Does Cycling To Work Save You Money?

[Ming the Merciless]

Not a fact at all. Like any activity compared against any other activity, the relative expense depends how you go about doing it. Some people buy expensive bikes and keep changing them so are paying multiple lots of VAT and losing multiple lots of depreciation. They also buy, expensive cycling kit, are too lazy to repair punctured tubes, farm out all their maintenance to the LBS - and quite possibly might spend more per year on average than I spend running a car.

That is sod all to do with cycle commute costs. Some spend more than necessary and have more than one bike. That’s not a cycle commute cost.

 

[Lovacott]

On average a cyclist will live almost 7 years longer than a sedentary person, which is a very, very worthwhile saving.

Sedentary people are not really alive.

 

[DCLane]

Bike costs are a bit more fuzzy. Is the cost of a cycling helmet or a can of 3-1 part of the price of cycling?

Is having to pay £3 a day to leave my car at home when I cycle to work, a cost of car ownership or a cost of cycle commuting?

In my case the helmet / maintenance tools / etc are all part of the cost. They're on a big spreadsheet with bikes (plus value/type) along with the current value of everything I have (bikes/wheels and parts/tools/clothes). That's totalled and my number of commutes is taken off that.

What muddies things a bit is everything bike-related I sell is taken off the total spent as I've paid out and earnt back: most of my bikes are sold on for a profit which has reduced the cost. I've also got all my rides on there, weekly mileage totals and weight from 2011-2020, although I've not updated that since April as my mileage has dropped so I let Strava tackle it.

Currently having sold some bib longs today but bought a cassette and a replacement LH Ultegra crank:

Spent since April 2011: £12,070
Commutes to work 1169 at approx. £10 a day: £11,690 saved

Balance: - £380 (which if I'd commuted to work since March would be a big positive)

However I still own the 12 bikes (dotted about in various places/lent out)/ wheels and parts/tools/clothes and my estimate is they're currently worth about £8620. So ... I'm over £8000 up in 9 years.

One note: three of the bikes were on Cycle2Work so I saved on the tax but lost out on pension contributions. I didn't factor that in, just the purchase price.

If you're paying to leave the car at home it's a car cost.

 

[Archie_tect]

Anything that stops you having to spend money, saves you money.

 

[Lovacott]

To be honest, the last thing I considered when deciding to cycle to work was financial cost.

I decided to cycle to work to save my circulatory system from clogging up and to give me something to focus on as my kids went to uni and we in turn descended into old age.

Probably the best decision I have ever made.

 

[WesternBikingGirl]

Money never entered into my mind when biking. But I do leave the car in the garage for a week at a time mostly. Feels good to almost never have to get gas for it.

 

[DCLane]

To be honest, the last thing I considered when deciding to cycle to work was financial cost.

I decided to cycle to work to save my circulatory system from clogging up and to give me something to focus on as my kids went to uni and we in turn descended into old age.

Probably the best decision I have ever made.

Ditto: if I hadn't got fit back in 2011 and lost weight I'd be dead. The doctor gave me a year to live due to health complications and was surprised I did something about it and stayed the journey: he'd warned me about 8 years earlier but I only behaved well for about 9 months before lapsing back.

What your colleagues won't realise in this weather is you end up with a toned physique. That got some comments when I moved to commuting in lycra shorts. Or maybe it was just the shorts

 

[Lovacott]

What your colleagues won't realise in this weather is you end up with a toned physique.

To a lot of the apprentices, I was just an old fart in the office a year ago. Now, they ask me if I rode into work and how it went.

It's a really nice way to start the day.

 

[Tom B]

I have a bike bank account. I pay £25 a month into it and anything bike related comes out of it. From this I buy anything bike related I need. It currently has a balance of about £200 and I occasionally raid it for non bike stuff. It topped up a turbo for the car in 2018 and put a dent in the council tax last April. This account also benefits from any wheeling dealing I do.

This covers my commuter / knocking about bike and my MTB.

