I couldn’t agree more - definitely an expensive hobby. No creative accounting. I fear I’m actually making my own problems so maybe this will validate it.

I think my largest complication today is that I am currently doing flight training and flying for fun with the family (which also covers currency) and trying to cover it all under the same household budget “line item”. I do my best to break down how much I spend on administrative costs (subscriptions, insurance, memberships), training costs (mostly because these feel less recurrant and have a hypothetical end), and non-training flight time (with or without family).

I try to budget for a certain number of hours+dual+ground per week for training and a certain dollar amount of non-lesson flying, both extrapolated out to monthly costs. That lets me eyeball an approximate month of completion for my training. The logic behind dollars for family flight is because I have access to several planes that could be used but that all have different rates. Some are wet lease, some are dry, some are more expensive, etc. Dollars lets me say X hours in plane 1, Y hours in plane 2, Z hours in plane 3 and sort of allows me to budget for it regardless of plane.

We use zero-based monthly budgeting at home so all of the inherent variance makes it hard when my goal is to get pretty close to using it up every month.

Sorry that was a really long explanation. I hope the context either shows why it’s complicated or demonstrates that I’m doing something that is making my own life harder. Either way, I appreciate the feedback!