I usually track the costs of tournaments that I play in every year. During the time period when I was working toward the OLM title, I figured that I spent around $13,000 just on tournament costs for the more than 70 tournaments plus chess league games. That figure does not include the chess books and other chess stuff purchased over that 7 year span. The games include several World Opens, a few FIDE rated round robins, local two day tournaments, one day events, and a few quads. There were also over 50 quick chess tournaments I played in for practice, but those did not count toward the OLM title. Yeah, it costs money to play a consistent program schedule of tournament chess.