How do you afford to ride?

[Colapop]

...is a good way to learn about how hard it's going to be later on when you have your own kids.

S'ok bub I aint mad atcha... just trying to work out how to afford my 'habit'

[adiddy]

yeah its good budgeting...
i see where u r coming from colapop , plus u "older" people have mortgages etc ....

[Steam]

try beign a student and playing sport 6 nights a week during winter

Oh you poor poor baby, being forced to play all that sport, no time to make money, boohoo.

[Swoop]

I have given up cigarettes, P and Cocaine...

Oh crap. I never started either of those addictions, so just divert the $$$'s that WOULD have been spent on those!

[Ixion]

My argument is that bike riding pays for itself.

If one is working , travel to work and back must be regarded as an inevitable expense, as is some other travel (doctors etc). And even if not working , some travel will be necessary.

I budget for all travel using the Pajero. Then almost always take the bike. This has a double benefit. (a) I get to ride to work etc. Riding's riding. I don't enjoy the trip to work as much as a spin in the countryside, but it's riding, and all riding is fun. And (b) it costs much less by bike, so the difference saved pays for the extra rego and WoF for the bike and still leaves a surplus that I can legitimately devote to riding at the weekend .

Only problem is that now I no longer have a 250, the surplus is not so great. I'm wondering whether I made a mistake there.

The actual cost of owning the bike is not much (not for mine, anyway). Rego is $5 a week, wof $2 a week. Depreciation on the sort of bikes I have is trivial in dollar terms (maybe a bit more significant in real terms).

Most other expenses are running expenses. So long as they are less than the Pajero, I'm ahead on the spreadsheet. Tyres are my biggest worry, don't get me started on that subject.

EDIT Actually, the real question should be , how do you justify having a cage as well as the bike. When I was young many families could not afford a car, and just had a bike. And others had a car, but very seldom used it, it was just for weekends and funerals. Everyday transport was by bike . That was quite common. It is really quite rare that one needs a car, just the occasional big thing that needs to be carried. I still don't accept the "but the children " thing. Bikes have pillion seats. And saddlebags.

[Racey Rider]

Having had a 7 year go at self employment (which paid less than minimum wage), and now being unemployed for 16 months, while feeding three kids and a wife, I have to wonder 'How I get to Race?'.

The main answer is Sponsorship, compromise and tight budgeting.

Sponsorship:
Without my Sponsorship, which this year paid about half my costs of Racing Street stocks in the winter series, I wouldn't be able to ride. The fact that I Really needed sponsorship meant that I Really put effort into getting it, and then more effort into Doing things for my sponsor to make it worth their while.

The rest of the money comes from the family budget, which is why I can only race one series a year.

Compromise:
I'd love to be riding a bigger bike, but if one can only afford a street stock,, then that is better than nothing. I paid $800 for a broken KR150 and slowing, working on it myself, learn't the hard way about what not to do to it.
Would like to get it Dyno-tuned one day, but at the moment it's just make little changes at the track each time and see what happens.
On dry days I use the old, old, front tyre that came with the bike. Was badly shaped, cracking and with out much tread,,, but it works ok in the dry. On wet days I now have a half used TT900 on another rim I can swap too.
Sleeping in the car is the go most times, to save money. Make sandwich's before I go, but don't eat much on a race day anyway.
When I came off and damaged my hand at the last track day, it was ether,, get it checked out at a doctors,,, or have petrol money to get home again ,, not both.

Budgeting:
The household budget has to be looked at carefully.
Do I want to go out to the movies? or go racing?
Out for tea? or go racing?
do I really need new jeans/shoes/undees? or am I going racing?

Needless to say... I don't have much of a life, other than waiting for the next race day I can get too!
Mid life crisis's have to be appeased!

[t3mp0r4ry nzr]

I sell drugs on the side

[Disco Dan]

I sell drugs on the side

yeah helps..

i have a car and bike, mini uses flob all gas little more than bike.

fulltime student, so get student allowance but that barely pays for my social expenses

..do pc repairs when i can which pays for reg, wof and speeding tickets

very hard! ...may give up smoking soon!

