Cycling is an expensive hobby .. Yes or No

Karl2010

Damm its expensive.

seemunkee

Depends. First it all depends on what you consider expensive. It also depens on how you do it. You can buy a bike and go ride it OR you can contiunually lust after the latest carbon, wear expensive kit, and want to go ride in exotic places.

Karl2010

Only got my first road bike in Feb 2010.

Now i wanna take the tripple ultegra groupset & fulcrum 7 wheels off my Ribble Gran Fondo and put it on a Van Nicholas Ti Amazon (which i dont even have)

Get Campag s/record groupset & Carbone wheels to put the on my Ribble.

Get paniers for the Van Nicholas.

Just ordered Another pair of bib shorts, and needed some bib tights because its still too f***ing cold for shorts, a helmet, padded underwear, lamuscle flapjacks for the road.

Plus i want a decent bike box for chucking the bike on a plane.

I also need to sort insurance out.

Im addicted.

Flasheart

I suppose it can be as expensive or inexpensive as you want it to be.
My bike cost £650.00 and it's good enough for me at my level.
I've spend another couple of hundred on pedals, saddle, shoes and lycra in the 14 months since I've had it.
At the moment I don't have the funds for sportive fees and the associated costs, so I just go out and ride on my own most of the time.
I'm still a cyclist and it only costs me wear and tear costs.

holmeboy

YES

Radioactiveman

It is as expensive as you want it to be, which in my case is a yes.

However the most important upgrade you can make in terms of performance is yourself.

Homer J

I said yes coz it is for me, but if you compare it with some other sports i'm sure they would be just as expensive. Eg Golf, I couldn't believe it when my uncle said he spent £500 on 1 bat, and you can spend more! Don't know how many there is in a bag but i guess it adds up to a bloody good bike. Then there's club fee's and stuff.

surreyxc

it depends on how you cycle. If you cycle just on the weekends but still desire all the expensive kit then yes it is expensive. If on the other hand you cycle not just for pleasure but also as transport then it is not too bad. For instance I cycle everyday to work, and use it as my main mode of transport. So I probably save over £1500 per annum on fuel, tax etc.

ScaldedCat

It's as expensive as you make it. You could cycle 7 days a week on a bike costing very little and get enormous enjoyment, you could spend 3 grand on a bike and rarely ride it because you don't enjoy it.

Depends what kind of cycling your hobby entails, if you want to race and be competetive then obiously it will cost. if you want to look as though you race and are competetive then, yet again it's gonna be pricey.
If you want to get out and enjoy the countryside or join a local club for the social side of cycling or just cycle for fitness then it needn't be expensive.

Mettan

Once you've got your bike (s) and your kit, your good to go. Running costs are ok.

Shifters seem expensive though

mrushton

It's getting more expensive as the big manufacturers ramp the price up to match their components that are heading to the point of being compatible only with that marque and possibly soecific within that mark eg Dura Ace freehubs on Easton being different to Ultegra freehubs on Easton. People like Prendas put out great kit at a fair price but everyone seems to want a share of the Assos/Rapha market. Of course there is cheaper stuff available but for a rider who has a steel bike with Look Delta pedalson 9 speed it's getting harder to source the bits.

freehub

Very expensive, you have to remember it's guaranteed you WILL need to buy new wheels eventually, new brake pads, new chainraings, cassettes, cleats, cables (inner/outer), tyres, chain and BB etc...

That makes it an expensive hobby.

Mccaria

I travel to work with two friends and invariably we end up discussing our hobbies. One has a helicopter, one has a boat. Cycling is cheap.

john-e-big-guns

Yes....Tyres esp, when you think about how much matrials in them, I won't run cheap tyres but £50 a 'Shod' is expensive...we are paying for the next years technology thats why everything is over priced....the differance in mark-up prices with some retail outlets is way over the top

freehub

Mccaria wrote:

I travel to work with two friends and invariably we end up discussing our hobbies. One has a helicopter, one has a boat. Cycling is cheap.

Someone owns a jumbo jet, helicopters are cheap.

Mccaria

Freehub - that friend doesn't catch the train

domhnall_dearg

Not only is cycling expensive in money terms, it's also very expensive in terms of time. Just think of all the things you could have done while on that 4 hour ride at the weekend. And all the money you could have spent doing them. So I suppose what I'm saying is that cycling saves you money just by stopping you spending it on other, less important things, like family and home.

