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I've tried homelabbing, ham radio, fountain pens, DIY electronics, Python...
Some stuff is more expensive then others. amateur radio is stupidly expensive in every conceivable way. It starts out with a cheap RTL-SDR dongle. You set it up and start scanning around VHF and UHF to see what's out there. Some stuff catches your attention and soon enough you want to transmit as well as receive. You buy the license manual and get your ticket (honestly not hard if you've passed high school science class) and you buy a cheap questionably legal Baofeng walkie-talkie. So far the 'feng, the SDR dongle, and the license manual and FCC testing fee set you back maybe $80 all in. Not bad for a few weeks or months of entertainment.
Then you look at what a "real" rig costs, thinking that the absolute pinnacle must be maybe $2000, like a good gaming PC. Nope, turns out the cheapest radio you can buy that's considered 'good enough', the venerable Icom IC 7300, is $1000, and it swiftly climbs from there. Then you need an antenna. Surely an inert hunk of aluminum is cheap? Nope, also hundreds of dollars. If you want to cut your own you'll need an SWR meter, and those are also hundreds of dollars. Now you need coax to connect that antenna to the radio, a way to get that coax from the inside of your house to the outside, etc. It's all $$$.
That's not getting into the non monetary expenses like space for your shack and antennas and time to actually use the radio when the ionosphere is cooperating and people are actually on the air.
Compare that to my other major pastime, conlanging and worldbuilding. You already have everything you need, just something to write with and time to daydream. Maybe that's why this is the one thing I've stuck with for 25 years now.