NOTE: This article is a work in progress, but I’ve already written so much that I thought: Screw it. I’m publishing this already. Enjoy. Come back some time later for updates. – Love, Phillip.

Things that are free, dirt cheap or affordable and balls of fun.

Here is a list of things that cost (very) little or even are free to get started with and are awesome amounts of fun and in many cases constitute entire lifestyles in their own right.

Social Dancing

Initial cost: 20 - 30 Euros to go to the first dance meetups

Specifically recommended are the latin-american close-embrace/“hugging“ styles: Merengue, Bachata, Kizomba, Zouk, Forro, etc. along with my personal all-time favorite Argentine Tango. Getting hooked on such a style of dancing usually is life-changing. Especially for hetero-sexual people it can mean night and day when it comes to meeting and quite literally getting close to members of the opposite sex and getting to know them, regardless of your income and availability of resources.

The Ladies love it because they can flaunt their beauty and femininity in a safe space that emphasizes some form of etiquette over getting drunk in noisy, expensive and often unsophisticated clubs and discos and find men who at least can handle themselves in a dance-meetup setting.

For men it’s an awesome environment to improve social and mating skills without spending obscene amounts of money only to get drunk and hungover and end up with no real encounters with cute and/or interesting ladies.

I’ve meet more than one person (women and men alike) who gave up their career to live a minimalist lifestyle, travel the world and go to the worlds premium dance events of their particular dance. High-profile female consultants who bumped into Tango on a business trip, quit their job a few weeks later, sold their expensive luxury car only to live of that money in Buenos Aires for a few years and learn all about Tango that there is to know and be skilled at. Software experts who left their lofty 6-figure job in California, sold all their stuff, traveled the world as digital nomad, did some coding part-time, danced with the cutest, hottest ladies around the world the rest of the time only to end up with more money in the bank a few years in because they didn’t need much for that new lifestyle. True thing.

My personal social dance – Argentine Tango – is danced *everywhere* in the world these days which means no matter where I am I can also go to the next local Tango evening (they’re called „Milonga“) and meet and dance with cute ladies in no time.

From the age of 38 to roughly the age of 48 I built my life around Tango and had encounters and experiences I wouldn’t have dared to even dream of only a few years prior. Experiences I will never forget for the rest of my life. I became fit and healthy from dancing 3-5 times a week and quite very interesting for the ladies who to this day to at least once a week fancy a man that leads them well and if it only is on the dance-floor.

Many couples have met in social dancing and many families have formed from those encounters. Those who never leave dancing become lean, healthy and graceful and remain so into old age and gain deep insights and wisdom about the human condition and how mating and hetero-dynamics work.

(Online) Videogaming

Initial cost: a few hundred Euros for a mid-range/second-hand gaming PC or gaming console. Anywhere between 200 and 800 Euros, electricity and an internet connection get’s you started.

This one has a undeserved bad reputation with some non-gamers. Most gamers aren’t disfunctional but have a quite physically active life. It’s only when they get home and in front of their gaming setup, they enter a whole new world.

Unlike „regulars“ just passively consuming media, gamers proactively meet online and play MMORPGs or action-adventure open world games, competitive arena shooters, racing games, strategy games, exploration games and many other types and genres with and against each other and form crews, teams and friendships for life that quite often result in real-world encounters and activities as well.

Imagine becoming best friends after having spent hundreds of hours gaming together with someone on the other side of the world. This is totally normal in online videogames. I personally know of marriages that have come out of couples meeting in-game, playing for a few years and then meeting up in real life. No joke.

Table-Top Roleplaying

Initial cost: a few Euros for a set of RPG dice, pen and paper.

TTRPGs are a modern, sophisticated form of the age-old art of storytelling in which everybody in the group gets to participate. The narrator, often called Gamemaster, represents the world in which a given adventure/story takes place and the Non-player Characters (NPCs) in it and everybody else at the table is a „player“ and plays a „player character“ or „PC„. The characters statistics and traits are tracked on paper („Character Sheets„) and specific rules govern how good the characters are at attempting their actions in the adventure they are on.

