topslop1

cleared, yes im boring.

topslop1

That's awful.. get her into cycling and out of tennis asap.

Edit: I could easily spend $4-5k a year doing shooting sports / 3 gun and that's without any equipment re-investment...just ammo alone.. I touched on that stuff a little bit when I was younger (and living at home) but my god the expense... just sucked. If you shoot 300 rounds a weekend (not really an excessive amount if 100 for handgun, 100 for rifle, 100 for shotgun, at an average of .33 a round) you're going to average $100/day.

PepeM

Or tell her to learn from the internet rather than take lessons, play on public courts, get her uniform and racquets in Walmart, and instead of travelling (competitions I'm guessing) to do whatever the equivalent of Zwift/Strava is (Wii tennis?)

topslop1

Good to hear that you've made the switch to 'engineer' a better future.. har har har. I sometimes spit at the machine that I drive in the sense that there's some pretty crappy things going on for the commoner while driving it.. e.g. I am paid ~20-25% of what I earn for the company... If that's the standard operating procedure for most places then I really only have a few options for future success: 1. work with much larger items / projects (move to construction p.m.) so that my 20-25% is off a much larger pot OR 2. start my own business of some kind at some point.

WalksOn2Wheels

I have some advice for you: Find someone you actually love and who will go into a marriage with you under the assumption that relationships are hard work and divorce is not an option. At the same time: be a spouse who is worth sticking with and being loyal to.

Dan333SP

Get an attorney and get an iron-clad prenup, and don't spend time wondering about being screwed monetarily by divorce when you're thinking of getting married. Obsessing over that sort of outcome doesn't seem like it would be the building block of a happy marriage.

Edit: Exactly what @WalksOn2Wheels said.

My wife insisted on a pre-nup because there's family money she needs to protect and she's a lawyer so she'll always earn more, but since the day that was signed we've spent 0 time dwelling on it and just work on being good partners to each other. If I sat and wondered what would happen to my finances if we split up, I wouldn't be able to enjoy our time together.

WalksOn2Wheels

In my second year of college, I was sharing a house with three other guys. One of them was getting married at the end of the year. I distinctly remember sitting in the back seat of his car while his fiance got out to get something in the house real quick. He looked kind of wistful and said "It's just scary, you know?" "Why's that?" I asked. "Because you just never know if it's going to work out."

Yeah, they're screwed. That was about 15 years ago. If I could remember his last name, I'd look them up, but I can probably guess the end result.

topslop1

Agree here, but I can't throw my head in the sand over the money thing either.. I'd have to think long and hard if I was head over heels for someone without good work ethic and or on $8/hr.. can't really afford life/family at that low a pay rate.

topslop1

I think having doubt or any kind of doubt is just human, no? At least even thinking of a possibility is human? I don't think you can say that the 40-50% divorce rate is triggered just by someone saying 'you never know if it'll work' at the beginning of tying the knot?

I'm a realist with statistics in the sense that 1 out of 2 is some scary odds to screw around with in terms of your life savings or being able to prosper financially (if we take the earlier post from the divorcee into consideration)

I'm late 20's and still trying to get settled into life anyhow so I have a very 'career first' 'life later' mentality unfortunately.

RPK79

Wowzas. I don't do the tennis thing, but there are free courts all over the place around here. I would think if you wanted to you could get by with a new racket every few years and some balls.

WalksOn2Wheels

Wow, I didn't think a thread about the expense of cycling would end up being about marriage, but here we go.

It's not about the possibility, it's about entertaining the possibility before you even enter into the marriage. It is now a "go to" option when things get tough. Things used to be really bad and women would be under social pressure to stay in abusive marriages, and none of the applies here, but the modern thought is "If it doesn't work, I'll just leave" and suddenly no one is fully committed. There has to be an in between where people do not enter into marriage lightly and do so with the intent that it is really "until death do us part" PROVIDED that neither of you cheat on each other, abuse each other, lie, steal, deceive etc. You just have to be willing to be that person and find someone else who is willing to be that person. It would take something EXTREME for me to decide I needed to divorce my wife. And she is also dedicated to me. But yes, the second I go and break that trust, I expect her to operate her legal right to a divorce, but being dedicated to each other we both actively avoid wronging each other in order to keep our marriage intact.

Dan333SP

A prenup can alleviate a lot of the worry you're having.

Still, your point about marrying someone who makes much less than you is a valid concern, it's really hard to avoid resentment on some level if you feel like you're financing someone's lack of ambition, but that's a massive oversimplification and every couple will have their own dynamic and way of addressing that imbalance. The underlying factor has to be loving them as a person, and for me that has nothing to do with earning capacity.

Like I've posted before, I make a good deal less than my wife, but we are totally open about our feelings in that regard and have reached compromises on how to handle it (like proportional bill pay and me doing the housework ect.). If career moves bridge that gap somewhat in our future, great. I hope they do, but that factor alone is not enough to damage our relationship.

