Our downfall is trying to value everything in terms of currency. In the old days when you were ill the community gathered around to help bring in the harvest. If your barn burned down folks had a good old fashioned barn raising.

Today, if you can't make it to work you have long term disability. If a fire destroys your belongings you call the insurance company.

It used to be Family > Friends > Money

Today it's Money > Family > Friends

Not so. I stop buying bike gear all the time.

I never ran numbers. I regularly commute to work by bike because I love to ride. Saving money is never a reason.

For me, the only way to save money for sure would be to be totally car free.

That didn't work for me. I actually spend more money at the health club now that I cycle. All in the pursuit of stronger and faster cycling. Maybe in another year or two I won't need the health club, but I was in such pathetic condition I need both for a while.

I think that NOBODY voluntarily bike commutes over 25 miles round trip everyday for the sole purpose of saving money. Especially if/when the weather and street conditions are not superb.

Saving money is good; spending more than a moment thinking about the associated pennies saved, due to cost of food eaten, and/or calories expended is not.

I doubt if any sports fishermen/hunters try to justify the joy of their activity by how much money they saved at the grocery store.

i've been on a bike for at least 17yrs. albeit the last 5 have been sans motor vehicle.
over the years i've had beater cars, and typically i hardly drove them. my fav was an 82' Subaru Wagon.

once upon a time, when i decided to start racing, and rode the bike crazy hours, every day, my grocery bill went thru the roof.

these days, I quit my job 1.5yrs ago, and I've done some touring, and now days, i surround myself with bike stuff.

that is to say...

at some point, my life changed from a car-centric lifestyle to a bicycle-centric life.


so really....
i guess my point is...
that any way of cycling is a pathway to ditch your car.
in the car-free lifestyle... its so much cheaper to live.

that is to the furthest extreme, i suppose.

there are a ton of variables in between, to reach that point.

Wow, you too.

I have found another unique phenomena... that a hamburger or small piece of candy has the magic ability to combine with air molecules and "grow" to many times it's original weight. A 1/4 lb hamburger for instance will suddenly make me 2-3 lbs heavier.

Well for me its the snowball effect. First I quit smoking saving me $150.00 a month. We are also down to one car, saving me $480 a year in insurance. $20 month in gas. That is $2500 a year right there. This does not include the fact I like Data Junkie am also addicted to my LBS ( Everytime I walk in, all the employees go Ka-Ching) So the money I save pays for my addiction, But also l look at it this way I am nearly 50 years old ride my bike every day to work and often take the long way home just to enjoy the day/ride. I feel better than I have in years.

I took the wife with me on a Trail ride this past weekend where she rode my commuter and I rode my new Specialized Roubaix. We had great day doing 30 miles and It conviced her her that she wants her own bike (the guys at my LBS all cheer). There are some things you can't put a price on.

I commute 25 miles per day, and overall I suppose I do save money even at the current low fuel price.

A few points relative to the OP's question:
1) My bike is super cheap compared to the car from the standpoint of maintenance and depreciation. I ride a $500 bike with an internal hub gear and it uses up chains and brake pads quite slowly.
2) Food. I actually don't see a huge variation in the amount I eat between riding and not riding. Even if I did, not riding to work should not really be seen as a great excuse to do zero exercise. If anything, you can count the commuting time as a huge savings because it allows you to do to things (comuting and working out) at the same time.

What he said.

I live in a big city that's got more cars than road space and now, after the snow, all the roads are being fixed from where people gouged out the pavement like swiss cheese with their chains. Commuting by bike, or a combo of bike and bus not only saves me money that I would otherwise spend on gas, car maintenance and parking fees, but it also saves me TIME even over the 20mile commute mark. I can get around most of downtown faster than the cars can because I'm not limited to surface streets alone, with any number of alleys, sidewalks, even stairs if necissary, to get to where I need to go and for the commute home that would probably take me 1.5-2 hours to ride what I could do in a car in the morning for 20min would be 2hours of gridlock traffic anyways when I get off work so I'm not saving any time by trying to get home by car. If I pair the bike with the bus my 2hour work to home commute gets cut to 45min usually. I'd say I save money by biking and time...when I do it >.< the weather's not been "ideal" for me of late and I'm a bit of a wuss when it comes to riding in snow, freezing rain or the dark, especially on my road bike. There's just one thing that does give me a bit of trouble, and that's that there aren't any showers at my place of buisness and sometimes I get typical road funk after an arduous ride (made even more so that I have to haul propper buisness attire with me.)

This is one of the questions I thought of as well when I started out commuting. During the process I actually forgot about it. I think I'll write down the costs of a whole year of mass transit commuting, and compare that to what I've actually spent at the end of the year.

Right now I don't really care about the costs, as I like cycling far more than being stuffed into a train or subway with thousands of others. It makes me feel free.
I get to listen to my own music, enjoy the birds waking up, watching people admire my speed when I go by, see beautiful girls whizz by in the opposite direction... I love every aspect of commuting. The money has just become a nice side aspect, since I trust that I'm actually saving a penny.

just stop doing your laundry.

This was an interesting read. So interesting in fact that now I'm wondering why more people ride due to higher gas prices. I guess i'll feel less guilty driving my car but no less proud riding my bike.

if this is trolling then I like my wart.

