Originally Posted by bellweatherman
Or you could invest about $0 and work on your own bike. There are tons of resources on the internet and you don't have to be "that guy" at the bike shop.
Except that working on your own bike requires tools, which a lot of us don't have, taking it from $0 to "way too much to afford" pretty quickly. Not to mention how much easier and more fun it can be to learn from someone who knows what they are doing compared to learning from a website with no one around to help out if you get stuck.