Randomness is handled with dice. Very often not just regular 6-sided dice, but 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 20-sided dice. Yeah, those exist and if you see anyone with dice like that, they are very likely affiliated with some form of „TTRPGing“.

Table-top roleplaying game(r)s are somewhat considered the precursor to multiplayer videogame(r)s and sometimes share overlapping communities. And unlike videogamers they don’t need fancy electronic equipment to have the same amount if not even more fun.

Countless roleplaying game systems, from lightweight rulesystems with only a few pages of rules to super-complex systems with thick books of rules and tables and any imaginable genre from science-fiction to fantasy, from crime-story over thriller to horror, from alternative realties over „stuffed animals that come alive when their owners are out of sight“ right up to playing intelligent robots in a science-fiction or cyberpunk world, mice in Brambley-Hedge or anything else you can imagine make up this diverse global social community.

Playing TTRPGs online in virtual tabletops („VTTs“) is a thing too. If you want to try out some more obscure game setting you might just find the right group that meets online with players from the Americas and Europe and Asia and a gamemaster based in New Zealand. Online TTRPGs formus are a good way to start online roleplaying in VTTs.

Snorkeling / Freediving

Initial cost: roughly 150 – 200 Euros + travel costs
Trunks/bathing suit, good diving goggles and long free-diving fins and the traveling costs to get to a decent spot

When it comes to the optimal cost/skill/experience benefit ratio in water sports, Snorkeling and (moderate) Freediving lead the pack by a large margin. For less than 200 Euros in gear you are set to an experience of a lifetime. Especially for people who have never tried this before.

Long freediving fins make moving around in water as easy as riding a bike compared to walking. And a good mask/set of diving-goggles and a snorkel are an excellent investment.

Add to that a pair of diving gloves to avoid getting cut when holding on on sharp rocks and a wetsuit to stay warm longer or in colder waters. This can be any type of wetsuit, it doesn’t have to be one for diving – and you are well set to enjoy any time at a relatively calm seashore with an exceptional adventure waiting only 20 meters from the surf and 1,5 meters below the surface.

Longboard Skateboarding

Initial cost: under 100 Euros for a second-hand midrange longboard and some sturdy working cloves for protection

Surfing

Initial cost: Only travelling costs if you trade in working at a surf-school or camp for shelter, food, access to gear (board + wetsuit) and surfing lessons. Quite a few people do this for a few seaons and have adventures and memories of a lifetime. Some never leave this life and whilst they aren’t rich at age 60+, they are healthy, meet new people every season and can surf like demigods.

New variants of this lifestyle include Windsurfing, Kitesurfing (my favorite) and – the newest, technically most advanced fad – Wing- and Kite Foiling. With board that have hydrofoils made from carbon fibre.

Surfing is more or less the classic alternative lifestyle …

Climbing

Paragliding

Cycling & Bikepacking

Initial cost: free for an simple hand-me-down used bike up to a few hundred Euros for a new everyday commuter.

Keep in mind: Your bike shouldn’t be a super-expensive bike that will be stolen at the first occasion if you want to build your everyday life around biking. And you don’t want to travel with a complex fancy bike you can’t repair when you’re in the middle of nowhere.

Choosing a bike over a car or ICE vehicle can and perhaps should be a lifestyle decision, especially if you live in a moderately to densely populated area where riding a bike isn’t a threat to your life. Building your life around a bike for short-range transport and locally getting around is a wise decision. Removing a car from your private belongings frees up huge amounts of cost and resources, riding a bike improves your health and forces you to make more thoughtful decisions on how and when to move around and what to take with you.

Skiing & Snowboarding

Owning a Motorscooter

Initial Costs: ~1000 Euros for a small used off-brand scooter, some protective gear and a top-case.

