The first step is working towards getting your license. This usually costs ~$2000-3000 and many places will let you prepay to make it cheaper. It includes 7 AFF jumps (with 1 or 2 instructors and gear included) and an additional 18 coach jumps. Once you have a license, it becomes a lot cheaper. Most places will have a single ride up in the plane (one jump ticket) cost somewhere between $15-25. In addition, you either need to rent gear or buy it. Renting costs $30-100 per day, in order to buy a decent parachute and all your own gear, can easily run you another $1,500-5000. This isn't a cheap hobby. Most people either are quite well to do, or are throwing every scrap of free cash they have at the sport. A few things that can save you money along the way include: prepaying for your A license, buying your own gear, and paying for some tunnel time (it will prevent you from wasting money having to repeat a AFF jump early on which can cost $200 each). Later on, people begin making money packing parachutes, or working as a coach to pay off their jumps. Some places also offer passes which can cost $5,000-10,000 but give you unlimited jumps for a year. Just for comparison, I've got 75 jumps and I normally make 3-5 per day plus gear rentals which comes out to ~$200 each day. Skiing at Vail costs $216 for a day now so it's roughly comparable. Answer from Dywyn on reddit.com