It's ridiculously cheap!
Bike - £4k
Helmet - £100
Other gear - £100
Insurance & Tax pa - £500
Maintenance & Fuel pa - £300
Bike will last many years or can be sold for money. Gear will last until you trash it which is many years.
Say it becomes your mode of transport and we go for 4 years. That's about £150pcm. THat's cheap motoring and doubles up as your hobby.
Say you're a sunny sunday rider, a true hobbyist. You'll probably get 10 years out of all that! Throw in a gear change, bring maintenance down to £100 pa and it works out at about £80 pm.
A lot of that I've over-estimated too, gear can be bought second hand, bikes can be cheaper (although this could push up maintenance costs...). Insurance may vary for some bike/location dependent but it's a variable which goes down not up! The sunny sunday rider could get 6 month insurance living in this country. And you've still got an asset at the end of it!
Please, show me where you can buy a jacket, trousers, boots and gloves for £100 in total? If you're a year round biker, that price level gear will last until you've frozen your arse off or got soaked to the bone on the way to work!
then you'll realise you need some decent kit.
As an example, my first lot of textiles was the Aldi kit. It's ok stuff, but not waterproof, and not that warm. Cost for jacket and trousers was about £100.
This is what I've spent, and I'm not made of money - I do however do high miles so value decent kit.
Helmet £250
Proper goretex boots - £220
Proper goretex gloves - £100
Decent textiles that will keep you warm and dry: £180 trousers £280 jacket
Other gear - kevlar jeans x2 £200
Kriega rucksack £120
Then there's the other kit I've bought - jeather jacket £325
Kriega US30 £90
Insurance £100 (but for most new riders, £500+) Tax £40
Maintenence - Tyres £180 MOT £30
Fuel at 55mpg is 0.093p a mile. I've done 10600 miles so far this year at a cost of £1000 total
Then there's the cost of actually getting your licence, £500-£1000.
Once you've got all your kit, THEN it becomes cheap. And yes I'm sure you could if you really wanted to, get all your kit, a used helmet etc for a couple of hundred quid. But really, would you actually want to? And as I say, if you're riding in the rain or cold, £100 kit will get binned very soon after your first soaking.
For anyone starting out, don't be under the illusion that it's a cheap 'hobby'. Starting from scratch to get your DAS and get kitted up, excluding the cost of a bike and insurance, you need to budget £1000 minimum, maybe closer to £2000 if the course is near to a grand. Add a couple of grand for a bike, then £500 for insurance, and if you're still just a Sunday rider £5000+ is a lot to spend on a 'hobby'.
£300 on maintenece and fuel is a laugh
a rear tyre is £80-£100 plus fitting, yearly MOT is £30, that leaves enough for 2000 miles of fuel, which even for the most dedicated fair weather rider isn't a lot. Espcially after spending £5000 on the bike and kit!