Can’t afford a car but want a powered vehicle? Get a Motorscooter. They come in all kinds of sizes and power ranges, ICE or electric, as branded lifestyle products or cheaply produced. If you have a slower, smaller scooter a helmet, padded jacket and gloves suffice for protective gear.

If a scooter is your main mode of transport owning one very easily becomes a lifestyle on its own. It’s not about speed, it’s about getting around and having no parking problems while being easy to handle and cheap to maintain. Fuel efficiency is through the roof and you can maintain your scooter on a shoestring budget if you’re willing to do some repairs and maintenance yourself.

When it comes to bang for buck in your own private powered vehicle, nothing beats a scooter or small light motorbike like the world famous Honda SuperCub, Honda Dax, the Piaggio Vespa or one of those countless retro-style knockoffs.

Especially in places where it doesn’t rain too often, scooters are the mode of transport of choice for many people and for good reasons. You learn move around and travel lightly and connect way easier with people in your vicinity when moving about.

Congested traffic is a breeze with a scooter, as is finding parking space. Time added to your schedule due to enhanced flexibility goes into finding nice scenic side-roads and literally enjoying the ride.

Dolce vita packed into a handy 50ccm or 125ccm package. You won’t want a Ferrari or fat SUV once you’ve discovered this.

Vanlife

…

Some final words

Do not be fooled: Everything in this list can easily be picked up and quite often does actually constitute a full-blown lifestyle. Longboarders actually do build their life around longboarding and take their favorite means of personal transport around with them all the time. Roleplaying Gamers have countless friends and comrades that share the same pastime and meet online and in real life on conventions and game-meetups to indulge in their favorite hobby. And do not be fooled by clichés. While some do hold some truth, very often there are people who completely break the mold. High-salary managers who don’t drive a luxury car but love to get around on their old scooter. People aged 50 and up who hop on their longboard every day to get around. Gorgeously beautiful young ladies who could totally pass as a fashion model but love nothing more that hanging out with their mates online and are deep into competitive combat videogaming, etc.

To get into any of these fields requires nothing other than some genuine curiosity and a little time and effort. Yes, you might need the right set of people near you. For instance, I’m lucky to have a Paragliding field with winches and a full-time flight instructor only 25 minutes of Scooter-ride from my home. That does help a lot for getting my Paragliding licence. But it’s also true that I wouldn’t have even noticed this if I haven’t been interested in paragliding and been looking around for years to find a way to get into it. In the summer of 2023 I said: Screw it, it’s been 30+ years that I’ve been wanting to do this, now I’m doing it.

Likewise, I never thought I’d be the guy to show up somewhere in Motorbike gear. But one day I thought: I want to be able to get around and be independent but I can’t justify having a car standing around when I don’t want to use it but would rather use a small electric scooter or my bike to get around. Which I both actually prefer to using a bulky and wasteful car when moving around in close range (<15km). So if it’s going to be an ICE vehicle, it’s likely going to be a scooter. And so after a few months of consideration and weighing details about what sort of Motorscooter to get and how to go about it, I finally bought a used Piaggio MP3 500, a three-wheeler with two wheels in the front – more safe, shorter braking distance and drivable with a regular car-drivers-licence in Germany … useful – and all the safety gear that goes with being as safe as can be on a motorscooter that can go 150 kmh on the highway aka Autobahn. And half a year later I was knee-deep into driving it and took a 7-week and 7500km trip to Portugal and back. Yeah, right, on my 500ccm motorscooter. And it was freakin‘ awesome. If you’d’ve told me I’d be doing this just two years prior I wouldn’t have believed it.

You never know where happiness looms and you have no idea what aweome encounter with a lifestyle and the people living it might change your life forever, even if you only live that lifestyle for a decade or two.

I compiled this list as an inspiration for you to go out and try some new things that really don’t need that much investment to show you entirely new perspective on things, people and life itself.

So get going!

Good luck and balls of fun out there!