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Ralphs. Fresh for everyone. ♪ Today on the show, we talk about saving money with bicycling. Even with a family. My guest is a man named Christopher Delaney, and he and his wife have two small children and manage all of their family transportation without a car. ♪ Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.

My name is Joshua Sheets. I thank you for being here. Today is Tuesday, December 2nd, 2014. And today, we're going to spend a little time on the saving money side of the equation. Talk about using bicycles as a form of transportation. One of the benefits is saving a bunch of money, but there are some other benefits as well.

♪ My guest is a listener of the show. It's a man named Christopher Delaney. And he reached out to me and said, "Hey, if you're ever interested in doing a show on riding bikes, I would love to do that." And I responded right away to him and said, "I would like to do a show on riding bikes, because I'm totally intimidated by the idea.

But I'd love to find somebody who's done it." And he kind of described the situation. I said, "This is perfect." And it's a great interview. It really is. It's an interview that's packed of information. No kind of like hardcore. I mean, it is pretty hardcore. Christopher's pretty hardcore. But he's pretty down to earth, so he's easy to talk to and easy to listen to.

And he shares some very practical advice about using bicycles as transportation. This was something that I had also interviewed on the show, Tammy Strobel. And she's famous for writing a book, among other things, from Rowdy Kitten. She had written a book on how to live car-free. But by the time we had our interview, it wasn't something that she really thought much about or talked much about, even though she and her husband used bicycles a lot.

So I wanted to bring another resource. So here I have an excellent show with Christopher Delaney. It's really good. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks so much for being here today. A couple of quick announcements. We're back in the saddle here after last week kind of missing out again.

I apologize to all of you for missing two of those shows. I will-- again, I didn't-- I know better. And I was thinking, I've got to create a really great show. But I had interviews lined up, and I just should have prioritized and adjusted differently to get the shows done.

So I apologize for those of you that wondered where we went. We're back now. And I anticipate a full month of December. I've got a bunch of great interviews. I've got a bunch of more topics. So we've got a lot to cover here in December. I've been thinking about what changes and what adjustments to make for next year.

And so I'll talk more about that in the future. There are a lot of things I'd love to do, but it's just a matter of capacity as far as what I'm able to do with things going forward. That's always the challenge, the difference between what I'd like to do and what I'm able to do.

I'm actually in conversations this week with a potential sponsor. That is the first sponsor that I've been able to find that I would feel good about introducing. To you, we'll see how those talks go. We'll see if we can reach an agreement that I think is a win-win for everyone involved.

But if it works out, it's basically trying to answer the question that many of you ask me. How do I find a good financial advisor? And it's a financial advisor vetting service. And I think it's the best one that's out there. Not perfect, but I think it's the best one that I've been able to find.

So we'll see if that works. So stay tuned for the show. We're going to have a great December here. Thank you all so much for being here. Here is Christopher. So Christopher, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. I appreciate you being with me today. Absolutely. Thanks, Joshua. I'm honored to be here.

Awesome. So I'm excited to talk about bicycling and bike riding as an alternative method of transportation. And I am a complete dunce when it comes to this topic. But I know that you are not. You and your family have been able to live successfully for at least some period of time without a car.

And you said you have two kids, right? Yeah, I have two little girls. One of them is two years old and the other one is about six months old. Awesome. So tell me your story as it surrounds your ability to use a bike for transportation. I'm fascinated by this.

Yeah, absolutely. I was, you know, my imagination was expanded greatly in about 2005 when I moved to Portland, Oregon. I grew up in Georgia. And, you know, in the South, there's really no alternative to using a car to get around places. There's no public transportation, very little bicycle infrastructure, if any at all.

And I went to school in Alabama and got my first bike there. It was a mountain bike. And my roommate was the one that introduced me to riding a bike. To the grocery store or riding a bike to school or whatnot. Started doing that. Eventually decided it was time, you know, to leave Alabama.

And I moved west. I lived in Louisiana for a little bit. And then I moved to Colorado. I was a ski instructor for a little bit and then met some folks there that lived in Oregon. And they invited me to come visit Portland. And so I went out there and fell in love with it.

You know, decided a couple months later, I was going to go to California. Decided a couple months later to move to Portland. And I sold my car that was back in Georgia and went to Oregon with my guitar and a backpack, basically. Nice. When I got there, I found out the public transit was fantastic.

You can take a train from the airport into the city. The bus system is great. And I used that for a while. And then I saw people riding bicycles around and decided, you know, that looks pretty fun. So I went on Craigslist. I found a cheap $150 bike that seemed all right.

I didn't really know anything about bikes at that point. And started riding my bike around town and, you know, gradually went to more places. I was riding it to my school. And then I started going to the grocery store. And then I started, you know, going to visit friends and going to restaurants and bars on the weekend and things like that.

And my confidence level started to increase. And I started riding pretty much everywhere. That lasted me up until the point when I met my wife and we got married about four years later. From when I had moved to Portland, she had a car and she, you know, she had a bicycle as well.

But she wasn't riding her bike necessarily for transportation. It was more just for fun to meet friends at coffee shops. Or just ride around the neighborhood a little bit. And then when she met me, you know, I started rubbing off a little bit. You know, she would ride with me to a date night or a friend's house or something like that.

And started, you know, expanding her imagination about what was possible. And she really enjoyed it. We moved right after we got married, we moved right away pretty much to Denver for a job. And in Denver, we found out that I needed a car to get to my job. So, you know, obviously we kept the car that we had and shared it.

