[Closed] How much do you spend on cycling in a year?

Plus the more hidden costs..........

The car I need day to day ~£2k maybe?

The car I've got as it fits bikes in the back easily £5k
+the added petrol used moving a big car arround Vs a small one.

House, without bikes I'd just rent a room in a house, say £250-£300/month.

With bikes, £500 for a small house + council tax and bills is nearer £650, so about 150% more!

Annual cost of stuff that I wouldn't otherwise need, excluding bike stuff is about £4.5k!

not something I really want to contemplate, I'm not loaded and I don't have bling bikes so it's not monumental but I'd still rather not calculate it.
I know last years bank review CRC and Merlin were by far my biggest outgoings.

I try to avoid adding it up as it quickly adds up to scary prices

Dawned on me last week when i was out for a ride that i had over £1000 of stuff with me that wasnt 'essential' for what i was doing - garmin 800, go pro hd, specialized carbon soled shoes, assos bibs, gore baggies, merino top, oakley jawbones, sworks helmet. Of course i can try to justify 'needing' this gear but the truth is i never had any of this when i starting cycling and i had just as much fun back then as i do now.

Yep. I spend a fortune on my 'hobby', probably more than I can reasonably afford.

Without it though, life would be a lot harder to get through and you can't put a price on happiness can you 🙂

Last year:
1. new bikes bought - 335 Euro,
2. bikes sold - 300 Euro,
3. parts bought - 20 Euro,
4. nutrition - nowt,
5. extra fuel - nowt,
6. extra house costs - nowt.
The year before:
1. new bikes bought - over £5k,
2. bikes sold - over £5k,
3. parts bought - circa £1k,
4. nutrition - circa £1k,
5. extra fuel - circa £3k,
6. extra house costs - nowt.
It's clear - move to North-East Ireland (not NI) and have no job, the expenditure WILL go down. By the time you sort yourself out you'll realise you don't need much, just a couple of simple bikes, a camera and some sarnies. Perversely I enjoy not being able to afford new toys, I appreciate what I have so much more.

£6.73

Not a lot for me. Many Thousands of miles a year on the mtb and tandem. couple of chains a year and the odd cassette. A few cans of GT85, a few bags of jelly babies. maybe a set of pads a year. I do spend a fair amount of time maintaining the bikes to prevent stuff wearing out.

couple of hundred quid a year tops?

Without it though, life would be a lot harder to get through and you can't put a price on happiness can you

*the actual riding anyway, work and other freetime spent lusting after and buying better bits would lose out tho.

Not as much as my private health insurance as had to pay out because of my cycling, three operations, countless xrays, mri scans, pyshio etc etc.

Last year it was about 5k, new bike for me, wife and son, then a few upgrades, bars, reverb post, all the gels and clif bars add up too. DVD's, mag subs.

A. Don't know.
B. Don't want to know.
C. The wife would kill me if she knew.

Probably more than the 'National Debt' of a small country.

Far far far too much.

Even aside from the bike racing the nationals alone is £30 entry for each, £40 hotel, dinner, breakfast, energy drink, gels, petrol, probably £150/race x5, so there's nearly £1000 before you've done anything to the bike. 5 Southern races, a few enduros, another £500 in entries and consumables.

Probably 6 sets of pads a year, a few tyres, bearings, tubeless sealant.

The bike in the first place (although I do sell them to cover my costs).

I know I've put nearly £80000 through the till of the shop I worked at in 11 years and that doesn't count things bought at CRC, Superstar etc, the majority of that's been in the last 6 years too.

So if we do factor in races and what not that's probably about £10000 a year. Great. Shouldn't have worked that out.

yeah but I could probably get just as much enjoyment out of it* by spending a lot less

You're absolutely right - I have just as much fun on my HT as I do on my new FS bike.
There's a combination of consumerism and retail therapy at play obviously but, I've found my riding has changed a lot over the past few years - doing more DH oriented riding with mates, entering more extreme races (proper enduros, Mega etc) and the bikes I ride have developed accordingly. Plus I've gained a nasty habit of snapping stuff.....

Somehow I've only managed to spend around £300 over the last 12 months directly on bike stuff (spares, repairs, upgrades, clothing).

But that's because I sold my Orange 5 frame (£500) & bought a cheap hardtail frame for £150, and sold my forks (£325) and bought some new ones on credit so they're only costing me £30 per month.

Also eBay'd other redundant parts that were lying around the shed.

In the last 18 months I've become married, & me and HRH have just had a baby, so spendage on bike stuff will be severely reduced from what it once was...

will be buying a charge duster ti frame in the next 6 months 😀 (well p/x'ing my current frame for it) apart from that though not a lot really (apart from the essentials bike lubes/degreaser/food)

My commute saves me so much money ,I never give it a thought. 😉

Not a lot really. Commuting on a bike saves me around £50 a week against driving so I'm probably in profit by around £2k.

I probably spend more on trips than anything else biking-wise. easily 2 grand this year to go away riding (whistler, fort bill (from brighton), couple of days in wales). bike bits probably cost me a grand a year.

Omar Little - Member
Of course i can try to justify 'needing' this gear

Where does justification and need come into the same sentence?
I [i]need[/i] all of the shiny things I buy, so there is no requirement to [i]justify[/i]...

