Originally Posted by slowandsteady
Why not sell the hybrid and use that money to go towards the new road bike? Also, explain how a good road bike can last many many years. It's not like you are going to buy a new one in a year. Okay, you may want to, but you don't NEED to. What are the alternatives? Joining a gym....that's not cheap. How much do you spend on vacations? A decent vacation can easily cost over $1000, and I bet she/he doesn't flinch at that.
Is it that you can't afford it, or that she/he thinks it is overpriced? There is a big difference.
Perhaps you can negotiate a deal where you skimp on other things you enjoy to justify the expense. I delayed getting a new car to get a new bike. Seems silly, since the new car would be $25,000 and the bike cost me $800(my brother works at the bike shop). Also, can you commute using the bike? You could justify the expense by saving on gas. Let's see my gas expenses are at least $60 a week. If I rode instead of drove to work, I would save $2600 in a year. The bike would easily pay for itself in just a few months.
Well, there's no need to worry about bike shop sales now. I've been watching craigslist.org for the last month or so, and just today I found a Giant Kronos GS for $400 which hit me in the solar plexus. I went and bought it. Here it is:
So now I've got a hybrid and a road bike. Whuhoo! I'm going to take it to the bike shop to get a tune up and change or add a few things, and then I'm on the road. I quite like having two bikes, as now I can go for rides with friends if they visit.
The economic aspects you mention do make sense, and it's strange I never thought of them. My wife had indeed urged me to join a gym before I got into cycling, so there you are. I work from home, so I thankfully don't have to deal with petroleum pressure. And I think I can safely say that I don't need to sacrifice all that much for the purchase of a $400 bike, an amount which is easier to swallow than $1,000+. As a relative newcomer to cycling, I myself wasn't very comfortable spending all that much on it, never mind my wife. I'm 40, so buying a top line road bike would have smacked too much of the mid-life crisis poseur. I'll wait a year or two longer to see just exactly how much further I get into it. If it goes past the daily rides for exercise that I do now then I may consider dropping some more serious coin on a bike.