Originally Posted by BCRider

The ONLY way you save money by finding all the parts and building is if you put it together yourself. As soon as you take the Big Box O' Parts into a shop to have it built into a rideable bike your money savings over buying a bike ready built flies out the window. Building up a bike from parts like that is NOT a $50 job. The way to save money and still get a good build is to shop around the local outlets and find stuff for super cheap that no one else wants or to buy stuff only when it's on idiotically low close out sales from the online outfits. Oh, and from the look of the prices in your list of parts you're not really a very good shopper. Much of what you picked for price is clearly higher end options. But then you're teaming these things up with lower end stuff. So the resulting bike would be a patchwork of items that raise the price without forming a consistent level of overall parts group. Two glaring examples is that you do NOT need to pay as much as you picked out for a perfectly decent cassete or for tires and tubes.

Let's look at the bike style for a moment as well. You're riding for fitness and fun. That's all well and great. But have you ridden a drop bar bike? Will you be comfortable leaning that far ahead and down? You may be better off with a "fast hybrid" or city bike. These come in some nice setups and can be had for around the cost of your list of parts.

For example Giant makes a 29'er off road bike called the Roam that comes with Avid disc brakes and 700c wheels for a MSRP of just $620 and that has a list of parts that are far upscale from the ones you've found. Kona makes a "Dew" series of light and fast asphalt commuters that have rims wide enough to easily allow using fatter road or trail tires for the limestone trails. The cost for those starts at only $450 for the basic Dew.

And these two examples are just from a quick look around. If you shop at your local stores or at the online shops I don't doubt that you can find a bike that's on sale for a price that will get you onto the road a lot cheaper than the option of building a bike. Or if you're sure that a drop bar bike is for you again there's options at your budget point out there if you shop a little deeper than you have so far

Now before you think I'm just tossing your whole enthusiastic approach ito the outhouse I'd like to add that I applaud your enthusiasm. But at this point and with your present level of knowledge where you would require your LBS to build up your bike it's just not the economical path to take to get a bike that you want to think that it is.