Dan333SP

Wife and I play tennis together during the summer. Cost per year? A couple cans of balls, so maybe $10?

I guess you "should" get your raquet re-strung every few months and could get the newest shoes/gear, but we aren't winning tournaments, we're just playing for fun.

It's like the rec rider on a bike using the same chain/cables the bike came with 15 years ago. It makes us cringe, but who cares if they still work?

topslop1

Yeah you can find ways to spend it if you like it - bikes and or tennis sure, anything. Lessons though... ehhhh that's like having a coach for bicycling and having a nutritionist and then having a good chiropractor... and then at that point you better be winning some difficult races right?

Marcus_Ti

Put it in perspective. Parking a car in downtown here is $9/day, nevermind special "event parking" rates. That comes out to $2,350 in money lost paying for rent for a place to put your car for a 40/hour-52/week job.

$250 in travel sounds like gas money.

People are simply terrible at judging character. Flipping a coin is about as good a call, statistically. And people are willing to turn a blind-eye to warning signs, because hormones and feelings. Everyone always puts on their very best-face in front of others, men and women both do it. Cleaning up the apartment for company, dressing up, being polite and watching language, and so on. It is all about compromise and people working together for the better of both-things go wrong when people want THEIR way or else.

Until you've lived with someone through their lifetime ups-and-downs and their reactions to them as well as your own, well you don't really know them or yourself.

When my brother got hitched...he was always hearing from his wife about all he was doing wrong (which he kind of was-nice guy, but we all have our flaws), and constantly hearing about his wife's perfect girlfriends with their perfect marriages. Well guess what? Turns out her GFs were lying to her and putting on a good face. Inside of a year ALL those girlfriends were divorced, and the guys ran away.

longbeachgary

Running = shoes and shorts

Cycling = bike, helmet, shorts, base layer, jersey, tires, jacket, knee warmers, leg warmers, shoes, cleats, chain lube, tubes, cyclocomputer, lights, special socks, gloves, tool kit and other consumables.

This is why we love cycling.....

mooder

^ This

I bought a used Opus Andante 2008 for 750$ 5 years ago. Bit over priced, but was my first buy and my first mistake. The offering on kijiji (most popular local classified) is very bad. People sell their 2-3 yo bikes for 75+% of price when new. You can get cheaper new bike if you buy it end season. It's ridiculous!
Since every one buy from local bike shop, the used market pricing is nearly the same price of what you can get online.

The shoes I bought for 130$ are 292$ here:
Giro Trans E70 road shoe - | Primeau Velo

Anyway, I subscribed to my university's bike club and can't wait to try on my new stuff! That's also why I put a bit too much money in it. There are competitions and I wanted to be fully equipped.

mcours2006

This is true. I ran for 10+ years before getting into cycling. I might have gone through 3-4 pairs of shoes/year, but I bought them in bulk and on sale, so cost might be $250, at the most, but often I'd squeeze extra mileage out of a pair. Winter running cost a bit more with thicker tights and jacket, but not that much more, and these you didn't have to replace them annually.

Drew Eckhardt 

It's almost free.

$40 tire every 5000 miles, $25 chain every 5000 miles, $5 shift cable every 2000, $5 housing every 4000, $20 cleats every 15,000, $10 bar tape every 10,000 $45 cassette every 20,000, $30 bottom bracket every 15,000 = $0.02 per mile. $0.40 a week, $21 a year.

Even durable equipment is inexpensive. With 19 years so far on my $900 titanium frame I haven't spent $4/month which barely buys a nice cup of coffee.

I've been wearing the same SPD shoes for at least 13 years (they have pink tinted primer spots from a 2001-2003 painting project)

$40 each from the UK but they're long lasting for a low per mile cost. I have 8000 miles on my front tire and 6000 on the rear with life left.

With kids in their odyssey years I bought a bunch of new previous season custom sizing samples and team left overs. You can't beat paying $15-$30 for $80 jerseys.

Drew Eckhardt 

Good tires are worth 15-20W @ 20 MPH beyond mediocre ones. That's in line with the difference between maximum one-hour and ten-minute power. It's huge.

Drew Eckhardt 

I turned two pairs transparent in less than two years in spite of rotating them with other shorts.

I have Pearl Izumi shorts I bought in 1997 which have yet to do that, although the leg elastic/gripper is completely worn out

ptempel

+1 I bought the Look Keo 2 Max pedals for ~$62 new at Ribble. An sure that they could also have decent deals for Shimano SPD-SL as well.

Hiro11

We can afford it. It's not the money, it's more heading off complaints about yet another jersey...

My point is most any sport gets expensive if you let it. Also, anyone thinking running is "cheap" has never ran with a bunch of yuppies. They can make anything expensive.

topslop1

That's funny as hell - not to mention my apartment even when cleaned up is still a mess so no misrepresentation here .

rmfnla

You need to find a meeting...