[Closed] Debt through MTB?

Even if it is just for protection of purchasing online its worth it,

There is a difference between using it for protection and getting into debt. The OP was stating they have £1700 of debt.

0% is fine, as long as you pay it off after the period, which most don't - hence why the banks keep offering you it!!

0% is fine, as long as you pay it off after the period, which most don't - hence why the banks keep offering you it!!
Not to mention 3% transfer fees

 

Plenty of cycling debt here but I guess I'm pretty materialistic and get enjoyment out of the stuff I buy. It's all serviceable debt anyhow not like a student getting into a £10k hole when let loose with a CC for the first time. I'd rather die broke having enjoyed buying/using bling stuff than try and take it with me (I don't have any dependants though which probably gives me a different perspective than some :p ).

Not to mention 3% transfer fees

made my mistake & learnt my lessons. got a 0% 12 month CC bought a meta 5, had a budget and a payback plan. should have been £2500. by the time it was built it was £2700 (forgot about cables, innertubes and helitape on the build :roll:) payback plan never quite went right and i ended up paying about £3k back in total.

the worst bit - i never liked the bike - replaced the frame (£850) with a £150 456 and sold the frame for £300.

don't do that anymore. next build took me 5 months - i bought a few bits each month until the parts pile totalled a bike.

Credit cards are only an issue if you have no self control.

They can actually be better than cash. For example the 0% ones let you mangage cash flow keeping the money in your account longer. Mine gives me points for flights. We get about 4 return flights (to Jersey to visit my brother in law) a year by putting everything throught the credit card. You can get cashback on plenty, nectar points, clubcard points, airmiles, give to charity etc. etc. This is not to mention the extra protection they offer when buying online (which was very useful with the old CRC shenanigans a year or so back). They are not just a method of borrowing money.

Also, does it count as debt if you spend on bikes rather than paying off your mortgage early?

I'm amazed so many live in their perfect little debt free bubbles! Not what national statistics would have you believe. 🙂

All of my bikes get put on credit, usually 0% but not always, I like the protection it offers (and have had to use it on more than 1 occasion) and also I'd rather earn on my savings or save more, than pay up front.

To the point that now the interest I earn feeds my bike habit, but still use that to pay off my 0% card. Last time round I had about £3k of bike and parts on 0% over 6 months, savings matured week before 0% ran out paid off! Credit companies secretly hate me.

I'm in about £500 worth of bike debt, although thats commuter/road bike debt not strictly MTB.

That includes a load of kit, panniers, rack, mudguards, commuting clothes etc.

I'll pay it all off before the 0% runs out and it'll still cost me less than getting the bus every day (and be 35 mins faster)

I'm amazed so many live in their perfect little debt free bubbles! Not what national statistics would have you believe.

All oh so sensible. Am I the only one who uses their CC to buy stuff they can't afford?

+lots - well said.

We have a bunch of general do-gooders methinks 😉

All my bikes and bits have been bought cash. In a triggers broom style, parts are generally swapped and upgraded around a decent frame. Though when feeling sorry for myself, I did bang a trip to Morzine I couldn't afford on the CC. Good job I was heading to a destination renowned for being cheap and cheerful eh? 😀

I can't see why some people are getting all preachy about not using credit though. Good bikes cost serious money. So if you can take advantage (properly) of a cheap finance deal, or 0% CC, then why the hell not?

I wonder how much debt a young privateer wc racer would rack up in a season. Must be loads.

I'm amazed so many live in their perfect little debt free bubbles!

Notice hardly anybody replied to my query about whether they had car loans.

😉

Don't drive (and never have, so no car loan). Lots of student loan (about 18k and climbing), quite a bit of that has gone on bike bits (check my recent buying history for proof of that).

My first (and only tbh) new MTB was a Saracen hardtrax from Halfords, bought by my Mother on finance for me, and I paid it off.

When I was 18 I was in a car accident from which I got 10k insurance payout, this was free money (as in not allocated or needed for anything) that I spunked up the wall. This ran out and I got 2 credit cards to fill the void.

I ended up having to go to my parents after about a year of living with 2 maxed out credit cards that I could only just afford to pay, so it was a vicious cycle that left me depressed and in despair.

Over a decade later, I have 3 credit cards, 1 has £0 on it, the other is a 0% balance transfer from an old student related debt, and the new one has been set up with a 0% balance transfer to sort out my SO's finances. I'm basically doing what my Father did for me all those years ago.

I think I'm getting better. As for bike stuff, other than the student loan thing, I usually do the buy/paypal route. If I do need to use the credit card I use the one that is set for every day expenditure that get's cleared at the end of the month, it's only used to give me a better credit rating.

