First, I have to say this is simultaneously the most entertaining and bitchiest thread I've seen on this forum. It made me chuckle several times.. and that says something dark about who I am as a person.
To the OP : IMO - and take this for what it's worth, as there's many folks with a lot more trigger time on here than me; I consider myself a "serious recreational" shooter -meaning that I don't compete, but I'm also not a guy who hasn't shot his EDC in 6 months; and my rifles do get shot sometime other than that last quarter of every year.
I learned pretty quickly, as a shooter on a tight budget for many , many years- that you don't
have to blow through rounds and rounds of ammo on a range trip, so my advice would be to start with ammo conservation rather than ammo hoarding. Yes, it's much cheaper ( or it was) to buy in bulk, but if you can't.. or even if you can.. make more sense out of what you shoot. For carry pistol, for me, I can usually run through a single box and have a GOOD practice session. 1 mag focused on fundamentals ONLY, 1 mag focused on precision shots at different distances, 2 partial mags focused on double tapping, and then ( if you have spare mags) loading several mags with 1-3 rounds at random, to practice reloads. ..
Because I did that for many years, there's times now while I run through much more, and then think " that was a waste of ammo!" at some point, fatigue sets in .. and your just dumping ammo to make the big noise. ( a lot less true for competitive or seriously training individuals, I'm speaking about the recreational shooter here.. ya'll calm down.
)
For rifle, we started coming up with "games" that made shooting fun , but didn't burn ammo. .. like shooting at chalk sticks at 50 yards with a .22 ; or "follow the leader" on a multi target board with 2 rifles.
The most fun I've had at the range in years was with a good friend shooting my 22 bolt from different positions at different targets- where we rotated picking the target and distance then competed. He said the same - it was a blast., and probably cost about $8 in ammo at today's prices.
Now if you wanna compete , that's different. Then ya' gotta be a baller.. lo. Pimpin ain't easy, but I makes my Ho's carry the range bag...