I treat this as a hobbie, and a hobbie that pays for itself is a wonderfull thing.
I have a decent job, so I don't do this for instant income.
I started mining again only this year and its a whole new ballgame since the early years.
I played around with bitcoin when it first came out, I was not serious about it because it was new but VERY interesting and had very little value when I dabbled in it on a couple of pc's.
It was a tough time for me, divorce and health issues and after a few months I moved on to other things.
If I only knew...........I would have never formated and gave those pc's away or re-purposed them for other things.
But it was quite a while before Bitcoin was anything more than novelty, but I still watched with fascination or maybe utter horror that the value skyrocked. LOL
So this is my mindset now, I keep what I mine in crypto currency and I mine for the future hope of the increased value and as long as I treat my spending on hardware as a hobbie and expect nothing in return except to learn a thing or two i'm happy.
I'm sure I will buy and sell coins to end up with the ones I am interested in.
Sure is more interesting than running Seti@Home and hopefully more profitable.