to be a great hobby for cheap, but cool, presents – I like to make people notebooks, bookmarks, and coasters, which only cost a few dollars in materials, but with some time and care can be high-quality gifts. Quality tools are great, but I started with a fairly cheap starter kit that had a ton of tools to play with – you can always upgrade the ones you find you use a lot. You can even buy rolls of veg tan leather on Amazon if you don’t have a good leather supply store nearby. Corter Leather and Weaver Leather Supply both have a wealth of great beginner tutorials, along with some cool advanced ones.
Cutting your own hair
For a while during the pandemic, it was pretty hard to go get a haircut. I never really liked going even at the best of times, and in the end, it was another routine expense I often preferred to avoid, often at the cost of my appearance! In the end, after some trepidation that I’d give myself an awful do, I sprang for a Remington buzzer and a basic pair of barber’s scissors. If you do the math on how often you get a haircut – plus the inconvenience of going somewhere, waiting, and making agonizing small-talk with your barber – you’ll notice it’ll pay for itself pretty fast.
There are plenty of tutorials on YouTube for how to trim your hair, and after one or two nerve-wracking cuts, it’ll feel like second nature. I can cut my hair in about fifteen to twenty minutes, without needing to leave the house. I’ve had my buzzer for around three years now and I cut my hair every two months – if each cut costs me about thirty bucks, that’s $540 back in my pocket, and probably dozens of hours, too.
Cycling
Cars are expensive. Hell, even bussing is expensive. Where I live it costs me nearly $8 for a round bus trip to and from work, which if you were to do it every workday runs you $160 in a month. That doesn’t include all the time wasted at bus stops waiting for buses that don’t show up. You can get a decent bike fairly cheap nowadays – though the sky’s the limit when it comes to cost – and they’ll pay dividends not only for your health and mood but your wallet, too. Unlike cars, which you’ll need to pay insurance and gas on routinely, your bike just costs you calories. It’s a great way to get some exercise if you don’t like going to the gym, too.
Gardening
I got into gardening last year, making the best I could of a sad little concrete cell of a back patio. In my circumstances, it was hard to make a proper go of it, but even so, I managed to get a healthy tomato plant, a bunch of pepper plants, peas, cucumbers, and some herbs going. Even with my pretty limited garden, I got all the materials to make some really tasty salsas and sauces. With a little more space than me, you could easily save tons of money on groceries, and enjoy fresher produce while you were at it. There are plenty of great gardening Youtube channels that will get you started, two I recommend are Self Sufficient Me and Epic Gardening. Even if all you have is a little patio, you’ll be surprised at how much you can fit onto it!
