Yeah, I prefer to just stay healthy. Actually you could probably estimate it statistically. In fact it has been done, I don't know about dollar-wise but there was a study that indicated that the health benefits of cycling outweighed the danger of getting killed/injured by 20:1. You may be able to extrapolate that into dollars if you went to the original study and figured out what health problems were avoided, and how much living with heart disease for 15 years costs.

Sure, some people wouldn't get heart disease anyway. But with the US health system the way it is these days, if you're one of the people who avoid it due to exercise, you probably just avoided a few hundred thousand dollars worth of medical expenses at least, not to mention whatever price tag you care to attach to being healthy for 15 years rather than being unable to be physically active and having to spend time in hospitals, etc.

Actually now that I think of it, I can give a slight input to that. I stopped riding for 4 months last winter in order to concentrate on other things. After only 5 or 6 weeks my blood pressure (taken during a blood drive) was so high that the nurses kicked my ass out of the blood drive with a note for my doctor and made me promise to go there the next day.

I did and I went onto medications immediately.

Now that I'm about 8 weeks back on my bike, I've stopped the meds several weeks ago (I test my BP daily and my doctor is OK with me altering my dosage as needed) and my blood pressure and resting pulse are both far lower than they were even on the highest med dosage that I ever got to.

I'm also losing weight, which is helping the blood pressure as well. I was never able to lose weight before I started cycling.

If you use non-insurance-copay numbers, I was looking at $250/year for a couple of office visits, another $200/year for tests, and $720/year for meds. That's for a very mild and cheaply treatable condition, but one that, if left untreated could lead to renal failure which is another way of saying "slowly dying" and destroys quality of life.

If you start getting into the fact that exercise has been shown to reduce the chances of everything from diabetes to cancer, the benefits could easily run into tens of thousands a year per person.

I started doing local errands on the bike this year and haven't given much thought to the cost-benefit vs. driving. I did however splurge on a new Timbuk2 so I have another 120 ish miles to 'pay it off' in gas savings. I like the feeling of having run around all day goofing off and having left the truck in the garage all day :-)

Time spent on the bike vs. at the office or at hoem with family. No offense, but my drive is 20 mins (highway) and my ride is two hours (lots of hills). I still do it, but you have to factor that in.

I'll admit it here, personally that time is on the plus side. The time spent driving, invariably annoying me or at the very least keying me up if even a small degree, has to be a loss.

A guy on another thread was way high on his "cost of commuting" and got a little bent out of shape about it, but he is right about one thing: Given a choice, we generally do it if we enjoy it and not for the savings. And however we most enjoy doing it, with the equipment we feel like paying for. It doesn't have to cost much more than, well, nothing, but the more you want to enjoy it train or branch out into other cycling pursuits the more it costs.

haha that was me. but bent out of shape? :/

And allez3 I totally agree with the time thing. But to counter my negative thinking I remember how when I was visiting DC for a medical forum I saw people commute 1-2 hours one way just to get to work.

Since there is no monetary amount that can be assigned to this it can't be factored into a spreadsheet.

I'm probably in the middle on that in that I won't buy the equipment if I don't feel like I've earned it through gas savings, etc. There is a 'minimum' I'll purchase like blinkie light, etc. for safety or the law but other things I have to justify to myself. The wife says "get it" but I don't like letting go of the wallet like that.

If I had a choice in a commute time of 20 minutes by motor vehicle or 2 hours by bicycle, the motor vehicle would win hands down every time. I can factor in the cost difference in my personal time lost, in which I could be doing home/vehicle repairs other than paying someone else to do it, plus the added cost of bike maintenance/wear.

I still get amused by posts claiming that one can have (what I consider) a full on year round commute, and be able to only spend 50 dollars or less a year on bicycle maintenance.

Well you seemed a little adamant let's say, but I just wanted to make sure you got credit for the excellent points if anyone cared to check that thread. I think I personally couldn't commute much more than an hour each way but if someone enjoyed it that much, I can see how they'd consider it a positive. Someone said they commute and also train for example, to the tune of 15,000 miles per year. That's more than double what I do and some people think I'm crazy ... it's all relative. Basically I can't see charging that time to the cost of commuting if I'd be riding that much anyway. Equipment, I think you have to look at it the same way.