[nighthawk]

Sure know the feeling C/P, its hard to keep ahead and do the things you enjoy,hence for us the bike only comes out in fine weather or on the odd weekend we don't have the kids.Mind you as you know fine days or reasonable weather has been a scarse commodity here of late

[thehollowmen]

...is a good way to learn about how hard it's going to be later on when you have your own kids.

Point. And that's one reason I've made sure I don't/won't have kids.

I've also given up drinking too...

[xwhatsit]

Hahahaha.

This question made me laugh.

I'm a student, and a poor one at that.

The question for me is... how can I NOT afford a bike? I used to catch the bus, to and from work, uni, yadayada. I live in Mangere Bridge, and everything is in the city and my work is in Remmers. My monthly bus pass (the cheapest option) was $160 a month.

$160 a month!

That's like more than a quarter of my wages; $40 a week.

On the bike I pay perhaps $20 a week at most in fuel, possibly only $10 if I'm careful. Rego, insurance, WOF of course... but it would still be well under $40. Plus, a bike is just better than a bus in any terms. I can leave half an hour to an hour later, depending on traffic and how many different buses I have to catch to get to where I want to go. In addition, where I live, often there is a bus only every hour, so I may get to where I want to go 45 minutes early. I value my time quite highly, I never seem to have enough hours to sleep, study, eat, work, and have some sort of social activity.

Of course there's the initial outlay, and extra costs like cracking cylinder heads as I've just done. However I would still wager I'm better off at the end of the day financially compared to a bus. Plus there's the intangibles... the grin on your face you get riding along the waterfront at St Heliers at 9PM with the streetlights shining on the rain-soaked road...

[Bonez]

Some of you have families to look after, some of you are unemployed or students. How do you afford to ride?

I love to ride, but I'm about to join the ranks of the unemployed next week, and the car and bike services coming up are daunting.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to sell my baby or anything. First I'm going to give up eating or something. I'm curious as to how some of you scrape by with this expensive habit.

I just buy cheap ol shitters(20- 30 years old or thereabouts http://bonezs-blog.blogspot.com/ ) which are cheap on tires and ancillieries, minimal plastic work. Still plenty about. Hell some are even deemed "classics". If they crap out in a big way I haven't too much "invested", just scrap them and use what I can to keep the others going. Each time I arrive home without a major drama after a long ride , which is the majority of the time I might add, is always a bonus.

Have a reasonable job at the moment and can afford something more recent but old habits are hard to kill.

[yungatart]

Budget! Mstrs is of Scottish descent, so has a pretty good control of $$, far better than me, so I am happy to leave it up to him to be honest.
Hxc has some expensive pastimes, but now that I am not carting him around in the Commodore on a daily basis, the petrol in the car lasts a lot longer, which leaves more available for riding. He fillls his own bike but occasionally we top it up for him, he works only about 5 hrs per week so doesn't have lots of cash.
Kids, mortgages, tax bills, rates etc can certainly leave huge holes in bank a/cs, but we always get by, I guess

[Mr. Peanut]

Services? If it aint broke dont fix it

[RantyDave]

My argument is that bike riding pays for itself.

Quite. I need to get to work. The options are bus, scooter, bike, car. I could cycle in but I'm not hard enough (although this would probably be the ideal solution in a lot of ways). The scooter is by far the most practical and will be the fallback if money's tight. Bike and car cost, I guess, more or less the same ... but I get a much better bike than I could even think about affording as a car. And parking's free, of course.

From that point on the bike is a free weekend toy

EDIT Actually, the real question should be , how do you justify having a cage as well as the bike.

I have a family too - we couldn't really not have one. The luxury is having the bike over a scooter, a scooter over a pedal bike, and I'd rather crawl than catch the bus any more.

Dave