It is important to remember some of the things I buy I would be buying anyway irrespective of commuting or not.

If I'm driving to work I'd be filling the car with £60 or so a month. I now fill the car 3-4 monthly.

When the car insurance / not runs out I don't bother redoing it until I need it. So I've saved 6 months on insurance in the last few years.

As other have mentioned it's not just a monetary gain. For me there is a time saving when commuting at rush hour. The alone time is somewhat better on the bike and lets you get your head straight and there are of course the well documented feel good factor. If I have a week where I'm not commuting I really feel the difference in my wellbeing.

 

[nonowt]

I think your colleagues reaction is just typical of a group when someone breaks with the expected norms. On some subconscious level your cycling is a threat to the norm for them. They want you to fail - not out of meanness but just to restore the norm of driving. He's had he's daft moment but no he's back in

Being a vegetarian in the 1980s was similar. Some people would endlessly go on about the smell of bacon and how it would lure you back soon enough and how much they loved steak, etc. After a while I realised this wasn't about my choice but about their choice

On the money saving thing it reminds me of a guy who I was at college with who was notoriously tight. He was also really hard work as he never had much to say. After college I used to slightly reluctantly meet him for lunch when we were both working in central London. After a while he mentioned he'd switched to a bus pass from a travelcard to save money. A few months on he'd started walking the 9 miles a day to save even more money (even though his job wasn't badly paid). The very last time I saw him, desperately trying to fill another long silence I teased him gently about the clunky walking boots he had on with his suit. His reply: oh, its costing me fortune in shoes walking to work. As much as that amused me I never spent another lunchtime on him.

Before the covid I used to half joke that the cycle to and from work were the best part of my day (even in bad weather). After a month or so of working from home I was feeling really flat. So now I do fake commute: leave the house around 8, ride a 5 mile loop, get home and start work. It's often the best part of my day.

 

[JhnBssll]

I don't think cycling to work really saves me anything, in fact I'm regularly significantly worse off for it. If my wife notices my car is in its space after I've gone in the morning she often takes it to work herself and her commute is 3 times further than mine I know I've run out of diesel when she starts taking hers again

 

[JhnBssll]

Before the covid I used to half joke that the cycle to and from work were the best part of my day (even in bad weather). After a month or so of working from home I was feeling really flat. So now I do fake commute: leave the house around 8, ride a 5 mile loop, get home and start work. It's often the best part of my day.

I really need to start doing something like that, it's a great idea. My problem is I've started working earlier and am finishing later as my workload has ramped up. When the first lockdown started I put a couple of 90 minute lunchtime slots in to my calendar each week so I could do a quick loop on the bike but I've not even managed that for several months. I know you can always make time, I just need to work out how to redress the balance

 

[DCLane]

+1 for me as well.

Not commuting by bike has really started to get to me.

 

[I like Skol]

I really need to start doing something like that, it's a great idea. My problem is I've started working earlier and later as my workload has ramped up. When the first lockdown started I put a couple of 90 minute lunchtime slots in to my calendar each week so I could do a quick loop on the bike but I've not even managed that for several months. I know you can always make time, I just need to work out how to redress the balance

Off topic, but this is one of the BIG drawbacks of working at/from home. For every work shy slacker that plays the system and does as little as they can possibly get away with while being remotely supervised, there are an equal amount of people like yourself and my wife who are going into overdrive to try and make up for the failings of their lazy colleagues so that any poor performance of the team doesn't reflect badly on them.
In the short term this will be great for the employers as all this talk of not going back to an office based culture will mean they can make huge cuts in infrastructure costs (office space ain't cheap) and will quickly weed out the poor performers leaving them with a lower headcount/wagebill but still getting the same output from the remaining staff.
Unfortunately the inability of the remaining staff to control their work hours effectively will soon lead to many being burnt out. There is no definable start, finish or middle to the work day when working at home meaning the temptation to work ever longer days without breaks is ever present.

 

[WesternBikingGirl]

I've heard that from a lot of serious bikers. I notice it myself if I have a few days off.