I'm 33 and I miss still miss working in the shop where I worked some years ago...I visit there every week


quote of the day, man.

+1 (and don't go into debt for a bicycle... save your money)

It's not just buying Bike parts though, And i don't lust for a flashy bike, want a crap conversion for rain and snow, a nice one so i have an oldish fix, And the homemade carbon road frame is a project with costs ballooning at an alarming rate. and the kilo TT because ill be in the state so the whole thing will cost me less than 350 now that the candian dollar is worth more than the american. i will most likely will not end up with the kilo and The homemade carbon will proably not be a rideable bike untill 2009.

It's taking up and ever increasing portion of my life, My friends are getting sick of me and my bike retoric, instead of talking about somthing else im looking for new firends. and in fact the more people i meet the more i like my bike,

Ok, Kol.klink, in that case you HAVE TO read "The Third Policeman", by Flann O'Brien.

I have a '92 road bike that cost me about $450 new, and a '95 MTB that cost me about $650 new. I'm 31. I probably will buy a new bike soon, but only because I made a new bike a self-reward for meeting a goal. Others here may ride more seriously, or put on more miles than I do, and thus may need nicer, newer bikes more often, but I find justifying a new bike difficult.

I did the consumerism thing in the early aughts. You're 18 now, and you're probably going to have a couple of McJobs before you start earning in the middle class. When you hit the middle class, don't go nuts! Keep living your McJob lifestyle. Maybe focus on retirement savings, maybe focus on a rainy-day fund, or even start saving for a down-payment on a house. I took my first solidly non-McJob job as a chance to go surpass the Jones'. Looking back, with debt and expenses built around a $18k job, there were a lot of wise choices I passed up when I first started pulling down $30k. But hey, I probably had an XM radio before you, an MP3 head unit before you, and a Palm-based smartphone before you - far better choices than saving for a house, right?


If you want something, research it, plan to your needs, and don't borrow to buy. Save for a couple months, for example, and buy a high-quality bike for cash, keeping in mind that "high-quality" isn't the same thing as bling. Are you really so dedicated and awesome that a $4000 bike is twice as good as a $2000 bike? It's only worth the money if you are.

If you don't start learning to live below your means, you will be a slave to your stuff until your dying day. That doesn't mean not to buy good stuff, just have less stuff than you know you can comfortably afford.

That said, I didn't start getting a good cushion above sustenance until my mid-20's. Right now, I save about 30% of my salary into retirement, savings, and employee stock purchase plans. It took a while, but it's worth it. Driving a cheap car, not having cable, and living modestly translates into having a lot of freedom.

Coming home at night and knowing you have no debt is the best feeling in the world.

a carbon-fiber road bike with top of the line components is still about as expensive as a low-grade used car. and you never have to pay for gas. that's comforting to me when i want to buy things for my bike i probably don't need.

really get rid of that credit card...that is the best way to get into debt...and get screwed by it.
Keep your dreaming realistic...im in the same situation. I have a crappy ss/fg, and im not happy at all with it but its better than having nothing. and i dream about bikes now and i always dream about building a new bike for the summer...and im from toronto too by the way.

^listen to him. i owe visa like 2300 dollars. it sucks man. being a dumb kid once, i wish i had bikeforums to lead me in the right direction.

It's never enough.

You may feel the urge, but there's resisting it and putting yourself in debt because of it. I'm pretty good at resisting it, simply because I capped my credit card limit (no, don't raise it to try to get me to put myself into debt, you evil bank) and refuse to use it when I know I don't have the money in my bank account to back up the purchase. I'm going back to school this spring because I want to put my life on a better track, so any financial planning advice I offer is juvenile at best.

What I can say is avoid the damn credit card, be patient and work out a budget for what you can actually afford to spend. Welcome to learning how to use a spreadsheet. Then put that much (take it off your pay each month - immediately) in a savings account. Once it gets rolling it'll motivate you to keep going. I put $50 in my savings account every two weeks. By the time I use is (trip to iceland this coming August) it's going to be a nice amount.

Oh, and quit smoking. Run the numbers on that and it'll blow your mind.

Edit: You know the saying about how people work in bike shops to get deals on bikes, etc? Well, play that angle - never ever ever pay full price or even a regular sale price for something. You can do better. Be patient and wait for a ridiculous sale somewhere, race for a local shop and get a deal that way, if your work is something that could help the shop, set up a barter agreement, something, anything. Shops are (sometimes) run by perfectly normal people. In a lot of cases (I'm speaking from personal experience as a shop owner here) inventory is easier to give out than cash. We've bartered in the past with bikes/parts if someone we know offers a service we're interested in or if we seek them out.

^yeah, quitting smoking is hard. but damn they are expensive as sin.

Dude, 4 weeks into my fourth time quitting, I hear ya. I smoked for a decade and after my first season of racing this year I saw quite clearly what smoking had done to me. **** that ****, I want to ride my bike as fast as possible.

Edit: I don't know about you, but cigarettes are ridiculously expensive in Canada now. I used to smoke about a small pack/day. That would run me $65 or so per week and over three grand per year. How much bike swag would that buy you? It's buying me a new 29er and a new cyclocross bike in 2008 - I can't wait.

Well thanks for the advice, well to be fair i owe them like 300$, i get check today and payday's tuesday.
Thats getting paid off. I work in a shop now and get 50% off all parts you can get from lambert.

It's all cool as long as

1. You don't get into debt for it.

2. You remember that the more important thing is actually riding the bikes rather than buying new bits.

If 2 stops being true buy a car and go to show and shines.

You're not alone. I finally decided 2 bikes is enough for me and i sold everything else. That was a big step. Now i want to improve the 2 bikes i have all the time.. for example, i want the $100 EAI Goldmedal cog for no reason other than I've basically got the same problem you do! Good luck.

Low self-esteem makes me want to go shopping...

in general if you have a decent setup: putting more money into your bike will NOT make you have more fun on it.

it also won't make you any better at it. if anyone was wondering...

It stops when you make it stop. Theres no reason to crave so much **** you dont need.

I love all the anti-consumerist rhetoric but let me ask one quick question.

Do I seriously get to buy a Rivendale when i hit the 30's?

.. or a bad day ("I deserve something nice for myself"), or a boring day ("I'll buy this to fill the void in my life").

Too true, man.. I thought I had it licked with my Cannondale. It was durable, comfy, and I felt fine commuting and even riding long distances on it. Plus I could swap the bars and ride it on the track. But them OMGFRAME and OMGDISCWHEEL and WTFPAINTJOB and I'm down a grand. I sold a great conversion (no regrets), and I'll probably flip my road bike next season if this current build works out (easily switched between fixed and 8spd). So my only consolation is that I'm thinning out my stable. Hopefully I'll be down to just two bikes when this all is done.

Wait.. except for my college beater. But that'll actually be a beater. I hope. I'm setting a limit of $75 on it.

Good luck, man. Good luck.

They key is keeping your desires in line with your income. Why waste your time coveting something you don't have the money for?

+ on trying to get rid of the credit card, it could end up causing you a lot of trouble if you like shiny things.

my problem is i'll buy an old schwinn to canibalize for parts for my other old schwinns, but then i can't just get rid of the frame. so then i have to build that up for cheap, but still sell it for less than the build cost. And sometimes it's hard to sell b/c I'm afraid the new owner won't take care of them. Sheesh. My goal is to have the conversion/beater, the road bike, and the cruiser and nothing else by summer.

tomorrow is buy nothing day

good place to start