You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
We were having a discussion today at work where someone said:
"The absolute cost of something you buy is irrelevant. What matters is the cost in proportion to your earnings"
Which got me thinking "I bet that applies to bikes!!"
So, how much was your bike as a percentage of your salary in the year you bought it?
Doesn't matter if the bike was new or S/H or bought this year or 10 years ago!
So for me, my main bike (this is STW so peeps with multiple bikes (ie everyone 😉 can choose their fav...) was 7.6% of my (gross) salary when i bought it. Hows about yours??
(ps, i don't want to know who much your earn, or how much your bike cost, just the percentage between them 😆 )
Mine was 7.1% of gross salary
Just realised 12.1 %
2% of gross.
14.5%, don't like this game.
2.5 of gross roughly
4.3% of gross.
1.5%
Probably about 40% odd but who gives a ####
4.5% of gross
2% of gross
1.5% of gross. Makes me feel a bit better than thinking of the actual amount of money it cost!
About 35% of gross... But then I own a bike shop! 😉
4.5% mtb
6.3% road
6.9% but have spent a little bit afterwards upgrading.
If at rrp 40.7% but probably 8-11%
All four 0.00153%
Won't say, as Missus might dig it out 🙂
And then it would be fast divorce fulfillment 😀
Cheers!
I.
About 99% but I'm 17 🙂
Road -1.86%
MTB - 0.33%, before some a-hole relieved me of it
Had the same question/thought myself, and a far more interesting Q than most STW surveys.
At time of purchase
MTB 10% gross
Road bike 5% gross
But TBF mtb IS worth more than my car or my motorbike.
About 99%
good man 🙂
Doh Ivan, good point, wish I'd seen that before I posted!
Doesn't matter if the bike was new or S/H or bought this year or 10 years ago!
Premise only works if bike is replaced annually and consumables (chains, pads, tyres etc) are factored in.
Annual
hardtail = 1/24th (4.2%)
FS = 1/24th (4.2%)
CX = 1/36th (2.8%)
tbf, all built up 2nd handish looking/waiting for bargains and taking advantage of the bike to work scheme.
About 11%, I'm not 100% sure exactly how much the bike cost having never added it up 😀
4.4% of gross for last mtb
This all depends on how often you change it.
3.4% - as a new value, but built up mainly of old parts from ST4, that in itself was insurance replacement for the Niner, which was the last bike I built up from scratch...So this Triggers Broom bike cost originally 2.1%, and is 'now' 8 years old....
i dunno as i bought and frame and transferred the bits and the one before was a frame which i transferred the bits and the previous one had lots of upgrades. but if i assume a fully built cost estimate then around 5% for the fs, 2% for the hardtail and 1.8% for the cx. for reference my primary mode of transport (the van) was 4.5%
11%
As my last bike was bought when I was unemployed, for the financial year in which it was aquired, close to 40%
As a percentage of the salary I was on just before I Bought it- approx 7.%
13.7% MTB - 5.5% car!!!!!
14.3% of net but its not percentage its the quantity 🙂
3-4% I think for the mtb. Though struggling to remember what I was paid 5 years ago (the bike is a bit like Trigger's broom by this time). Probably a bit less than that for the roadie (er, one of the roadies).
Mind you, comparing to gross salary doesn't take into account what you have left after the taxman has had at you. An interesting measure might be against net salary, i.e. "of the £X,000 I had to live on this year I spent Y% of it on a push bike". That really could be divorce-making material for anyone who prioritized carbon fibre bling over the family holiday 😆
All four of my bikes together come to approximately 4% of my gross salary as it is today.
but they were acquired over a number of years and I have at various times owned more bikes, and bikes of significantly greater value both when my income was much less, really the major limiting factor is what else makes a claim on your finances, kids and mortgages tend to dictate available funds for discretionary purchases like bikes more than some arbitrary percentage calculation...
2% ish
7.2% if I only count my fixed income and not my self employed income as its up and down.
8.3333% for my favourite bike. I'm glad they don't make a carbon version!
(cough) .just worked it out..
Not playing, it's embarrassing.
😯
Still riding my first bike from seven years ago, bought with teenage savings (no job at the time). So... >100%?
FS about 7.5%, the road bike about 3% in the sale but then it got new wheels, hardtail just over 1% 2nd hand.
Most expensive bike was my Soul when I bought and built it up.
At the time it was a smidge under 10% of my gross salary. I also bought a Ribble road bike at the same time as well.
Both funded by a maturing savings plan. This was 11 years ago, and the Cotic is about to get another overhaul that is roughly 4% of my current gross salary.
I love that bike.
Shit! 0.75% but I'm northern!
4% for mtb, 2% for cx bike
I want Kryton57's job.
