People in the upper class avoid these 7 hobbies

Weird confession: I pay almost obsessive attention to how people spend their free time.

Not in a creepy way—more like a behavioral-science nerd standing at the edge of the party, noticing patterns. And one pattern that’s hard to miss is this: people with real wealth treat their hobbies like capital.

They invest them for compounding returns—in energy, reputation, relationships, or insight. And they quietly avoid hobbies that leak time, attention, or credibility.

That’s what this piece is about. Seven pastimes the upper class tends to sidestep—and what to do instead if you care about building a life you’re proud of.

1. Status chasing

“Look at me” isn’t a hobby, but the behaviors around it often masquerade as one: collecting logos, upgrading toys every six months, or curating a life that photographs better than it actually feels.

Thorstein Veblen called it “conspicuous consumption” way back in 1899—spending designed to display status rather than create value (see The Theory of the Leisure Class for the classic treatment).

The modern upper class trends the other way: stealth wealth. They’d rather under-signal and over-own.

Here’s why: status chasing is an arms race you can’t win. The hedonic treadmill makes today’s flex tomorrow’s baseline. Worse, it trains your brain to benchmark against strangers instead of your actual goals. If you love watches or cars, keep loving them.

But shift the hobby from chasing to craft—learn the engineering, the history, the restoration. When the hobby deepens your competence, it stops being empty signaling.

2. High-risk day trading and gambling

Is it technically a hobby to ride meme stocks and roulette wheels? Sure.

But it’s the kind that nukes attention and spikes cortisol for returns that rarely beat a boring index fund. I’ve mentioned this before, but a pastime that requires you to check your phone 50 times a day is not leisure—it’s light addiction dressed in CNBC.

The affluent prefer asymmetric bets that don’t demand constant vigilance: owning a slice of a good business, angel checks where the downside is capped and the upside is uncapped, or—most common—staying out of the casino entirely.

If markets fascinate you, turn speculation into study: read company reports, learn accounting, or simulate strategies on paper for six months. You’ll keep the intellectual puzzle and lose the financial shrapnel.

3. Nightlife as an identity

I love a good night out.

But making “going out” your central hobby is like trying to hydrate with saltwater—it looks like relief while draining the very resource you need tomorrow: energy.

Late nights, heavy pours, and loud rooms are fine in doses; as a personality, they’re expensive.

Upper-class folks don’t reject fun; they budget it. They optimize for mornings—where deals are made, ideas are written, and bodies are built.

When nightlife shows up, it’s curated: dinner at a place where conversation carries, a show with friends they actually want to see, then home.

If your social life orbits the bottle, try swapping two nights a month for a small dinner you host. You’ll get deeper connection—minus the 36-hour hangover tax.

4. Endless passive entertainment

I’m not anti-TV. I’m anti “oops, it’s 2 a.m. and Netflix asked me if I’m still there.”

Upper-class people enjoy prestige series and sports, but they don’t let passive consumption set the pace of their free time.

Why? Because attention is a non-renewable resource. As writer Annie Dillard put it, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” 

This doesn’t mean swapping shows for productivity chores; it means choosing active entertainment more often than passive.

Cooking a new plant-based recipe, making photos, learning a chord progression, taking a cold-water swim—these give back.

They generate stories, skills, and friendships. Keep your comfort shows (I do), just fence them. “Two episodes, then I make something.” Simple rule, huge upgrade.

5. Online feuds and drama

The upper class hates reputational debt. Public spats, subtweets, and YouTube beefs feel spicy in the moment and radioactive later. Screenshots travel faster than apologies.

Worse, the habit conditions you to treat disagreement as spectacle rather than signal—to score points instead of learn.

The wealthy still have strong opinions; they just practice containment. Private DMs. Off-record calls. Or the most elite move: silence. You don’t need to dignify every provocation. When you do engage publicly, aim for “reasonable, cited, and kind.”

It’s amazing how quickly attention follows the person who refuses to pour gasoline on the fire.

A tactic that’s helped me: write the hot take, then schedule it for tomorrow. If it still feels necessary after a night of sleep and a walk, post. Ninety percent of mine expire quietly.

6. Multi-level marketing and clout-chasing side hustles

Plenty of people join MLMs with good intentions and big hearts.

But at the hobby level, it’s usually a time sink wrapped in borrowed credibility. Your identity gets yoked to a product you don’t control and a compensation structure you didn’t design. That’s the opposite of leverage.

As investor Naval Ravikant says, “Earn with your mind, not your time.”

The upper class orients hobbies toward optionality: skills and relationships that can open doors later—without the awkward “hey boss babe” pitch.

If you want a money-adjacent hobby, try something like niche writing, open-source contributions, or volunteering on a nonprofit board where you learn governance. These create reputational assets instead of reputational liabilities.

7. Extreme DIY to “save money” (when it destroys time)

This one will ruffle feathers. I’m a fan of learning to do things yourself. I cook most nights, change my camera sensor swabs, and once spent a weekend fixing a stuck window because I wanted the satisfaction.

But here’s the trap: making frugality your main hobby. The upper class outsources tasks that are low-skill, high-time, and easy to delegate. Not because they’re “above” the work, but because they’re clear on opportunity cost.

If you earn $80 an hour and spend six hours wrestling a task a pro could do for $120, you didn’t save $120—you spent $360 to feel busy. The hobby to keep is craft (woodworking, gardening, fermentation), where the doing is the point.

The habit to drop is compulsion: mowing the lawn while resenting the lawn. Pay the teen next door, then take the hour you bought and use it on exercise, reading, or a longer call with your parents.

The pattern underneath all seven

The common denominator isn’t snobbery—it’s stewardship. Wealthy people tend to protect four scarce currencies:

• Attention. Is this hobby training me to be present, or splitting my focus into a thousand dopamine crumbs?

• Energy. Do I feel more alive after this, or subtly dulled?

• Reputation. Would Future Me be glad this is on my timeline?

• Optionality. Does this expand who I can be and what I can do next year?

When a pastime fails all four tests, it quietly exits their calendar.

What to do instead (a practical swap list)

• Swap status chasing for mastery collecting: take a watchmaking course, a barista class, or a track-day skills clinic.

• Swap day trading for owner research: pick one great business and read its last five annual letters.

• Swap identity-level nightlife for host energy: small dinners, curated guest lists, conversation that breathes.

• Swap endless streaming for active media: book clubs, film clubs, or a “make something every Sunday” rule.

• Swap online drama for IRL debates: same topics, better tone, superior learning.

• Swap MLMs for portfolios of proof: write, code, design, photograph—anything you can point to that says “I can do this.”

• Swap compulsive DIY for selective craft: choose projects for joy, outsource chores for time.

A quick personal note

A few years ago I realized my “harmless” habit of doom-scrolling sports debates at midnight was taxing my mornings. I put my phone to charge in the kitchen and started ending the night with a chapter of nonfiction instead.

Tiny tweak, huge compounding.

As Annie Dillard reminded me, days add up to lives. And lives aren’t built in big dramatic sweeps; they’re tiled from small, repeated choices.

Two final guardrails

1. Keep your hobbies honest. If you call something “fun,” measure how you feel after. If the answer is consistently “drained, broke, behind, or vaguely anxious,” it’s not leisure—it’s leakage.

2. Let your calendar tell the truth. It’s easy to say you value health, family, and learning. It’s harder to make a Saturday morning look like that. Block the time first, then defend it like you would a meeting with your future self.

I’ll end where we started: your free time is capital.

Spend it like someone who knows returns compound.

Trade the short, loud hobby for the quiet one that pays you back for decades—in health, trust, and real wealth.