Seriously, Homer J has a good point. Other hobbies can be equally, if not more expensive. When I bought my current bike (£850 on ebay) I discussed it with a golf playing friend and his attitude was "How much for a bike!". It then transpired that the same day, he'd spent £200 on a putter, one of 14 allowed sticks, so that's about £2800 for clubs (I'm pretty sure I could get a nice bike for that ). And then there's golf clubs (where you play rather than what you play with). These are slightly more expensive than cycling clubs (I think the one he's a member of is about £1500 per year), you've also got green fees etc. Also there's no escaping these fees, with cycling it's find a road and ride along it, you can't do that with golf.

So cycling is quite a cheap hobby although there are cheaper.


This also proves that by picking your comparison carefully you can convince yourself of nearly anything.

Woosha

Cycling is expensive there is no doubt about that just ask my wife but then again being lazy does get expensive to if you end up having medical problems from not exercising.

As mentioned above golf is expensive and I think golf is more expensive by the time you add up all the green fees, equipment etc. Golf is ongoing cost as cycling once you get all the gear you can choose not to upgrade etc.

If your spending money on sporting equipment and using it is it such a bad thing?

freehub

Mccaria wrote:

Freehub - that friend doesn't catch the train

I was proving a point, someone who owned and ran a plane such as a jumbo jet could think of a helicopter as a cheapo hobby and there plane hobby as being expensive, it does not mean helicopter hobby is cheap.

Cycling is expensive for such a sport.

Karl2010

Domhnall Dearg wrote:

This also proves that by picking your comparison carefully you can convince yourself of nearly anything.

+1

As for cycling being an expensive hobby.
I guess it depends how much money you've got.

Ive spent a fair bit on the credit card since Feb and im thinking of the holidays & stuff i could be having with that money. For me personaly, im going through the SETUP stage. Once ive got that sorted out i know the running costs will be cheeper. But there is just so much stuff to buy & learn. (Need tools aswell.)

Think im gonna sell my car. I dont go very long distance in the car these days so might as well get shut. Its £800.00 a year just to keep it on the road. Ive got a van so if i realy need to go anywhere i can use that. I think ill be happy to use the trains more and be content with saving £800.00 per year.

bompington

From an old thread on cost per mile:

bompington wrote:

My old Raleigh cost £120 second hand, so far it's done 8,000 miles, that's 1.5p/mile.

In that time it's also had money spent on new accessories, replacement parts and consumables: rear mech, cassettes, chainset, cranks, chains, BB, brakes, wheels, tyres, tubes, lube, lights, batteries, computer, bottle cages, saddle, tools, there's bound to be stuff I've forgotten.
All that comes to around £580; and clothing comes to another £100, not including stuff replaced by an insurance payout.

So that comes to a nice convenient £800 (the estimates are reasonably close), which makes it 10p per mile so far. Most of the running gear has been replaced this year so I'm hoping it'll do another few thousand miles as a winter bike, hopefully 2 winters before needing any more major replacements, so the cost/mile will come down.

So in this case that's a lot more than just the purchase cost of the bike, I'll let you know in a couple of years how the new bike (£1K) compares.

But here's one comparison at least - I had a Mazda from 1994 to 2003 that covered 160,000 miles literally without anything going wrong, just routine servicing and replacement costs; I worked out that it cost me about 25p/mile - i can't really imagine you can run a car much cheaper than that.

Of course we'll not go into how much extra food cycling entitles me to eat...

The answer for the new bike? I rode about 200 miles on it before it was nicked, thanks to staggering incompetence allied to appalling coincidence it was under-insured and so I lost £500, therefore £2.50 per mile.

It's pretty obvious that it can be as expensive as you want it to be, and, despite the fact that I'll come on here regularly and drone on about how overpriced gear is marketed at the gullible, I feel the pull of shiny things as much as anyone - there are many factors that hold me back, for instance I like to think that I have a better relationship with my family than I do with my bike.
As for how cheap you can make it, there are limits - I reckon it must be quite hard to do any significant amount of road miles much cheaper than I've described above - but if I compare it with the kind of outdoor sports I have done over the years - skiing, climbing, canoeing - only hillwalking can beat it for bargain basement exercise, adrenaline, challenge and enjoyment.

Gav888

I voted no, so far cycling has cost me around £3500, that is for 2 bikes and all my gear which ive found reasonable.