Good to hear mate

I'm not a banker .... Quite the opposite. I clear up after the bankers. I'm a regional manager of a debt recovery agency with a studio engineering side hobby (which brings in zip nowdays)

All my cash seems to disapear into cyberspace. My payslip says one thing, my bank balance on the morning of payday says another. 

Had the £1700 debt for about 8-9 months now so I'm paying a fair bit of interest - not cool but that's the reason for my post. 

Ps no car loan. Company

does cycle2work scheme count?

Have a total aversion to debt.. so never had any, and I mean ANY (mortgage excluded).

Even paid the mortgage off 10 years early because I didnt like the thought of it hanging over me.

The result of a childhood spent hiding behind the settee from debt collectors I suppose 🙂

"does cycle2work scheme count?"

I'd say yeah! Sure as hell does

Nah, c2w is like anti-debt!

If i'm ever to get a motrgage in the future, then i need to build some kind of credit history....

This is what bugged me many years ago, you can't avoid the debt-trap temptation test! When I wanted a mortgage I had to get a credit card and use it a lot over a year or so to get any kind of credit rating, as I'd never had any credit before. Talk about temptation / testing my attitude toward money! ) All good though, just use it in place of your debit card and paid it each month on direct debit, same spend, no bother, pretty fast / good credit rating. I realised I actually fear debt and feel safer with a bit of savings.

Credit cards are a good idea for some and a nightmare of consumer pressure and debt-traps for others. I think they should be more tightly regulated, now you see ads for 'writing off your debt' there must be a lot of people who lets face it aren't intelligent enough to understand basic finance well enough to avoid getting tehmselves into a mess that some won't accept responsibility for. Maybe they have a point.

I spent a lot of $ on a bike a while ago, all on a credit card - I got a better exchange rate than with my debit card, it saved me enough for a nice Thomson post for the frame.

No MTB debts, but my car is 14 years old 😉

And with a 0.5% mortgage I'm not particularly bothered about paying that off either.

it's a great time to be overpaying your mort. - chipping away at the capital.

mort rates won't stay low forever and when they go up, you are gonna be paying more for longer.

When I was young (and naive), I thought nothing of buying bikes on finance. £100 a month here and £100 a month there seemed like a small amount to pay.

Unfortunately, due to nothing more than my complete stupidity, I ended up in something like £24,000 worth of debt. This was 10 years ago.

I've struggled ever since then. About 4 years ago, my then girlfriend bailed me out and paid everything off for me, in full (out of some of her inheritance money). I then had to pay her back but this was much easier than trying to pay lots of different loans each month.

I've spent the past 3 years of my life paying her back virtually every spare penny that I have after I've paid my rent etc., just so I can get myself out of the hole that I got myself into.

It's been very difficult and there have been times when it's got me really down, but I'm almost there now. Just £250 to pay next month and I'm debt-free. I can't even begin to tell you how happy this makes me!

I'm 31 now and because of this debt I haven't been able to save any money, nor have I been able to pay any money into a pension fund. But the most important thing for me is that I'm now debt-free, and can start saving.

I know what I've said sounds like an introduction at a therapy meeting, but I don't care. I'm very proud of myself for being able to pay it off in such a short space of time, considering that I don't earn a big salary either.

To anyone thinking about getting things on the never-never, just be careful. You can never truly afford as much as you think you can.

I'm welling up 😉

Bike on finance? People surely must be joking right. A house on finance ok. But that is about it. Anything else shouldn't be on finance. Actually it shouldn't even be allowed. No wonder the economy is screwed up... No one as any sense of money any more.

I think I'm about to...

I have a very poorly frame and no money 😥

Still have my SS though, so its not all bad!

crotchrocket +1

Excellent time to overpay the mortgage.

Never.

Most stuff gets paid for on the CC, which is linked to my current account by a DD as I couldn't even get a mobile phone contract with absolutely no credit history!

Only ever had debt in my student loan which I don't count as:
*Repayment is linked to income, so more like a tax
*As an 'investment' the payback time was a little over a year, so it could be paid off in 12 months and I'd still be in profit

I wonder how much debt a young privateer wc racer would rack up in a season. Must be loads.

No, I've never been in debt due to bikes, and I cant see that changing any time soon.

To be honest, the only reason I buy bikes and riding kit is because I've got so much money I dont know what to do with it all!

Bought one bike on 12 mths interest free and second on cyclescheme - with the cost of a well specced bike approaching the price of a nice 2nd hand car it makes sense. Far better for the money to stay with me for longer

Sod the holier than thou mentality, just get what you want, you're a long time dead

I wish I could stand by my convictions.

