Debt through MTB?

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.”

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).

+1 Hilldodger
Why not, paying a bit of interest is not as insane as some are saying.
What price pleasure?
I try to enjoy life.

After housing, food, housing bills, clothes and shoes, pension fun

Unfortunately most of those come so far down the priority order for a lot of people nowadays.

What price pleasure?

You could do marketing for Visa / Mastercard.

“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.”

Agreed, but you would have to be pretty stupid to say buy a £5k bike on credit of 10%apr over 5 years.

If however you can buy £5k bike for £2.5k in the sale on credit, and the total charge comes in at less than the cost of the full bike new then it still makes financial sense, its all about applying risk, obviously everyones level of risk varies, but just not use credit at all is not always the best way of using your hard earned cash.

I have a MTB on 0% finance. I had £3500 sitting in a savings account at the time, but as I could afford the repayments out of my income it made more sense to me to take the credit and keep the savings intact. If for some reason I needed to pay for it on day 1 I had the lump sum sitting there, but as it was a fixed interest rate and there weren’t any charges for finance it was a no brainer. If there’d been a discount for cash I might have taken it though.

I also use a credit card but it’s paid off in full by direct debit every month and is more for security when shopping online (aside from the fraud protection work the CC issuers do it gives me a buffer between a fraudulent transaction being made and the money coming out of my account which I wouldn’t get with a debit card).

No car loan, no student loan, no overdraft. I do admittedly have a sizeable mortgage but again that’s serviceable from my income (with a buffer for interest rate rises) so I don’t worry too much about it.

i couldn’t afford/justify spending 2k+ on a bike in one go. i can afford a small deposit and a modest monthly payment every month over a few years. by the time the few years are up i have developed a need for a new bike and head straight back into another 0% deal.
ps, my wife spends more a month on cigarettes than i do on bikes so i’ve got the moral high ground in any domestic “discussions” about family finances….

Who gives a flying turd?
I pay around 50 quid a month on 0% finance for my bike for 12 months, never struggled to do it but if i tried to save up to buy it outright it just wouldn’t happen, i dont have the discipline to save for long periods. As a previous poster said, 0% finance is like saving up in reverse. I’m not in any danger of causing another world banking crisis.
At the end of the day, its my brass, i work hard for it, i’ll do what i bloody well like with it.
If i wanted to get into debt i dont see how it affects anyone else (no kids/ other half) n for folk on a forum to start booing abou mtb debt is a bit much really. A little bit of support for each other may not go amiss seens as were all involved in the same leisure activity. I think we all need to stop worrying about what other people are doing.

doublepostfail

Absolutely nothing wrong with responsible credit. So what if it costs you a little more? Aren’t I allowed to spend my money on whatever I see fit? I could by an extra set of widgets for my bike or I could pay to have it a year earlier. No difference really.

I used to put biking stuff on credit cards but I haven’t for a very long time. That’s a result of unexpectedly finding myself unemployed for a month or so!

My car has almost 170k on it. I looked at a change late last year. I could easily afford the finance but I now have a pathological aversion to debt so no new car!

There is a stigma about debt for some people, others have had their fingers burned so I’m not surprised to read so many stories of debt free living let alone debt free cycling!

I love all this,

[*]Those who have some cash to spend,
[*]Those who dont but do credit and have the facility to repay on time,
[*]And then those who are totally skint but really like to ride bikes so [*]rack up debt as a result.

The problem is if you have no money so to speak then Mountain biking is not the hobby. It’s freekin expensive, with all the thrashing the things get we all tend to get through a fair amount of components, cloths and accessories not to mention fuel if like me you live in the mtb badlands. I know that I am the latter and will remain that way till the kids are older and the wife can work full time again. But if I wait until I have a spare £30 for some new tyres (or tyre) then I’ll be off the bike till the end of never so I watch the O/D slowly rise whilst listening to all the singletons / well educated big earners, or childless folk harp on about all the nice new bling they have or watch them disappearing into the dust on their far superior and well maintained bikes. So for the sake of my sanity and to get me away from TV soaps and reality shows that the wife likes i’ll just have to accept a small (or large depending on viewpoint)amount of debt to pursue this hobby. TBH the only other option is to knock it on the head….and i’ve not even mentioned climbing, or electronic gadgetry as yet!!

I reckon there are several of the holier-than-thou ‘savers’ who have made bad purchases, swapped bikes after a month because the new one came along etc etc. Financially that’s really no different than paying a bit of interest on a bike – in the end you’re spending more money than you need to, I fail to see the difference.

If I couldn’t afford a decent bike, I’d have one on credit. Carpe diem and all that. By the time I can afford the house / car / bike collection I really want, I’ll be 45 with osteoarthritis and no time to ride.

Hmm.. what with this thread and the mboy one.. maybe we should operate a STW bike parts charity service. I’ve got loads of bike junk I don’t want, but the classifieds are such a headache. I wish I could give it to someone like donks up there for example.

A rather poignant post sir

This has got me thinking, I have a 0% offer on my card at the moment for 6 months, must be time to expand the collection! £1500 on a bike with one gear and no suspension seems sensible so that’s what I’m going to do!

Get in there