...looking over my "order tomorrow list" i can, after about 2 months, already see, that this hobby will drive me into fucking poverty.
90 € just for flavoring and VG base. i cant even anymore.
oh and btw: fuck you /u/Enyawreklaw for making me hunt that shitty "JOY" stuff by FA... the Bronuts sound so fucking amazing that i have to try it.
thanks guys. i wanted to quit smoking to save money...look at me now
EDIT: okay i figured that it seems like i am serious about the money saving part. wasted over 180€ a month on cigs when i smoked.
i already love this hobby. i really do. there is so much to do and find out. like exploring, you know?
meant it as a joke, didn't come across as one. i am terrible at jokes :c
I'm just the opposite. I re-up about every 4 months, and it costs me about $50-$100. This is far and away the cheapest "hobby" I have at about 25 cents a day.
Oh, I'm with you. The outset costs were pricey, but since then it's been a little here and a little there when I want to try something new or run out of something I use a lot. I still buy juice a few times a year to try something out or really nail down a recipe, but most of the time I'm like, "oh, I think I have everything to make that, let's give it a try!" I'm simple though, in that I have one true ADV and have for over a year now, so most of the time it's something really special or I'm getting asked to make something by friends.
The best part of DIY'ing for me is when I realize I'm almost out of my ADV and I don't have to worry about remembering to order before I need it, and then waiting for shipping...I just need a few minutes in front of my scale. I've gotten lazy to the point of "lol, I have half a tank of juice left on my mod, maybe I should get mixing," although I try to just make a 120ml bottle once a week or every other week, so I don't even have to worry about that.
This is pretty much how I'm rolling, I've been slowly accumulating DIY stuff, and am now close to vaping exclusively my own mixes. I never made that one big initial buy, I got a stash of nic when I got scared of legislation, bought some VG when I had a juice I wanted to cut, then bought a small thing of PG, and some flavors. I don't have a big stockpile of flavors, just what I need for my strawberries and cream style ADV, and a recipe or two that I'm tweaking. I make a few 30ml batches for adjusting and trying things, and try to have a 120ml batch of the ADV steeping at all times.
I used to spend 50 or 60 bucks on juice orders, now I spend 15 or 30 if I need nic.
What's worse is when you have 3 incoming shipments from bullcity at the same time and missed the free shipping because you see a flavor that you passed on from the previous order that you said you wouldn't need.... :|
You know if you email them they'll generally lump up shipping for you and only charge you once. I've forgotten stuff on my order before and asked. Even got them all at once.
I keep track of all of my DIY expenses through an App with my bank. Going back a year now I have averaged 32 dollar a month. That covers all of my wife's and my nicotine costs.
When we used to smoke American Spirits, at about a pack a day between the two of us, we averaged 180-220 a month. When we first switched to vaping B&M juice our costs really didn't drop much because we were paying like 10-13 for a 15ml bottle of decent juice.
I currently have 43 flavors, of which only like 8 are in bottles larger than 10mls. I've come up with a few ADVs for the wife and I that we rotate through. That really goes a long way towards keeping costs down. We vape about 120mls or so a month for about 30 bucks. By my count that's 150-190 bucks a month we are saving.
TL:DR It is possible to slowly grow and experiment without breaking the bank, just takes a little patience.
I have never spent much on DIY because i research what recipes i know i like and just by certain flavorings , at first i made the mistake of buying all types of flavorings but i have yet to use a single one and don't see ever using them.
I use certain ones over and over so that really keeps the cost down.
any "must have" flavors from TFA?
there are so many :(
There are, but there are a much smaller number that you must have.
The key to keeping your costs down is to find a few ADVs and rotate through them. That way you need at most 10-20 common flavors. You buy those in bulk and than only on occasion buy small bottles of random flavors to experiment with finding new ADVs.
Sure that pizza and garlic bread vape sounds great on paper, but are you really going to want to vape that all day every day? Doubtful.
IMO, unless you are in the DIY community for artisinal reasons there really aren't that many must have flavors. If you are here for artisinal reasons, you didn't come to save money.
I look at this as the equivalent of rolling your own cigarettes, which was what I used to do before I quit. The start up costs buying flavors to build up a nice stash, buying big bottles of stuff I know I'll use frequently, little trial bottles of stuff I want to work with or to try different recipies, is a bit high, but it's worth it in the long run.
I've been giving myself my normal juice budget each month to build my supplies steadly instead of over spending on this hobby and I already have enough in 2 months to last me over a year in simple recipes. It might suck now, but it's definitely worth it in the long run.
dont make the mistake of ordering flavors you won't use.
i know for a fact i love creams and certain fruits and a select few bakery additions, so im sticking to that from now. also, some flavors are just way better than others. try to stick to those primarily. but its also tough because you wanna make others recipes and try and find the next "secret" ingredient. and then you end up ordering every flavoring that sounds like it MIGHT be good and then you're fucking broke and ahhhh shit.
yeah i see what you mean.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but I constantly see people trying to convert people over to diy without any sort of warnings. Unless you're lucky, you aren't going to save money at first or potentially ever. Ive made literally hundreds of people's recipes and clones and rarely are they as good as truly premium flavors. Some sort of caveat would be the responsible thing to do if diyers are truly trying to help others.