Struggling with your electric bill? Get an energy assist from SDG&E and SAFE. You may qualify for an 18% discount. Visit sdge.com/fera to find out more. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, and fun life, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

Today, Fun Friday question. Question comes in from Chris. Very interesting. Says, "Joshua, looking to see if you have any insight on emotional or psychological decisions versus logical decisions when it comes to finance. Backstory. I have a paid-for 20-year-old Harley-Davidson motorcycle. I have not ridden it in three years. I spend about $200 per year on an insurance policy.

Each spring, I do maintenance on it, which costs about $30, and living in Minnesota, we only really have six months or so of decent riding weather. I have a big garage, so storage is not an issue, apart from each winter when I have to move it around in the garage and I tell myself I'll sell it in the spring.

I can make the logical argument to myself that I need to sell this. It is a depreciating asset, costs money to maintain and insure, and it really brings no value to my life. However, I cannot bring myself to sell it. I have no pressing financial obligations, so the $5,000 or $6,000 that I would get from selling it would really not do much to improve my life.

About the only thing that I would do with the money is put it in a taxable brokerage account. I've told myself I'm going to sell this bike for years now, but I still can't figure out why I still have it. Any insight would be helpful, and as always, thanks for the great show.

Chris in Minnesota. Well, Chris, kind of a fun question, and obviously in light of your current financial situation, thankfully not a super important question, just one of these musings, and clearly you have mused on this for a couple of years, and what I was most impressed by, the reason I wanted to answer this on the show, was your clear thinking that you applied to it, and so I'll just share with you my suggestions and commentary.

First thing, I am glad to hear that you are assessing the value of the item and trying to understand its value in your life. In general, I think most of us are prone to inertia, just simply continuing to do what we've done, and in this case, you have a Harley that you've had for a long time, and well, why get rid of it if you've had it for a long time?

But you do point out that there are some problems, although minor, financially otherwise, with maintaining it and keeping it going. I mean, if you don't go out there and start the thing at least every month or a couple of months, you wind up with the carburetor all messed up, and the thing will run.

I mean, it's a 20-year-old Harley, so right there, you're not going to get a very smooth start anyway. So you wind up cleaning the carburetor, and you have to keep the battery maintainer on it, and you're replacing batteries and all of your spring maintenance, as you said, and then your insurance policies.

So there are some costs to it, and then of course you can calculate the-- and as you should, you've calculated the depreciation cost. Now my guess is for a Harley of this age, it's pretty much done depreciating. I don't--I'm not that in tune with the Harley-Davidson marketplace, but it's hard for me to think that it's going to go down much more in value than $5,000 or $6,000.

So you probably have almost no depreciation at this point in time as long as it is maintained. So your really costs are your maintenance costs and your insurance costs. One thing I would look into in this case was can you just drop the insurance. In the state of Florida, there is no requirement that you have to have insurance for a motorcycle.

Of course, it's a good idea, but unlike with cars, there's no legal requirement that you have to maintain insurance. I guess the state authorities figured that if you get in a crash on a motorcycle, probably the damage to the car is going to be a whole lot less than the damage to your bike.

So it's not required that you maintain insurance. That could be one way of trimming your expenses. And, of course, you have the cost of the maintenance on it. Here's how I would assess it. I wouldn't discount the psychological value of things. I think we all have things that we like, and we just keep them around because we like them.

Maybe you had many great rides on this Harley and you've really just enjoyed owning it. I have a friend of mine who has the same thing, has a classic Harley. It's 1993, so over 20 years old. He has owned it since it was brand new, put all the miles on it, and he just likes to have it.

A similar thing, except he doesn't do the maintenance on it, and so every year he takes it into the Harley shop to have the carburetor cleared up and all that, so it does cost him more money. But I don't think there's a problem of keeping stuff around. In terms of selling it, I think you identified some of the reasons why it's not pressing.

As you say, I have no pressing financial obligation. To me, the idea of selling my $5,000 or $6,000 toy that I've enjoyed over the years to just put the money in a brokerage account sounds very logical and utterly boring. So I can understand why you wouldn't do it. If you don't have a pressing goal and you're not pressing where this $5,000 or $6,000 is going to make a big deal, it's a lot more fun to look at the Harley in the garage than to see an extra $5,000 of value for most people on a probably substantial brokerage account.

Now, if you have no investment assets, this could set you on the path to investing. So here are a few ideas. Here is what I would do. Number one, I would not discount the psychological value, but I would consider it. There comes a time in most of our lives where it's time for us to let things go, and if you're ready to do that, let it go.

But I wouldn't discount the psychological value. None of us make all logical decisions. It might be a fun economic concept and somewhat useful to think about the rational person. What would a rational person do? But the reality is we're not really all rational. We're very emotional. Even the concept of rationality presupposes an external objective standard for rationality.

Interesting philosophical argument there. We'll skip it for now. But in the context of your own rationality, it would be determined based upon what do you value. Some people would say, "I value having money and productive investments." Well, it's rational in that context to sell the Harley and toss the money in a brokerage account.