I don't buy bike related things that I can't afford.
Mtb however has caused me to have a number of injuries which have prevented me from working.
At various times when I have been self employed this has caused me to go into lots of debt to support myself through these periods.

I'm genuinely shocked over the mature and sensible attitude of most posters.

I thought we all had some debt as the economy is in this position due to over extending ourselves financially as a western world economy. 2 generations ago debt was frowned upon. Now days we receive a sublimal message to consume "it makes you happy" ... We all know it doesn't of course. I watched a great documentry called the history of self. It was commissioned by Sigmund Freuds nephew after the second world war

Bike on finance? People surely must be joking right

I don't see a problem with credit cards. I'm sometimes happy to pay a little extra to have something straight away. It's when you spend faster than you pay off that there's a problem.

$hit loads!

I'm crap with money. But I have a lot of fun! Paying stuff off at a decent rate at the moment. Sometimes I care - most of the time I don't really.

Have bought two bikes through the bike to work scheme and paid them back over 12 months 0%. Bought another bike on two years 0% a while back, had it for about three years so all good there. Bought a bike Dec 2010 on two years 0% so will finish Jan 2013 and I no longer have the bike, sold it though as I just didnt get on with it and replaced with something else I still have so dont mind paying the £70 per month.

Dont think I have got into proper interest bearing debt for bike stuff though, dont think it would be worth it.

Getting into such an amount of debt for a recreational activity is bonkers. Cycle to work scheme, bike for commuting etc, makes sense and if 0% paid off then great, just like getting a car loan for some people. But to rack up debt on a CC, non 0% just for a £4k weekend machine. 😯

That's well written @ZaskarCarbon, and I know all too well the feelings that can go on inside when you're constantly in a circle paying off one with the other, not being able to make payments, etc.

After my post earlier, I checked on my bank balances etc, and it seems that my paypal is linked to my account that has my wages going in, and rent/bills going out. Not my student account for fees/books/etc. So that's good, it means that I haven't been spending my loan on bikes this time.

Yay for happy accidents.

With mid range bikes costing as much as 2nd hand cars and people have always put cars

Well just don't buy them if you can't afford then. Or "SAVE" the bloody money and once you have it, spend it.

"I'm genuinely shocked over the mature and sensible attitude of most posters."

I assume you referring to all those not using credit. To me it shows lack of financial understanding and making the most of your income.

"Well just don't buy them if you can't afford then. Or "SAVE" the bloody money and once you have it, spend it."

I bought my £1.6k bike in September on 0% for 12 months. I never liked my old bike, and stuff was starting to need replacing which would have cost > £500 over 12 months. No I couldn't afford to buy new bike in one lump sum... your very lucky if you can aford to spend £1.6k at the drop of the hat. I could have saved £130 a month for the next 12 months + had the additional outlay of keeping the old bike going, but no, easy solution, take advantage of 0% finance, I get a new bike straight away and my income drops by the same value as if I was saving to buy said bike in 12 months time... wheres the problem in that ?!!?

There was even a back up plan that should I not pay all the bike off in 12 months that I would transfer the balance to a 0% credit card.

Saving for another 12 months would have cost me £500+ on bike parts, plus the fact that the equivalent bike in 12 months time will be approx £2.2k instead of £1.6k

"Well just don't buy them if you can't afford then. Or "SAVE" the bloody money and once you have it, spend it."

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Easy grandad! You're dodgy ticker's going to have one of its turns again if you're not careful 😉

Funky dunc - exactly.
I also saved big money on my tr450 and covert as I bought them together and paid the bike shop in one go rather than taking the bikes shops 0% credit. The cc gave me purchasing power.

There's no problem but what your doing is buying and using (which is depreciating) now and payin for it later. 0% is great but lets not loose sight it's HP and a form of credit.

Cycle to work scheme's use credit also but a very fair one at that

I genuinely congratulate all those none debtors and those who mange them sensibly
An emotive subject this - fun

Credit Card biking - you bet 8)

If I saw something I genuinely wanted I would buy it "on the spot" as long as it was approximately affordable - LBS had a good deal on a 2011 model road bike over Xmas, saw it, liked it, carded it.
Will pay it off with the next wage check, or if not leave it over a few months - so, I pay a bit of interest for a short while, big deal - the saving on the price more than covers that.

Unless you're scrimping'n'scraping to save up for something or are already financially over extended why not spend and enjoy 😀

Easy grandad

Well I am probably in the 10% of poster under forty but here you go. It's only biking, I know it's amazing and I love every minute of it but it's a non essential pass time and it comes very low on the list of things to spend money on.
After housing, food, housing bills, clothes and shoes, pension fund and getting to work (although you could argue that sometimes you can get to work by riding to work).