Let’s Talk About Money

In the United States, movie tickets typically range in price from about $9 to $20 per person. If you get some popcorn, lets call it 50 dollars for two people for about 2.5 hours if you include previews.

That’s a dollar per unit time of $10 per person per hour. People still go to the movies, though not as much as they once did. But let’s call that number acceptable.

Bowling, a far less popular pastime that it once was is priced all over the map from $4.50 a game and shoe rentals at $2.00 a pair, or hourly rates I’ve seen are $23.00 - 27.00 an hour.

Axe throwing seems to average $30 an hour. I assume it’s the lumber cost, I can’t picture why else… (Okay my wife had thoughts.... lights, employees, axe sharpening, some sell food...)

Trampoline parks seem to have a range from $14 to $30 an hour per person.

The list keeps going.

People in America seem willing to pay something in the 10–30-dollar range for entertainment. I am here to postulate that even if you had a crippling reading habit, you would be hard pressed to find a cheaper hobby. Even if you are buying all hardcovers all the time at $30 each, the average book is 80,000 words. At the higher end of reading speed of 300 words per minute, that’s 266 minutes or about 4.5 hours. That’s a cost point of about $6 an hour. Half that if you buy paperbacks.

Reading, even if you do it a lot, and buy all your books is a very cheap hobby to maintain.

Used book stores libraries and electronic books drive that number down even lower.

In a world where a nickel seems to cost a dime these days, books are a wonderful option.

Get reading.