Want to have some fun this fall? It’ll cost you.
The Bank of America Institute has released a new report on the hobby economy, and it shows that the price of fun is going up. According to BoA card data, hobby spending increased in August by more than double the pace of overall transaction growth.
In other words, consumers are dropping more cash on their hobbies, but their hobbies are also getting significantly more expensive.
Right now, hobby culture is having a moment online, as Gen Z and millennials document their pursuit of “grannycore” skills like knitting, gardening, scrapbooking, and sewing.
But hobbyists should expect to shell out a bit of extra pocket money for those pursuits, as arts and crafts stores, hobby shops, and outdoor recreation retailers are driving what the BoA Institute has dubbed “funflation.”
The mini hobby renaissance
The report’s data reflects the idea that hobby culture is having something of a mini renaissance.
Per the company’s research, hobby spending spiked majorly during the pandemic (around early 2021), before petering off over the next several years.
Now, interest is ticking up again. In August, hobby spending was up 7.9% year-over-year, while actual transactions increased by 3.4%.
“In our view, it’s likely that people splurged on hobbies amid social distancing during the pandemic, then gravitated back toward pricier alternatives like travel throughout 2022 and 2023,” the report reads.
However, it continues, there may be some rotation back to less expensive leisure as after-tax wage growth has slowed considerably and rising fuel costs have made travel less accessible.
Arts, crafts, and video games
Across the generations, older millennials spent the most per customer on hobbies (a trend BoA Institute attributes to that generation’s likelihood of having small children), followed closely by baby boomers and Gen X.
Gen Z spent the least—which, the report’s researchers theorize might be a result of a pivot from more costly hobbies to “activities like knitting, sewing, or baking (arts and crafts).”
The types of investments differed by age range, too.
Older millennials were the most likely to spend on outdoor recreation and arts and crafts, followed by Gen Z in both categories. Meanwhile, Gen Z saw its video game spending increase by around 20% year-over-year in August, after a sizable increase of over 30% year-over-year in 2025.
Board games, crocheting, and hiking might be more wallet-friendly than a trip to Cancun—but they’re still going to cost you a bit more than they did in 2025.