And basically, you know, I would use it to get to work. And then my wife had a bike that she would ride to just kind of get around the city there. We lived downtown. And, you know, I tried riding to work on my bike. It was 25 miles each way.

I worked at the airport. And, you know, if you aren't familiar with Denver, the airport's 25 miles east of the city out in the middle of a bunch of farmland. It's very sparse. And it was pretty dangerous, in my opinion, for me to ride my bike out there just because of the speeds that people were traveling on these two-lane farm roads.

My co-workers would regularly brag about, you know, going 80, 90, 100 miles an hour on these back roads and catching air over, you know, little hills that existed. And so, you know, I was commuting when it was dark in the morning and I just decided, you know, it's not worth it, you know, getting killed by one of my co-workers driving 100 miles an hour on these farm roads.

And so I pretty much resigned myself to driving the car every day. I wasn't super excited about it. But it was 25 miles each way. Pretty impractical for a daily commute on a bike to do 50 miles. You know, on my wife and I's radar, we didn't have kids at the time.

And we wanted our life to be a little bit more localized where everything was, you know, within five or 10 miles and we didn't have to necessarily use a car. We started talking about what we would do when we got a family. And we had seen online and a few times in person this bike called a cargo bike.

And it has a large box in the front. It's typically known as a Bock Feets. It came from Europe. And there are a couple of folks who make them here in the United States. And so we started talking to the people here in Oregon who made it. The company was called Metro Feets.

We got our hands on one to test ride and absolutely fell in love with the bike. And we said, you know, when we have kids, we would love to get one of these bikes. And that would really help us continue to get around the city, but also reduce our dependence on the car that we had.

And while we were in Denver, we had our first child. And we started strategizing how we could get the bike. At that time, you know, we couldn't really afford it. So we had to wait. And then we ended up moving to Wyoming. We moved to Casper, Wyoming. It's a small town, dead center of the state.

About 50,000 people live there and move there for a job. And that's when we really started considering selling our car, becoming car free, and buying one of these bikes. In April of 2013, my wife said she was ready. And she was willing to at least try this as an experiment.

And, you know, I'm pretty confident and motivated about, you know, using bikes for transportation. But I really didn't want to pressure her into that. I wanted her to come to that on her own. And so I just patiently waited for, you know, a couple years after we were married until she was like, you know, I think I'm ready to try this.

And I'm really on board. So we sold our car and we got a Metrofeet's cargo bike. And we started living car free in Casper, Wyoming. It was an amazing experience. We both fell in love with it right off the bat. We really enjoyed getting around with our daughter in the bike.

She was a little over one years old when we first started riding with her in the bike. I think she was maybe one and a half or two. And then in January of this year, we moved back to Portland, which is my wife's hometown. And, you know, we've been living car free here as well.

You know, in addition to the bike, we also use the Zipcar membership, which is a car sharing program that allows us to have access to a car if we need it. And, you know, it's been pretty enjoyable and relatively easy for us, to be honest. But that's a little bit about our story there.

So, I mean, you've got some credibility here. How long has it been since you actually sold your car when you were living in Wyoming? Two years? Almost. I think it's been about a year and a half that we've been car free as a family. Me personally, you know, I've been car free for the majority of the last decade.

I think, you know, I had a car after I met my wife and we moved to Denver for two years. But, you know, after selling that, we've been car free for maybe about a year and a half. And also you've been able to live with one car for the entirety of your marriage.

So, you know, even if many families just switch to having one car, I know that's what my wife and I have done, I couldn't see and still can't see any way that in where we live, in I think the biggest county in the United States with a very distributed, spread out lifestyle, I couldn't see any way to do without one car, excuse me, without a car.

But even just going from two to one saved me so much time and hassle of fixing the thing and getting oil changes. And I was glad to get rid of that second car. Absolutely. If I could figure it out, I'd get rid of the first one. But I haven't been able to figure that out.

It's tough. And I think it has to do with it's not an all or nothing decision. I think that would be more detrimental for people to make that as an all or nothing decision. It's more of a reduction mindset. So, you know, finding ways that you can reduce your dependence on that because it sucks so much money out of your life.

You know, AAA says it costs nine thousand dollars a year to own and maintain a vehicle, not including car payments. And that was in 2013, I think, when that came out, 2012, maybe. So with inflation, you know, that number only keeps growing. But, you know, nine thousand dollars a year is significant.

And if you can start thinking about ways to reduce your dependence on that and to be creative in structuring your life so you don't necessarily need the car as much, those things are definitely positive. And it can help people make a transition there when you view it as, you know, incremental, small incremental changes.

Right. So I've heard of Portland being a bike mecca, but I haven't heard of Casper, Wyoming being a biking mecca. What's the difference between living in a place? And I assume I'm right about that. But what's the difference between living in a place where there is a well-established infrastructure versus a place where I'm assuming there's not?

I personally think it's about the same because when we were in Casper, there might have been out of the 50,000 people that live there, there might have been 10 people. And that's being extremely generous using a bike for transportation. And I knew probably half of those folks. You know, I could see folks riding around and, you know, there's only 10 of us out of 50,000.

So it was less than 1%. In Portland, about 6 to 10% of the population uses a bike on a daily basis for transportation, which is significant. Wow. But the 90% that don't are the same as the 99% or the 100% of people in Casper. So the attitudes of the city, the attitudes of the drivers are largely the same regardless wherever you live.