Favourite quote:
"If I die before I wake, I pray my wife sells my bike for what it's worth not what I told her I paid for it"

Bussing to work would be £58 every 4 weeks so that's £754 year saved on commuting costs 😀

Yearly bike expenses: say set of tyres, chain, cassette, cables, few brake pads and some loob easily comes under that figure so another one who's in profit 8)

I really hate seeing this phrase, but I'd like to know...

psychle to the forum please 🙂

Don't add it up, for me biking is a cost of living along with food and shelter.
I do my best to buy most stuff second-hand, and only buy bits rather than whole bikes, so rarely have a large single expenditure. But I must spend loads!

I have spent over £300 on physios so far this year (with some more on the way) before adding up all the other stuff.

Personally I wouldn't like to work it out, probably £5k-plus from spring 2010 to spring 2011 - but then for the last few months we have been living off the proceeds of my s/h bike part sales.

Hairychested - Please expand on the £1k of nutrition, genuinely interested.

I like Shot Bloks and they are expensive, but were you buying epo or something?

(Mr MC posting)

depends where you draw the line. Ive just bought my first car at the age of 39, primarily as a bike transporter as Ive always owned a motorbike (though winter bike commute is wearing a bit thin). Car cost me £4K, so say half that for being bike specific?

All our holidays are biking (or snowboarding), last year did 2 weeks in colorado, this year we had planned (until I broke my arm 🙁 ) 2 weeks in the alps, a week in sierra nevada in the autumn and next year spending my big four-oh MTBing for 2 weeks in India. Not cheap but no more than non bikers spend on holidays that would bore me to distraction. We consciously have a small house and small mortgage and spend our money on experiences, many of my colleagues and none-biking mates have big houses, big mortgages and no holidays.

I seem to be constantly turning over bike parts, but much of that is bought and sold used, if its new is nowhere near RRP (just got some of the Marz forks wiggle are selling for ~half price) so would be difficult to put an overall cost on it.

Most of my disposable income spend can be directly linked to bikes. Better that than crack, fags and booze.

several hundred thousand a year.... but I dont keep it all.

A fair bit of cash, probably around £2500 including Alps trips/not including bike purchases, but given I've uprooted my life from The City to be in the hills this is a minor figure. The bigger (and unanswerable) question: what is the return?

Cassette, chains, tyres, pads etc is probably about £150 a year.
Needless bling probably about £100-200
Endless search for frame and forks I like - constant cash hemorrhage (but finally found some I'm happy with)
Petrol/accom for road trips - £250 a year

Actually pretty good value compared to a years gym membership of approx £800/year.

Not as much as njee20!

Retro83s point about finding just what you like is the reason for a good deal of my expenditure. You still can't test all bikes and even a test ride doesn't tell you everything. I have recently bought a frame I am not happy with even though I had ridden a mates briefly. I am not looking forward to explaining to She Who Must Be Obeyed that I want to change it. Wear and tear counts for about a quarter of my bike costs, the pursuit of perfection takes up the rest.

About £2-300 a year I reckon.

Bike cost £400 (rigid Inbred when they were half price in 2005), spent around £200 on a set of Bombers & some Magura Julies.

The pads on the Julies just don't wear out, and I've bought a second hand set of bombers for £60 or so off here in the meantime.

I've spent about £170 on wheels in 6 years, probably another £250 on tyres, grips, bars, a 36T chainring, an SLX mech, second chain and a bash.

But then I've still got a bike that's worth a good £2-300 in bits quite happily.

The key things for me are:

a) Buying bombproof kit. Nobody ever broke an open bath Marzocchi, and I'm still on the same Octalink BB and cranks the bike came with.
b) DIY everything. There's nothing on my bike that isn't easily DIYable for a man in a shed.
c) Keep your chain clean and oiled. I have two chains, swap them round and keep them clean and oiled. My drivetrain is largely original and still in decent nick.
d) Don't read magazines. Magazines have two customers - the reader, and the advertiser. I found that when I was reading magazines, I was far more tempted to buy random bits. Every other thing that's reviewed is "must have". It's a load of bull.

Would probably be a lot more but I go through fits and starts of riding the bike, and spend nothing at all during the fallow periods.

If I rode them all the time they'd wear out more and I'd spend more blinging 'em up.

This spring's emergence from hibernation has cost me £200 on a new cassette, chain, chainrings, grips, and a new more dry-trail friendly tyre for the 29er.

I'm noticing that my MTB shoes are falling to bits, as are my gloves and short liners and waterproof - all of which I've had for yonks and can have no complaints about 'em wearing out - but that's probably going to be another £150-£200 to replace all that.

But then I probably get as much pleasure out of researching all this guff and rooting out bargains on t'internet and in magazines as I do from actually owning or using them.

I tend to hand over all but the most routine maintenance tasks to my LBS because anything I try to do myself usually results in a bodge that they end up having to put back together again anyway.

But then, what else would I be spending my money on? Cheaper and more fun than a gym membership.

Erm......

Never mind.

I would be embarrassed to list each item but i'm a total knacker with money and since November last year have allowed about £13K to slip through my fingers, it started when I bought a Cube Stereo Race and it's only stopped now but have sold some stuff off, but I'm now reducing my fleet as I just don't get the time to ride. The Niner Air 9 and the Cube Peleton are for sale, £1400 and £700 respectively..
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Yeah right.

Answering that question on a public forum would be matrimonial suicide!

far too much 😥

but it gives me enjoyment so it dont matter 😀