A fun question that I haven't seen a dedicated thread for: how much do you spend on your wam hobby?

I've noticed that the pie fetish and gunging related fetishes are quite typical and indoors-based wamming is quite common compared to outdoors/public-based. Seems to me there's a big price difference here. And I've seen some old threads where, for example, pie enthusiasts can spend big numbers for their thing! And some mudders also spend a lot on clean-up gear, gas for their cars, etc.

I can start by describing my cost base. I was inspired to write this thread as I noticed, while going through some old threads out of interest, that my mudding fetish is quite economical.

The biggest cost for me would be my bike (for getting around) and clothing. As a big sportswear fetishist, I can't resist buying new hoodies and trackies regularly. To a degree it's justified, because I wear these clothes in my everyday life too, and they are subject to a great amount of wear-and-tear! But one might wonder about 30 pairs of track pants in a wardrobe..

The bike was bought and paid for as a one-time purchase and yearly maintenance is just a hundred or two. For filming I use my phone, for GPS my phone (again, getting around to mud spots) and the only additional gear is a handlebar-holder for the phone and a flexible tripod for setting up the phone camera. I also got a small attachable pouch for the bike, where I can place my keys.

For clean-up, I use natural methods: rinse off at the best available water spot, a lake, a stream or even a puddle. A few times I've come across great mud in a place, where there just isn't a clean-u spot anywhere close. Of course, I haven't been able to resist, have absolutely thrashed myself in the filth and then biked as fast as I can through neighbourhoods to get to the nearest clean-up spot. While kind of stressful, it's also a big thrill to be messy out in public like that - and also not a big risk, because I'm tens of kilometers away from home usually

In summary, aside from new clothes and bike maintenance, my wam-specific spending is probably a hundred euros at most. Mud is cheap!

Edit: added a photo from my first real mudding after last winter. Wish I was there... for a mudder, winter is a time of wamxiety!

This is a SUPER interesting topic (at least to me). I was joking with someone last week that the place I've noticed inflation the most is in my messy supply shopping.

I've never gone through the formal exercise of calculating what I've spent on this hobby, but it's easily over 10k as I've been doing this for 15 years.

For me the biggest expenses are gear and supplies. I like to have a variety of clothing options (singlets, briefs, speedos, and even casual wear sometimes) plus a large assortment of mess. Most of the time I give guys the gear they wear as a souvenir and sometimes the gear are prizes in games. I have bought a LOT of singlets from BumChums. Lol. It's very easy to spend 200-300 on a messy weekend when factoring in some of the pricier ingredients like pie filling, honey, and fluff. If I'm trying to be restrained I'll do more batter and syrups. Aldi here can be helpful for some economical supplies, but I have better luck at Wal-Mart. Plus, the cheaper box mixes don't mix as well (IMHO).

On occasion I've traveled just for sessions (though generally I like to have multipurpose trips) so if you factor in flights, hotels, and rental carsit really adds up!

All that said, now that I have so much equipment and a small stockpile of supplies, the per session cost isn't as much when I'm able to host. It's taken quite a lot of investment to get to that point though.

I definitely should just try converting to mud or wet look.

The biggest issue for me was cost vs quantity of mess. I found that purchasing cake mix/batter, sauces, syrups and custard was just to expensive and cost too much for how much mess it made and also the thickness i was looking for. I ended up looking at real gunge online from the UK and settled with Messy pup gunge. I estimated it would be cheaper that way(and less suspicious). Depending on exchange rates and maximizing how much I could get for the delivery weight thresholds, each 10L of thick gunge cost me around $19-20 NZD(sometimes could get cheaper when discounted).

If included the cost of my gear which is mainly wrestling singlets, an inflatable pool/spa and a rough estimate of all the messy supplies I've purchased. It would be around 4,200 NZD for about 5 years, not too bad in my opinion lol.