Hey everyone, quick question for you all! I’ve been seeing a lot of people with the latest and greatest foils and boards, which got me wondering—how much are you guys actually spending on gear each year? And how much do you think you’re losing when you upgrade or sell your old stuff? Just curious because this hobby isn’t exactly cheap!
Great info thanks a lot. $ per hour/mile is a great metric to see how much joy your dollar really brings and a great barometer to make decisions on gear upgrades.
jeez how the heck did you sell a used Barracuda v1 for $2300? I’ve never seen the used market work this way. Sounds like cherry picked data to me. Generally I’ve never recouped more than half, and usually a good bit less on used gear if I’ve really put significant time on it. I’ve been able to get about 75% list price on barely used gear. Foils/masts seem to retain value best unless you foil around reefs and scrape the bottom. Boards have been going out of style so fast they don’t retain value well at all. Wings are even worse, I can’t barely give my old wings away.
I refuse to put on record the answer to your question, but its thousands of dollars per year for me after reselling.
I can rationalize that it is quite a bit cheaper than skiing, which I was completely sunk into for many years. Not much different than my friends who are serious about road or mountain biking on many thousand dollar bikes every two years with upgrades all along the way. And certainly quite a bit less than many hobbies such as sailing or wakeboarding that require a ridiculously large chunk of money periodically to buy a boat. And for wakeboarding, gas money along the way.
I’ve sold a 95L Fanatic board less than a year old for nearly 1/3 of what I paid for it, a brand new XPS wing for 2/3 what i paid for it, A brand new spitfire 1180 for 2/3 retail price (got a good deal so not too much of a hit). It hurts but if the gear doesn’t meet my expectations it pisses me off seeing it in the garage so i’d rather sell it & move it on.
In saying that I’ve bought clapped out second hand gear for a good deal that I really enjoy so there’s swings & roundabouts.
I cap my spending at 2k per year. Non foilers think this an astronomical amount but it feels like a tight budget.
This leads me to take the opposite approach of walnut - eating the scraps on the used/demo market.
However I’m pretty happy with my setup right now and hope I don’t continually spend 2k a year
Most of the beginner stuff that I should be selling I am keeping around to teach friends because the used market value just doesn’t seem worth it compared to sharing the sport with others
I’m one for scraping on the used market, getting stuff that has already depreciated by 40-60% and selling at 30%. I’m out about $300-500 a year like this. I ride about 300-350 days a year, drive 12 miles round trip to my home break, so it works out to be about $3 a session. cheap sport really.
I have a system where I get $100 a paycheck moved to a separate account plus whatever I can “side hustle” doing repairs and what not as my “fun money” for prone, winging, mountain bike, whatever. It’s really nice because I can never trick myself into dipping into actual household operating income and I have a definitive and immediate answer whenever I want something.
Honestly the money is the easy part. The time is harder. I ground out a corporate job for 10 years, paid off everything, and live like a hobo now. My car is worth less than my annual fun budget(how many of you take a bigger hit in car depreciation annually). I exclusively shop at goodwill. My wife holds down the real job and I do ANYTHING she tells me to, remodel whatever, build a porch for my brother in law, school pickup and drop off, dinner, cleaning, laundry, whatever. I never miss a swell it’s awesome. Fuck real life, I’m living a dream!
Winging 3 years. Spent 17.5k (RRP was 24.5k but got good discounts and small amount of used). Sold stuff for 6.2k, current gear worth 4k if I sold, so I am 7.3k down. Costs me ~2.5k/year for 200 days most of which I don’t need to travel
My windsurf and kite stuff RRP 27.5k, I paid 10.5k mostly discounted/ VG used. Now worth 5k. Lasts years compared to winging.