You know, auto culture in the United States is very much considered an entitlement. And so, you know, being in Casper and riding a bike to me is no different. It doesn't take any more confidence or any less confidence than it takes to ride a bike on the streets in Portland.

You're still up against pretty much the same barriers, the same challenges, whether, you know, aggressive drivers, city streets that don't support everybody using them. They only support one type of transportation. That's what I found. I mean, it is in a sense easier here in Portland, but not significantly, I don't think.

Why do you do it? Is this like your crusade to support your political belief or personal values? Or is this just because you like being frugal and don't like spending money on a hunk of metal that sits in the garage? Why do you do it? Yeah, it's a little bit of both of those things.

My wife and I have a very strong values attachment to this decision. But then at the same time, when we actually calculated our finances, we found out that we would save $700 a month by getting rid of our car. And so there's a huge financial benefit to making that decision.

You know, and that's a composite number. It's different for a lot of people. But for us, we had a car payment. We had insurance. We had gas. And then we were budgeting money every month for maintenance because for whatever reason, the car that we had was sucking the maintenance life out of us.

It was ridiculous. In any case, we decided $700 was about what we were saving every month on that. There also was a very strong values commitment because my wife and I have both spent time traveling internationally. We're very sensitive to the relationship between American foreign policy and resource extraction, i.e.

oil, or what it takes to get that. There's another thing, too. I grew up in a pretty conservative religious family where you hear the term pro-life thrown around a lot. And one of the things that my wife and I were very passionate about is there's about 46,000 people a year that die in the United States from automobile collisions.

And that number, the UN says that's 1.4 million people per year in the world. And we thought that that was a pro-life issue. Decreasing our car use, in part, was because we want to prevent the causes of death. And that's one of the highest causes of death worldwide. From the externalities of it, when you look at things like climate change, when you look at the actual automobile collisions that are killing people, you look at the intoxication deaths that are caused by people walking, riding bikes, and driving cars that are intoxicated.

That was one thing. Another thing, we definitely wanted to stop contributing money to this global war for resources and global war for oil. And we're not to the point where we're going to stop paying our taxes, but we did want to vote with our dollar, as it were, and stop giving money to the corporations and the governments that are creating these environments.

I like that. It's nice to hear somebody integrate fully pro-life. It's one of the things that always bugs me, because I am profoundly, as a person, I am profoundly pro-life in every way. And it so bugs me when somebody says, "Well, I'm pro-life in terms of taking care of the babies, but we can kill all the other people on the other side of the world for useless, stupid reasons." Well, wait a second.

Why don't you be a little consistent here? Why don't you be consistent with your beliefs, and you're either pro-life or you're pro-death? And so we have this odd mixture. Yeah, when people look at things factually, take Ebola, for example, that's killed, at high estimates, around maybe 10,000 people. With automobile culture and design and the way that we're using that technology, it kills 1.4 million people per year, and that number is growing.

What's the more dire situation that we need to address as a global community? Not saying Ebola is not important, but if we were to look at the actual danger factor involved, I'm a pilot as well, and everybody knows the little statement, "You're more likely to die on the way to the airport than you are actually in a plane crash." Providing evidence that it is way more dangerous to ride in a car or to drive a car than it is to fly in this metal tube at 30,000 feet across the world.

I think that was something interesting, and I'm a pretty passionate person, and so I was very motivated not to just talk about being pro-life, but to incorporate that into as many areas of my life as I could, and this seemed to be a very natural output for that. I like that, and the cool thing is it serves your own self-interest, too.

You're healthier and you're richer, and you can support your values. It's nice when those things line up together. Sometimes you have to impoverish yourself a little bit, maybe, to stand up for some of your views and opinions and to fight for what you perceive to be right, but it's nice when you can fight for what you perceive to be right, and it puts money in your pocket, too.

Absolutely, yeah. So, I am a novice when it comes to riding a bicycle. Obviously, I was a kid, grew up riding one, but I never even considered using a bicycle as transportation. A bicycle was just always something fun, and then where my living situation, where I live in Palm Beach County, Florida, it is one of the most spread out counties, I think, in the country.

I can't remember, but it might be the biggest county in the country, or it might be. Maybe not. I don't know, but it's a pretty large one. So, I've always commuted. I always lived, when I was growing up, 20 miles from my school, and just always commuted. Never even considered riding a bicycle until my wife and I were married, and I started living in downtown West Palm.

And I hadn't had a bicycle for years, and then we decided to get one so we could go on bike rides together. She had one that was left over from about sixth grade, and so we went down to Walmart, and I got a $99 special on a beach cruiser, a larger, tired beach cruiser, which was a little bit more suitable for my, and I'm about 6'6".

But what I found is that it was cool, and it was pretty cool to be able to ride it around West Palm. We'd ride it down to the beach. We'd ride it, you know, the Green Market on Saturday morning. We'd ride down on Thursday night to the bookstore. Sometimes we'd walk.

Sometimes we'd ride. But we wound up riding it a lot. And then, when we moved out to Palm Beach Gardens, we continued riding it, and then I wound up, it got stolen for reasons that, well, actually, I'll tell the story, 'cause this is kind of interesting. I rode it to the mall for, we live fairly near a mall, and so I tried to ride my bike instead of having to use the car.

And I locked it one day. There were no bike racks, so I locked it to a railing, and I came back, and the bike was gone, and I deduced that it hadn't been stolen. It had been clipped by the security guards. So I went after him, and I found the bike and got them to actually, which is pretty cool, I got them to actually pay me the 20 bucks for the bike lock that they'd chopped, 'cause there were no bike racks there.