Some people, however, would say, "I value living a rich life now, and for me, knees in the breeze is my only disease, and my Harley Davidson is my two-wheeled psychologist." I left some helmet stickers there for you. And indeed, to me, that is utterly rational. It's perfectly rational to keep something around because you enjoy it.

So don't discount the emotional value of something. Now, there's a reason you haven't ridden in three years. Maybe motorcycles just aren't your thing anymore. That's fine. Which brings me to thing number two that I would do. I would think carefully about the utility of the motorcycle. Is there a reason to keep it from an argument of utility?

For example, I think there is a tremendous amount of value of keeping around something like a backup form of transportation. If you have a car, but you also have a motorcycle as your backup, then perhaps that'll save you some money on renting a car to get to work when you need to go and put your car in the shop or if you have an accident.

If your total annual cost is $200 a year to maintain it, but you take your car to the shop for a few days, it wouldn't be hard to meet $200 per year of expenses. I think it's also really nice to have something like a motorcycle around. A motorcycle can be--although I'm sure a 20-year-old Harley is not-- a motorcycle can be something that's more fuel efficient.

If you need to take a fuel-efficient trip somewhere, that can be good. Or who knows? Maybe the zombie apocalypse is going to happen. North Korea fires off their nuke. Everyone hits the road, and there's massive traffic jams, and a motorcycle allows you to buzz along on the outside. So there you've got a zombie apocalypse vehicle in place for yourself.

I don't know. There are a lot of reasons. For me, if I had the storage space, I would find it valuable to have backup vehicles. And vehicles of different profiles. So consider if there's other utility for it that you're not thinking of. Number three, I would look for something--if you're worried about this emotional connection-- I would look for some kind of fun, other positive emotional connection to swap it out with.

So I wouldn't just toss it into a boring brokerage account. Think of something fun to do with the money. Maybe you want to spend it. And so tell your wife, "Hey, honey, listen, I'm selling the Harley. Let's go do something fun. Something that both of you have enjoyed doing, and turn the Harley into an experience.

You've traded out the hassle of a thing. You've traded out the hassle of storing it and maintaining it. It had a lot of fun experiences for you, but you can send it out in style by taking the money and selling it for an experience." I think that's worth it.

A lot more fun than just throwing it in a brokerage account. Or if you have not told yourself no on any experiences that you really want, then go and find some kind of fun investment that would give you psychological value. Maybe you want to go ahead and use this as a down payment on a speculative piece of property that you've thought about buying.

Or maybe there is a brand-new cryptocurrency that you've been eyeing, and you think, "Well, this is wild speculation, but you know what? Let me turn the Harley into something fun here." Maybe you've been eyeing that Barrett .50 cal, and you can't justify it. There's no reason for it, but you'd sure rather have one of those than a Harley.

You figure, "Well, if I buy the Barrett .50 cal down at the local gun shop, it's going to cost me 6,000, 7,000 bucks, but maybe it will maintain its value over time, and, hey, it would be fun to go out and shoot with my buddies every now and then." I don't know.

You pick whatever you're into. But come up with something that's emotionally fun and stimulating. And then instead of it being kind of a boring thing of, "Oh, I've got to get rid of this Harley and toss it into a brokerage account," you have something fun to think about, something interesting.

And then my final suggestion for you is don't discount just swapping out the experiences that you got with the Harley and swapping it out for something that would give you experiences, but that's more appropriate for where you are right now. And here I would encourage you, yes, consider selling it and you could put it on the market, but be open to doing a trade.

Sometimes with something like this, you'll come out better in the end if you'll trade it. Take some time and find somebody who would like to have a Harley and trade the Harley for their bass boat. Do you have bass in Minnesota? For their fishing boat. Or trade the Harley for a side-by-side, a UTV.

And maybe you would get more use out of the side-by-side UTV or a snow machine or something like that, and you can use it during the winter months. Maybe that would be more fun for you. Trade it for a boat. Trade it for a dual sport. If the reason you don't ride the Harley anymore, you enjoyed riding motorcycles, but you don't really love just being out on the road and you can't ride it six months, get yourself a dual sport or something and try to do a trade for it.

Perhaps you'll find something that would be more interesting. So that's my answer. I don't know which of these ideas would stick, but I'm not real excited about this idea. I have no pressing financial obligations, so the $5,000 to $6,000 that I would get from selling it would really not do much to improve my life.

That sounds boring, boring, boring to me. I'm going to put it in a taxable brokerage account. Find something with some juice and trade out the emotion that you have in the Harley for something else fun. And, hey, Chris, if you can't think of anything else to do with it, toss it on a – call up a local shipper and send it to me.

I'll ride the pants off of it. This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources. Find out more at RadicalLifeMedia.com. Struggling with your electric bill? Get an energy assist from SDG&E and SAFE. You may qualify for an 18% discount. Visit SDG&E.com/FERA to find out more.