I strictly budget. A portion of my income goes to savings to keep at a certain level of pure cash on hand, a greater portion to investment, a portion to scheduled expenses, and a portion to my hobbies. My hobbies are my beer money fund, instead of beer, money I spend on things I like to do while I'm alive and expect to recoup nothing from but the satisfaction of enjoying life. I am very lucky as a late millennial that I can responsibly do this, but one of the fun things about this hobby is that it can be done extremely cheap and most can partake if they want. Cards are only expensive if you chase the very 'best'. If you want a Hank Aaron rookie to flex, it's $3,000. If you want a cool Hank Aaron card, it's like $3 for a 1976 Topps with round corners. You can get nice looking cards of superstars for a quarter or even less. What's a 2000 Topps card of Pedro Martinez worth, a nickel? Just because a card is cheap and doesn't buy bragging rights doesn't mean it's any less cool if you're collecting cards you like. I collected as a teenager when I made a few bucks a week or less, by not being a mint collector and not needing the brag cards. When I was in college and broke as broke gets I still had fun with my collection and diving deeper into the research side. I got to buy some cheap but cool cards when I was first out of college and making very little.
If your budget is $10 a week, you can have a ton of fun. If it's $1,000 a week, you can have a ton of fun too. One of the reasons I like rare but less popular material is that it's about the effort and putting in the work, turning up new or even unknown items that aren't a dollar flex. Some of the coolest collections aren't worth much. Pick up threads by their nature tend to skew to the wealthy and give a distorted picture; I wish more people who weren't made of cash would show their stuff. A T206 Wagner is not difficult to get, it's just about how much money you have, but rare items are often cheap and impressive in a different way.
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