And so they gave me the bike, and the head of security was so annoyed at me, he gave me 20 bucks from his desk to buy myself another bike lock. And then I rode it to my office the next day, and I didn't have a bike lock, and I was lazy about getting one, and three days later, it disappeared from my office.

So I am now bike-less and have been for a year or so. I just switched to walking to work instead of biking to work. But what I realized was that my Cruiser was not the optimal choice for transportation. It was slow, and the tires were so fat, it wasn't very good.

And I realized, I know nothing about bicycles. So if I were interested, since you've done this a little bit, if I were interested in actually saying, "I'd like to get a bike that would actually be useful and practical. I'm not sure about commuting every day, I'm not sure about being a nut like you and driving, what'd you say, 25 miles to the airport in Denver, but I'm interested in getting a bicycle." Where would I start, and what advice would you have for me as a novice person who rides a bicycle?

Yeah, totally. There's a paradigm shift for most people that would be a good place to start. So when you're looking at a bicycle in the United States, a lot of people in their head are thinking recreation. And so when you make the switch to wanting to use a bike for transportation, you kind of have to think about things a little bit differently.

So I like to use the car paradigm as an example. Would you buy a car sight unseen, offline? Probably not. Would you buy a car from a real seedy used car dealer in a bad part of town next to the payday loan office and the video poker establishment? Not if you listen to Joshua's show and have an ounce of common sense.

Sure, probably not. People say when you start seeing strip clubs and payday loans, you know you're in a part of town that's just going to be trying to take advantage of you. And so that's where all the used car dealerships pop up. And if you walk into one of those places, you're just asking to be taken advantage of, unfortunately.

Most people that are going to buy a car would do their research. They would connect with a mechanic, potentially, if they don't know what they're doing, because that way when they find something used, they can get it evaluated. And then if you're looking at purchasing something new, which I know is not very popular in the community that we're in, you would go do your research on a dealership and find one that is reputable, that's going to stand behind their vehicle, possibly offer a warranty as a part of that.

All of those same considerations would apply to purchasing a bicycle for transportation. It's going to be significantly less money, so there's not as much pressure on the purchase. So some basic things. Now bike shops are offering loans for bikes or credit cards with their company. I wouldn't recommend going into debt for this at all.

First off, if you have a bike, ride what you have. If you don't have a bike, buying something used is a good idea, spending as little money as possible for something quality. So just like with a car, the first thing I do is find a bike shop who will do a used bike evaluation for you.

Very common, pretty much all bike shops will do it, all mechanics will do it. That's probably the first thing I do is find a bike shop and make sure that they will be able to do an evaluation on a used bike. Then get on Craigslist or whatever your online marketplace is in your city and find something local is preferable because then you can have it checked out.

I would stay away from buying anything online. I would stay away from buying anything from Walmart. Walmart for bikes is the same thing as a seedy used car dealer in a bad part of town. I learned that with my Cruiser because it looked all fancy and shiny and I'm like, "Ah, it's cheap and it's great." And then I got it home and I parked it underneath an overhang and three days later, everything that wasn't the fancy shiny chrome frame was rusting and nothing, it just started falling apart almost immediately.

So I recognize there's a little bit of a difference in quality between a Walmart bike versus what I would assume somebody else would be able to ride every day. Yeah, when you buy a bike from a department store like Walmart or the mall or whatever happens to be, the person putting that bike together is not a mechanic and they have no knowledge whatsoever of what that bike needs to be safe.

And it may sound a little harsh and I don't mean it as a critique on the people that work in those establishments. I'm just speaking from experience that that's usually not a good idea because the bike is a machine and you wouldn't let a grocery store employee fix your car.

For the same reason, I wouldn't let a Walmart employee build my bike. There are some safety considerations in that. So a good starting place, connect with a shop, find something used and do it. Now if you have the money and you want to get a new bike, that would definitely work in your favor because you'll rule out a lot of the mechanical problems that you'd have.

Most bike shops in America are oriented towards recreation and fitness and so they're not necessarily oriented towards transportation. If you live in a larger urban area, you might be able to find a shop that is oriented towards transportation. Cities like Minneapolis, Austin, Denver, Portland, Seattle, LA, New York City, those are ones that come to mind that I know have transportation-oriented bike shops.

Every other city in the country is going to have a bike shop more than likely and the sales staff is not necessarily going to know what is going to work well in a transportational sense so you'll need to do a little bit of internet research to find out what brands they offer and then what bikes within that brand work well for transportation.

Some basic questions that you want to ask when you go in, make sure you say up front that you're looking to use this for transportation. Be ready for some really silly reactions. They might congratulate you and say, "We're really excited that you're taking this step," or they might say, "That's impossible.

There's no way that's going to work safely." Don't listen to any of the negative talk unless the person is knowledgeable, saying, "Stay away from this part of town," or, "Use these streets." If that's the kind of feedback you're getting, it's excellent. But if it's globally negative, like, "This is never going to work.

This is the dumbest idea I've ever heard," completely ignore it. In any case, look for a bike that has the ability or already installed fenders and a front or rear rack. Usually a bike that will have those elements will be good. Things that are preferred are large tires and disc brakes.

They work really well for transportation bikes. Not a necessity, but definitely preferred. And then you're going to want to make sure that you budget a little bit of money for accessories. So whatever your budget is, take 75% of that, spend it on the bike. Take the other 25%, and you'll need to buy, at the minimum, a front light and a rear light, white and red, respectively, and a U-lock, something that looks like a U or a D.