@hanchurch - you deserve another bike! just use the rest of us spendthrifts as justification
someone off here has been used as a reference point by his mates who wished to portray themselves as restrained, i.e. "[s]nosedive[/s]X has bought a Merc van, I only got a second set of wheels and I put the spares on eBay"
4 bikes 10 percent. Two more months before n plus one kick in and another 5 percent. Love my bikes. No car. Commute so justified.
2% but the one I want is about 8% but I will never get it passed the wife. As the old saying goes, one of my biggest fears is that when I die my wife will sell my bikes for what I told her they were worth......
Not sure how much my bikes cost as I build them up myself, not even sure what my exact salary is, its been so long since I've actually needed to check!
A rough guess would be 4% each bike, that's not every year though, I probably build a new bike up every 18-24months keeping 2 at any one time each for 3-4 years.
8%ish but I'll probably not replace it for a couple of years.
43% give or take a 1%
@Mr nice I probably do but I'm a petrol head too and if we play this game with cars when I bought mine you would see why my bike is only 0.75%! And it was passed by the wife (infact she got the bankers draft from the bank for it!)
Currently 0% as my pub bike was free
But my last and next proper bikes will be around 20%...
what's a salary?
The most expensive bike I have bought to date. About 3.5%.
It cost more than the car though. I'm cheap 🙂
FS MTB 6% second hand to buy it new it would be 17% 😯
A touch over 50% of my share of profits from the business
@hanchurch - fair enough. We all have to make choices. I have deliberately avoided getting into fast cars since they make fast bikes look cheap 😉 If we play the game with stereo and record collection it will look worse for me than my bikes...
Mtb 2.6%
CX 0.6%
Next mtb 5.5% (waiting for 2016 to kick off).
6.9 %
As a percentage of the cost of my car: 333%
FS - 7.9%
HT - 3.8%
That's at RRP, both been added to since.
16% bike. 1.6% car
Anyone want to "do the math" and come up with the current running STW average??
Its a triggers broom, but last time I swapped frame (second hand), the second hand cost would have been 1.5-2%
Complicated. In true trigger's broom fashion I tend to just buy frames, then upgrade a selection of parts to suit, selling and buying as I go along. In real terms my "best bike" was about 9% of my gross salary if bought new, but built up and upgraded to a broadly similar spec using spares and used bargains it cost about 5%.
Just ordered a road bike at 6%. Mtb would have been about 4% the year before as would the CX the year before that. Commuter was 1.5% but it has been going for 3 years now.
Winter bike- 1%
Summer Bike 2.9%
MTB 2.5%
Purchased over 10 years so 0.6% over that time. You can probably add about another 0.3% in running costs, maintanace and upgrades.
Not bad for a hobby thats kept me healthy, sane, got me to work, the shops, the pub, made me some friends and been a great experience.
About 2.5%, but then i do have about 8 of them all about the same.
Of disposable income might be more interesting, I suspect those saying 40% still live with their parents. Having said that untill last month mine was probably 5% of disposable, now its probably 40% !
Anyone want to "do the math" and come up with the current running STW average??
Krytons 0.00157% might be a Mclaren Sworks and Greys 8% might be a Raleigh. To be accurate you'd have to sum the bike values and the salaries and then work out the forum average from that.
end nerdiness
I justified my most recent bike purchase as two days wages.
As a percentage it depends how much I work in a year.
when I was a student I spent 100% of my months money on a middleburn XC Duo, and ate plain pasta for three weeks.
my last two bikes have been presents from my dad, which is great apart from when he's staying here I don't get to ride very much 🙁 would have been 3.75% & 1.25%
About 4.4% I reckon, bit hard to put a value on something that bares little resemblance to the original bike I bought!
Around 4.6%. Is that good or bad I don't really know.
2.2% for the most expensive one.
About 35 percent if I had to replace them new. Low wage and love my bikes. I worked out that I needed about 13 bikes to quell my curiosity.
3%, second hand fs
5%
thanks aracer it works great
Think we need to start grouping the scores into the following categories...
0-2% "It's just a passing hobby, I'll be playing golf this time next year"
2-5% "Sometimes, when I've been a good boy, the missus lets me out on my bike as long as I'm home for dinner"
5-10% "Hey, if you can't buy skill, at least you can buy a skills compensator"
10-20% "I've got a problem. The amount I spend on bikes someone should pay me to work with them"
20-50% "I've got a problem. I'm paid to work with bikes"
50% + "I've got a problem. I'm paid to work with bikes and I still live at home with my parents"
For both bikes (FS Carbon XTR/XX1 & HT Steel XT), and if I purchased the same models every year, probably around 10% NET salary. Its the upgrades and other stuff like bike trips that probably adds another 5% to that.