Ive noticed that most of my LBS do not offer financing and if they do its only for 6 months. Some offer the lay a way system but who wants to do that 90's style of purchase. How do they expect us to pay for a expensive road bike? Anyone .. post how to purchased your road bike. The best method of paying off the bike you have found. Did your LBS do financing? Did you open a new card with 0.0% apr for a year? Discuss

I tried cash, the shop wasn't willing to offer a further discount. Put the bike on AmEx paid it off immediately.

If you can't pay for it immediately, you need to think seriously about affording the bike. For most of us these are toys/exercise gear, other things are more important, such as having an emergency fund.

of course , my emergency fund never gets dipped into. Thats why im wondering what everyone else did to afford.

AMEX and enjoy the points.

Unless, and I mean this in the most extreme cases, your bike is your only mode of transportation to get to work, then don't finance a bike.

I am a firm believer in only buying what you can afford. If you can't pay cash then you don't need it. The only exceptions are a home purchase, maybe a car if you can get very, very low rates, and anytime you can get 0% financing. There is a large used market if you want to find something in your price range. Start saving and get it when you can pay cash.

We paid off our house last year and it feels great! Now comes college cost for three boys.

Wrote a check.

I don't go into debt for toys (even though cycling is important to my physical and mental health).

I used cc and got the points then paid it off.

I steal my bikes.

I've done this in the past, in lieu of taking money from savings. As long as you have the cash to pay it off at any time it can be an ok strategy. However, with money market/savings account rates virtually at zero, it's not worth the hassle.

Opening the account takes a bit of effort; it can negatively affect your credit score; you've got another bill to pay for 12 months, and if you mess up, one late fee will exceed your gain by an order of magnitude.

If you buy a $5,000 bike, finance it on a 0% 12 month promotional card, you'll save about $25 compared to taking $5,000 out of savings (assuming .5% interest rate, which is pretty good today.

Not worth the hassle, and potential pitfalls.

And if you don't have the $5,000 from which you can part, you shouldn't buy a $5,000 bike.

Steal is real?

I anticipate this getting interesting.

This begs the question: is there a financial market for bike financing?

I know Trek did something like that as "factory financing" several years ago, but I haven't seen anything since.

Only if we can get someone to come in and say, buy what you want; you deserve it; this is what credit's for, it's necessary to support our consumer driven economy, life's too short, it's an investment in your health, better than wasting money on hookers and blow,.....

Did I miss anything?

Heck yeah you did! You shouldn't spend 10k on a bike, you should spend 3k and donate the rest to charity.

(I rarely use cash - I use my amex and I pay it off monthly.)

Probably not - compared with the general population there aren't many people who ride bikes, let alone extremely expensive ones. Bikes are relatively small purchases compared with something like a home or car or other types of loans, so even with high rates the interest would be very small. It would be nice for the buyer, but hard to imagine making significant money as the lender...

If somebody really wants a nice bike, just work on saving. Avoid eating out one extra time per week, make lunch, stop buying expensive clothes for a couple months... whatever, there are ways to save for a bike.

...anticipating someone will submit a post reflecting their doctoral thesis in microeconomics...then someone will ask for data and proof...

Trek still does.

I sold a bunch of photography gear and other non-bike hobby stuff to buy bike stuff. Since I married 10 years ago, I have yet to actually see a paycheck as it goes into the account and pays for our wonderful lifestyle. Any toy money comes from other toys that I can hock.

That's only half the equation. We also need the people who blame the most recent economic collapse on people financing bicycles, which was caused by Michelle Obama's interest in obesity, of course.

There are bunch of companies that do this sort of financing. Same companies that do 12 months same as cash for furniture stores, electronics stores etc. They don't care that it's a bike instead of a 60" LCD TV. They're not lending against the bike, or the TV as collateral.

The model is they pay the store a % of the price financed, so they get a few percent cut upfront. Then they make most of their money on the customers who don't pay off in full during the promotional term, and they get 24% interest or so, from the original date of purchase. And they make some money on people who pay off in time, but borrow other money from them.

If it wasn't profitable, you wouldn't see all the 0% promotional interest offers that you do.

Tru Dat

Ha! That's pretty much what I did. Sold my brewing equipment and xbox and put that towards the bike.

I did 0% financing on the frameset and paid cash or used my debit card for everything else.

I think the layaway plan of 90 days isn't bad. it's not financing the bike. Now to add to what others have said it's best to have the funds for it. If you can't come up with the funds in 90 days.....you really can't afford that bike.