Those are the most secure. And then if you've got a little bit of extra money on top of that, I'd look to buy waterproof bags and a rear-view mirror. And the rear-view mirror can attach to your bike or a helmet if you choose to wear one. Yeah, I've got to imagine with biking, the gear makes all the difference in the world.

Just as simple as having a basket. So if you have something to put, or like I said, a bag to strap stuff to, that makes all the difference in the world. Absolutely. And there's so many choices. If you're a basket person and you want a basket up front to just toss your purse or your backpack in, that's really easy.

If you like the waterproof bags that can strap onto your rack, that's really easy, too. And there are lots of great choices for that. But there's no reason to buy all of that up front. Just the lights and the lock are really what you need. So probably also, though, should you steer away from things like fat tires, like mountain bikes, I would imagine are probably suboptimal unless you're riding up and down a mountain.

So you should probably get something with skinny tires if you're going to be on roads. Is that right? Not necessarily. I would actually prefer not to ride on skinny tires. My tires right now are the thickness of a mountain bike tire, but they don't have the little knobs on them like what mountain bike tires would have on it.

They're smooth and they have a little bit of siping, so they kind of look like a smaller motorcycle tire, basically. It depends on where you live. I've met people that commute daily in Alaska, and they need what's called a fat bike, where it has these huge tires on it that run at really low pressure, and they ride over gravel and dirt and whatever.

It depends on the safest way to get where you're going, what it looks like. For some people, I've spent a lot of time in the South, in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. There are a lot of unpaved dirt paths that go places. That's why I like recommending buying a used bike first, because then you find out what you actually need.

If you start off with a skinny tire bike and you find out, "Wow, the easiest way for me to get to work is to ride a little bit on this dirt path," then when you actually buy a bike new, you'll get one that fits your needs a little bit better.

Right. Do brands matter? Is there a specific brand that you should look for that's a good entry-level brand, or does that just matter as far as what the bike shop actually carries? Branding is important only to the extent of the support from the manufacturer. Most bicycles that are sold in the world are either made in China or Taiwan.

Those are really the only two places in the world. You can buy an American-made bike, but it will cost you thousands of dollars and be a little bit impractical for folks who are starting off. Bikes that are made in Taiwan are typically superior to bikes that are made in China.

I would steer away from anything carbon fiber. That will not benefit you in any way. This goes back to the Walmart discussion. Brands usually partner with the shop to provide support for that bike. For example, if you went with a larger brand like Specialized, Trek, or Felt, Raleigh, there's maybe 10 well-respected manufacturers for bikes in the United States.

They will offer excellent support for that bike. If something breaks on it, it can be warrantied. If you crash and you need to replace the bike, a lot of times they'll offer loyalty programs to replace the parts, even though it was your fault and it wasn't theirs. That kind of support is really invaluable to someone, especially if you don't have mechanical knowledge.

Developing a relationship with a bike shop is very important because they can help support you. Flat tires, mechanical issues. Sometimes you'll be able to find riding support and group rides that will help you get a little bit more comfortable on the road riding with cars with other people who know what they're doing and they can help give you those skills.

Those are all the things that come with a brand. Usually brands are exclusive at certain bike shops. One shop will only sell Trek. Another shop will only sell Specialized. The way that the manufacturers develop their relationships with bike shops is they mandate that orientation. It's important for the support aspect of it.

For the actual rideability of the bike, they're pretty much all the same. They all have a chain, they all have gears, and they all have wheels. That's basically what you need. There's no reason to overcomplicate that. Pretty much all bike shops are going to sell essentially the same thing.

You're basically buying into that brand support. When you're looking for a bike, you can go to a variety of bike shops and try things out. Ride as many bikes as you want. Bike shops are always happy to have people go in and test ride things. That would give you more of an idea of what you're drawn to, what style of bike you're drawn to.

Dave: Is there a price range that if I were shopping for a bike for transportation that I would want them, for a new one, I'm sure used ones will vary, but is there a price range that would be a reasonable entry-level price range to consider? Ryan: Yeah. If you're buying a bike used, I would expect to spend around $500 for something that's high enough quality to use it for transportation.

If you're buying a bike new, I would expect to spend around $1,000. It puts you in the middle bracket of what a bike shop will offer. You don't necessarily want to buy the cheapest thing possible. The cheapest thing possible is designed for someone who will occasionally use their bike, maybe a couple times a year to ride on a trail with family.

Maybe the grandkids come and you pull the bikes out and everybody goes out for one day a year. The cheapest bike is designed for that individual. In the mid-range, you're going to find a lot of bikes that are good for everyday use, but that aren't so nice that you're afraid of it getting damaged or stolen or broken.

The quality of the components is important when buying a bike for transportation. I would expect to say $1,000 is reasonable to get something that's decent, durable quality, but also something that is not so nice where you have to be afraid of locking it up outside the movie theater or something.

For me, it was a slap in the face when I walked into a bike shop one time and here I am. I'm in the $99 Walmart special mindset. All of a sudden, I go in and it's $1,000. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't even conceive of it. I can totally see you're exactly right.

If there's a big difference between how I often in the past used a bike where a couple times a year you brush it off and ride a few miles versus something that's designed to be used on a daily basis. I learned my lesson with my $99 special when stuff was breaking on it.

I rode it more frequently than any bike I ever had and it fell apart. We have to think about it in terms of how important where you're going is. I ride to work every day. I am a responsible employee. I don't like to show up late. I don't like to call in sick and things like that.

