I've been reading the "The Millionaire Next Door" (thanks to my local Japanese library) and one of the ways they explain millionaires become millionaires is that they play both good offense
and good defense. Offense meaning they make big salaries and defense in that they are frugal with their pay checks and not squandering them away on big ticket boats, jet ski's, or expensive brands.
So far nothing has increased my offense and defense like a bike.
Let's start with the big impact a bike makes. Riding a bike every day means not driving a car. Cars cost money. They cost a lot of money. Of course there is the initial price of the car. Even if you buy a car used it is usually a very significant chunk of change. Then there are the ongoing upkeep. Gas, insurance, parking, parking tickets, speeding tickets (oops now more insurance too!), and not to mention the lost productivity sitting in traffic. Some people say a car sets you free. I think a car is more like that torture machine in the James Bond movie Goldfinger with the laser. It moves slow and cuts
deep.
So the big baddy, the car, is out of the way. How else does my bike save/make me money?
-No gym membership. A fellow teacher pays for a gym membership. Space is precious in Japan and therefore memberships to places that take up a lot of space are therefor also expensive. He pays about ¥8,000 a month (about $100) to swim only. He can also only go on the weekdays from the time the gym opens, 7:00am, until 10:00am. It works for him as he gets up early and swims before school. But about ten months of that gym membership would pay for my bike. I bike about 25km a day which I think is pretty good workout. No gyms needed here. Plus I get access to my bike 24/7/365 and it can take me more places.
-I pace myself more. If I go out with friends for a drink and I am on my bike that is plenty of reason to pace myself and not drink so much. Drinking in Japan a la carte is expensive. If I have to choose between a dangerous zig zaggy ride home or my life I'll call for the check after just one or two (I'll also keep more money in my wallet). My friends are also less likely to egg me on as well knowing that it would endanger my life.
-I pocket my transportation expense. In Japan many companies will pay for your train pass or fuel expense to get to work. My school will pay me this if I am riding my bike or taking the train. This is a major source of how my bike will make me money. How much? Currently my transportation expense is about ¥60,000 a year (about $800 or so). Next year when my school moves to a new area it will be about ¥160,000 a year (about $2000)! Not bad. That's real money in my pocket.
-Gympact pays me for what I would do anyway, ride my bike. Gympact is a website and iPhone app were you promise to workout a certain amount a week. You can track it with Runkeeper, or the Gympact app itself if you are going to a gym (but we covered that already). Meet your pact and you get paid money. If you don't meet it you get charged money. I have so far made about $10.00 over five weeks and I have never been charged for missing a pact. That might not sound like a whole lot but when you figure most of my dividend paying stocks pay out about that once a quarter Gympact doesn't suddenly look too bad. Plus I would be riding anyway so might as well get paid for it.
-I am more stress free. I'm not going to make it sound like teachers have the most difficult jobs in the world. We don't have to lift heavy things, and in general if we mess up a lesson nobody dies. But there is stress involved. I stress out about my lessons and if they are going to go well. Will it be fun and also educational? The last thing I need is a class full of 39 Japanese school girls staring at me and then giving up and going to sleep. It is probably more psychological than actual but I do feel the pinch. Japanese parents can be very demanding of their private school teachers and I have to deal with that. Riding to and from school each day is a great release for me. I get exercise and I focus my mind on something else even if just for thirty minutes.
Why don't we get concrete. The following is the breakdown of what my bike has cost me.
Bike $1000.00
Lock $360.00 (this was for two locks, one for me and one for the GF)
Pump $37.50
Handlebar basket $126.73
Fenders $60.64
Lights $40.00
Breaks $62.50
Transportation $10.50
(Transportation is train fare I paid which normally would have been covered by a train pass).
Total $1697.86
Wow! You might think that's quite expensive. But I received my second half of the year transportation reimbursement which was ¥30200 or $377.50. So far my bike has actually cost me:
$1320.36
I'm going to continue to track my bike related income and expenses. There are still a few items I need to purchase so this number could go up in the following months. But within a year I'm pretty sure it will become negative meaning my bike is another part of my life making me money.
Image credits:
http://www.thebicyclestory.com