I started cycling as its something ive always wanted to get into but never had the time to train or got round it, plus its a cheap way to race (once im fit enough) and your getting healthy at the same time

I used to be into motorbikes which took up my spare time and my spare cash, the bike was £6500 then leathers etc, all in all was about £8000, then insurance and running costs, each time I went out it was £10 for a full tank. Then track days on top of that.... thats an expensive hobby

But if I didnt have the motorbike £3500 is a lot on its own, but compared to what I used to pay for my hobby its cheap.

ben16v

all hobbies are expensive!
especially when added up together,
i`m into:
home cinema - HDprojectors, surround sound big tv`s, PS3 360 Wii etc
golf - clothes, clubs, courses etc
wakeboarding - board, bindings, wetsuit, boat time
cycling - bike, pedals, clothes etc
old VW Corrado - thanks god it still runs
and then number one love.... Stella mmmm... but i dont go out so save a bit of cash there lol

Mccaria

Freehub - it was a light hearted comparison of how judging the cost of cycling as a hobby is relative. I am not sure you can judge cycling in absolute terms as cheap or expensive.

Whether you judge cycling to be cheap or not will be a function of the proportion of your disposable income/wealth you spend on your hobby, the opportunity cost of spending this money on your hobby versus something else (holiday, clothing, food etc) and the perceived value you gain from this expenditure.

Personally I find it helpful to have friends with more expensive hobbies as it is surpriising how easy it is to justify the cost of a pair of Assos shorts when compared to the cost of replacing a spotlight on a helicopter !

You can even make "cheap" hobbies expensive if you try. One friend is into running, which should cost very little - just running shoes and kit, but by the time you factor in the cost of entering and getting to marathons in Boston, Tokyo, New York etc.......

Gazzaputt

It's a blindingly expensive past time. i cannot believe really the tens of thousands I have spent over the years.

But I've enjoyed every penny of it.

Fogliettaz

I cycle to remain reasonably fit for my other 2 expensive hobbies, sailing and skiing. Now they are expensive but as said above all throughly enjoyable.

richk

The money I don't spend on petrol/train fares by commuting by bike covers the costs of all my cycling.

starlet_gt

my last hobby was cars, and I spent well over 10k and when I compare it to the amount I've spent on cycling, I'm making a hell of a saving. I think cycling is an expensive hobby but to my cars its nothing.

Pross

It can be expensive to start out but needn't be that bad once you have all the necessary gear especially if you are competent enough to do your own maintenance and repairs. Everything's relative - my one daughter's hobby is dancing, costs a few quid every now and again for costumes and about £5 per week for lessons. My other daughter is into show jumping and the monthly cost of owning and running a horse scare me (£120 livery, £10 food, £75 farrier, £90 horse and trailer insurance plus entry fees and fuel to get rider and horse to an event)! I could buy a lot of cycling gear and enter a few races for that each month. Both enjoy doing what they do though which makes it value for money in my book just as I think my cycling costs offer value for money, especially now I'm cycling to work whenever I can.

Headhuunter

Not at all expensive as far as I'm concerned. I don't feel the need to buy the latest Assos or Rapha kit, my lycra and other clothing comes from Decathlon or I wait to buy when sites like JE James, CRC or Wiggle have sales then I stock up. I reserve my cycling specific garb for weekend runs and ride to work in dirt cheap, multi pack cotton T shirts and shorts which cost even less.

I ride to work on a bike I bought on the bike to work scheme. Not only has bike to work slashed 40-50% off the cost of the bike, it saves me paying approx £100 per month on a train pass (in London). I also use it to get round London for shopping, social engagements etc etc and have no need for a car (cost couple of grand a year if you factor in depreciation of car, insurance, tax etc etc). Although I do belong to a gym, cycling keeps me fit so it's certainly not necessary for me to pay gym membership (about £500 per year) I just do because I also like to go to the gym now and then.

Admittedly I spent £800 on a carbon Focus bike a couple of years ago, on top of my commuter, specifically for weekend club rides, but overall as far as hobbies go, it's not especially expensive. I've got friends who spend way more on things like golf, sailing, windsurfing etc.

I do a lot of my own repairs or get my dad to, so don't spend much on that.

Cycling is as expensive as you want it to be. If you feel the need to buy over priced gear then that's your decision.

bobtbuilder

VERY expensive.

My Orbea Orca cost me £4,500 and the amount of time I spent on it cost me my 7 year relationship.

(It was still worth it).