Cycling makes you rich

I took the opportunity last night of tallying the savings I've been making by cycling part of the way to work over the last couple of years. The good lord knows I'm a little obsessed with statistics - but it is a harmless sideline. Anyhoo, I've ridden to work 90 times since January last year, a return trip of 28km.

The savings are really easy to calculate: those trips represent $399.60 worth of saved Citilink tolls. It also means that I've not driven 2,520km in the car. There's a saving of $214.20 in petrol straight away. Taking into account the deferred cost of servicing and tyres bumps the saving up to $373.75. The grand total is $773.35, or $8.59 a ride. Or 30c a kilometre. I'm happy with that result, despite the fact that over the same period I've probably spend twice that on shiny bike bits.

The exercise prompts some further thought. If I'd been more religious about it, and ridden four days each working week over the two-year period, I could have done 360 trips, saving $3,092. Or I could have shed the car altogether and saved the roughly $22,000 I've spent keeping it on the road. Plus had the cash from selling the car in my pocket. Let's call it a nice round $30,000. Even so, I'm happy with the $773 figure. It's a start.

Shiny bike bit at the top left is a spoke threader I have my eye on. Will need to ride to work a bit more to save the money!

4,603km so far this year.