I sold my car and I was able to justify a carbon fork anytime I liked. And still be ahead on the money part.



Even if you added all the money I spent on my four bikes and their gear, I still spent less than 6 months of owning a car.

It only gets cheaper than public transport (we have an efficient and fairly inexpensive system here) if I stop buying new bikes and gear.

i guess i don't have the laundry problem cause my sweat actually smells good, what have you been eating?

I now avoid two bitter cold, windy 15 minute walks between my parking space and my work. There is no way I'm ever going to get a parking space just outside my work, people who started years before me are dozens of years away at the current rate of attrition. If I ride hard, I can get to work in about the same amount of time, and I'm happier for it.

We are down to one car currently and it's big kid hauler, in gas we saved about $400 dollars last year. I tried to convince the wife that savings could buy me a better commuter bike, I was unsuccessful. I eat 1-2 extra granola bars every day I ride and I don't change clothes to ride to work (I work the night shift so I just change into work clothes at work). Of course I don't ride to save money, or to get in shape, that's all just a nice bonus.

In Italy we have lower incomes, and same or higher prices, so saving money is more important that in other countries.
Ok, i made a 70 km (round trip) each way.
Using the car, I spend approx 8 eur of gasoline and highway ticket for the round trip.
With 21 working days (approx) I spend 168 eur without taking in account replacement parts, oil, etc
With bike+train, I spend 34,50 eur for a month, without taking in account a new jacket, oil etc :-D
So, I save (at minimum) 134 eur /month....

I've done a bunch of these calculations, just because it's fun. I'm not cycling to save money. I replaced a 53-mille round trip drive with an 8.5 mile round trip (folding) bike commute combined with round trip Amtrak train (25 minutes each way).

I figured the "Raw" cost of my bike + train is $11.88 per round trip
($9.00 Train, $1.12 food , $0.90 bike, $.86 extra clothing). Lots of assumptions in there, including extra dry cleaning & wearing out 1 extra pair of pants & 1 pair shoes per year since I bike in my work clothes.

Raw "Driving" savings is approximately $13.25 -- that is, I save about 25 cents per mile not driven (again, lots of assumptions in there including depreciation, when I get a new car, etc.

So, in theory I'm saving about a buck fifty a trip.

However, on a "real cash flow" basis, I've actually saved around $900 in two years. Most of that is because my car insurance dropped $360 / year when I switched to bike commuting, and my maintenance expenses have been less than budgeted.

Parking at my job is over $400/ year, so I'm saving money commuting. My husband works at a bike shop, so gear is less $ than it could be, and we'd get gear anyway, whether for the commuter bikes, the road bikes, his mt. bike, etc.

Laundry has not increased, I always have 1-2 loads/ wk of workout clothes and it's the same even if I bike in all 5 days. My commute is only 13 miles round trip so I don't see a big increase in food either.

The big thing is that if I were to drive everyday, we'd probably need to get the second car fixed, who knows what that might cost, $500-$1000 I'd guess. Right now, it just sits in the garage and we survive quite well on just 1 car.

I definitely agree with those saying if you didn't bike commute you'd want to get exercise some other way, so you'd still have the extra workout clothes laundry and the extra food due to calorie burn. If you didn't want to exercise some other way, you'd probably have HUGE medical costs in a few years anyway.

There are a number of ways of thinking about it.

First, as mentioned, selling the car (or a car) is the winner. You save money when you do that.

However, the way I look at it is, if I weren't fixated on cycling I'd have some other hobby I blow money on. Friends and family would buy me other crap for Christmas. So if I spend my "fun" money on biking stuff instead of, say, electronics and such, that spending doesn't really fit in the calculations.

That's why commuting math is so convoluted. Cycling is my means of transportation, recreation, exercise, and a hobby. When you consider one thing fills all those needs, it's pretty cheap.

Money? Saving money? What's money got to do with it?

How about this:

> Best health investment for the $ I've ever made. I'm still overweight, and losing it slowly. My heart, lungs and muscles are healthy as can be. The doctor is impressed and so am I.
> No more spewing carbon smoke into the air 2-4 times daily.
> No more sitting in traffic getting agro over sitting in traffic. My mental health is better because of riding. Free of charge
therapy, if you will.
> The truck sits in the driveway, waiting to be sold this Spring or Summer. There are now 41 miles on the odometer since November 3rd.
> I use the bus system around here too. It's a cheap and valuable investment.
> The gear that we all need to buy pays for itself quicker than any fossil fuel ever will.
> For a 25 mile round-trip (described in OP), there wouldn't be a real need for "extra" food as that's not too many miles.

I say, "screw the money" .. and ... , "are you happy?" I'm not happy buying gas, sitting in a car, sitting around, etc.

You start saving money the day you should have a heart attack but you don't because you've been enjoying a healthy lifestyle thanks to bike commuting.

I think i save some money but, sincerely, i don't mind.

-Parking at my office: 720 € / year at best.
-Here gas is over 3,75 €/gallon and my comute would be a 25 mile round trip on a van.

I think i could justify buying a Salsa El Mariachi frame showing those numbers to my wife...

Coque.

Good stuff bro