If I'm going to ride my bike in, I still want to be an excellent employee. I don't want any of those things to get in the way. I have really nice, rather expensive tires I've invested a lot in that don't get flat really at all. I have over 10,000 miles on one pair of tires and never had a flat, which is great.

If you spend the money to invest in quality parts in certain areas of the bike, you can trust in that. I will leave a little bit more early than I normally would had I been driving to give myself some time just in case I get a flat or something happens.

I'll have time to catch a bus or call a friend to get to work just in case something happens. It never has happened. I've never had to call in sick or call a friend or whatever. I like to know that I've built some extra time into my schedule so it's not going to affect getting to work on time.

When you think about it that way, you don't want to skimp on the money. Skimping on the money side of things or skimping on the durability, sacrificing that could sacrifice another relationship that you have that depends on you transporting yourself there. If you're just using it to go to the grocery store, obviously at that point you could afford to skimp a little bit on durability because what are the consequences of you not making it to the grocery store?

Not that great. No one's depending on you to be there. It doesn't mark negatively on your career if you don't get there on time. If that's your goal, then you don't need something as expensive or as durable. For me, my work bike, just to give you an example, with all the things I have on it, it costs about $2,000.

I have a generator hub in the front that generates electricity when I pedal. It powers all of my lighting so I never have to change batteries and it's always on. I've got a rack with waterproof bags. I have a Bluetooth speaker that connects to my phone so I can listen to podcasts and the radio and make and receive phone calls while I'm riding my bike.

Those are some of the things that help make that choice and that lifestyle a little bit easier. Dave: The cool thing is I remember reading, I think it was Jacob Lundfisker wrote an article and he just talked about how if you're going to have the best car on the road, it's going to take a lot of money.

To have the best bike on the road, any normal middle class person could easily afford it, especially if it's their primary or at least replacing one of their cars. You go from a $5,000 car that's kind of middle of the road, pretty cheap car most people would consider, to a top of the line bicycle for $2,000, you're still saving money.

The riding experience, the enjoyment of it would probably be substantially better by having something really nice so it allows you to make that switch away from the car. Ben: When you make that choice on a bicycle, it makes the price a little bit easier when it's a one-time thing.

You buy a car, say a new car for $30,000 or $40,000, that car still needs you to put $100 per gas tank in that thing to actually run. When you buy a bike, that's a one-time cost. That will always continue to work as long as you take care of it.

It removes that embedded cost or the need for anything else to make it go. You just have to eat more burritos. Whatever it is, they say miles per burrito instead of miles per hour. Dave: How do you do this with kids? You've got two young kids. What are some tips and tricks for being able to do this with kids successfully?

Ben: That is considerably more challenging. There are a lot of resources out there to help folks. I know it's kind of hackneyed, but we always point towards the European model in, say, Holland and Denmark because they have been doing this for a lot longer. They ride with kids, no problem.

We look at their model, and a lot of them have special bikes designed to fit a child on them. When you adapt a bicycle that's normally found in the United States to carry kids, it doesn't necessarily make it functional for transportation because just the weight of adding a child to a regular adult bicycle eliminates the ability to carry actual cargo.

You might be able to carry your child, but then you can't carry grocery bags and all the things that come with a child that you have to carry as well. Diapers and spare clothes and wipes and food and all these other things are extra. When you look at the European model, they have special bikes that are designed to carry children.

A couple types of those. There's a tricycle model with two wheels up front and one wheel in the back. It's got a big bucket in the front. That's one. I don't necessarily prefer that, but it's definitely an option. Then there's a company that makes an extension to the back of an adult bicycle called an extra cycle.

That's the style of bike called a long tail. Those are nice because kids can sit on the back and you have these two large bags that you can put things in. Then there's the Bockfeet style where you have this big box up front, and it only has two wheels.

You steer with a steering linkage that goes underneath the box and connects to the front wheel. It probably sounds weird hearing that described, but if you duck, duck, go, a Bockfeet ... Thank you. I know what we're trying to do here. If you search for the Bockfeet style, it'll pop up and you'll see a picture of it and it'll make sense.

They're not that hard to ride. When riding with kids, the first consideration everybody has, and justifiably so, is is it safe? That's very important. You need to be confident riding your normal route around your city before you want to carry your children. You want to know where the safe streets are.

Safe streets are usually streets that have lower speed limits, ideally somewhere around 15 to 20. If your location ... I know being raised in the South, I know very few streets have that kind of speed limit. In grid cities, larger cities that have a well-established historic grid, you're going to find lower speed limits just by design.

Those are going to be a little bit easier. Be confident riding in your context before you add a child to that. Even when you do add children to that, you want to make sure that they're safe and that you can see them and that they're strapped in. A lot of places mandate helmet use for kids, which is a great thing.

Say here in Portland, any child, I think, under 12 has to wear a helmet. Those are just the basics. Both of my ... Our six-month-old is in a car seat strapped into our box. I've actually screwed attachments in there and locked her car seat down to it. Our other child is in a five-point harness style.

Maybe you can include a picture of our setup in the show notes. Yeah, I'll make sure to do that. That's just one thing among many. You want to be able to carry all of your gear comfortably and be able to maneuver yourself on the bike. Carrying three kids with a 50-pound backpack, not a good idea.

You want to be able to comfortably get on and off the bike. I like riding with a rear-view mirror because you can increase your situational awareness and know what's going on around you. That's really important for safety. All of the safety things taken ... Once you get that taken care of, it's really, really, really fun.

That's one of the biggest reasons that we love getting around as a family on the bike. My kids love it. My two-year-old is always so excited to get on the bike. She sees the world in a different way, and she gets to interact with us in a way that she couldn't if she were strapped into a car seat or whatnot.

She can turn around. We can look at each other. We can carry on conversations. We listen to music. She loves the Frozen soundtrack. We got that playing on the Bluetooth speaker. We're going down the road singing Frozen as loud as we can. It's a really fun experience. It's interactive.

If you're driving in the car and your child is screaming and going nuts, it's very difficult to remedy that situation. If we're going down the road on the bike and my daughter starts having a meltdown, we can just pull over and figure out what it is. She's like, "Oh, I dropped my toy." Cool.

I'll pull over, pick it up, give it back to her. We're back on the road, and everybody's happy. It's just more interactive. You didn't mention bike trailers. Do you use a trailer at all, ever? I don't. That was one of the main reasons that we got the box bike.

Trailers are designed for the recreational side of things. If you're riding, if you look at any trailer website, they're going to show people on a recreational trail, not around cars, going rather slow when it's sunny and beautiful outside. That's how a trailer is really designed. When you use it for transportation, personally, I don't think it's very safe because the child is not connected to your bike other than this small connector that attaches to the axle.

That makes me a little uncomfortable. It also is extended way past the bike in the back. Sometimes folks don't see that. If someone's driving behind you, they might see you on a bike, but they don't see the trailer which is much lower than you. There have been instances of people getting rear-ended from behind because the person didn't see the trailer, but they saw the person on the bike.

Also, it separates you from your kids, so you can't really have a conversation. You can't really talk. They just sit back there and wait until you get to whatever your destination is. It's a great way to make your kid fall asleep if you want. That makes sense to me as far as kids.

I had a trailer for my bike before it was stolen, and I would use it to go to the grocery store. I did find it's an easy entryway with my $99 Walmart special. I got a trailer from my brother and just stuck the thing on there. I was able to go and haul my load of groceries.

I felt pretty crunchy. It was pretty funny going to the grocery store where I live. I could get good parking. The bike rack was empty, and I would park right in front of the store and just stick my trailer there on the sidewalk, which probably in biking places is a problem.

It was kind of fun to go out with the Publix guy and load the bags of groceries into my trailer. He said, "Are you serious?" It was a good entryway to actually using a bike to haul some cargo. That's great. I love it for cargo. They're not designed for that either.

Sometimes cargo can be really unstable in a trailer, but there are specific trailers designed for cargo. I'm not that supportive of carrying children in a trailer. Sure. I understand that. For transportation. Now, if you're doing it on trails on the weekend for recreation and it's beautiful and sunny outside, that's one thing.

It's not that great for all types of weather. It's not that great for riding on the road with cars. It's not that visible and people aren't accustomed to looking for it. Those are the things that I would definitely encourage folks away from a trailer for a long-term plan. Short-term plan, yeah, it's great and easy to get into it, but long-term, I don't think it's the best or most ideal way to carry children on a bike.

Last question I got and then I'll let you give it some thought and just see if there's anything else you want to share. A few years ago, I was in China and I noticed two things when I was there. Number one is there's a massive number of scooters. It was pretty cool to see.

I mean, there's just bazillions of little itty-bitty scooters and they're all decked out with face shields and these gloves, these winter gloves connected to the handlebars so people could use them. There were tons and tons of those, which I think are an option that we should give a lot of thought to in the US, especially in urban areas.

But then also, there were tons and tons of the bikes with the electric, the battery power, the e-bikes. What are your thoughts on that being helpful for somebody whose legs are not quite as strong as yours? Is that a helpful thing for someone to consider? I love e-bikes. I absolutely love them and I think that it's extremely positive.

You talked about the trailer as being an easy way for people to get involved with carrying things on their bikes, whether it be kids or cargo or groceries, whatever it is. I think the electric bikes are the exact same thing, just for individuals looking to ride a bike. Not everybody's fitness level is the same.

Not everybody's abilities are the same. There are some folks, maybe you're a lawyer and you live in Kansas or Iowa, a Midwestern state that's not that easy to get around on a bike, and that could open it up to you. Maybe there are folks out there who aren't that healthy and might have bad knees or physical issues that prevent them from pedaling for an hour on a bike.

An electric bike could give you a little bit of fitness but also open you up to decreasing your dependence on the car and having more of an active lifestyle. I think those things are excellent. Even for folks who have the bikes that we're talking about, the larger cargo bikes, those are pretty heavy.

If you have a mom that's carrying three kids and groceries in a box, or a dad, it's much easier to have an electric assistant there that would help you out. It makes that life transition much easier and, for a lot of people, it's a more sustainable option. Yeah, I can see that.

My thing is I'm glad we are getting more options in this country. Thankfully, these days, I don't have to spend much time in rush hour, but any time I drive down here where I live, it's I-95, it's eight lanes. No, actually, it's ten lanes. Sometimes I have to drive down to Boca in rush hour.

As I'm cruising along, I look at the tiny number of cars that are in the carpool lane, and I look at the massive number of cars that just have one person in it. It bothers the engineer in me. I just think, "This is so crazy inefficient. Why don't we all at least ride motorcycles?" I love to ride motorcycles.

I was thinking, "Listen, you get a nice ... On a motorcycle, what I learned riding a motorcycle, you can get a very nice bike that's very comfortable. You get yourself a decent, maybe like an aero-stitch suit or something like that that's just on and off to cover up your street clothes, and you can be well-protected in case you go down.

You can be much more comfortable." I just think of the money and the gas and the congestion and everything that we could save if we built more, if we just chose different options. We live in such a car-centric culture that you've got to be pretty counter-cultural to do it.

Well, people have to think outside the box a little bit because what's happening in the United States right now is that we have developed in totality for the automobile and for individuals to drive cars alone by themselves, going one way. We've run out of money. Basically, the highway trust fund is empty.

Cities and states cannot sustainably fund their road maintenance on their own, so they're looking for federal grants. The federal grants have run out. As a country, we don't have a way to pay for that anymore. The gas tax hasn't increased since the '90s, and inflation has increased, but now all the other costs have gone up, and we haven't funded that adequately.

What happens in that case? They rob other pots of money. The extra money that is needed for road maintenance on a national scale comes out of the general fund. Instead of that money going towards healthcare or education, now it's going towards roads. The folks who live in this country will have to make a decision on whether that's a worthwhile investment to them.

Personally, I think we could use the money a little bit better because obesity being such an epidemic in the United States, doing something that's active is beneficial. If you can also make that transportation, wow, you've killed two or three things with one stone now that maybe if a kid rides a bike to school, he or she gets to school more alert and awake, ready to learn.

They've already done physical activity, and they haven't caused the damage to the road that a vehicle would. If you expand your conception of transportation, if you expand that concept out, it can really affect other areas of life in really positive or negative ways. I'm with you. It's funny. I'm so interested in education, and there are only a few things that I've seen at least research on that seem to actually make a difference in how well children learn.

One of them is parental involvement, but one of the other ones is physical activity, is that the brain, when there's more physical activity, then the brain is more receptive and the person is able to learn more. But as you see budgets cut, one of the things that you see going is PE and physical time.

I just think, why don't you scrap half of the academic classes and fill one of them with just total play, fill the next one with maybe some structured physical activity and structured games, and fill the third one with, I don't know, shop class or something, and you'll get better results in the three or four academic periods that you still maintain than you're getting with the six or seven that you're doing on a daily basis.

If you're an adult, too, if you work for a larger corporation that has a more global footprint, a lot of them have a benefit for you to ride your bike to work, and they'll actually pay you to ride a bike to work. In the United States, a parking spot costs approximately $40,000.

So if they can save providing parking for you, then they'll turn around and give you some of that money back, and that will help soften the cost of getting involved in this. But employers, they realize that, too. Employers want their employees to be physically active and to show up.

They've also found that by paying people to ride their bike to work, they've seen their health care premiums go down over the whole corporation because now people are more active and fit. So the company is saving money. It's really a benefit, whether you're young or old. Wow. Very cool.

Well, keep up your work, and it sounds like you guys are at least leading as an example, and I hope that more people follow. I think that's awesome. So anything you want to add as we go? No, I'm good. I think it was a great conversation, and I'm hoping folks find it useful.

Very cool. Well, Christopher, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, Joshua. I don't know about you, but for me, I figure if somebody can ride a bike in Colorado or in North Dakota or in Portland, I don't have much of an excuse down here in sunny South Florida.

Thankfully, I've designed my life that I just don't really spend that much time driving anymore, and I'm making progress on that. But still, I don't have any excuse, and neither of us has an excuse. So take that. I hope you find the information helpful and inspirational. Check out the show notes for a link to a couple of articles on Christopher and his family.

He's a pretty neat guy, and he hosts a—I don't think he mentioned it on the show, but he hosts, I think, some kind of weekly show on bicycling on a podcast or a local radio station where he lives. So check that out. I'll put links to that in the show notes.

That's it for today's show. As we go out here, I thank you all for your reviews. If you've enjoyed the content, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new here, I thank you all for your reviews. If you've enjoyed the content, consider becoming a member of the show with the membership site, The Irregulars.

There's lots of details on that, but that's how I've designed to pay the bills. I really appreciate those of you who have signed up. It means the world to me of your place and your trust and confidence in me. I really appreciate that. I also thank you for your reviews on iTunes and Stitcher.

I'll read one review as we go out the door here. This review comes in from Dale and it says on iTunes, "The subject is informative and easy to listen to. Joshua is very well spoken, making this podcast very easy to listen to. The content contains very detailed facts and advice.

I like that he doesn't generalize and recommend to everyone to do the same thing. He always points out that everyone's decision is dependent upon their personal circumstances, and then he goes into the detail behind what circumstances are appropriate for each option, giving us the necessary information to make our own decisions.

Everyone's very well educated about the topics he covers and doesn't hesitate to let us know when he's not as well informed about a topic that his guest is describing rather than fake it. He does tend to be a bit long-winded, as I am kind of being here, but that's only because he has so much useful information to share.

Great podcast. Dale, thank you. That's a very generous review. I don't know how long today's show is, but I don't think it's as long-winded. So in the case of the goal of not being long-winded, I'm done for the day. Peace out, y'all. Thank you for listening to today's show.

This show is intended to provide entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment. Your situation is unique, and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you. This show is not and is not intended to be any form of financial advice. Please, develop a team of professional advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy, and consult them because they are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide specific answers to your questions.

Hold them accountable for your results. I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate in today's show, but I'm one person, and I make mistakes. If you spot a mistake in something I've said, please come by the show page and comment, so we can all learn together. Until tomorrow, thanks for being here.